The Meaning in the Unity

Just a somewhat mushy work-in-progress to get me through the summer until we really get to see what happens to Booth and Bones after the season 6 finale! I apologize foe the total lack of dividers in the last upload. It's obviously been a while since I've done this. It should be fixed now. I pretty much live for feedback (and really appreciate constructive criticism!) so if you have a chance to review I'd be grateful!

Chapter 1: Finding the Logic

"So, I've got Parker this weekend. I was thinking maybe we could go do something together," Booth said, propped up against Dr. Brennan's desk while she was crouched over a table hard at work.

"You'd like to tell him that we're romantically involved?" Bones posited, glancing up from the puzzle of bone fragments.

"I think just kind of ease him into the idea that we're dating, you know."

"Dating is a form of courtship in which social activities are done together to assess the suitability of the other as partner. That does not at all describe our relationship."

"What?" he scoffed, noticeably annoyed.

"I didn't mean to offend you, Booth. I am just observing that our relationship is essentially unchanged with the exception of added sexual and physical intimacy. Our years of friendship resembled dating much more closely than our current relationship. While this may be courtship, it certainly isn't dating."

"What should I tell him then, that we're courting?"

"Courting is a modestly accurate term for our relationship, I suppose. However, it still suggests that we are assessing one another's qualities in preparation for marriage."

"Well we may not be assessing, but I sort of like to think we're moving in that direction."

"Of marriage?" A laugh rolled out of her.

"I don't see why that's funny. I know that you don't believe in marriage, Bones. I was sort of hoping that you'd come around. You know, with the baby and all."

"The fetus, an unborn child is a fetus," she kept moving about her work.

"No," he took her by the arm and turned her towards him, "I mean the baby. Our baby. Listen, I can't be an every other weekend Dad, not again. I want," he paused, "I want a family."

She pursed her lips. "But we are, by all intents and purposes, already a family."

"Bones," he groaned.

"Yes, a conjugal family includes a procreating male-female pair and their immature offspring. We are a family." She shrugged from his grasp and moved back to her work.

"Bones, you're doing that thing that you do."

"Doing what, working? I am trying to reconstruct the shattered pelvis of the victim so that we can solve this case."

"No, you're doing that thing that you do where you get all anthropologist and sciency to avoid something that you don't want to talk about."

"This is how I talk. You said that you want a family," she looked up and gave him a flash of a smile, "and I explained that we are a family." Booth wrung his hands together as Brennan turned back to the bone fragments.

"Bones, how can I explain this so that you'll understand? I don't just want us to meet the dictionary definition of a family—"

"Encyclopedia, not dictionary," she interrupted.

"I want us to do the things a family does."

"Like what?" she said, still focused on her work. "We share meals and resources, we engage in sexual division of labor, we're largely, although not officially, cohabitational."

"Fine. I want other people to call us a family."

"Oh," she finally stopped working and turned back to him. "You want a culturally normed nuclear family."

"Yes, Bones," he sighed. "That."

"Fine. I will consider it. Now could we please get back to work?"

"Okay," he said with a smirk.

"It's so good to see you, sweetie. I feel like a shut-in," Angela said, wrapping her friend in a hug.

"Well, right now you are, essentially, a shut-in. That is why I brought you lunch."

"I know," she said without a smile. "So, tell me what's been going on in the lab."

"Hasn't Dr. Hodgens been filling you in? I mean you see him every night."

"I know, I know. Bugs, dirt, blah, blah, blah, but I want the gossip. I want your side."

"Well, Booth and I discussed marriage."

"Oh my God, Sweetie. That's huge. When? What did you say?"

"It was this morning. I told him that I would think about it. I just don't see why he wants to participate in such an antiquated ritual. I mean, having a child out of wedlock does have a certain social stigma, but it shouldn't at this point in our social evolution. I never intended to have my personal freedoms stripped from me in order to become the possession of a man."

"Okay. You might be taking that a little too far. Booth doesn't want you to be his possession."

"He said that he wants to be a family, and I tried to explain to him that we already meet the criteria for a conjugal family, but he said that he wants us to be culturally normed nuclear family."

"Somehow I doubt those are the words he used, sweetheart. I think he just meant that he wants the whole world to know that you two are in love and want to spend your lives together."

"Well that's absurd. Nothing short of a worldwide broadcast would inform the world of our relationship, and even that would fail to reach a large population of individuals with no connection to westernized media sources."

"Okay fine. He wants to stand up in front of his friends and family, and God,"

"I don't believe in God," Brennan inserted.

"I know, but he does. He just wants to commit himself to you." She held up a finger as Brennan tried to interrupt. "Nah. Not possess you, or claim you, but commit to you."

"He has already impregnated me, suggesting social and financial commitment to my livelihood, as well as his sexual dominance over me. I don't know why he would need a legally binding contract to suggest the same thing. We receive schizophrenic messages from our society saying that marriage should last forever, but at the same time that it can be legally reversed as easily as it is put in place. I don't believe in contributing to those messages."

"But Booth does. If you're going to raise a child together you're going to have to learn how to compromise, trust me."

