A/N: Hi guys! I'm alive! :) So this chapter's not perfect, but it's been too long, so I'm posting anyway hahaha. This second part of the story, you'll notice, is meant to change pace from the last part. It's going to move a lot quicker. Thanks for still reading (hopefully)! Hope to hear from you guys (preferably via reviews, but I'm not too picky) super soon! Enjoy!

Part 2: Entropy / lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder

Week Thirty-Seven, Day One | August, 2013

Lance Sweets is twenty eight years and seven days old.

That's what he's thinking about as Booth's car slows to a stop in front of his house. And it's something he hadn't put much thought into before: getting older. When he was younger, everything was this rush, a furious, impatient hurry to get older. After all, age meant independence. It meant achievement. With age, people would take him seriously.

Now he's grown tired of that rush. In twenty-eight years, he's lived a small lifetime. Everything he sought after had come with patience, with work, in time that now seems to move just a little too fast.

For the moment, though – it's no matter. He's twenty-eight years and seven days old, and just for today, that's all he will be. He is content with that.

But mostly, he's just content to be home. Back for the first time since last month, and cancer-free to boot, he patiently waits for Booth to kill the engine before jumping out of his seat.

He's appreciative, he's grateful, he's beyond thankful to have stayed with Booth and Brennan following his surgery; but if he wasn't itching to go home and be out of their figurative hair – no matter how much they claimed that wasn't the case – then he wouldn't be Lance Sweets.

Booth, on the other hand, takes his sweet time. He's in no rush because it's early in the Saturday afternoon, because they've got no ongoing case, because all of Sweets' scans came back clean. As far as he's concerned, they've got all the time in the world. At least between the car and the front door, they do.

The car locks as soon as the driver-side door swings shut, and they walk across the lawn that seems to have miraculously been trimmed. Sweets doesn't give it much thought at first, but as he steps from the grass to the walkway, he recalls that he never actually paid anyone to mow it. He certainly didn't do it himself; he makes a mental note to find out who did and thank them.

They step up to the porch, and with one hand, he fishes through the front pocket of his backpack for his keys and jams them into the lock a moment later. He jiggles the lock – because even though the house isn't that old, little things like that have been notoriously slacking – and turns his hand, but it jams nevertheless. He turns it back the other way, shakes the key out, tries again. With a satisfying click, the door finally unlocks and he lets Booth and himself inside.

The lights turn on of their own accord.

"Surpriiiiiiiiise!"

With an audible intake of air, Sweets drops his bag – along with a casual expletive he will later deny – onto the floor as his heart jumps up into his throat.

Many, many people have suddenly gathered in his entryway. A smile spreads slowly across his face; his heart calms back down.

It's a party, of course. He laughs because he should have known but didn't, but that hardly matters. So he smiles, he laughs, and joins in the fun.

After a short time, Christine runs her two-year-old version of a run over to where he's standing in the kitchen and bounces excitedly, with a piece of yellow construction paper in one hand and her mother's finger in the other. Brennan is bent over slightly to the side to hold her hand, and she smiles at Sweets as she announces, "Miss Christine has something for you."

"Oh yeah?"

He squats down, and Christine – grinning in her purple polka dot dress, with her little hair pulled back into two tiny pigtails – thrusts a page of nondescript crayon doodles his way.

"I made this!" she shouts happily. "Happy buhthday!"

He grins wide at the colors at the page and says, "Thank you very, very much, cutie. You know," he stands up for just a moment to fish a roll of tape from a kitchen drawer. "I think this is the best picture I have ever seen." He tapes it right up on the refrigerator as Christine beams proudly. Once he's done, he squats back down.

"Can I have a hug, cutie pie?" he asks, spreading his arms wide, and the two year old happily obliges as well as she can; she comes forward and ducks her head into his shoulder and grabs his neck and climbs halfway up on his left knee, almost as if she'd wanted to be lifted up but then changed her mind. She even throws in a tiny, half-puckered kiss to his cheek. "Oh, thank you!"

"Ya welcome!" she grins, bounces a few more times, and goes back to play.

At first, Sweets wonders how Booth was able to find them; but then he figures that of course Booth was able to find them. He's an investigator. Of homicides, sure, but given the right information and resources, he could find practically anything.

The White family included, Sweets supposes. He's only really mentioned them offhand, on occasion, and even then, he'd never have much information to share. Not as if he was hiding them, of course – after all, what was there to tell? Still. He is both surprised and not-surprised as he shakes Oliver's hand, and is graced with a hug from Queen Aurelia.

