The Sildenafil in the Sniper

Disclaimer: Alas. BONES is not mine. I already have a career; which is a good thing – because after this offering, which is not intended to infringe or offend, my one in a billion chance of a shot at the BONES Fantasy Writing Team is gonna be crushed like a hyoid bone. Paradoxically, I would still give up my own six months of sabbatical leave (reserved for writing the PhD thesis) to do it.

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A/N: This is a post-Season 5 finale offering. There may be spoilers, but they will be buried so deep in fulminating hyperbole that you will not care. If you've seen the finale, you'll still be reeling, and this story may just snap you out of it.

Technical (product placement) note: Sildenafil is a drug commonly known as that little blue pill called Viagra. Despite the popular / recreational indications for use, it also treats congestive heart failure quite effectively, albeit with a potential for a happy ending.

This is the tale of Colonel Seeley Joseph Booth (US Army – Retired), Emeritus Professor Temperance Brennan (unrepentantly unretired until interment), and the termination of more than two decades of unrequited love, with a little help from a mathematical formula, a heart failure drug, and few shots of tequila. To those that know them, or know of them, Booth & Brennan quintessentially represent the conceptual ideal of two people, referred to in common vernacular as, 'made for each other' – although Professor Brennan would fondly refute that insupportable assertion out of habit.

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The intense five year partnership forged in the 'noughties' had been tethered by two opportunities to throw caution to the wind and become a true couple. But Booth had consistently been too cautious, while Brennan had run like the wind. Cracks and leaks in the dam that refused to break were always plugged just in time – for two more decades in fact. In the end, the solution came down to a mathematical construct applied to probability, an exponential function to be precise. The X axis plotted time in years, the Y axis plotted chances presented to bring the 'bone-crossed lovers' together. For the non-squints in the peanut gallery, protesting about the math, saying 'I don't know what that means' - it's algebra, get over it. In plain English, or American if you insist, the take-home message was that as time went on, there were less and less valid reasons not to be together. The squinty metaphor simply demonstrates that pressing the 'EXP' button on your calculator means more than just that big-ass number on the display, and that 'everything happens eventually' - or perhaps more accurately within the context of an exponential function, 'inevitably.'

Twenty years previously, Booth and Brennan had parted ways with promises to take up where they left off upon their return from their respective sabbaticals, although a Tour of Duty in Afghanistan is probably a bit of a stretch in this context. Despite their words to each other, silent gazes of reassurance, and their best intentions to commit to change, a number of obstacles preventing this eventuality were placed in their way with disturbing regularity. Their mutual friend, Angela Montenegro-Hodgins is on record with her opinion of what went wrong on that fateful day. For an artist, she is surprisingly adept at Root Cause Analysis.

"That day at the airport in Dulles, the issue was that they ran out of time to get to the required level of physical contact. I mean if Booth was willing to take the risk of being thrown in the brig to go AWOL, then enough with the hand gripping and skip to the lip locking already! But Bren loves to elucidate and Booth just loves the sound of her voice – they simply ran out of time. Even their eye sex didn't get past first base. If they'd gotten straight down to the lip locking, they would have gone on to be arrested for public indecency, and the rest, as they say, would have been history. They could have done the 'misdemeanour marriage' in the US Army brig, just like Jack and I did in jail, and have had half a dozen kids by now."

Brennanite manifestos published following the 'temporary' dissolution of their partnership in 2010, squarely point the finger of blame at a shadowy media consortium, with links to Brennans' publishing house. The allegations describe a number of plots contrived to prevent Dr. Brennan from realising the benefits of a relationship with her partner, in order to maximise profits from the books about her steamy scientific exploits, and extend product placement contracts at the Jeffersonian Institution.

