There were some filler chapters I could have written to add to this overall story, but I finally decided to stick with what I had originally written when I first write this story before I began adding different sections in between the original chapters. This chapter follows canon insofar as Booth arrests Bones' father, and Hodgins and Angela's wedding is derailed. The rest is my own take on the aftermath of that in the framework of the Friends With Benefits story. I hope you all enjoy this one, though it is not the sex scene that usually is within this story.
Disclaimer: I don't own, or profit from, these characters or franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Booth was not feeling so hot right at the moment. After last nights arrest of Max, he'd been trying to hide the rather painful "battle wound". Women may rightly complain about the pain of child birth, and he was not about to dispute that, but he'd defend to the death any man's honor if he was complaining of a direct shot to the cajones. At the very least his were bruised up and he was a hurting unit. He could tell that Bones had been looking at him in a concerned way all afternoon at the non-wedding reception, especially when they were dancing, so he knew she would confront him once they got back to her place.
In the time since the harrowing experience with the Gravedigger she had spent time talking with him and Gordon Gordon. It had helped, and even though she still clung to her very deep skepticism about psychology and constantly reminded Gordon Gordon of her belief that it was nothing more than a soft science at best, she was still continuing with the therapy. His own anger at the Gravedigger had yet to subside in any appreciable way, but he wasn't still chomping at the bit to go and find the sick fucker anymore. If the chance ever came up to snipe that bastard he would take it, but he wasn't actively seeking it. He'd spoken at length about it with Gordon Gordon and was more comfortable with the range of emotions that the whole episode had thrust upon him.
"Alright what's wrong, Booth," Bones said immediately after they walked into her apartment and she had closed and locked the door. Ever since the Gravedigger incident she had been more aware of safety concerns, and always locked her door. That had made Booth much happier as he had always badgered her about not locking her doors.
"Max and I got in a fight when I arrested him," Booth admitted. "He said he couldn't just go peaceably, even though he wanted to be arrested for exactly what I told you at the wedding."
"And you think I'd be angry over that?" she asked.
"No," Booth very reluctantly said. "I got in a good shot and he conned me in as if he had conceded, but when I got close he hit me with a straight jab square in the balls."
The woman in her wanted to burst out laughing, but the more clinical mind prevailed. "Have you been having headaches or any dizziness? Nausea even?" she asked.
"What?" he asked. "What are you talking about?"
"A trauma to the testicles can bring about a clot, Booth, and can easily break off," she explained. "It can be very serious, and can also be easily misdiagnosed as the symptoms can be similar to other problems, such as meningitis."
His eyes widened. "No, nothing like that, except for the initial pain and nausea when the boys were nailed," he told her. "But that's normal."
"I will take your word for that," she smirked. "I assume that they are rather tender?"
"Oh, you can safely assume that, Bones," he said with an eye roll.
She went into the kitchen and brought them each a beer and then sat down next to him on the couch. "I imagine Hodgins' bachelor party wasn't much fun for you last night the, after you got there from processing," she teased, now pretty sure he was alright. There were a lot of things she needed to think about regarding her Father, but for now she wanted to focus on Booth.
"That was no bachelor party, Bones," Booth chuckled. "Unless you call a bunch of guys in groups drinking beer and playing cards or shooting the breeze a bachelor party."
She arched a brow. "No strippers? No pornos? That doesn't sound too much like what I would imagine Hodgins' coming up with for a bachelor party," she mused.
"Evidently Hodgins met Angela's Dad the other day and the guy scared the shit out of him," Booth laughed, personally thinking it would have been great to meet Billy from ZZ Top. He himself wasn't a big fan of the whole stripper/porno bit at bachelor parties anyway, so it didn't bother him. "Then Angela insisted that he invite her Dad to the bachelor party. Jack made damn sure nothing happened at that party that could remotely upset the man."
"Angela had a pretty wild bachelorette party," Bones said simply as she took a sip of beer.
"Oh?" Booth asked, his curiosity now aroused, and he was damn sure she said that the way she did on purpose.
"It was at the new male strip club downtown," Bones told him.
"I didn't need to hear that, Bones," he told her. The idea of her going to a party and ogling nude, or semi-nude guys was not one of his fonder thoughts, to put it mildly.
"Then we went back to her place to drink and had a toy party," Bones continued, knowing she was driving him nuts.
