A/N: Mali Bear's Buddy just has the best ideas. I guess I tweet too much about football lol

Sorry if I lose anyone with the football talk. I'm going to try to make it easy to understand for everyone, so even if you don't know what football is, you might get some idea :) The definitions are taken from Google

I'm going to use what was going on this past week in terms of bowl games for some inspiration. Oh, and no Hannah. B&B fluff! Some nonsense fluff. Just to hold me over until the winter hiatus is over and we go back to angsty real life.

Blitz

-Noun [blîts] – A sudden, surprise charge upon the passer by a defensive player

Part 1 – Kick-off

-Noun [kĭkˈôf] – A placekick that starts play at the beginning of a half

"Hiya, Bones!" Booth greeted her as he pulled open his front door.

"Hi, Booth. I brought over the report on the Rivera case like you asked."

"Great! Come on in, Bones. The game is on!"

She followed Booth into his living room where he grabbed the remote and quickly flipped between three different channels before settling back on the original one.

"What are you watching?"

He looked at her like she had asked an offensive question. "Bones! It's bowl week!"

"I don't know what that means," she said, slowly moving toward his couch. Booth's warm apartment felt welcoming after Bones had come in from the cold December air. She removed her heavy winter coat and tossed it over the back of a chair.

"Take a load off, Bones. You are now enrolled in the Seeley Booth Center for Anthropologists Who Don't Know Football and Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too."

"That is poor grammar, Booth."

He slapped his palm to his forehead. "Bones! It's Zoolander!"

"I don't know what that is."

"Okay, as soon these games are over, we're going to watch that movie."

Brennan nodded silently in agreement and watched the players on TV. The second half of a lesser known bowl game was starting and the partners were staring intently at what was happening on the screen.

"You have plans tonight?" Booth asked his partner casually.

"No. Why would I?"

"It's New Year's Eve, Bones! I would've thought you and Angela would've gone out or you would go out on a date or something."

"I could say the same for you. Is Parker with his mother?"

Booth nodded sadly. "She and Brent are having this party and they want 'family time,'" Booth said sardonically, adding the quotation marks with his fingers.

"I'm sorry, Booth. I know how much you love spending time with him, especially on holidays," Brennan tried to make him feel better.

Booth smiled softly at her and turned back to the game they were watching.

"Where's the basket?" Brennan asked.

"What?"

"You know, the hoop that the ball goes in."

Booth held in his laughter and answered her as seriously as he could. "There's no basket. That's for basketball. In football, you have to run the ball to one end of the field. That gets you six points. Right after that, you have to decide whether to go for either one point or two. Then, the team that just scored kicks the ball away down the field so the other team can have a chance to score. But that's just the basic minimum. It's so much more complicated than that,
Booth explained.

"Which team would you like to win?"

"Well, I'm not really a fan of either team, but if I had to pick one, I'll go with North Carolina."

"Why?"

"Well, His Airness went to North Carolina."

"Who?"

Booth resisted the urge to let out a frustrated grunt. He forgot how little she knew about sports despite her genius level. "His Airness is Michael Jordan. He played basketball at UNC."

"I know that sport. But you're not a fan of Tennessee?"

Booth shrugged. "Their colors remind me of an orange dreamcicle."

"Oh…" Brennan said, pretending to follow his logic.

They watched a few more plays in silence. Brennan observed the players line up in certain formations and she determined that certain players' positions meant whether or not the ball would be thrown or given to a specialized runner.

Just as she thought she was catching on without Booth's help, a player in blue and white took the ball and ran. He was tackled to the ground and when another defender jumped on the runner, Booth leapt off of the couch and began to pantomime pulling something from his pocket and throwing it into the air.

"Late hit! Late hit!" he cried, continuing his throwing motion.

"Booth?"

"Bones, did you see that?" Booth collapsed back down onto the couch.

"See what?"

"The late hit! Okay, watch the replay," he said, pointing back to his TV. The last play was shown again in slow motion and Booth explained to her, "Once the referee blows his whistle, the play is over. So, since that Tennessee guy hit the North Carolina guy when he was already down and the whistle had been blown, it's a late hit penalty. There are a lot of other penalties, but I'll explain them if they come up."

"Okay, but how come they didn't call the penalty? Even the commentators agree it should've been one!"

Booth shrugged. "See how frustrating this game can be, Bones? It was a judgment call on the ref's part, though."

