Chapter Two: Violet Skittles

A week after starting her job with Booth and the team at the Jeffersonian, Hannah seemed to find her rhythm. They hadn't had any murders that week, which was nice. And Booth had taken to Hannah quite quickly. Angela Montenegro, the forensic artist and tech guru, had quickly taken Hannah under her wing and pointed this out to her. Booth wasn't a big fan of working with new people.

"There must be something about you that he likes. Which could be a lot of things. You're very likeable." Angela had stated, making Hannah laugh.

Hannah strolled into Booths office and plonked a cup of hot coffee in his desk in front of him. He looked up at her with a bored look on his face.

"Y know, you look like you need to have someone murdered."
"Why,  are you volunteering?" Hannah raised an eyebrow as she say down in the chair across from his desk, swinging her long legs over the arm rest.

"To be the victim or to make a victim?" Booth sat up and leaned on his desk.

"I dunno. Surprise me. I'm just so bored!" He picked up the coffee and took a sip. "And this is good coffee. Where'd you get it?" He took another sip.

"The Mailbox. It's this quaint bar slash Diner slash cafe place just down the road from my apartment. I went there alllll the time while my mates and I were at Quantico. They know my coffee order by heart. I'm pretty sure they know my number as well because they greet me by name when I call..." Hannah shrugged as she sipped her coffee, the feeling of caffeine flooding her sleepy system making her happy.

They sat there like that for a few moments, a comfortable silence before it was interrupted by a young guy walking in and collapsing into the seat opposite Hannah. He didn't even seem to realise Hannah was there when he started talking to Booth.

"Y'know, you can't cancel our appointments. You and Doctor Brennan  are required to come to the appointments. You don't have a choice." He said. Hannah and Booth shared a look. Booths was one of exasperation  and Hannah's was one of amusement.
"You can't brush me off!"
"Hello!" Hannah chimed in before Booth could say something. The young man noticed her for the first time and took a huge breath.

"Wow, hi. Sorry i didn't see you there." Hannah smiled.

"Eh, it's fine. I mean, it just goes to show how often Booth has a female on his office. That's what, the third time this week I haven't been noticed? " Booth nodded.

"You are one with the furniture."
"Ah, but at least it's comfy." She patted her seat fondly. The guy stood up and reached out his hand.

"I'm Lance Sweets. I'm the psychologist."
"Ah, the shrink. You're the one Doc B doesn't believe does real science.' Sweets face dropped into one of exasperation.

"She doesn't believe that psychology is a real science. Which it is. It's brain science." Hannah chuckled and shook his hand.

"I minored in psychology, Sweets. They told me I couldn't be all just gung-ho at Quantico- Hey, that rhymed!" Hannah looked really pleased with herself. Booth chuckled and Sweets looked at her quizzically.

"Well, I'll try not to ignore you again. All things considered, you might beat me up if I do..." Hannah and Booths phones rang simultaneously. Sweets groaned. "It's always me. Always."

"It's a case! See you later Sweets." Booth clicked his phone closed and watched as Hannah hung up her phone and pushed herself out of her chair and drunk her coffee.

"Pleasure meeting ya! Just don't forget me next time." Hannah winked as she followed Booth.

Hannah had fallen into a rhythm with her partner and for the first time in a long time, Booth wasn't unhappy with having a partner. Hannah had leaned quickly within their first week together and Booth smiled as they got into the SUV.

"So you have a minor in psychology,  huh? That's wasn't in your file."
"Eh. It's not that important. It was either that or more running. And as much as I love running, it's handy to have a little bit of help in the psych department." She scratched her inner arm as she said that. Booth noticed her doing that a lot when she talked about anything to do with Quantico.

"So, you're an FBI agent who doesn't like running?"
"I didn't say I didn't like running. If someone were to yell that they had doughnuts, I would run. I just don't like excess running. I ran track in high school because that's what my gramps wanted." Hannah shuddered. "I ended up in the ER so many times, I'm pretty sure they had a room booked for me there, just in case."
"Your gramps, huh? What, did he have no one else to encourage to run? Why didn't you just say no?"
"Have you ever said no to your grandfather?" Hannah motioned for Booth to turn left. She looked back at the map, a long, delicate finger following the road they were on.

