Squeenie's Drabble Challenge #11

Bones and popular culture
::as requested by katie__pillar::

The week in the Henderson household went like clockwork, with never a change. Mondays was the A-Team. Tuesdays was Knight Rider. On Wednesdays the girls got their say with Beverley Hills 90210. Thursdays was Star Trek, because Josh, who was nine, insisted, and no-one had the heart to say no to him. Fridays was comedy night, and the kids watched as many sitcoms as they could fit in between dinner and Mrs Henderson despatching them off upstairs to bed, in careful chronological order. Weekends were always weird, because sometimes some of them saw family members, and others went out with friends. There wasn’t much pattern to the weekends, but the weekdays were cast-iron reliable, and the Hendersons knew it and were glad for the security it offered.

But there was one person who remained oblivious to the oil that ran the Henderson household, and it sometimes worried Mrs Henderson, which was silly of her, really. After all, Temperance Brennan was a clever girl, and there wasn’t much doubt, really, that she would get a scholarship, go on to college, and have a good life. But… how normal was it, really, for a sixteen year old girl to spend all her time up in the bedroom she shared with thirteen-year-old Julie, sitting at the scarred desk Mrs Henderson had brought from her parents’ garage? That girl did nothing but work, barely spoke to anyone, barely made eye contact. Sometimes it was like she lived in a different world that had nothing to do with this one.

Mrs Henderson told herself not to worry, because Temperance Brennan was a clever girl who would have a good life. The rest – it didn’t matter so much, surely?

And maybe it didn’t, really. Temperance Brennan was a clever girl, who did win a scholarship, and did go on to college and did have a good life. But she had missed out on the rhythm of the A-Team and Knightrider, of Beverley Hills 90210 and Star Trek, and sometimes she just didn’t know what it all meant.

Squeenie's Drabble Challenge #12

Zach Addy and wellies
::as requested by pim2005::

They got the call about the body in the lake first thing that Tuesday morning, and Dr Brennan had called her team, telling Cam quite firmly that they were *her* people and she would notify them. Zach slid out of Hodgins’ car, and looked around, a little sleepily. Cam and Brennan were already down at the lakeside, their Jeffersonian overalls on, waders on up to their waists. Booth stood to one side, a heavy black overcoat protecting him from the worst of the rain, dress shoes already muddy. Swinging shut the car door, Zach watched with no little amusement as Jack struggled into his own waders, almost falling on his ass into the mud before sorting himself out. Suppressing a grin, he followed the older man towards the rest of the team, congratulating himself on having put his own waders on before leaving the house.

He was still congratulating himself as Booth’s gaze slid over him, only to halt, disbelievingly, at his feet.

“What the hell?” The others were already looking confused or, in Jack’s case, laughing his tiny fuzzy head off. Zach glared at his colleague with a look that had never, ever, in his entire life, succeeded in intimidating anyone, and then looked down.

Putting waders on before leaving the house would definitely have been a plan. Zach had been right in theory, at any rate. It didn’t work so well when you were half asleep, and put on your joke-Christmas-present-from-Aunt-Maudie: bright green wellington boots with giant frog eyes sticking up from the front.

Zach sighed.

This was going to take some living down.

Squeenie's Drabble Challenge #13

I really need to get a Bones icon.

Bones and tapping-fingers
::as requested by katie__pillar::

At first, it had annoyed Booth. Really, really annoyed him. He liked Brennan. God’s own truth. OK, she was all kinds of weird, and seemed to have entirely missed the concept of ‘popular culture’, and her insistence that she needed a weapon couldn’t be considered anything but disturbing, but, y’know, that’s people for you. And he liked her. But, jeez, the tapping!

He’d be on the phone with someone, anyone, nothing to do with anything, and there she’d be. Tap tap tap. They’d be on a stake-out and he’s trying to concentrate, and there she’d be. Tap tap tap. He’d be trying to sweet-talk a witness, really bonding with him, getting him to give up more than he thinks he knows, and there she’d be. Tap tap tap.

At first he’d thought, yeah, she knows how annoying it is. He knows his Bones, after all, and she likes to yank his chain sometimes. But he doesn’t think she’s trying to piss him off. So maybe she doesn’t have a clue. He wonders if he should mention it. Y’know. ‘Hey, Bones – the tapping thing. Cut it out.’ But in the end he doesn’t.

For a while, he’s not sure why he’s not doing anything about. Then, and this is kinda weird, Booth thinks, it stops being quite so annoying. And after a while, Booth finds himself almost expecting it. When she’s gone, he misses it. Because it’s tap tap tap, and she’s there.