the rub in the rye_ {bones}

[Ron Weasley]

the rub in the rye_
a bones rpg
[contains spoilers for season six]

p l a y e r s.

dr. temperence "bones" brennan
handled by hannah

angela montenegro
handled by becca

[Ron Weasley]

science can explain pretty much everything...
except why i love you

The Jeffersonian was a place Temperance felt comfortable and safe in. Despite some mishaps in the past that might prove that security was not exactly state-of-the-art, it was generally as secure a place as you could find in Washington DC. Even after months in the field, her office was set up the same as it had been in less than a week, and the lab was reconstructed equally as efficient. Most of the cases they had been working were typical - if cases could be called typical. Each new case was definitely different and unique, as no two bodies were exactly alike, but in the overall schema of typicality, the cases would be as Booth called them - run of the mil. There were no high profile cases... and there were never any low profile cases, or cases that were any less significant than the last.

It was even what could be called a typical Monday. Temperance spent most of the afternoon writing emails to various universities in regards to speeches they wanted her to make, and several emails to her publisher who wanted to know when she might be done with her next novel. She had written several key sections to some of the research papers she was working on and was now reviewing her report for the last case she and Booth had finished that morning. It was a pretty cut-and-dried case, actually; the DC police had found a skull in the landfill, and wanted Temperance to give her professional opinion on what it might be. As it turned out, the skull was actually not human but orangutan, which took less than 30 seconds for Temperance to figure out, but not everyone knew the differences as she did. It was painfully obvious to her that it was not human, and she would forever be surprised that people would so easily mistaken a skull that was not human as human, but she could forgive people for not being as brilliant as she was.

Now her mind was drifting over the lunch she and Booth had went to after she had dismissed the skull. They ate at the diner, as they usually did; they sat at the bar and both ordered their usual meal. The afternoon sun slanted in through the windows, hitting their backs and heads. Booth was telling jokes that she actually understood and could laugh at, and they sat there, stealing each other's fries and laughing. When the jokes had been told they ate in silence; it occurred to Bones that she and Booth had been together for so long as partners that the silence between them had grown comfortable. It had never been awkward between them, at least on her side, but she had always made her position known. Nothing about that day was out of the ordinary, nor was there anything extra ordinary about her conversation with Booth. And yet, there was much unsaid between the two of them.

Only several weeks before, Hannah had left Booth, in a figurative and literal sense. Her reasoning was beyond Brennan, and it took Booth a while to divulge what that logic was. Apparently, Hannah had felt that Sealy was not fully devoted to her, and that he was still in love with Temperance. As a result of his affections not being completely focused on her, she took an assignment back in Iraq, and left Booth to contemplate his position with Temperance. It was this that concerned her the most - because for as sure as she was completely happy with where she was in her life, there was something that could be said for the fact that her life did not feel complete without Booth right beside her.

It was a fool's notion to believe that Booth was undesirable; physically he was very attractive, and anthropologically an ideal mate. He was not as intellectual as Temperance would have liked, but he did have a sense of humor, and was willing to try. There were many qualities she admired about him, but did she love him? She did not feel what could be considered as love, but yet, she did feel lonely when they were apart. It was also no secret that on many occasions she had fantasied about her and Booth being together; when she stayed with him while he recovered from his brain surgery and while she was was on sabbatical. But when it actually came time for her to actually, physically be with him, she could not find it within her to be close to him.

Brennan got up and stretched her legs. She needed air, to clear her head. It was warm enough outside, and the sun was shining. The Jeffersonian grounds were lovely, and it didn't take long for her to circle the little park. She decided to go around again, kicking little rocks with her shoes absently as she stared at the ground, with her hands in her pockets. Every now and then, as she turned over the fact that Booth still loved her in her mind, she would pause a moment to look up and see if Booth was even there.