"No. I never did." Hannah nodded.

"It's hard. But Gran made up for it. She taught me how to play piano." Booth smiled as she made him turn again onto the freeway.

"Was being an FBI agent the thing you always wanted to do?"
"Nope."
"What did you want to do?"
"That is something I'm not going to tell you, Booth. Not in a million years." Booth groaned.

"Come on, Price! Tell me!"
"No."
"Come on. Let me guess then."
"I'll just deny it all." Hannah responded as she folded up the map. Booth came off the freeway and drove down the long road that would lead them to the beach that Brennan and the FBI forensic team were waiting for the agents.

"You're going to be a giant pain in my ass, aren't you?"
"But at least I'm pretty." She batted her eyelashes at him before pulling her sunglasses out of her breast pocket and pushed them up her nose. Booth parked and shook his head. Hannah was right though, even though she was joking.

Pretty, but completely out of bounds.

Booth sighed and got out of the car, adjusting his 'cocky' belt buckle as he walked.

"What a lovely place."
"Yeah, I'm sure whatever died over there would agree." Booth held her elbow to direct her towards the small team of forensics that were crowded around a small hole in the ground.

"Bones. What's up."
"Dead Caucasian male. Late teens, early twenties." Brennan was knelt in the hole beside the body.

"Who found the body?"
"Some teens."
"And where are they?" Brennan waved a bloody gloved hand in the general direction of a couple of cars. Hannah looked over and could see a couple of teens talking to the police. She peeked a look into the hole, looking around Brennan and cringed.

"I'll go talk to them." She gagged at the smell as a whiff from the decaying body waved over her. "I'll let you deal with...This." Booth shrugged and bent down to talk to Brennan as Hannah avoided rabbit holes to talk to the witnesses.

"Who are you?"
"FBI, Special Agent Hannah Price," She showed the officer her badge. Motioning to the girl and boy standing behind him, the girl looked like she was going to be sick. "They find the body?"
"Yes ma'am. You can talk to 'em but you won't get much." He moved out of the way. Hannah smiled kindly at them.

"What are your names?"
"I'm Tommy and this is Lee.  Was that a dead guy?" Tommy asked. Hannah frowned and nodded.

"Yes it is. How did you find the body?"
"Well, Lee and I were trying to get out of the house for while because our parents are super strict and never let us out so we snuck out," Lee was glaring at her brother. "And we came down here. Lee saw the dip and came to have a look-"
"And when I looked in, I saw the rotting hand, 'kay? And if was gross and then I threw up."
"You didn't do that ON the body, did you?" Hannah asked, blowing a hair out of her face. Lee looked guilty and Hannah groaned. She looked over at Booth to see him wrapping it up and the group packing up the body.

"Thanks guys." She started the walk back and almost sprained her ankle in one of the rabbit holes. A tech grabbed her arm to stop her from completing her fall and she thanked him before catching up to Booth.

"Looks like our murderer threw up on the body."
"Ah, yeah.  That was the girl this morning." Booth pulled a face and with held a gag. "So is it murder?"
"Could be. We need to get it to the lab and let the squints do their job." Hannah stopped and stared after him.

"Wait, what's a squint? Booth? What's a squint?!"

***********

A squint as it turns out is what Booth called people at the lab. Squinterns, as he then added, was what he called Brennan's interns. Mainly because they squinted a lot.

The  interns followed a roster for who it was that would be working within the Jeffersonian. Today's intern was Vincent Nigel Murray, a young brit full of random facts.

"Did you know that in Switzerland, it's illegal to own just one guinea pig." They were standing over the body, Hannah frowning at him as Cam sighed, closing her eyes.

