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Fic: She's Wordy and Verbose
Title: She's Wordy and Verbose
Fandom: Bones
Rating: PG for discussion of gore
Pairing: Lance Sweets/Daisy Wick
Spoilers: The end of 4x02 "The Man in the Outhouse."
Summary: The conversation at the end of "The Man in the Outhouse," and what came after. Short and silly, with no real point except that this makes me happy.
Notes: Because I am convinced that Daisy is a less horrendous character when you take her out of a stressful group setting where she's trying to convince her personal hero of how competent she is (look at her at the end of "Skull in the Sculpture": wonder of wonders, she is a human being!). And because -- adorable. I have several of these ficlets in the wings. What the hell, writing muse? Title from MC Chris's otherwise irrelevant "Nrrrd Grrrl," because I couldn't resist.
Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan did the Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan thing. It’s not much of a shocker; they’ve got the thing – the Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan thing – where they can basically read each other’s minds and shut everybody else out, when they want to.
So it’s not a surprise that Dr. Lance Sweets finds himself alone in his office with a half an hour still to go before the scheduled end of the session, and the prospect of a Friday night with no plans looming overhead.
It’s slightly more surprising, even to him, that he pulls out his cell phone and thumbs through his contacts until he finds the number that he snagged out of Dr. Saroyan’s Rolodex earlier. But hey, he figures, why not?
(The new grad assistant thought he was brilliant.)
(She was pretty cute, too.)
“Hello?”
“Hi,” says Sweets, “is this Daisy Wick?”
“Yes, it is!” the voice on the other end chirps. It’s – pretty unmistakable.
Sweets smiles, wide and easy and maybe hopeful. “Hey! This is Lance.”
“…Who?”
He deflates, a little. “Uh, the shrink?”
“Oh! From the Jeffersonian!”
His smile is smaller, this time; more rueful. “Yeah. Listen – sorry you got fired.”
“I’ll survive,” she says, and Sweets isn’t entirely sure he believes that tone, but he’ll let it pass. Daisy’s voice perks up again. “What are you doing right now?”
“Nothing; what are you doing?”
“I’m – wait.” Her voice stops dead, then picks up again, suspicious. “You don’t play the accordion, do you?”
“The accordion? No; no, no.” Sweets is almost laughing a little, grinning, as he settles back in his seat, but he doesn’t laugh outright. “I play a little bass, though.”
Daisy’s voice brightens. “Really? I play acoustic guitar. Pretty well.”
“Cool,” Sweets says, and he means it. “Listen—”
“Do you want to get dinner?”
He reflexively sits upright. “—Uh, yeah! I mean, sure!”
“Great!” Briskly: “Do you like Indian?”
“I love Indian,” Sweets says, firmly.
“Me too! I think it comes from the semester that I spent in India while I was an undergrad.” She momentarily sounds thoughtful, and he thinks he might have lost her, but she gets back on track. “Meet me at Tandoor and Grill on Capitol Hill in 45 minutes?”
“Absolutely,” he tells her, and they exchange cell phone numbers and goodbyes, and as Sweets grabs his coat and heads out of his office, he’s grinning, and not at all thinking about how weird this is.
“Um,” says Sweets, after twenty minutes at the table, “here’s the thing. We’re gonna have to talk about something besides the Jeffersonian, once in a while.”
Daisy shoots him a wide-eyed, genuinely blank look over a forkful of chicken curry. “Why?”
“Because. It’s – pretty hard to determine any kind of compatibility or mutual interest if all we do is talk about how awesome Dr. Brennan is.” Hurriedly: “Not that she isn’t totally awesome.”
Daisy Wick’s smile is nice, Sweets notices. The restaurant’s low, warm lighting could probably make pretty much anybody look like a supermodel, but she’s really cute.
“But, I mean, I do lots of stuff that doesn’t involve the Jeffersonian, personally and professionally.” He sits back in his chair; gestures at her. “I’m sure you do, too.”
“Well,” says Daisy, looking like she’s seriously giving it thought, and Sweets gives her his very best encouraging face. Slowly: “I’m in the process of getting my PhD in physical anthropology from American University, I graduated – summa cum laude – from Dartmouth with degrees in anthropology and psychology, and I just broke up with my boyfriend, who was an emotionally-stunted, accordion-playing jerk.” She looks at him after the matter-of-fact recital; asks, earnestly, “Like that?”
“Like that,” says Sweets. “—The accordion? Seriously?” He winces. “Dude. Wheezy.”
“That’s what I said!” Daisy smiles at him across the table, and Sweets grins back. She finally takes the bite of curry that has been chilling out on her fork for a couple of minutes. As she chews: “He thought what I do is completely weird.”
“Seriously? He thought forensic anthropology was weird?”
“Well, he thought it was gross,” she says, pulling a face. “He’d get mad when I brought case files home.”
“But – it’s so cool,” Sweets says, momentarily uncomprehending (though he does realize that most people are uncomfortable looking at images of dead bodies; that it reminds them all too well of their own mortality), and Daisy stares at him for a second, as if trying to gauge his sincerity.