"A compromise means reaching an agreement in which each party gives up part of what they demanded. Marrying Booth would not be a compromise; it would mean my conceding to the wishes of a man, which is precisely the problem with our modern expectations of marriage. The woman, as the physically weaker sex is expected to bend to the wishes of her husband."

"In marriage sometimes you give in to what he wants, and sometimes he gives in to what you want, that's what I mean by compromise. And I'm just saying, this might be one of the times that you should give into what he wants. I hate to say it, sweetie, but I'm going to have to side with Booth on this one. Marriage is," she looked around her home, now covered in burp cloths and baby blankets, "well it sort of rocks."

Brennan silently stared at her friend for a moment.

"Just think about it, okay."

Bones was back in her office sifting through files and notes when Booth walked into the lab. With a cowboy strut he made his way onto the platform to talk with Hodgens. "Check it out, man." He pulled a ring from his pocket and flashed the diamond briefly before tossing the box back in his pocket. "I'm asking her to marry me. We talked about it this morning but I want to really do it right. I called her dad and asked for his blessing. I arranged a night out, fancy dinner, a little dancing. I…"

"Wait, wait, wait, back up the train there soldier. You asked her dad?" Hodgens gawked.

"Yeah. It's what you're supposed to do when you propose, right?"

"Oh man, you don't know her at all," he chuckled.

"What? I do. Daffodils, daisies, Jupiter, I know her."

He held up a finger, still grinning, and pulled his cell out of his pocket. With two keystrokes he had his wife on the line on speakerphone. "Hey Ang," he said, "Booth asked Brennan's dad for permission to marry her."

They heard laughter from the other end of the line.

"What? It's tradition. He gave me his blessing," Booth assured.

"She doesn't want to get married because she doesn't want to be considered a piece of property, and you just her dad for her. Do you not get it at all?"

Booth stammered. "I know she's not property!"

"Well then don't try to buy her from her father."

"Buy her? No. That's not fair. I am not buying her."

"Hodgens, will you take care of this one? We're napping."

"Of course. See you when I get home." He hung up the phone and tossed it back in his pocket.

"Booth, Brennan is all about logic. If you want to convince her to marry you it's going to have to be logical. Give her some sound reasoning. And do not tell her that you asked her dad."

Booth's bottom lip protruded and he nodded his head. "Point taken." He wandered away.

"Sweets, buddy, you got a minute?" Booth asked, poking his head in the door of the psychiatrist office.

"Booth. Of course I do, I always have a minute for you. But you know you could make an appointment to speak with me, then you'll know I have time."

"This is too important for an appointment. I need help now." He walked into the office and took his seat on the leather couch.

"Alright. What can I help you with?" Sweets pulled a notepad from his side table and uncapped his pen.

"You don't need your little notebook for this one, Sweets. Put it away. I need you to do your whole shrinky mojo mind-readie thing and help me solve a problem."

"Okay well, first, I don't read minds. I am a clinician and I try to understand the human condition."

"Well okay, then you do that."

"I will try my best. What is the problem that we need to discuss here to today?"

"It's Bones. I need you to help me logic her into marrying me."

Sweets gave him an inquisitive look. "Logic Dr. Brennan into marrying you?"

"Yeah, you know. I mean we're having a baby and I want to do the right thing by her. I want us to get married. But when I brought it up to her this morning she went off about how marriage is an antiquated ritual and blah blah blah. So, I need to come up with a way to logic her into marrying me. That's the only want to work with Bones, logic."

"I'm still not exactly understanding."

"Listen to me, Sweets. I've proposed twice times and been shot down both times. That's not a very good track record. I can't strike out with Bones."

"Agent Booth, marriage is a very important developmental milestone in the terms of forming intimate relationships. You know that's something that Dr. Brennan struggles with. This is a very major step for her and you need to consider that. This isn't something you can force someone into doing."

"I don't want to force her," he gawked. "I just want to, you know, shove her in the right direction."

"Have you ever heard of Erikson's theory of development? He posited a stage theory of development in which individuals must face crises in a set trajectory, overcoming or failing to overcome various crises and move onto the next. During adolescence the main crisis is identity. People have to figure out who they are. When Dr. Brennan's parents disappeared and she lost her family she was in that stage of understanding herself, and because she is so precocious she was probably even beginning to move onto the crisis of early adulthood that is characterized as intimacy versus isolation. I believe that the loss of her parents stinted Dr. Brennan's psychosocial development and left her stuck, more or less, trying to overcome isolation well into adulthood. Most people learn to develop long-term friendships and relationships when they are just entering adulthood, but Dr. Brennan, she has been a little late in getting there. It wasn't until just the past couple of years that she has started to relate and commit to people in a mature way. So what I'm trying to say is that this isn't something that you should try to push on her. She needs to arrive at the point of entering into a life-long intimate relationship in her own time. It simply wouldn't be ethical for me to help you come up with a way to coerce her into marriage."

"No, no, no. I'm not saying I want to coerce her. I'm just asking how we can help her understand that this is the right time in her life to get married. You said yourself, she's in the whole intimacy phase, right? What if you just called her in here and told her about all this Erikson stuff?"

