From me, an Admirer - Day 11 (Bones - Cadgins)
Title: From me, an Admirer
Author: AccordingToMel
Summary: After Cam starts receiving mysterious gifts, she begins to suspect that she might have a secret admirer.
Pairings: Cadgins
Rating: T
Spoilers: None.
Word Count: 2,073
Disclaimer: Last I checked, no. But let me tell you, if I had my way with the show, things would be vastly different!
Author’s note: Egads! One more chapter after this one. I can hardly believe it. Now the real test will be whether or not I have time to write the last one before Christmas, now won’t it? ;) (Kidding, kidding…it’ll be up tomorrow, don’t worry!) Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one. The first part will consist of day ten still, and then move onto day eleven.
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six,
Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From me, an Admirer - Day 11
Day 10 (continued)
Thankfully Cam doesn’t have too long to wait before her next encounter with Fisher. She spends a good chunk of time contemplating Angela’s words once she is back in her office and finally decides that the artist was probably correct. She needs to know if it is Fisher who’s behind all this secret admirer stuff, though admittedly she has yet to decide what she’s going to do if it turns out that he actually is the one. Cam has already almost convinced herself that it couldn’t be him, but there is a small part of her that still worries about the possibility.
As luck would have it, she runs into him towards the end of the day when he is dropping off another report for her.
“Fisher, I need to talk to you,” Cam tells him as soon as the new report is in her hands.
“Sure,” he agrees monotonously. “What do you need to talk to me about?”
She shifts on her feet, feeling awkward and uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Well, I... I was wondering what you were doing in my office yesterday.”
Fisher stares blankly at Cam for a moment before responding. “I thought we already had this conversation yesterday. I was dropping off a report for you.”
Cam nods, watching him intently. “Yes, I know. But what I wanted to know was if there was any other reason why you were there? Or anything else you were dropping off for me besides the report?”
She holds her breath and waits for his answer, searching his expression for anything that might give away his reaction to her line of questioning, but she doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
“Yeah. I left a box on your desk,” he responds, sounding particularly disinterested.
Cam tries not to let her surprise at his admission show too strongly on her face. She’s not quite sure that she succeeds. “You left it there?” she repeats.
“Yes.” Fisher just looks perplexed.
Cam asks the question she really doesn’t want to know the answer to. “So it was from you...?”
Fisher blinks a couple of times and then laughs dryly. “No. I was asked to deliver it to you. I have no idea what it was.”
“Someone asked you to deliver that package?” she demands, eyes widening as she takes a step instinctively towards him. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know his name,” Fisher responds with a shrug of his shoulders. “One of the security guys, I think.”
“What does he look like?” Cam asks, and she knows she’s sounding just a tad desperate, but he doesn’t seem to be paying her much attention. “Tall and skinny? Short and plump? Muscular with really red hair?”
Fisher seems to contemplate this for a few painfully long moments. “He was shorter. Definitely didn’t have red hair. I think it was a light brown or something. And he was a bit on the heavier side.”
“Chuck? Was his name Chuck?”
Fisher shrugs. “Sounds vaguely familiar yeah. It was probably Chuck.”
Cam could hug him right now, she really could. “Thank you for clearing that up for me,” she says enthusiastically.
“I had a dog named Chuck once. He died when I was ten in a horrible boating accident. Redefined my life...” Fisher mutters absently to himself, but Cam is already hurrying away from him and back to her office.
* * * * *
Cam considers hunting down Chuck on her own. But then she remembers that he’s all the way at the front of the Jeffersonian and it could literally take her a good ten minutes to actually find him with the fact that she’s still using crutches and is not supposed to be bearing any weight on her foot just yet.
But thankfully, Cam is a resourceful woman. She picks up her cell phone and dials Booth’s number.
He answers on the third ring. “Booth.”
“Hey Booth, it’s me,” she says as way of greeting. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the lab. I just got here. Why? Where are you?”
She smiles into the phone, in spite of the fact that she knows he can’t see her. “In my office.”
“You couldn’t have just walked down the hall?” comes his slightly amused retort.
“Remember the crutches? Yeah, well, it’s easier to just call you.”
