Timeframe/Info About This Fic: I suppose anytime in Season 8, though certain vignettes will obviously have a timeframe.
Disclaimer: Bones and its characters belong to their rightful owners.
Authors Note: You guys shouldn't have encouraged me to write fluff again. I was perfectly happy writing dreary, torture-filled angst marshmallows and now I'm writing more fluff x.X I warned you before about this xD
Anyway, these are all written up and I'll post the five other parts periodically. I just really love those "five times blah blah blah happened and the one time bleh bleh bleh happened" plot ideas, though instead of little drabbles, they've sort of turned more into actual short stories. Eh, whatever. I hope you enjoy!
"Morning, Doctor Saroyan." The chipper tone caused the pathologist to jump. She raised her gaze and blinked at the grinning doctor standing at the door.
"Doctor Sweets! What…are you doing here?" The former coroner lowered the bloodstained tool in her hand and stared expectantly at the young man in front of her.
"Uh," the psychologist glanced around him and took Cam's lack of dismissal as an invitation to enter the room. "I'm waiting for Booth. We were supposed to interview a suspect together and he told me to meet him here." He looked back over his shoulder and rocked slightly on his heels. "I guess he's somewhere with Doctor Brennan…"
"I would assume he'll be out to meet you in a moment then," Cam responded more so out of politeness than anything else. She returned her focus back to the fleshy skeleton in front of her, half hoping that the psychologist would get the hint to wait on the break platform for Booth instead of hovering over the evidence.
No such luck.
"So, that's the victim whose killer we're searching for?" Sweets' voice, considerably closer than it had been before, caused Cam to jump again. She looked back up at the wide-eyed young man and smiled thinly.
"Ye-es," the pathologist started slowly. Over the span of thirty seconds, the psychologist had progressed from lingering by the door to standing directly over the body. "Can I help you, Doctor Sweets?" Cam's patience was now starting to wear thin.
The psychologist returned Dr. Saroyan's even stare with a meek smile. "I've noticed I'm still uncomfortable with well, whatever you guys do here. All the blood and guts and stuff," Sweets elaborated on the technical terms with forming a squished ball in the air with his fingers. "So, I was wondering, uh, if I could help you out a little bit. Just to familiarize myself more with…y'know…the not paperwork."
The young man's smile was so infectious and innocent that Dr. Saroyan couldn't help but to return it with a slight upward curve of her own lips. "I can't let you perform any of the cuts since you are not a licensed professional and it would cause this investigation to be illegitimate."
Sweets brought his splayed palms up in front of his chest and pushed his body back slightly with elevated eyebrows. "Fine by me."
"But I can allow you to hand me certain instruments when I need them," Cam consented with a small smile.
Sweets grinned. "That's totally awesome." The psychologist positioned himself by the tray of shiny tools and blades. "I'm kind of like your intern now, right?" His eyebrows danced mischievously.
"Let's not get carried away, Doctor Sweets," Cam shook her head with a smile and returned back to the body. After a moment of silence as Cam carefully pried off a layer of muscle with Sweets watching on with awed disgust, the pathologist reached out her hand for the first tool. "The size 15 scalpel, please."
"Uh…"
Not even glancing up from the job at hand, Cam replied without breaking stride. "The knife on the far right."
"Got it!" Sweets grabbed the blade and swapped out the tools with Dr. Saroyan. He took the slightly slippery blade from the former coroner and frowned as he held the used blade with two fingers away from his body as he tried to figure out what to do with it. A bead of grayish green slipped down the blade tip and ran across the psychologist's thumb, causing him to jerk his hand and let the blade slip. He gasped softly as he caught the blade before it hit the floor, but it lightly nicked the inside meat of his pointer finger. With a frown, Sweets noticed that the scalpel had cut him slightly. A bright bead of crimson welled up on his index finger and trembled with its own top heaviness.
"Ouch," the young man murmured, setting the offending blade safely back down on the table with his other hand. He lifted his injured hand close to his face and scrutinized the injury to make sure none of the mystery liquids got in. Since the body juice was dribbling down his wrist and not into the slice, he assumed he was safe.
Just to be sure though, he decided to warn the engrossed pathologist beside him. "Hey, uh, Doctor Saroyan?"
"Yes?" She didn't even look up.
"I just wanted to tell you that I didn't kill her if you find my blood on the body," he remarked casually.
This was a weird phrase, especially for the shrink. It caused Cam to pause mid-slice. "What are you talking about, Doctor Sweets?" She dragged her gaze from the cadaver to the psychologist, who was still analyzing his finger as if it were a patient. Cam froze as she saw a bead of blood on the young man's finger that he had lightly separated from the other digits.
"Did you just cut yourself?" A strange urgency bled into Cam's voice that Sweets had only heard a few times before.