"But if they just go back and look at the replay, they can amend their statements for a fair game," she reasoned.

Booth laughed. "No can do, Bones. You can't review and reverse a call when there is no penalty called."

"That is quite unreasonable," Brennan huffed as she watched the game move on. She started yelling at the TV as well and as the clock wound down, Booth saw a side of her that he had never seen before. She was getting into the game and she was becoming quite knowledgeable about it too, even after only watching it for a short period of time.

"No! Don't run to the right! You always run to the right!" She jumped up from her seat to yell at the TV. Booth smiled at the sight. It was fun to see her out of her shell, acting like 'one of the guys' rather than a scientist or even a girl. She stomped her foot in frustration and began to pace around the coffee table. The game went to a commercial.

"Damn! I almost forgot…" Booth grabbed the remote and flipped channels.

"What are you doing? It's going to come back on soon and I'd like to see the conclusion!" Bones shouted.

"There are other games on! I just want to check the scores." He flipped channels and found the station he was looking for. He was angry a certain team was losing, but not surprised. He changed channels again and found another game. He waited for the score to appear and as soon as he was satisfied with all of his updates, he changed it back to the game Brennan wanted to watch. They had missed the first few seconds back from the commercial and they discovered that the game was heading into overtime. Booth explained college rules for overtime and Bones, with her steep learning curve, caught on quickly. The game stayed intense and Booth found he was enjoying himself. Explaining football to a newcomer to the game wasn't as stressful as he had thought. Especially when it was Bones. Their game was the last of the night and Booth couldn't wait for the next day.

"Bones, do you know how many games are on tomorrow?" Booth cried when the game was over, throwing his arms up in the air.

"I don't. Should I?"

"Six! Six glorious games are on tomorrow! You wanna come back over and watch?"

She smiled. "I may have some pressing matters in the morning, but we'll see. I'm becoming quite fond of the game." Brennan started putting her coat on.

"Woah! Where ya goin'?" Booth wanted to know.

"Home, Booth. It's getting late and I'm getting tired."

"Oh," his face fell, "You don't wanna stay and watch the ball drop? You can't sleep right through the New Year, Bones!"

"Would you like me to stay?" she prompted.

Booth ignored the obvious yes that seemed to be screaming at him in his mind and said instead, "Only if you want to stay."

Bones raised an eyebrow. "Alright. I'm sorry if I end up falling asleep. I was at the lab quite early today."

"Of course you were," he mused.

They stayed on Booth's couch, drinking random bottles of wine he found hidden in his cabinets and watching replays of the games from earlier that day. It wasn't until he turned it to a countdown show did he notice she wasn't listening to him anymore. She had fallen asleep at one end of the couch, with her head resting on the arm and her feet in his lap. Without disturbing her, he draped a blanket over her. He waited until the last possible second to get ready for their impromptu New Year's celebration. He hadn't expected to celebrate with anyone and the bottle of champagne he had bought originally had plans for a special occasion. He gently slipped her feet off and snuck off to break out the champagne flutes and the bottle of Dom Pérignon. Waiting until there was a minute left of the old year, Booth popped the cork on the bottle and poured the golden liquid into the flutes. The loud POP woke her up and she flinched like she was ducking for cover from a stray bullet.

"Booth! What the-"

"Wake up, Bones! You're gonna miss the ball drop!"

Booth handed her the glass and they counted down the New Year together.

"Happy New Year!" they chorused.

They toasted to what the New Year would bring and Booth brought the glass to his lips to take a sip. Brennan, however, had a different plan. She leaned over and placed a lingering kiss on his cheek. "Happy New Year, Booth."

She flushed slightly and Booth was speechless.

"I'll call you tomorrow about the games. Goodnight, Booth."

She put on her coat and boots before heading back out into the new January air, leaving Booth still sputtering for words.

Part Two – Audible

-Noun [ô'de-bul] – Changing a play at the line of scrimmage by calling out a predetermined set of signals

"Booth."

"Booth, it's me. Can you come over and give me a hand with something?"

Booth rolled over and looked at the clock on the nightstand. Telling him it was only eight in the morning, he groaned. "Bones, what are you doing up so early?"

"I told you I would probably have something going on this morning. Can you help me or not? I can call Sweets or Hodgins…"

"Nope," he said into his phone as he flipped off the covers, "Let me get dressed. I'll be there in twenty."