[Liberty Martin]

angela

Angela arranged the scraps of paper on the scanner, pressing a few buttons on her keyboard before sitting back in her chair, waiting for the computer to work its magic in getting these pieces of a letter onto the system. They had been found among the things of a body from the early twenties, and although it hadn’t been entirely necessary for her to recreate the letter, she had felt that it was something she wanted to do; there were no pressing murder cases at the moment, the last one having finished and no more bodies found yet (and it was ‘yet’, because there were always more bodies found, always people who were killed), and she had the hope that it was a love letter. There was something magical about reading the words from one lover to another, so long after they had both died, and perhaps pregnancy was making her more romantic than usual – it was definitely making her more nauseous, and that was something Angela could have lived without – but she thought that these people deserved to have their story known, even if she was the only one who knew about it. It was certainly less depressing than reconstructing a skull, or using the Angelator’s software to construct a person’s last few minutes. She still hated her job. She loved working at the Jeffersonian, her friends, and being able to be part of the team that put a killer behind bars for good, but she still found it heartbreaking to deal with so much death. She didn’t know how Brennan could make something like that her entire life. Angela had never planned to end up here. She’d never thought that she would be the person who gave dead people back their faces, who provided the identity for grieving parents or other halves so that they could let their family rest in peace. She was an artist, still considered herself that after all this time, and those seven months in Paris had made her feel like she had found herself again. Paris had been where she’d wanted to be, painting had been what she’d wanted to do. And now here she was, back in the lab coat, back as a squint, surrounded by death. Angela loved life.

But she didn’t hate her job really. It depressed her, made her desperate for something real and fiery and alive, but Angela could no longer see herself doing anything else. The break had been good, and there was still a part of her that longed for France, even now that the decision to have the baby here at home had been made. Every time the mangled remains of someone came in, her heart bled for them, which was why she felt it almost reassuring to be dealing with the past of someone who hadn’t been brutally murdered last week, but whose remains had been in Limbo for years and years. The dead were still dead, still left behind family or a lover, perhaps children, but it wasn’t as agonising as a recent murder, somehow. The guy who had owned this letter had found peace long ago, and now she was just going through the last of his things before his story ended. The task would get brushed aside if another fresh body was found, Angela knew that, but she hoped that this could be the week where nobody was killed. Sure, she liked having Booth around the place – she might have been married, but only a blind woman would have said that he wasn’t eye candy – because they really weren’t a team without him and Sweets in it too, but chasing after murderers was not her thing. She never would have thought it Brennan’s thing, either, but her best friend seemed to be doing a lot of it. Even after the relationship that never was, after their times apart, the team had still found its way back together (even if Caroline had had a lot to do with it). Angela thought that was a good thing. They’d been catching bad guys for five years now; it certainly wasn’t a job she would have wanted to do with anybody else. This was how it was supposed to be, she was sure. They were all meant to work together, and she was meant to be the woman who drew faces for dead people. Angela was a great believer in destiny, and perhaps she had always been destined for this; she’d certainly never felt as satisfied, as happy, as she did now.

Married, pregnant, surrounded by her friends...Angela never would have predicted that she would end up like this, but she would have been lying if she’d said that she didn’t like her life. It had felt wrong when they had all gone their separate ways, and a part of her had always thought that they would stay as a team forever. She and Hodgins would have their baby, Brennan would get together with Booth—and there was another sticking point. Booth and Brennan. Brennan and Booth. She’d not expected them to leave in the first place. When they’d returned, she certainly not expected Booth to have an admittedly super-hot girlfriend in tow. Not that she’d been in tow for long; Hannah was gone, and now Angela didn’t know what the hell was going on between Temperance and Seeley. Everything would be so much easier if they just got a room and had fiery, passionate sex until they just admitted they were in love with each other, and had been for years. She sighed, deciding to go and impart this advice on her friend, because seriously, something had to happen there. Angela was just surprised that it had taken this long. She left the programs running on her computer, since they would need an hour or two to sharpen the fragments before she could piece them together, and slipped off her lab coat, heading out of her office and the Jeffersonian and into the grounds, where one of the techs was sure he had seen her heading earlier. He was right; it didn’t take Angela long to spot the back of Brennan’s head and quicken her pace to get closer to her. “Sweetie!” she called, trying to get her friend’s attention before she managed to cross the little park towards her. “Hey, sweetie, wait up.”

[Ron Weasley]

science can explain pretty much everything...
except why i love you

“Hey, sweetie, wait up.”