Booth laughs through the phone. “I guess you’ve got a point,” he acquiesces. “I assume there was something you wanted though?” he adds after a moment.
“Yes, actually.” Cam isn’t quite sure how to ask the question without sounding ridiculous, so she just jumps right in. “I was wondering if you could do me a favour.”
“What is it?”
She takes that as a good sign. “I need you to go find Chuck Reimer and grill him for information.”
“Cam, what?!” Booth cries out, and she can practically hear him rolling his eyes.
She presses on anyway. “Okay, look. I don’t have time to explain the whole thing, but basically I saw Fisher in my office yesterday when I was coming back from lunch, and he had just delivered that day’s gift from my secret admirer.” Cam pauses for a moment to pointedly ignore Booth’s groan before carrying on. “Then I thought it might be Fisher who was the secret admirer. So I confronted him about it just now and he swears up and down that he only delivered the package to me because Chuck asked him to. But someone must have given it to Chuck in the first place, because it didn’t come directly through the mail this time around.”
The line is quiet for several moments, and Cam starts to worry that maybe Booth’s hung up on her. She is about to ask if he’s still there when he finally speaks.
“So you want me to pump him for information? Find out who gave him the package in the first place?” He doesn’t sound overly thrilled about the prospect, but Cam doesn’t really care.
“Yes, exactly. I’d do it myself, but it’d take me a good five plus minutes to get down there and then probably another good five minutes to find him, with me being on these crutches and all…”
“All right, fine. I’ll do it,” Booth grumbles through the phone, making a point of sounding extra miserable. “But only because you’re all gimpy right now.”
“I am not gimpy!” Cam protests, but she is laughing. “Thanks Booth!” she adds as an afterthought, just before he hangs up the phone.
* * * * *
“So, here’s the scoop,” Booth announces approximately twenty minutes later, when he barges into Cam’s office unannounced.
She turns off her computer monitor and looks up expectantly at him from her seat at her desk. “Let’s hear it,” she says, anticipation seeping through into her tone.
“He doesn’t know anything,” is the verdict.
“What? How can he not know anything?” Cam demands, rising to stand in spite of her injury.
Booth shrugs nonchalantly. “He said that it was delivered by a private courier. Chuck signed for it and brought it down to you. But since you weren’t around, he asked Fisher if he could bring you the package instead.”
This was not the kind of information that Cam was hoping to hear. It seemed awfully suspect in her mind. “Did he say what company? Or what the delivery guy looked like?”
Booth stares at her incredulously. “No. I didn’t ask him.”
“Why not?” Her petulant child voice is back, but she can’t seem to help herself.
“Camille, Chuck is a security guard, not a prime suspect in a murder case. I’m not going to interrogate him as if he is one, even if you’ve somehow decided that he is in your own warped mind. You know your admirer isn’t Fisher - thank God. Why do you need anything else?” Booth sounds about ready to either burst out laughing or smack her upside the head. Possibly even both. “Besides, I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough anyway. Stop worrying about it.”
The conversation abruptly ends at this point and Cam feels no further ahead than she was before.
Day 11
After a night of contemplation and deep thought, Cam decides that the first thing she is going to do on Wednesday morning is open up her past two days worth of secret admirer gifts, as she’s allowed them to remain untouched on her desk. The first gift is a beautiful, sky-blue scarf. It matches perfectly with Cam’s jacket and she finds that she’s quite pleased with the gift, even if she still is a little uncertain about who they’re coming from. She tucks the scarf into her jacket sleeve and moves to open the second package. This one is significantly smaller, but she already suspects she knows what it is. Her suspicion is confirmed when she opens the package to reveal a silver necklace. It is simple but elegant at the same time, and at the center is a small angel charm. She suspects that it’s moderately priced, but not overly lavish.
Cam is in the middle of admiring the necklace and trying to decide what to do with it when she hears a soft tapping on her office door.
She glances up to see Hodgins standing in the doorway. “What’s up?” he asks with a soft smile, leaning casually against the inner doorpost.
“Just opening my secret admirer gifts from the last two days,” she tells him plainly, smiling back at him.
“What did you get?” he wonders, walking over to where she’s leaning against her desk, and Cam notes how neutral and convincing his voice sounds.