He even gets to finally meet Clara, who – like her now-four year old daughter – is a beautiful mess of curly hair; although, unlike her daughter's, it's dusty blonde, and pulled up into a neat half-bun. She smiles beautifully when she greets him; it's a pleasure to meet her, he says. And as he gets a good look at her, he notes what he suddenly sees.

"You're expecting?" he says, half a question, half an exclamation. Clara's would-be tiny belly swells out just so, giving the impression of a clear – if relatively early – pregnancy. But instead, she sheepishly knits her eyebrows and shakes her head.

"Um," she pauses. "I'm actually not…."

Sweets feels his ears go hot red with embarrassment, especially as he looks to Oliver and finds him looking purposefully away. Perhaps he shouldn't have said anything at all – so he rushes to backtrack.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I didn't –"

But then they cut him off; it seems that the Whites don't have it in them to torture him for that long. Oliver and Clara quickly erupt into laughter.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" Clara says. "Of course, I am expecting! Little girl's due in February."

Sweets, he sighs in relief. "Man, you almost gave me a heart attack! Congratulations!"

And Oliver, once he finally stops laughing, puts an arm around his wife and says, "Thanks, Sharkbait. Looks like life really doesn't stop, huh?"

He'd lasted a little longer than he thought he would, but regardless – by the time six o'clock comes and goes, despite the party still ongoing, Sweets finds himself flopping down on his bed, still dressed, and shoving his face in his pillow. He tells himself it's just for the moment, but if he's honest, he'd much prefer to stay right where he is for the rest of the night. He loves each and every one of the people downstairs, but hell if he isn't bone-tired by now.

A short one month distance from major surgery will do that, he supposes.

Sighing softly through his nose, he eventually forces himself back up. If he's going to cave and go to sleep this early, the least he could do is plug in his phone and brush his teeth. Maybe change into something other than slacks and a button-down.

So he digs his charger out from his bag and plugs it in by the nightstand before heading to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Thankfully it's not a far walk; one of the better things about losing his roommates was that he could move into the "master" bedroom, where a bathroom is attached right on. Call it a perk.

A few minutes pass and he emerges with a set of clean teeth. He starts toward his dresser, but a hesitant knock on the half-open bedroom door stops him before he gets there. A pause.

"Yeah?" his voice isn't rough or hoarse or gone; just tired, like the rest of him. Just quiet.

The head that pokes into the room, it's Daisy's. And he smiles as soon as he sees her, because he hadn't had much time to speak with her downstairs – what, with people coming at him from all sides with questions and well-wishes and congratulations.

"Hi," she says. He told himself he'd call her in the morning, but he decides that this is better. "Can I come in?"

He smiles. "Well, I'm certainly not gonna make you stand in the hallway. Yeah, come in."

She does. She comes in and sits on the bed, and once she assures Sweets that she doesn't care if he changes while she's here, he switches into soft pants and an old tee shirt and joins her there. They sit side by side on his usual side of the mattress.

A silence passes between them before Sweets asks.

"Something on your mind, Miss Daisy?"

The look on her face is pensive, bordering on troubled. Her eyes are cast down to the floor.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, but… I don't think there's any way to say it without making it about me. I don't know, maybe it just is about me… but I don't want it to be about me."

He considers this for a moment, and in the end, he just nudges her shoulder with his and smiles. "I don't mind talking about you. I like you. Besides, I think it'd be a nice change of pace."

He says, sitting on his own bed, in his own bedroom, above his own party. Over the past few months, Sweets knows he's been quite the topic: that too-young FBI psychologist with cancer, did you hear? Apparently his cancer's pretty rare. He got put on leave because he couldn't really handle it. Apparently, the treatment stopped working.

And now, suddenly it's gone. Now he's back. Almost, sort of. Still.

He's tired of his own narrative.

"I mean," she chuckles. "It's also about you. So don't think you're off the hook."

And he sighs a long, dramatic sigh he hasn't got the energy for and says, "Fine, fine. Shoot."

A pause.

"I wanted to… apologize. Because, you know – I've been thinking a lot, about you and about this, and I can't help thinking that… I don't know, that I haven't really been – there – enough."

He wants to interrupt, to interject, but thinks better of it.

"You know, in the beginning, right when you told me you had cancer, I told you I'd be there for you. I just don't feel like I've owned up to that, I feel guilty, and I know this must sound like I'm trying to assuage myself of it, but I really just…"

She sighs.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry I haven't been the friend I should have been. And if there's – if there's any way I can make that up to you… I'd like to."