"Thanks, Booth."

"Anything for you, Bones."

They both hung up simultaneously and Booth quickly showered and dressed. He was there sooner than he told her, but she didn't mind.

"Alright, Bones. What's so urgent that you needed to wake me up?" he said when she opened her front door.

"Well, I consider you an expert on the subject so you were the most obvious person to call," she told him as he walked in. Brennan pointed to a giant box in the living room. It was a fifty inch flat screen TV. Booth's jaw dropped.

"Bones! How much did you spend on this thing? It's huge!"

"It was only a couple thousand with all of the accessories. I put a call into one of the satellite companies too. I've ordered that big sports package. They promised to have it set up today before the first bowl game starts."

"Bones, the first one starts in a couple of hours!"

She smiled. "I know. That's why I need you to help me set this up before the satellite company gets here."

Booth shrugged off his jacket and handed it to Brennan before he got to work. When he opened the box, he stared at the machine for a moment in awe before he went straight to work. It didn't take long for the partners to securely mount the giant TV on one of Brennan's walls. She was, of course, distraught about having to rearrange several of her artifacts since she was running out of room to display them all nicely, but knew it was a sacrifice she was willing to make. A technician from the satellite company showed up and set up the dish as quickly as possible once Booth told the man the importance of the games they were planning on watching and the partners were able to watch the pregame shows.

"You know, Bones, there are three games on at once. Do you know all of the channels so we can flip and check scores without missing out game?"

She shrugged. "No. I'm not too concerned about it though."

"Okay," he drew the word out, " and why not?"

"Because," she smirked, "We have this…"

Brennan pushed a few buttons on the remote and the screen split into three.

"Woah! Bones! This is awesome! We don't have to change channels to check the scores! We can watch three games at once. Ha! Bones, you're amazing," Booth said. She set the channels for the smaller sections of the divided screen and they focused on the largest part of the split screen, the one that was showing the game Booth had been waiting for all week.

The Penn State team charged the field, led by their eighty-four year old head coach. Booth was telling stories about the old coach, how respected the man is and how his players look to him like he's God. He told her about stories of legendary games that his team won and the miraculous plays that were concocted by Coach. By the time the kick off started, Bones had become a certified Nittany Lion fan. They watched the first half yelling and hollering at the TV, telling the coaches which plays to run and telling them to go for it when the offense only had inches to go for a touchdown.

"Run the Wildcat!" Bones yelled at the TV.

Booth laughed. "You know what the Wildcat is?" he asked her, not really believing his ears.

"I did some research this morning while I was waiting for the television to be delivered. I've found several playbooks online for offense, defense, and special teams plays. Do you know what an on-side kick is?"

He tried hard not to laugh and nodded once. "Yep. It's when a team kicks the ball ten yards to the other team but tries to get the ball back into their possession."

"Yes. It's used mostly when teams are losing so they can attempt another touchdown or field goal."

Booth smiled proudly at her. "Bones, you're a football genius! My little girl's growing up," he teased.

She rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the halftime show. They spent the day analyzing the games, arguing with the refs who couldn't hear them, and eating delivered pizza and snacks they scrounged up from Brennan's kitchen. He was surprised at how much she knew. Her research was paying off and Booth was even learning from her about the sport, rather than the other way around. Granted, it was mainly stats she had researched, but he wasn't shocked. That was the squinty part of the game, the part he knew would interest her the most.

It was getting late, and like the night before, Bones fell asleep early. She dozed off during the halftime show of the Fiesta Bowl and Booth did his best to hold in his shouts.

But when the referees missed an obvious penalty, Booth lost it.

"Come on, man! Open your eyes! He was holding that guy! Give 'em ten yards!"

"What'd I miss?" Bones asked, rubbing her eyes to adjust to the light.

"Sorry, Bones. You missed the third quarter. The game's almost over!"

She shrugged. "That's alright. I don't like these teams anyway."

Booth chuckled. "Yeah, they both play dirty sometimes, but so does every other team in the country."

Brennan hardly stayed awake for the end of the game and Booth had to threaten carrying her to her bed if she didn't go herself.

"Fine. Goodnight, Booth."

"Goodnight, Bones. I'll see you tomorrow."

She looked alarmed, like she had forgotten an important appointment. "What's tomorrow?"

"Sunday, Bones, is when the pros play. Professional rules are different from college rules. You still have a lot to learn."