She shows him the scarf and then she shows him the necklace still sitting in the box. “Wow,” Hodgins utters softly and meets her gaze. “Are you going to wear it?” he asks after a brief pause.
Cam eyes him curiously, trying to figure out exactly what’s going on with him. She feels something warm building up in her chest again and she notes that there is something intimate about the way he’s looking at her. “I guess there’s no harm in that,” she tells him.
Cam fumbles for a moment to put the necklace on by herself, and somehow she almost manages to topple over. A steadying hand on her arm from Hodgins is the only thing that keeps her upright.
“Let me help?” he offers, and she agrees without much fuss. She thinks she’s finally learning to allow Hodgins to do things for her without feeling badly.
Hodgins removes the necklace from the box and moves to stand behind Cam. Holding her ponytail out of the way, Cam waits with abated breath. Hodgins lowers the necklace around her neck and clasps it at the back, fingers brushing gently against the nape of her neck as he pulls away in a manner that can be nothing other than deliberate. She finds herself shivering in spite of herself and almost instinctively turns her head to the side, her face nearly colliding with Hodgins. They remain like that for a few moments, breathing in each other’s air and invading each other’s personal space, and Cam feels the intensity in the air around them shift. And she is quite certain that Hodgins is about to do something - to make his move.
But then the moment ends almost as quickly as it began, when Brennan comes racing into the room. They instinctively pull as far away from each other as they can and turn to meet Brennan’s clueless gaze. Hodgins excuses himself with a barely concealed smirk and a longing look as Brennan starts talking. But Cam knows that there was something going on there, something that could have happened, and she feels just a little bit giddy at the thought.
* * * * *
Her eleventh gift arrives late in the day. The card is on the outside of the box this time and she reads it before opening the gift. It reads:
Tomorrow is the last day. Meet me in the garden at the back of the Jeffersonian at lunch.
I wish you nothing but the best this holiday season.
From me,
an Admirer
P.S. I hope you enjoy this gift. It’s one that’s especially close to my heart.
Cam smiles in spite of herself and opens up the package sitting in front of her. She examines it for a few moments before finally breaking into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
------------------------
Part Twelve
Author: AccordingToMel
Summary: After Cam starts receiving mysterious gifts, she begins to suspect that she might have a secret admirer.
Pairings: Cadgins
Rating: T
Spoilers: None.
Word Count: 2,073
Disclaimer: Last I checked, no. But let me tell you, if I had my way with the show, things would be vastly different!
Author’s note: Egads! One more chapter after this one. I can hardly believe it. Now the real test will be whether or not I have time to write the last one before Christmas, now won’t it? ;) (Kidding, kidding…it’ll be up tomorrow, don’t worry!) Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one. The first part will consist of day ten still, and then move onto day eleven.
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six,
Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From me, an Admirer - Day 11
Day 10 (continued)
Thankfully Cam doesn’t have too long to wait before her next encounter with Fisher. She spends a good chunk of time contemplating Angela’s words once she is back in her office and finally decides that the artist was probably correct. She needs to know if it is Fisher who’s behind all this secret admirer stuff, though admittedly she has yet to decide what she’s going to do if it turns out that he actually is the one. Cam has already almost convinced herself that it couldn’t be him, but there is a small part of her that still worries about the possibility.
As luck would have it, she runs into him towards the end of the day when he is dropping off another report for her.
“Fisher, I need to talk to you,” Cam tells him as soon as the new report is in her hands.
“Sure,” he agrees monotonously. “What do you need to talk to me about?”
She shifts on her feet, feeling awkward and uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Well, I... I was wondering what you were doing in my office yesterday.”
Fisher stares blankly at Cam for a moment before responding. “I thought we already had this conversation yesterday. I was dropping off a report for you.”
Cam nods, watching him intently. “Yes, I know. But what I wanted to know was if there was any other reason why you were there? Or anything else you were dropping off for me besides the report?”
She holds her breath and waits for his answer, searching his expression for anything that might give away his reaction to her line of questioning, but she doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
“Yeah. I left a box on your desk,” he responds, sounding particularly disinterested.
Cam tries not to let her surprise at his admission show too strongly on her face. She’s not quite sure that she succeeds. “You left it there?” she repeats.