Sweets sighed. "I don't think Dr. Brennan would be too impressed with the work of Eric Erikson. Maybe you can help me understand, though. Why is it that you want to marry Dr. Brennan?"

"Why? Because I love her. I want us to be a family, you know. Man and wife, and baby."

"Would it make a difference if you were legally married or not?"

"Yes it would make a difference. I've already done the whole have a kid but not a family thing. I don't want it to be like that. I want to be 100 percent dad. There for all of it, you know?"

"And you think that that not being married would make it less likely that you would be 100 percent Dad? If you're worried about legal or custody rights there are attorneys that you can work with now, before the child is born, to assure arrangements that you both agree with. Would that serve the same purpose as a marriage?"

"No. I know that Bones isn't going to withhold custody rights or anything like that. We spend all our time together."

"Well then what is your reasoning for getting married? Is it about your religious beliefs? Do you want to be married in the eyes of God?"

"No, it's not about God," Booth groaned, dropping his forehead into tented fingers. "Marriage is just, it's what you do. You fall in love, you get married, you have kids. What is so complicated about that?"

"Booth, I'm just trying to help you come up with a logical way of explaining the necessity of marriage to Dr. Brennan. Isn't that exactly that you asked me to do? If you want to be able to reason with her about getting married then we are going to need to isolate the reasons that you want to marry her. So I'm asking you, what are your reasons for wanting to marry her?"

He paused to collect himself and remove some of the venom from his tone. "I don't just want us to be two separate people who happen to share a kid. I want us to be a family. You know, to have all the same stuff and go on trips together and all eat around the same table."

"Okay. So it's really about unity. Forming a family unit."

"Yeah, exactly. I tried to explain that to her and just started talking about nukes and conjugal visits and stuff," he waved his hands around emphatically.

"Conjugal families?" Sweets offered.

"Yeah, fine, maybe that was it. It's like she doesn't understand the difference between what we have now and family."

"Do you know?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Marriage," Booth boomed.

"Well Booth I don't know exactly what to tell you. It sounds to me like you're still a little confused about the reasons that you want to marry Dr. Brennan yourself. And if you don't have a firm reason I don't know how you can expect to appeal to her sense of reason on the topic."

"You know Sweet you're useless. I don't know why I even bothered come in here." Booth stood and headed for the door. "Your mojo really sucks."

Booth was getting ready to leave the office for the day when Dr. Brennan walked in unannounced. "Hey," he smiled up at her, "to what do I owe this visit?"

"I have come with the terms of a compromise."

"A compromise?" he stopped packing up and waited for her to continue.

"Angela said that marriage requires compromise, and so I have come with the terms of a compromise."

"Marriage, hu?" he prodded.

"I have considered your proposal, rationally, and I decided that you are right. We should get married because although the tradition may be outdated, marriage comes with certain legal and social benefits including fiscal and custody arrangements that are more conducive to long-term mutual cohabitation with a child. So, I've decided that if we intend to cohabitate in the interest of raising our child, then yes we should get married."

A smile of disbelief spread across Booth's face.

"However," Brennan continued, "because compromise suggests that each party must conceded part of their demands to reach an agreement I feel that I am entitled to request that you make some concessions from a traditional marriage to suit my desires."

"That sounds fair. Let's hear your terms." He braced himself for the worst, and tried his best to tug down the curled corners of his mouth.

"I would like to married by a justice of the peace at a ceremony that is neither extravagant nor religious. I will not be wearing symbols of chastity or virginity such as a white gown or veil. Finally, I will not be changing my surname."

He waited in silence for a moment, but when it became obvious that she had nothing else to say he tried to choke back a chuckle. "Those are your terms? You don't want to wear a wedding dress or change your name?"

"And," she corrected, "a modest ceremony. I am, however, willing to be somewhat flexible about who is in attendance."

"That's it?" He walked around his desk to stand close to her.

"Do you find this to be a suitable compromise?"

"Yeah. More than suitable." He held her hand in his and mirrored her smile. "But, I never officially proposed."

"You suggested that you would like for us to get married and I told you that I would consider it. Although it lacked the fanfare of a traditional proposal, I do think that it would be considered the proposition of marriage."

"You don't sort of feel bad that you missed out on the fanfare?" he asked.

"Although the cultural expectation of a romantic proposal is common, it is by no means necessary. Marriage is, in essence a legal transaction."

"Well I like a little bit of fanfare. So what if we go out for a nice romantic dinner? I have it all arranged."

"I would enjoy that. But, I believe that cultural tradition would necessitate you to purchase a ring for me prior to the meal."

"I'm way ahead of you, Bones. Way ahead of you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the box he had shown to Hodgens earlier that day. Popping it open he removed an antique diamond ring from its velvet fold.

"It's beautiful," she said as he slipped it onto her left hand. "It looks quite old. I would guess the mid 1940s."

"You date jewelry now too?"

"I am an anthropologist, I have studied the American post-war culture as well as more historic relics. Am I correct?"

He bobbed his head. "Pops wanted you to have it."