A/N: This is a bit of an experiment. I've been battling the mother of all writer's blocks for months now, and even though I originally planned this story as a long one-shot, I just can't seem to find the motivation to sit down and start working on a +10k fic when it will be weeks before it's ready to post. Therefore, I decided to split it into short, snippet-like scenes that will be easier for me to manage.

I know I'm way behind on "All My Yesterdays" – my apologies to those who are waiting for an update, and I promise I haven't given up on the story. New chapters will be coming, but first I need to kick-start my writing mojo again, and hopefully this (much shorter) fic will be the way to do it.

This story is AU (Alternate Universe) - it's set during season 1, but things will work out a little differently than you remember them from canon. Any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated!

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Great, now he's thinking of Becca again.

Booth picks the wayward piece of candy wrapper out of his son's blond curls and bundles him into the car seat, carefully keeping his focus on the present. Parker is tired and grumpy, but they're running late already, and the SAC has made it very clear that his patience is wearing thin. Booth tries not to dwell on that either; he got plenty of warnings from well-meaning superiors that he was committing career suicide, and he isn't sorry he ignored them even though he might have underestimated at the time just how serious they were.

It doesn't mean there's no sting when he sees another brainless twit get promoted while he's stuck behind the same rickety desk, but you just can't work the hours the Bureau expects from its top agents with a four year-old waiting to be picked up from daycare. Things will get better when Parker is older; it's the mantra he clings to, although he can only hope that he won't be too old for a serious career in the field by then.

Things would be different if Becca hadn't left.

Booth snorts without humor. Yeah, sure they would be – he'd have another meaningless fling in his past, and he'd be broke because of gambling debts instead of daycare fees and babysitters. He'd still have women chatting him up whenever he sets foot into a bar instead of seeing one flirty smile after the other slipping the moment they hear the words "single dad", and every weekend not spent working on a case would still be a blur of neon lights, poker chips and too much cheap alcohol.

He casts a quick glance at Parker in the rear view mirror and can't bring himself to resent her for leaving. Sometimes he does – when it all gets too much, when he's behind on everything and Parker wakes up with a cough and a fever, or when he has to hand over another interesting case to an agent who doesn't have a small kid he's responsible for 24-7. At other times, though, he remembers the look on her face when she handed him the baby, his baby, and he hates himself for putting her through all this. He can't regret it, though; he wouldn't have Parker if he hadn't.

I don't have a maternal bone in my body, Seeley. She has always been honest with him, and he appreciates that – not that the matter would ever have come up if it hadn't been for that little accident with the condom, because by the time he came back from his last deployment with the memory of a blood-spattered boy standing shell-shocked over his father's corpse, he had stopped thinking about ever having a family. The concept seemed like a stupid boyhood dream that had faded in the harsh light of reality, and it felt only fitting that none of his relationships ever went anywhere. Becca was fine with the arrangement, busy as she was with what looked like the beginning of a very promising career, and they were both content to enjoy what they had while it lasted.

She laughed in his face when he proposed after the stick turned blue, and he still cringes with embarrassment at the memory – not because of her laughter, but because he knew even then that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life with her, that he just wanted this baby with a desperation that took him completely by surprise.

He catches another flash of Parker's fair hair – his mother's hair, he looks more like her every day – in the rear view mirror and feels a quick, unexpected surge of affection for the woman who didn't want any of this and went through with it anyway. Sure, it took weeks of arguing, pleading and finally begging, but in the end she relented, and until today Booth can't fully believe that she really cared about him enough to carry the child she never wanted to term for his sake.

He hasn't seen her since the day Parker was born. That was her most important condition – she let him name the baby, gave him full custody, even offered to pay child support (he has refused to far, although he isn't sure how much longer he'll be able to afford his pride), but she would leave immediately after the birth for a new start in a different city, a different law firm, a different life altogether. In a way, it made things easier for all of them – or at least Booth likes to think so. Parker has asked a few times why some of the kids at his daycare center have daddies and mommies, but so far he accepts the explanation that it's just how things are, that some kids have one parent and others two in the same way that some kids have siblings and others don't.

Booth isn't looking forward to the day when the boy won't be satisfied with that answer any longer, but he has learned by now not to dwell on things he can do nothing about. He glances at the clock on the dashboard and can't help the grin that spreads over his face as he steps down on the accelerator; he has a long, boring meeting and a ton of paperwork to get out of the way first, but then it'll be time to go to the airport and save a certain forensic anthropologist from the clutches of Homeland Security.