But she keeps looking over at him, a tiny smile threatening to break loose, as she bends to pick up her over-sized shoulder bag. “You really think so?”
He leans over the table, a little curious about what she’s rummaging through her purse for. “This one time, Dr. Saroyan let me touch an eyeball.” He sits back; spreads his hands. “It was awesome.”
“Was it pretty much a bag of fluid?” she asks, drawing a folder out of her bag. “Eyes liquefy really fast.”
“Not really.” Sweets considers. “It was kind of–” He makes a gesture with thumb and forefinger, as if squeezing an invisible eyeball. “–spongy.”
Most people would probably double-check that the other person means it, when they say they’re okay with corpses. However, Daisy Wick, Sweets is already getting, is not ‘most people.’ She drops the folder on the table between them, splayed open. There are a number of documents inside, typed with carefully (perfectly) printed notes in the margins in purple pen, but on top are several high-resolution photos of a mostly-decomposed corpse with its jaw jacked open wide and skeletal arms flung up.
A tray full of drinks rattles alarmingly as the passing waiter catches sight of the photographs, but Daisy doesn’t seem to notice.
“Sick,” Sweets says appreciatively, and then he is treated to a demonstration of just how intensely Daisy can beam.
She’s working on her dissertation on the burial rites of a Brazilian indigenous group, she tells him, and very quickly, Sweets is sucked into trying to extrapolate meaning from postures and artifacts.
Watching Daisy talk about diastatic versus basilar skull fractures – her eyes bright and flicking up every couple of seconds to look at him – Sweets ups the call from ‘cute’ to ‘wicked pretty.’
“Did you know,” Daisy says, bubbly, her voice not quite rising enough for it to fully be a question, “some forensic taphonomists have found that all human iris colors change to this gunky brown-black within seventy-two hours of death, and within forty-eight hours if the eyes are kept at room temperature, and not actually in a head.”
“No,” says Sweets, fascinated, and he spears a piece of chicken with his fork. “I totally did not know that.” Beat. “Gunky?”
Every single table around them clears out within twenty minutes.
Fandom: Bones
Rating: PG for discussion of gore
Pairing: Lance Sweets/Daisy Wick
Spoilers: The end of 4x02 "The Man in the Outhouse."
Summary: The conversation at the end of "The Man in the Outhouse," and what came after. Short and silly, with no real point except that this makes me happy.
Notes: Because I am convinced that Daisy is a less horrendous character when you take her out of a stressful group setting where she's trying to convince her personal hero of how competent she is (look at her at the end of "Skull in the Sculpture": wonder of wonders, she is a human being!). And because -- adorable. I have several of these ficlets in the wings. What the hell, writing muse? Title from MC Chris's otherwise irrelevant "Nrrrd Grrrl," because I couldn't resist.
Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan did the Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan thing. It’s not much of a shocker; they’ve got the thing – the Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan thing – where they can basically read each other’s minds and shut everybody else out, when they want to.
So it’s not a surprise that Dr. Lance Sweets finds himself alone in his office with a half an hour still to go before the scheduled end of the session, and the prospect of a Friday night with no plans looming overhead.
It’s slightly more surprising, even to him, that he pulls out his cell phone and thumbs through his contacts until he finds the number that he snagged out of Dr. Saroyan’s Rolodex earlier. But hey, he figures, why not?
(The new grad assistant thought he was brilliant.)
(She was pretty cute, too.)
“Hello?”
“Hi,” says Sweets, “is this Daisy Wick?”
“Yes, it is!” the voice on the other end chirps. It’s – pretty unmistakable.
Sweets smiles, wide and easy and maybe hopeful. “Hey! This is Lance.”
“…Who?”
He deflates, a little. “Uh, the shrink?”
“Oh! From the Jeffersonian!”
His smile is smaller, this time; more rueful. “Yeah. Listen – sorry you got fired.”
“I’ll survive,” she says, and Sweets isn’t entirely sure he believes that tone, but he’ll let it pass. Daisy’s voice perks up again. “What are you doing right now?”
“Nothing; what are you doing?”
“I’m – wait.” Her voice stops dead, then picks up again, suspicious. “You don’t play the accordion, do you?”
“The accordion? No; no, no.” Sweets is almost laughing a little, grinning, as he settles back in his seat, but he doesn’t laugh outright. “I play a little bass, though.”
Daisy’s voice brightens. “Really? I play acoustic guitar. Pretty well.”
“Cool,” Sweets says, and he means it. “Listen—”
“Do you want to get dinner?”
He reflexively sits upright. “—Uh, yeah! I mean, sure!”
“Great!” Briskly: “Do you like Indian?”
“I love Indian,” Sweets says, firmly.
“Me too! I think it comes from the semester that I spent in India while I was an undergrad.” She momentarily sounds thoughtful, and he thinks he might have lost her, but she gets back on track. “Meet me at Tandoor and Grill on Capitol Hill in 45 minutes?”
“Absolutely,” he tells her, and they exchange cell phone numbers and goodbyes, and as Sweets grabs his coat and heads out of his office, he’s grinning, and not at all thinking about how weird this is.