“Yes.” Fisher just looks perplexed.
Cam asks the question she really doesn’t want to know the answer to. “So it was from you...?”
Fisher blinks a couple of times and then laughs dryly. “No. I was asked to deliver it to you. I have no idea what it was.”
“Someone asked you to deliver that package?” she demands, eyes widening as she takes a step instinctively towards him. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know his name,” Fisher responds with a shrug of his shoulders. “One of the security guys, I think.”
“What does he look like?” Cam asks, and she knows she’s sounding just a tad desperate, but he doesn’t seem to be paying her much attention. “Tall and skinny? Short and plump? Muscular with really red hair?”
Fisher seems to contemplate this for a few painfully long moments. “He was shorter. Definitely didn’t have red hair. I think it was a light brown or something. And he was a bit on the heavier side.”
“Chuck? Was his name Chuck?”
Fisher shrugs. “Sounds vaguely familiar yeah. It was probably Chuck.”
Cam could hug him right now, she really could. “Thank you for clearing that up for me,” she says enthusiastically.
“I had a dog named Chuck once. He died when I was ten in a horrible boating accident. Redefined my life...” Fisher mutters absently to himself, but Cam is already hurrying away from him and back to her office.
* * * * *
Cam considers hunting down Chuck on her own. But then she remembers that he’s all the way at the front of the Jeffersonian and it could literally take her a good ten minutes to actually find him with the fact that she’s still using crutches and is not supposed to be bearing any weight on her foot just yet.
But thankfully, Cam is a resourceful woman. She picks up her cell phone and dials Booth’s number.
He answers on the third ring. “Booth.”
“Hey Booth, it’s me,” she says as way of greeting. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the lab. I just got here. Why? Where are you?”
She smiles into the phone, in spite of the fact that she knows he can’t see her. “In my office.”
“You couldn’t have just walked down the hall?” comes his slightly amused retort.
“Remember the crutches? Yeah, well, it’s easier to just call you.”
Booth laughs through the phone. “I guess you’ve got a point,” he acquiesces. “I assume there was something you wanted though?” he adds after a moment.
“Yes, actually.” Cam isn’t quite sure how to ask the question without sounding ridiculous, so she just jumps right in. “I was wondering if you could do me a favour.”
“What is it?”
She takes that as a good sign. “I need you to go find Chuck Reimer and grill him for information.”
“Cam, what?!” Booth cries out, and she can practically hear him rolling his eyes.
She presses on anyway. “Okay, look. I don’t have time to explain the whole thing, but basically I saw Fisher in my office yesterday when I was coming back from lunch, and he had just delivered that day’s gift from my secret admirer.” Cam pauses for a moment to pointedly ignore Booth’s groan before carrying on. “Then I thought it might be Fisher who was the secret admirer. So I confronted him about it just now and he swears up and down that he only delivered the package to me because Chuck asked him to. But someone must have given it to Chuck in the first place, because it didn’t come directly through the mail this time around.”
The line is quiet for several moments, and Cam starts to worry that maybe Booth’s hung up on her. She is about to ask if he’s still there when he finally speaks.
“So you want me to pump him for information? Find out who gave him the package in the first place?” He doesn’t sound overly thrilled about the prospect, but Cam doesn’t really care.
“Yes, exactly. I’d do it myself, but it’d take me a good five plus minutes to get down there and then probably another good five minutes to find him, with me being on these crutches and all…”
“All right, fine. I’ll do it,” Booth grumbles through the phone, making a point of sounding extra miserable. “But only because you’re all gimpy right now.”
“I am not gimpy!” Cam protests, but she is laughing. “Thanks Booth!” she adds as an afterthought, just before he hangs up the phone.
* * * * *
“So, here’s the scoop,” Booth announces approximately twenty minutes later, when he barges into Cam’s office unannounced.
She turns off her computer monitor and looks up expectantly at him from her seat at her desk. “Let’s hear it,” she says, anticipation seeping through into her tone.
“He doesn’t know anything,” is the verdict.
“What? How can he not know anything?” Cam demands, rising to stand in spite of her injury.
