Disclaimer: Fox owns every show mentioned here (Bones, House, 24, and of course The X-Files). I am envious, but I am not Fox. Nor am I Fox Mulder. (Sorry. I like puns.)

A/N: The similarities between these two shows will forever amuse me. Also, every show mentioned in here is a Fox show. I did that on purpose. Because, in a Fox reality, they would definitely have Fox shows, whatever else they did (not) have.

Booth, unlike his partner, has not been living in an isolation chamber for the past 20 years. He has a television, and he uses it. He reads, sure, but there's nothing quite like coming home after catching a murderer and turning on some mindless television show that only requires him to stare, slack-jawed, at the flickering pictures that are barely coherent as a plot. In the middle of cases, he watches every active or deductive show he can get his hands on (he goes through a lot of "24" and "House" during difficult cases), because they make him think, and sometimes he'll figure something out and call Bones in the middle of the night with some inane detail on a show and how it solves the case. She'll inevitably have no idea what he's talking about, but will understand the facts of the situation, and she'll know how to prove it, and they'll get their guy.

He's tried to get her to watch shows like that with him, but she never has any idea of what's going on and gets upset when they get facts wrong. And she'll never, ever watch the idiotic shows that he prefers at the end of a case. It's too bad, really, that she doesn't watch TV; he thinks she'd like House. They're very much alike, except for, you know, the cane and the addiction and the sadistic bastard-ness. They like their facts.

But the point is, he watches television. And sometimes he thinks back to his very first case with Bones as his partner and wonders what the hell he was thinking. He watches television, he loved "The X-Files," why the hell would he compare them to Mulder and Scully? Stupid move, Booth, very dumb.

Because now, every time he sees an old episode on TV, he thinks of her. She practically is Scully, what with the "doctor" title and the autopsies and the skepticism. And now that he's thinking of it, he always plays the Mulder to her Scully, being less of a scientist and more instinctive, even when it makes no logical sense. And they're partners now, so while they've got a fancy lab with skylights instead of a tiny basement office and a whole team of people to help them and the trust of the Bureau, they really depend entirely on each other. And he's spent more time in Bones's company than he has alone recently, which is so very Mulder-showing-up-at-Scully's-apartment-at-three-in-the-morning that he doesn't know what to do about it. They even have the same phone conversations: "Booth, it's me." "Bones? Where are you?" Someday, he swears, "Scully" will slip out instead of "Bones," and he'll laugh and she'll be confused, and he'll try to explain but fail miserably, and someday, someday he's got to show her an episode.

She'd like Scully.

And he's more like Mulder than he thinks he is, because he hides this part away in the back of his mind, but it's still there, and he still knows it's there: they have the same intelligent flirtatious deep friendship that Mulder and Scully had, and he remembers how they ended up. The entire world knows how they ended up. And maybe it took them seven years, but they got there. And he likes the thought of having that sort of relationship with Bones, where they trust each other more than they trust themselves. Hell, he doesn't even hate the idea of loving Bones - in fact, he kind of likes it. Even if it takes them seven years to get there. Because he's starting to think that something like that, a relationship on that level, is well worth the wait; if you've got the chance for it, you can't screw it up. So he's in this for the long haul.

Dear God, what has he gotten himself into?