"TOY PARTY?!" he bellowed.
"Down boy," she calmed him with a hand on his forearm. "It was like a Tupperware party, but for sex toys instead. What did you think it was? A group of women masturbating together with their favorite toys after seeing hot, young, naked men on stage all evening?"
"Those are two images I didn't need, Bones," he groaned, his nuts throbbing some more.
Bones laughed. "You did!" she said, very amused. Then she noticed how uncomfortable he was just sitting there and knew that it wasn't from arousal. "Strip," she ordered him firmly.
"What?" Booth asked, startled at the directive. Oh, he didn't mind the idea of being naked for Bones, but they hadn't been talking about sex in a specific way.
"I'm not talking about us having sex tonight, Booth, but you're obviously very uncomfortable and I would like to see if there may be more damage to your testicles than mere bruising," she told him in a slightly clinical fashion.
"God this is humiliating," he muttered as he stood and dis as she told him. He kept his shirt on, though it was now unbuttoned, and removed his tuxedo pants and boxer shorts, standing there in his glory in front of her.
As always when she saw his naked manhood Bones unconsciously licked her lips. He was so damn perfect she always had to hold herself back when the timing was all bad for what she really wanted. His being injured there made this definitely the wrong time. He was flaccid, though he was very slightly engorged, so he was a bit thicker than normal when soft. She lifted his shaft and visually inspected his testicles, noting the visible bruising. She gently used her free hand to cup and feel his testicles. They were swollen, and it was a swelling that was not from arousal. Nothing too severe, but definitely painful. Given the amount of bruising and swelling, she was surprised he was as docile as he had been. His time as a sniper and the ignoring of physical stimuli must be kicking in, she reasoned to herself. Seeing that he didn't react any differently than she expected from a minor injury in that area, she sighed in relief.
"While there is obvious damage, it's nothing more than the bruising that one would normally expect from such an injury," she told him finally, reluctantly removing her hands from him.
"Thank God," Booth breathed easy. She'd scared him a bit with all that stuff about misdiagnosis of the extent of injury.
"Zach told me at the reception that he's going to Iraq," Bones said as she watched him put his pants back on. Ordinarily she would be well into a sexual encounter with Booth in his current state of undress, but she knew that wasn't going to happen with him injured like that.
"He talked to me," Booth replied as he sat back down, a bit gingerly, beside her.
"Did you try to talk him out of it?" she asked. She had recommended Zach, because he was qualified, but she had not expected him to accept, and she felt he was not ready for something like that. She herself had been asked first, and she had refused. She was not going to be doing any such jobs for the government anymore as she did not want to be apart from Booth like that when the danger was so high. Her only exception would be if Booth was able to go with her, which the government had explicitly said not to.
"No," Booth said very carefully. He was treading on thin ice as he knew that Bones would not like it that he had told Zach that he should do what he felt was right.
Bones tried to reign in her sudden flash of anger. Of anyone she would have expected Booth to see the potential harm that such a course of action could have on someone such as Zach. "Why not?" she asked when she could say it without sounding in anger.
Booth was very adept at reading Bones and he knew she was angry. He couldn't blame her. He knew how much Zach meant to her, and she wanted to do for Zach what he himself did for her. "He came to me at the wedding and asked me what it felt like to get shot, Bones," he revealed. "I asked him why he was even asking me such a thing and he showed me the letter he got from some nameless asshole from DoD saying that the President was requesting his help. He told me that he was asking me about it because I know more about duty and personal honor than anyone he knows."
Bones couldn't argue with that, as she felt the same way about Booth. It was something that she admired and respected about him beyond compare. "He's not ready for something like that, Booth," she said softly. In her minds eye she was remembering all of the horrid examples of the brutality that mankind can inflict in the name of some cause that gets lost in the annals of time.
"No one ever is the first time that see all of that, Bones," Booth replied just as softly. "I wasn't, and I'm still fighting my own personal demons from my time in the military. Can you honestly say you were ready to work on the remains in a mass grave the first time you did so? Or the time after that, or the one after that?"
"No," she reluctantly admitted.
"And Zach isn't ready for this," Booth continued. "But he's going to learn something very valuable, Bones."
Bones looked at him curiously. She asked a silent question with a raised brow.