"My, have we missed you, Mr Nigel Murray." Hannah suppressed a smirk at Cams tone, the sarcasm going straight over Vincent's head. "Does that have any relevance to the dead body?" Vincent opened his mouth and froze, shaking his head.

"Then can we try and stick to finding out if this," Hannah motioned to the body, "was murder and who he is? Please?"
"Of course, Agent Price. My apologies. The body, as Doctor Brennan mentioned, belongs to a Caucasian male between the ages of 18 and 23."
"He's been dead at least three days." Cam added as she lifted the dead man's head. Hannah grimaced and looked up in time to see Angela join them. She shot Hannah a smile before adding to the growing list of observations.

"At least 15 kids between your age range were declared missing between last week and three days ago. It's not much to go on so I need to run the facial reconstruction programme." Angela looked at the man's face and grimaced. "Hopefully I can get something."
"Ohhh come to papa." Everyone looked up as Hodgins spoke, an almost manic edge in his voice. He looked up just in time to see Cam give him a disapproving look.  "Sorry."
"What have you got?"
"Skittles." His eyes gleamed. Hannah walked over to see that Hodgins was holding an undigested, yet gross looking purple skittle that he had pulled out of the hole in the mans stomach.

"I don't think I'm ever going to be able to eat skittles again." Hannah suppressed another gag. "Let me know when you guys have something. I'm going to go find Booth." Hodgins, Angela, Cam and Vincent watched as the newest member of their team quickly walked away, waving a hand in front of her face.

"She's definitely going to be an interesting one." Cam nodded before turning to the stomach of the victim and pulled it out of the torso.

"Do you want this skittle or..."
"You can analyse it as well as the fibres of his clothing and try to find out why he's wearing so much purple."
"Maybe he wanted to be a skittle." Vincent piqued up, this time without a fact. Angela rolled her eyes and turned her camera on that was hanging over her shoulder.

***********

Several hours later, Hannah sat in the chair she had dubbed as hers in Booths office and rubbed her eyes. Her laptop was balanced precariously on her knees and three empty coffee cups were lined neatly along the bookshelf beside her. She itched her wrist as she thought, staring at the face of the now identified young man.
 
Darren Stewart, 20 years old, missing since five days ago but only had a report filed three days ago. Hannah leaned back and sighed.

"Any luck?" Booth walked into his office and stared at his bleary eyed partner. Her blue grey eyes were tired and she had kicked off her shoes.

"Nope. Nothing. He's just a regular kid.  No criminal record, no complaints... his boss claimed that he was amazing at his job but that doesn't say much because Stewart dressed as  giant skittle..." Booth came over to her and sat down in the opposite chair and sighed deeply. "What did his flatmates say?"
"Not a lot. We have one of them in custody because his girlfriend was cheating on him with Stewart. Can you track down a Lacy Harbringe?" Hannah nodded and started typing again. She waited for several seconds before clicking on the first girl that came up.

"This her?" Booth pulled out a picture from his pocket and tossed it onto Hannah's lap. "Yep, that's her. Do you need the address?"
"Yeah. You and I will go question her tomorrow. I've got Sweets and Bones talking to the flatmate now."
"So what are you going to do?" Booth looked up at her and thought for a moment, his brown eyes glazing over momentarily.

"How do you feel about Mexican?"

Authors Note:

Wow hi!

It's been a couple of days since I posted the first chapter. I'm sorry. I would have finished this chapter sooner but I got distracted by real life stuff.

Ugh. Anyway. How are you guys? How are you liking #Prooth to start with? I'm so excited to at some point actually give their relationship more depth and make it so cute and amazing.

Oh and just so ya'll know, if I do *****
That means a time skip. Really unoriginal but it works.

Okay. I'll try to work on chapter three and get that up sooner rather than later.

AND ONE MORE QUESTION!
Who would like to see some more Aubrey/Hannah action? I thought it would be cool if they knew each other. And what do ya'll think Hannah's tattoo is?

I'm done now.
Byeeeeeeeee

》Bree《