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The key allegation involved forgery of a letter from the US Secretary of Defence which persuaded Booth to re-enlist. Screen Actors Guild archives confirm that a bit part actor/dancer contracted to a TV show called 'Glee' was hired to play the part of a Colonel from the Army Rangers, with the aim of delivering a patriotic notice of their intent to headhunt Seeley Booth from the FBI. Dr. Lance Sweets, who witnessed the exchange next to the coffee cart that day, noted some non-verbal anomalies in the poise of the alleged Army Ranger, commenting that the soldier appeared to be standing in a 'first position demi-plie' rather than 'standing at ease' on the sidewalk. Brennanites also raise the very valid issues of how a man of almost forty, recovering from brain surgery, with a dodgy lumbar spine, could conceivably be considered fit for active duty in the Middle East.

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The second Brennanite allegation concerned the planting of anomalous pre-historic human remains at an island archipelago off Indonesia, and the formation of a bogus 'organising committee' to lure the unwitting anthropologist from a job that other forensic anthropologists would kill for. The attractive 'Anthropological Holy Grail' scenario involving cross-species breeding in early hominids, is widely considered to have been specifically scripted by a rival anthropologist to distract Temperance Brennan away from all those bones still crying out for a name in Limbo at the Jeffersonian. A more socially savvy individual would have pegged the offer as 'too good to be true'– and let's face it – it would have to be pretty good to be a viable alternative to having a 'Nekkid Booth' in your life (but the author digresses).

When Seeley Booth had told Temperance in 2010 that 'everything happens eventually' and that he wished for them to 'be together for 30, 40, or 50 years'; he had never envisaged that they would have to wait for twenty of those years to actually get together. Uncannily, or perhaps predicably if you're a Brennanite, they remained firm friends, strange confidants and a dynamic casual crime fighting force. A pact to meet each year at the coffee cart by the Reflecting Pool and distance-eliminating communication technology was collectively their Achilles heel; the reason why they could never truly walk away. The web became their virtual table at the Royal Diner, without the French fry stealing, and occasionally, when the stars aligned (or the plotting conspiracists failed) there would be actual meetings at the diner, just like old times.

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Frustrating friends, colleagues, family and themselves for the first five years, their respective callings kept them busy enough to avoid the exponential pull of inevitability. After the first five years of this bizarre holding pattern, plotted out by forces unknown, Dr. Sweets had threatened to write another book to expose their pathological pattern of sublimated co-dependence. Booth quickly issued a counter-threat that included a bullet engraved with 'Yo! Later dude,' fired from a snipers' rifle at a range of 1500 yards. Although Temperance Brennan was never proven to have made any counter-threat toward Lance Sweets over this threat, popular opinion suggests that the 2015 release of her Best-selling book, 'To the Marrow of the Matter', was her literary digitus impudus toward the psychologist.

In the interim years, their individual and combined biographies had formed the stuff of legend. From 2016 to 2022, Booth was back with the FBI full-time based in Philadelphia, supporting his son Parker in a burgeoning professional sporting career. Brennan was based in Montreal speaking French like only the Canadians can, giving up alcohol, eating meat and adopting a cat. Their joint services were called upon by a variety of North American agencies to take on tough cases and consultancies during this period, and their annual pact evolved into a commitment to meet socially for a few days in Las Vegas each year on the 20th of May. The significance of this date is thought to be related to their original coffee cart pact. What is known about the Vegas trips, is that the culture of commitment by extreme examples of antiquated marriage rites was explored, with ceremonies presided over by Al Capone, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Captain Kirk, a Deathwok Clan demon called Lorne, a Jaffa warrior called Teal'c, and a Kanye West impersonator – who copped a right hook from Brennan for repeatedly interrupting her cultural experience (when he obviously didn't have a PhD). When Brennan decked 'Kanye' on May 20th 2022, Booth remarked 'that was hot', Brennan started drinking again, went Vegan, and coincidentally her cat adopted an elderly neighbour before she relocated to DC. Booth momentarily fell off the wagon and played a single Keno ticket, which won him a three million dollar jackpot.