"He's going to learn the cruel reality that the real world isn't some sterile lab with all the best equipment and theories to go by," Booth explained. "He's going to learn the incredible compassion and care that you give to the victims we deal with everyday, and why it's so important. It won't be an academic exercise for him anymore, Bones, and it won't be another opportunity to please his teacher. That's the piece of the puzzle that you found by going out in the field, both here and also around the world. He needs to do this to become the kind of Forensic Anthropologist you believe him capable of becoming."
"I thought you didn't like Zach," she replied when she had recovered from such a deep comment. She'd honestly never thought of it in such a way.
"I never said that, Bones," Booth told her. "Zach is different, and I don't hang out with him, or socialize, but that doesn't mean I don't like him. I like Hodgins and I don't hang out with him very often, either. Angela, too, for that matter."
"I'd do more than just knee you in the balls if you did hang out with Angela, Booth," she warned him good naturedly.
"I don't doubt it," he chuckled, at the same time wincing at the thought of what she'd really do to him if he did hang out with some other woman, especially such a good friend as Angela.
"I think I'm going to be staying in the lab more for a while," she informed him suddenly.
"What?" he asked. This sudden announcement startled him.
"I'm going to have to find a replacement for Zach, eventually, but I'm not ready to do that yet, so I need to be at the lab more so the work there doesn't fall behind," she explained. She knew he would see right through that and know that she was not comfortable right then working in the field without Zach in the lab to back them up with the rest of the team. It was a small distinction from the argument she had given him, but it was genuine.
"Alright," he said reluctantly, but knowing that she would not budge from her position, and she would tell him her real issue when she was ready.
Bones clasped his hand in hers and looked at him directly. "I do have something I want to ask you, though."
Now it was Booth's turn to raise his brow in question.
"What do you think about possibly moving in with me?" she asked, her bottom lip pressed in between her teeth in nervousness. She had never had anyone live with her, outside of her abortive relationship with Peter just before she'd began working with Booth on a regular basis. That experience had not been a good one, so she had been very hesitant about asking Booth to live with her, despite how much of a forward momentum their relationship had taken on since their confrontation when Booth had needed therapy and Sully had asked her out.
Now that was one that Booth had not been expecting at all. Bones was just now getting very comfortable with the idea that they were in a genuine relationship and not just relieving their urges as Friends With Benefits. Now she was asking him to move in. He had no objections to the idea, but he needed to make sure that she was ready for that.
"Are you sure you're ready for something like that?" he asked.
"Are you?" she asked him.
"Yeah, Bones, I am, but that's not really the issue," he pointed out. "You're very independent, and enjoy your privacy, even with our relationship. I don't want to do anything that may damage what we already have."
His concern told her that she was right in making this move. He wouldn't let any issues or problems harm their relationship. He was the kind of person she wanted to live with and gain the more intangible joys of life from. It felt right, and the timing was as good as it could be. She had been angry about Zach, but instead of having a massive fight over it, which would have happened with anyone else, they had discussed it. It was finally time to go with her gut.
"I'm ready, Booth," she told him finally. "I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't. I think we're both ready for this."
"The I guess we have a project over the next couple of weeks," he smiled his charm smile at her.
She smiled back, but a sultry one. "And when those balls of yours heal, we have some catching up to do," she informed him. "Say christening every room of our home?" she teased.
"I could kill your Dad for putting the boys out of commission," Booth groaned.
Bones got a wicked look in her eyes, and her smile just screamed evil. "Lucky for me you have exquisite hands and a spectacular tongue, hmm?" she said as she stood up and held out her hand. "Come with me, you bad boy. You've got some work to do."
Booth let himself be led merrily into her bedroom. He was pissed that he couldn't do anything with Seeley Jr. that night, unless he wanted a very excruciatingly painful experience, but he could ignore all that if he could play with that incredibly HOT body that Bones had. The best part was that she reserved it all for him, and had for nearly a year now. How could a guy get so lucky as to develop a relationship with someone so perfect? He didn't know what he'd done, but he wasn't about to change now. Now it was time to enjoy a bit of dessert. Yum!
A/N: Sorry about no sex scene in this one. That will be the next chapter when they get to christen the rooms of their home. Thank you to all who have stuck with this story despite the delays once I began to add sections to the original fully written piece. I hope that the lack of a sex scene didn't deter you as I felt that this chapter was important to the overall story. Gregg.