She trials off, and the resulting silence is long and drawn out until – finally – Daisy glances sidelong at her ex-boyfriend. Ex-fiancé. Ex-boyfriend again – and current friend. Lance is looking forward, just toward the wall, with his head cocked to the side. He gently bites his bottom lip, thinking. Thoughtful.

The stress, the anticipation, they nearly make her blurt out again. They nearly push her to just say something else, something that would make him understand, because she's not entirely convinced she explained it well enough, but then he looks her way. He understands perfectly.

He just disagrees, is all.

"You know, you say that," he says, pulling his legs up so he's sitting crisscross on the bed, "like we didn't just talk for two hours a week ago."

"Yeah, I know, but that was –"

"About Star Trek into Darkness and your sister's new dog and not anything important?" she nods carefully, and he grins. "Well, you should know – just because a conversation's not about cancer, doesn't mean it's not important."

His phone vibrates from its place on the nightstand, and all he does is glance at it. A text from Booth tells him that – in spite of it only being seven o'clock – the party is wrapping up. People should be gone within the hour. It's the typical see you soon and let me know if you need anything. All it is is typical at this point.

"I know that when someone – when someone close to you is sick or hurting, sometimes it's tough to think about anything else. Maybe by addressing it more, by talking about it more, it'll help, but here's the thing: I'm sick of that." He offers half a laugh and gestures to his phone. "Like, take Booth for example. He's helped me so much, and I'm beyond grateful. But I don't really remember the last time we spoke about anything that's not cancer-related."

And Daisy, she nods like she understands, but he's not quite done.

"Look, I know I can talk to you about my cancer. I know that if I need you, you're there for me. And talking about movies or family or anything else at – what, one in the morning? – is being there for me. I don't just want to talk about cancer. I like talking to you. I don't care what it's about. You haven't been as absent as you think."

He takes a breath.

"And you should know that you're allowed to feel things, too; not just me. Your feelings are just as important as mine. Just as valid. Alright?"

She smiles.

"Alright."

Her eyes are still bright green. They wouldn't have changed, he knows, but still – even in low light, he notices them again. For the thousandth time since he first saw her.

There's so much compassion in those green eyes, he can feel it in his chest.

"So…" she starts, after a long stretch of silence. "Something else, then?"

He smiles.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think – I think it's time for a change."

Lance Sweets and Daisy Wick, they've always been unpredictable, right from the start. So much so – that now they've become predictably unpredictable.

There's a pattern here. There's a pattern of coming together, breaking apart, and coming back again, and even the psychologist can't exactly place it. Even he can't explain why.

The first time they broke up and got back together, he chalked it up to history. Because in his mind, he always knew breakups were supposed to be permanent, that ephemeral, inconsistent relationships were ill fated, but every time he looked at her he remembered the first time he saw her. He remembered first dates and first kisses and all the brilliant, shiny moments that made her worth it.

The second time, he figured, breaking up had been a mistake. What better way to rectify it, then? They could slide back together, easily and gently, fall back into the same familiar rhythm like nothing ever happened, and for a while, it was alright.

It was alright because he loved her. It was alright because she loved him.

It didn't last because something wasn't right. Timing, communication, expectations – whatever it was, it was the reason why they weren't living together when he got cancer. It was the reason why they were friends – good friends, but not much more.

Now?

Now they don't know what to call themselves.

Now, one thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. A hesitant knock on the door somehow leads to the two of them, shirts off, lying together under the sheets with tired lips and wound-up minds.

Half asleep, Lance has no idea how it happened. He has no idea how she could even still be attracted to him, really, and that's not meant to be self-deprecation; it's genuine curiosity. Combine the fact that he's still underweight with his head of barely there peach-fuzz hair. Combine them with the strangest timing, the odd sort of semi-calm of tonight, and they have a mystery.

"We didn't work," he says suddenly, and not as if he's only just realizing it.

"We didn't work."

Her head is resting gently on his collarbone, and he doesn't need to open his eyes to know she's wide awake.

A long moment passes between them in faux-silence. Soft chatter echoes through the house; the floors creak and doors swing on their hinges and drawers and cabinets open and close. That's the party ending, things getting put away, people leaving. The door is shut, locked, and they are alone.

"I want us to work."

A pause; a nod; a sad smile.

"I want us to work too."

It is nearing eight o'clock on a warm Saturday night, and the sun – miraculously – has yet to dip completely below the horizon. It's not all dark just yet, but that doesn't stop sleep from tugging at him.

"So…" she says after a long while. "Where does that – where does that leave us?"

And what he does is offer a quiet, near contented sigh. What he does is give her a tired smile. What he does is enjoy her company. Because among many, many things – he loves her company.

He presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head.