Temperance was completely lost in her thoughts of Booth. As a completely desirable female, it was completely logical that a completely desirable male like Sealy would be interested in her. What wasn't logical was why Booth had to love her - and why he felt the need to settle down with her. What was even more bothersome was that Booth couldn't accept the fact that Brennan couldn't love him. It was not that she was incapable, she was human; she just didn't know how to love someone. Sweets would say she had deep psychological issues, but seeing how psychology was pretty much a joke anyway, and Tempe was a well-adjusted, very successful person, she could not see how such people could have problems.

All this notwithstanding, Temperance turned to face Angela as she came across the yard. Her best friend was beautiful, almost radiant. Booth had said pregnant women had a "glow," which Temperance never understood, as humans did not possess the ability to be luminescent. But seeing her friend, she could understand the turn of phrase - it was not a sort of illumination as a general temperament. Angela seemed very happy to be going into motherhood, and Bones was very glad for her. The thought of motherhood had been on Tempe's mind in recent months, as her biological drive to propagate her genes was peaking. She told everyone around her that it was due to the influence of hormones and that she was stronger mentally than to succumb to a few passing urges. Her desire to have Booth be the father of her child had not escaped her friends, either, nor the gaze of Sweets, who had broached the subject with her on several occasions.

"Angela, I thought you were working on your letter project," Bones said as her friend came closer. "You know you could have called me if you needed anything, it would have been much more efficient than trying to find me and then coming all the way out here." She smiled at Angela anyway, glad to see her. She knew that Angela probably had something unrelated to work to discuss, or else she would have not made the trek. "But it is nice to see you."

Matters of a personal nature were difficult for Temperance to discuss. It was not that she took issue with the topics themselves, as there was very little that she had an issue discussing, but she often had difficulty connecting to the emotional side of things. In the past her misunderstandings with emotions had upset others, and it was not her intent. Angela had quite a lot of patience with Brennan, given her repeated blunders, and it was something to be admired. She could only hope that the topic Angela brought up would be something within her social grasp.

[Liberty Martin]

angela

Angela had always thought that Brennan and Booth belonged together. She knew that her best friend didn’t hold any stock in gut instincts, not even after seeing how many bad guys Booth had caught with his, but they had always seemed perfect for each other, in that whole opposites-attract kind of way. She was honestly surprised it had taken this long for them to realise it. Oh sure, there had been that thing where Booth had told Brennan that he loved her (and yes, Angela knew all about that; she was the best friend, after all, and she had got squeezing stories out of Temperance down to an art), but they’d still gone away. She and Hodgins had gone off to Paris and for a little while, it seemed like that was the end of their crime-fighting family. It had started falling apart after Zack...but with them all going off to do separate things, Angela had never thought that it would get back together again. But that was okay; things happened, and people drifted apart. It didn’t mean they loved each other any less, because she knew first-hand that it was possible to love someone years after the last time you had seen them, but she had actually enjoyed those seven months apart. She’d enjoyed coming back, though; it was as though Paris had been a long-term vacation, and now they were back to real life. She was back to giving dead people their faces, they were all back to solving crimes. It sounded like some kind of weird movie, really; there were times when Angela really couldn’t believe that this was her life. All those dreams she had had – still had, really, if she thought about it – all those ideals of a bohemian life and never settling down, and here she was, working with the FBI, married and with a baby on the way. She didn’t think her life could have done more of an about turn if she’d tried to make it happen.

But that wasn’t to say that Angela wasn’t happy, because she was; she was extremely happy. It had always been Jack who’d wanted to take the next step in their relationship, to move in, to have a large family, but Angela thought that although it might not have been anything close to what she had been anticipating doing with her life, it was perfect for her; she was going to end up here all along, and she’d just needed to find the right partner and group of friends to make it happen. Perhaps it was wrong of her to feel so happy when other people’s relationships weren’t going so well – Sweets and Daisy, well, nobody knew what was going on with them, Angela couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Cam with a guy, and as for Booth and Brennan... – but she couldn’t help it. She was pregnant, and yes, there was the ever-present nausea and constant doctor’s visits, and Hodgins was already talking about which room should be adapted into a nursery and she was not looking forward to the time when none of her clothes fit anymore, but Angela was really pleased to be pregnant. There was a life growing inside of her, and for someone who worked with death all the time, she thought that that was a really great thing. The more bodies that got brought into the lab, lives which had ended far too early, the more determined Angela was to make sure that her baby had the most fulfilling life it could. God, she was going to be one of those horrendous over-protective moms, wasn’t she? She didn’t care, though; bringing a new life into this world was a beautiful thing, and it almost made up for seeing so much death.