“Um,” says Sweets, after twenty minutes at the table, “here’s the thing. We’re gonna have to talk about something besides the Jeffersonian, once in a while.”
Daisy shoots him a wide-eyed, genuinely blank look over a forkful of chicken curry. “Why?”
“Because. It’s – pretty hard to determine any kind of compatibility or mutual interest if all we do is talk about how awesome Dr. Brennan is.” Hurriedly: “Not that she isn’t totally awesome.”
Daisy Wick’s smile is nice, Sweets notices. The restaurant’s low, warm lighting could probably make pretty much anybody look like a supermodel, but she’s really cute.
“But, I mean, I do lots of stuff that doesn’t involve the Jeffersonian, personally and professionally.” He sits back in his chair; gestures at her. “I’m sure you do, too.”
“Well,” says Daisy, looking like she’s seriously giving it thought, and Sweets gives her his very best encouraging face. Slowly: “I’m in the process of getting my PhD in physical anthropology from American University, I graduated – summa cum laude – from Dartmouth with degrees in anthropology and psychology, and I just broke up with my boyfriend, who was an emotionally-stunted, accordion-playing jerk.” She looks at him after the matter-of-fact recital; asks, earnestly, “Like that?”
“Like that,” says Sweets. “—The accordion? Seriously?” He winces. “Dude. Wheezy.”
“That’s what I said!” Daisy smiles at him across the table, and Sweets grins back. She finally takes the bite of curry that has been chilling out on her fork for a couple of minutes. As she chews: “He thought what I do is completely weird.”
“Seriously? He thought forensic anthropology was weird?”
“Well, he thought it was gross,” she says, pulling a face. “He’d get mad when I brought case files home.”
“But – it’s so cool,” Sweets says, momentarily uncomprehending (though he does realize that most people are uncomfortable looking at images of dead bodies; that it reminds them all too well of their own mortality), and Daisy stares at him for a second, as if trying to gauge his sincerity.
But she keeps looking over at him, a tiny smile threatening to break loose, as she bends to pick up her over-sized shoulder bag. “You really think so?”
He leans over the table, a little curious about what she’s rummaging through her purse for. “This one time, Dr. Saroyan let me touch an eyeball.” He sits back; spreads his hands. “It was awesome.”
“Was it pretty much a bag of fluid?” she asks, drawing a folder out of her bag. “Eyes liquefy really fast.”
“Not really.” Sweets considers. “It was kind of–” He makes a gesture with thumb and forefinger, as if squeezing an invisible eyeball. “–spongy.”
Most people would probably double-check that the other person means it, when they say they’re okay with corpses. However, Daisy Wick, Sweets is already getting, is not ‘most people.’ She drops the folder on the table between them, splayed open. There are a number of documents inside, typed with carefully (perfectly) printed notes in the margins in purple pen, but on top are several high-resolution photos of a mostly-decomposed corpse with its jaw jacked open wide and skeletal arms flung up.
A tray full of drinks rattles alarmingly as the passing waiter catches sight of the photographs, but Daisy doesn’t seem to notice.
“Sick,” Sweets says appreciatively, and then he is treated to a demonstration of just how intensely Daisy can beam.
She’s working on her dissertation on the burial rites of a Brazilian indigenous group, she tells him, and very quickly, Sweets is sucked into trying to extrapolate meaning from postures and artifacts.
Watching Daisy talk about diastatic versus basilar skull fractures – her eyes bright and flicking up every couple of seconds to look at him – Sweets ups the call from ‘cute’ to ‘wicked pretty.’
“Did you know,” Daisy says, bubbly, her voice not quite rising enough for it to fully be a question, “some forensic taphonomists have found that all human iris colors change to this gunky brown-black within seventy-two hours of death, and within forty-eight hours if the eyes are kept at room temperature, and not actually in a head.”
“No,” says Sweets, fascinated, and he spears a piece of chicken with his fork. “I totally did not know that.” Beat. “Gunky?”
Every single table around them clears out within twenty minutes.
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THIS IS ABSOLUTELY KICKASS WONDERFUL AWESOME.
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And because I have to ask: might you have an mp3 of the otherwise irrelevant "Nrrrd Grrrl"? IT ARE RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.
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Well, and some explanation. The entire background to this relationship is in two episodes of the show (the only two that Daisy has been in); Daisy is a temporary graduate assistant in the forensic lab who is needy and ANNOYING AS CRAP, and Sweets is the FBI profiler/psychologist who's a regular on the show, who is a 23-year-old genius and essentially 13 at heart. They met in the middle of the second episode of the season and made interested googly eyes at each other, and then -- yeah, that's really it, in terms of canon. Well, and the phone conversation at the beginning of the fic (I took some of the dialogue straight from the show), and way later, in the episode that aired this week, this, which made me shriek with shipper's vindication.
So, it is up to you if you want to read, not knowing the show? But that is the necessary context to help it make sense, if you do want to. :D
Nrrrd Grrrl, by MC Chris. I don't have an MP3. Some of the lyrics make me rolllllll my eyes, but it's a cute song, and it's fun spotting all the shout outs.
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Hooray!
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