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Just when their friends thought that the tide had finally turned at the start of 2023; that Booth and Brennan in a pique of mid-life crisis might actually be going somewhere again, fate struck. Well, Booth would call it fate. Brennan simply referred to it as the opportunity of a lifetime. After all, it's not every day you get offered a berth on a five year mission to Mars. Plus there would be the benefits afforded by ultra-low gravity upon Booths' lumbar vertebrae. On the downside, five years was a long time to be separated, particularly when there was nobody to have zero-gee sex with. Following the publication of her most popular work of non-fiction, 'In space, no one can hear you scream: Kinesiology and zero gravity coitus,' Brennan took a sabbatical from writing books during the Mars mission and moved back to the Jeffersonian with her own personal and professional mission waiting in Limbo (Cue: the most epic montage in TV history).

Their achievements had inspired two generations of law enforcement and forensic anthropology wannabes; who doggedly followed in the academic and professional footsteps of their heroes. Two generations of e-bookworms had also evolved to become uncompromising devotees of the liberal booty-ship culture called 'The Temperance Method', employing moves from the classic page 187, to Chapter 25 of the 2015 Best-seller 'To the Marrow of the Matter', to chapter and verse of the 2029 smash hit 'The 207th Bone.' In a stroke of supreme irony, Temperance Brennan fell from a ladder in 2028 during a dig at an abandoned opal mine in Coober Pedy, South Australia - breaking her hip. Consequently, she failed to re-enact some of the best these classic bedroom moves with Seeley Booth, because of the limitations presented by the hip prosthesis. It is always so tragic when life is prevented from imitating art.

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The year 2029 was a turning point in the relationship between Booth and Brennan. After 19 years spent mainly apart, the angst between them reached a new equilibrium which was close to zero. They started working together again, eating Thai food, and socialising. Temperance Brennan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her quest to identify over 7000 sets of human remains, during which time she finally achieved objectivity over her own identity. In a shady sub-plot, 2029 was also the year that the octogenarian Max Keenan eliminated the final member of the consortium that had conspired against the happiness of his baby girl.

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Booth had become significantly less prudish; the mellowing of his personality in part due to five years of low-gravity induced mild hydrocephalus, and a decent dose of cosmic radiation. He had also returned from the Mars mission with a touch of congestive heart failure, which doctors had hoped would correct itself after a couple of years of reacclimatising to Earth gravity. Until that time, doctors put him on a course of sildenafil, which he tolerated well from a cardiovascular perspective, and advised him to wear long trousers to cope with the 'other' side effects. Temperance Brennan used her scientific observations of the effects of Viagra on Booth and her newly evolved sense of humour to inspire the literary and critically acclaimed masterpiece, 'The 207th Bone.'

On the 20th anniversary of their 2010 parting, the opportunity plot of their love went exponentially perpendicular. In fact, perpendicular became the literal and metaphorical theme of the evening, as the laws of Physics were challenged and the dam was finally broken. They had attended the launch of her e-book in Mexico, which went viral in a mere 40 minutes. Celebrating over shots from a bottle of genuine tequila, there were no more reasons remaining, no more lines, no more inhibitions. Booth, with a little help from sildenafil, decided to give Brennan chapter and verse of 'The 207th Bone'. Brennan accepted both the logic and humour in his decision.

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The laws of Mexico were also challenged that night when they were arrested for public indecency. The charges were dropped when Brennan asserted that they were being charged under antiquated laws and that they had been discriminated against upon the basis of their age. She was of course entirely correct, but even Angela protested that this didn't excuse people with wrinkles getting it on in public.

They lived wrinkly, ahem...happily ever after.

A/N 2: My primary intent for this piece is simply to provide a little light-hearted relief to my fellow BONES fans who may be feeling a tad angsty or dejected. But as I put the final touches to the story after watching the finale this afternoon, I also realised that a part of me is trying to one-up on Hart and the BONES team – they deliver a year of separation punctuated with a hand grip, a telepathic exchange, and a dodgy side-part, & I'm saying 'A year? Fine, I'll give you twenty and make you laugh about it'.

The message here is that if you can forgive my hyperbolic parody, then you may just be able to find it in your heart to forgive Hart. If Twitter is your bag, you may want to 'tweet' him to let him know that your perspective has been placed into context by 'the sildenafil in the sniper' which was infinitely more idiotic and much less plausible than the Season 5 finale.