It was hard to think of doom and gloom out here, though; the death seemed to be limited to the lab, because the sun was shining and there were flowers all around. Soon there would be a chill in the air and the leaves would turn to reds and oranges, falling in a carpet across the ground that made her want to pick up her paints and go back to her roots of being a real artist for a while, but Angela hoped that it would still be a while before the days were grey and short, because being outside at the moment was refreshing; if Brennan had come out here to clear her head, Angela could see why. She had a lot to think about after all, didn’t she, now that Hannah had broken up with Booth and that hunk of FBI meat was well and truly available again; Angela just hoped that her best friend would be willing to share her thoughts with her. “It’s good to see you too, sweetie,” she told her friend, waiting until Brennan tacked that on the end of her words before replying; she might not have cared about social conventions, but Angela had made it her mission in life to remind Brennan of them nonetheless. “The computer’s working its magic,” she explained with a shrug, finally catching up and falling into step by Brennan’s side, “so I’d just be sitting there for a half hour at least.” She smiled, just about managing to refrain from rolling her eyes at how logical Brennan made everything sound. “I wanted to come find you. We haven’t talked properly since, you know...”

[Ron Weasley]

science can explain pretty much everything...
except why i love you

“I wanted to come find you. We haven’t talked properly since, you know...”

Temperance nodded as Angela spoke. It made sense that with the computer running and no other projects going on that Angela would want to get away from the lab for a break. Though Angela's office was by no means small or uncomfortable, it was stuffy compared to the air outside. And while the air was not fresh, it did feel better to breathe than the stale, recycled air of the Jeffersonian, which was no doubt better for her baby. Of course, this chain of logic probably did not occur to Angela in the slightest, but Brennan did not mind at all, though she would not mention it to her friend, as there was no point.

"I don't understand," Bones said plainly. This was as close to the truth as she could come; she had no idea of what Angela was speaking. There were many things that had happened since the last time Angela and she had talked; she had written emails and correspondence. "The last time we talked was this morning; I said good morning and asked you how you were feeling, and we talked. Isn't that properly talking, or are you referring to something else?"

It wasn't that Temperance was clueless, because she was in fact very intelligent and thoughtful. It was that she just didn't understand all of the nuances that were supposedly in place. Booth had brought up on several occasions that the irony was not lost on him that she was an anthropologist but lacked an understanding of her own culture. She had to explain to him that she was a forensic anthropologist and cultural anthropology was a completely different field of study, and that while she enjoyed working in the aspects of cultural anthropology, she was and always would be a forensic anthropologist. But, admittedly, there was a part of her that was nagged by the fact that she paid her own culture so little mind, while she spent so much effort on someone else's. Maybe she would better understand other cultures if she completely understood her own.... but what was her culture? That was an even bigger question to study.

Looking over at Angela, she could see that she had intended something other than their morning conversation. Trying her best, Temperance said, "I would assume you don't mean the conversation we had this morning based on your expression. I would assume this is some other conversation we have had in the past. I am still not sure which one you mean."