Booth shrugs nonchalantly. “He said that it was delivered by a private courier. Chuck signed for it and brought it down to you. But since you weren’t around, he asked Fisher if he could bring you the package instead.”
This was not the kind of information that Cam was hoping to hear. It seemed awfully suspect in her mind. “Did he say what company? Or what the delivery guy looked like?”
Booth stares at her incredulously. “No. I didn’t ask him.”
“Why not?” Her petulant child voice is back, but she can’t seem to help herself.
“Camille, Chuck is a security guard, not a prime suspect in a murder case. I’m not going to interrogate him as if he is one, even if you’ve somehow decided that he is in your own warped mind. You know your admirer isn’t Fisher - thank God. Why do you need anything else?” Booth sounds about ready to either burst out laughing or smack her upside the head. Possibly even both. “Besides, I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough anyway. Stop worrying about it.”
The conversation abruptly ends at this point and Cam feels no further ahead than she was before.
Day 11
After a night of contemplation and deep thought, Cam decides that the first thing she is going to do on Wednesday morning is open up her past two days worth of secret admirer gifts, as she’s allowed them to remain untouched on her desk. The first gift is a beautiful, sky-blue scarf. It matches perfectly with Cam’s jacket and she finds that she’s quite pleased with the gift, even if she still is a little uncertain about who they’re coming from. She tucks the scarf into her jacket sleeve and moves to open the second package. This one is significantly smaller, but she already suspects she knows what it is. Her suspicion is confirmed when she opens the package to reveal a silver necklace. It is simple but elegant at the same time, and at the center is a small angel charm. She suspects that it’s moderately priced, but not overly lavish.
Cam is in the middle of admiring the necklace and trying to decide what to do with it when she hears a soft tapping on her office door.
She glances up to see Hodgins standing in the doorway. “What’s up?” he asks with a soft smile, leaning casually against the inner doorpost.
“Just opening my secret admirer gifts from the last two days,” she tells him plainly, smiling back at him.
“What did you get?” he wonders, walking over to where she’s leaning against her desk, and Cam notes how neutral and convincing his voice sounds.
She shows him the scarf and then she shows him the necklace still sitting in the box. “Wow,” Hodgins utters softly and meets her gaze. “Are you going to wear it?” he asks after a brief pause.
Cam eyes him curiously, trying to figure out exactly what’s going on with him. She feels something warm building up in her chest again and she notes that there is something intimate about the way he’s looking at her. “I guess there’s no harm in that,” she tells him.
Cam fumbles for a moment to put the necklace on by herself, and somehow she almost manages to topple over. A steadying hand on her arm from Hodgins is the only thing that keeps her upright.
“Let me help?” he offers, and she agrees without much fuss. She thinks she’s finally learning to allow Hodgins to do things for her without feeling badly.
Hodgins removes the necklace from the box and moves to stand behind Cam. Holding her ponytail out of the way, Cam waits with abated breath. Hodgins lowers the necklace around her neck and clasps it at the back, fingers brushing gently against the nape of her neck as he pulls away in a manner that can be nothing other than deliberate. She finds herself shivering in spite of herself and almost instinctively turns her head to the side, her face nearly colliding with Hodgins. They remain like that for a few moments, breathing in each other’s air and invading each other’s personal space, and Cam feels the intensity in the air around them shift. And she is quite certain that Hodgins is about to do something - to make his move.
But then the moment ends almost as quickly as it began, when Brennan comes racing into the room. They instinctively pull as far away from each other as they can and turn to meet Brennan’s clueless gaze. Hodgins excuses himself with a barely concealed smirk and a longing look as Brennan starts talking. But Cam knows that there was something going on there, something that could have happened, and she feels just a little bit giddy at the thought.
* * * * *
Her eleventh gift arrives late in the day. The card is on the outside of the box this time and she reads it before opening the gift. It reads:
Tomorrow is the last day. Meet me in the garden at the back of the Jeffersonian at lunch.
I wish you nothing but the best this holiday season.
From me,
an Admirer
P.S. I hope you enjoy this gift. It’s one that’s especially close to my heart.
Cam smiles in spite of herself and opens up the package sitting in front of her. She examines it for a few moments before finally breaking into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
------------------------
Part Twelve