"Uh, yeah, I'm really sorry. I guess the blade slipped…it was sort of wet with some of the, well, dead body juice," Sweets wrinkled his nose. "I'm not doing a very good job at this."
Without giving any indication that she had heard the psychologist's prattling, Cam grabbed the young man's upturned wrist and dragged him forcefully to the sink. She turned on both taps with quick, jerking movements and shoved the shrink's hand under the warm jet of water.
Sweets tried to pull away with little success. "I'm fine, Doctor Saroyan, I really am," he protested, trying in vain to again wiggle out of her grasp. Her hand tightened like an iron vise around his slippery wrist and he still couldn't free himself, even under the pressure of the water shooting from the faucet.
Cam was still ignoring Sweets' whined pleas and grabbed the nearest bottle of soap, squirting the orange liquid directly onto the slightly streaming slice. Sweets winced at the acidic sting and tried again to squirm away.
"That kinda stings," he pointed out lamely as the pathologist scrubbed the blood, bile, and soap from Sweets' injury. At this point, he wasn't sure if Cam was simply ignoring him or if she had just completely lost it. He was dearly hoping that Booth or someone else wouldn't wander in and see him getting his finger washed out like he was an inept child. He wasn't sure he would be able to handle the embarrassment. After a few more moments of scrubbing and unheeded pleas, Cam finally turned off both of the knobs and the water ceased its pouring from the spigot.
"Uh, thanks, Doctor Saroyan…but you really didn't have to do that. It wasn't more than a paper cut, really."
"I had to make sure no foreign substances entered the wound. It's protocol."
"Oh, well, I understand, but could you release my ha—"
"I'm not done yet either. We still have to make sure that no other dangerous pathogens enter your body through the cut."
"I swear it'll be fine!" Sweets raised his free hand and tried to tug his captive wrist back. However, Cam was not about to release her patient anytime soon. She towed the reluctant young man forcefully to a portable first aid kit and popped open the white tabbed case. Sweets suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as Cam carefully dried his dripped hand with a clean, white cloth and smeared three different types of ointment across the barely perceptible tear in the skin. Honestly, to the psychologist, it looked no worse than a shaving nick.
"I'm sure Booth is looking for me. He's probably wondering where I am…" The psychologist tried one last time to excuse himself from the nearly obsessive pathologist. Quite frankly, Dr. Saroyan's uncharacteristic franticness frightened the shrink slightly.
"Once I make sure infection won't set in, you can go. I just need to cover the injury with something to prevent particles from entering." Sweets' eyebrows darted skywards. He almost had this déjà vu sense that he was ten again and his adoptive mother was bandaging him up after he had fallen on his bike for the first time.
Cam pulled out a decorative Band-Aid from the kit and Sweets groaned out loud. "No, you can't be serious. Everyone will laugh at me for wearing that."
Cam was not sympathetic as she tightly wrapped the plastic bandage around the young man's finger, giving the back of his hand a light pat for good measure. "Better safe than sorry," Cam replied with a satisfied smile as she finally released the young man's wrist. "Tell me immediately if you start to feel any pain from your finger."
"Thanks…I will…" Sweets murmured hurriedly, quickly darting backwards out of the lab before Cam could grab his wrist again and repeat the incredibly embarrassing ritual.
"You ready to go?" Booth straightened up from his leaned position on the wall when he spotted the young psychologist practically running towards the exit.
"Yeah," came the quick response. "Let's go."
"What took you so long? I thought you said you were going to be ready right away."
"It's a long story," Sweets muttered sullenly, attempting to tuck his injured hand behind his back.
Booth caught the movement and grabbed the young man's wrist and twisted the hand until he could see the bandage on the boy's index finger. "Wait…is that a princess Band-Aid?" Booth wasn't sure on whether he should laugh or cry.
"Apparently Cam was out of monster truck Band-Aids." Sweets replied gloomily. Booth released his wrist and the psychologist inspected the pink and sparkle-clad bandage wrapped around his wrinkled finger. He could see an excess of the ointment oozing out through the sides of the protective foam. The special FBI agent wasn't sure what had happened in the five minutes that Sweets had been left to his own devices in the Jeffersonian, but he was incredibly curious.
"What happened?"
"I tried to help Doctor Saroyan out with the autopsy and ended up cutting myself on a used blade. She was…quite thorough in cleaning out the wound," Sweets replied with pursed lips. "I suppose the added caution was triggered by an emotional memory response to what had happened to Arastoo a few months ago. Normally I doubt Doctor Saroyan would be so…driven in cleaning up minor lab accidents."
"Yeah, right," Booth agreed with a side glance at the scowling young man beside him.
Hopefully Cam wasn't too out of character. I have the least experience with writing her character, though I really love it :'D
Thanks for reading!