[Liberty Martin]

angela

It was nice to be outside; the lab always smelt of death to Angela. That wasn’t to say that it always had the stench of decomposing corpse, because while they gave off a pretty nauseating smell when you were up close, the air filters meant that it didn’t travel too far unless it was a particularly nasty one (although she had been less tolerant of the smells up on the platform since she’d been pregnant, the ever-present morning sickness – and that was a stupid name for it, if ever she’d heard one – giving her a headstart on the way to throwing up at someone’s mangled remains). Her office certainly never smelt of flesh, and she could always shut the door or light some incense if she needed a better scent around her while she was working, although that happened rarely. But together with the almost hospital-like scent from the chemicals used to keep it clean, the smell of metal and whatever experiment Jack and the squinterns were doing, it smelt like death. It was always going to be what Angela associated with corpses coming in and another murder to solve. Another day in the lab, another dead person’s face to draw, another killer for them to help Booth catch. While she was finally happy with her job, knowing that their expertise really had stopped people from killing again, it was still depressing to be around so much death the whole time. She had known what her job was when taking it on, even if she hadn’t appreciated quite how hard it would be at times, but she was beginning to think about her maternity leave already. She wanted to be able to spend time outside, particularly on days like this, where the chill in the air was negated by the fact that it was sunny and beautiful, and have her baby thrive on the clean air of nature, of the world outside, rather than a lab full of dead people.

She knew it wouldn’t work like that, though. Of course she was going to end up bringing the baby to the lab, and she was sure that she would be interrupted at home by some case or other, because there were always cases and she was the only one who could reconstruct a face or create a plausible method-of-death scenario. She’d have to set up her computer at home with the software, but that would be easier for Angela than having to go to the lab all the time, at least at first. Babies were an outright sign of new life, of all that was good and pure with the world, and she didn’t want that tainted with the opposite of that, the world that the lab revolved around. And yes, she knew that she wouldn’t really be able to plan how her time off went, because nobody could predict when a murderer would strike – well, if it was a serial killer, Sweets probably could – but it was nice to dream about a few months of a peaceful life. If everything went how she imagined it would, she would stop working before she got so fat that she could only waddle, and spend the last few weeks with her paints, making pictures for the baby’s room, which she would have already decorated sometime before, when she could still bend over. Once it was born, she wouldn’t go near the lab at all, and instead Auntie Brennan, Auntie Cam, Uncle Booth and Uncle Sweets (okay, so perhaps she needed to work on what the baby would call her friends, because it sounded a little weird) would come and visit her, so that she didn’t have to bring her baby up around murders and violent deaths. It wasn’t something Angela wanted for herself, most of the time, let alone for a baby. There were some things children shouldn’t know about, and while she wanted the baby to know that Hodgins was a genius scientist and helped to catch bad guys, she didn’t think the specifics would do anything but traumatise the kid. Wherever possible, Angela wanted to avoid that.

She didn’t have to think about it yet, though; it was all a long way off, and she was barely showing at all at the moment. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was getting through a box of crackers a day, Angela didn’t think anyone would know—and they still weren’t supposed to, because Jack hadn’t seemed to find the time to do his big announcement yet, although Angela was pretty sure that most of her friends had now figured it out. Brennan, Cam and Booth knew, so it was really just Sweets that she wasn’t sure about, and the squinterns, but she had begged everyone to act surprised when Hodgins finally announced it. She kind of wished he would get on with it, though; at this rate, he would still be deliberating over the right way when she had a prominent baby bump. It wasn’t her problem to worry about, though, since she had enough of those being the one who was pregnant (not that she minded, not even for a moment, because she loved the idea of having a baby, even if it hadn’t been exactly where she had seen herself). She shook her head at Brennan’s question, a smile on her face – apparently talking a language that her best friend understood was still one of Angela’s problems too, even if she had known Temperance for years. She had got better, there was no denying that, but Angela always seemed to forget how oddly specific she had to be with her. “Sure, sweetie,” she replied; Brennan wasn’t wrong in that they had had a conversation that morning, but it had been about her pregnancy and whether Angela had finished a facial reconstruction yet, not about anything else. “I said good morning back, and told you how my morning sickness is more like all-day sickness.” Before long, Angela was going to find herself actually enjoying crackers, she was eating so many of them; perhaps she should move on to ginger biscuits, and see if they helped at all. She was willing to try anything. It wasn’t that the nausea was bad, because she could come to work and function normally without wanting to throw up every five minutes, apart from if there was a particularly ripe corpse in that day, but more that it was ever-present. “But what I meant,” she continued, linking her arm around Brennan’s, “was that we hadn’t talked about you and Booth since Hannah went back to Iraq.”