Fic: The Game (3/3)
title: The Game (3/3)
fandom: RP
pairing: David Boreanaz/Emily Deschanel
rating: R
word count: 1,788
a/n: I wrote this before the latest news about David came out, right after the 100th episode ended. It's not my intention to ride on the coattails of said news, or to make some claim about the details. I'm not posting this to the David/Emily comm because I un-joined it when people started excitedly speculating about the details of David's affairs, and I'm not interested in that. So why am I posting this anyway? Well, the tone seems to fit for the moment, and I like the writing. So, probably the last thing I'll write for this pairing, because, ironically, things are getting a little too real.
Previous 2 parts of this series tagged here, though they're not integral to understand this one.
This is the game. They take what they had and keep it.
Of course, there are handcuffs. Of course.
Everything's been a retrospective lately with the one-hundredth episode still fresh as the season begins to edge toward a close. The cover is timed to come out right before the finale, and aside from that it's Rolling Stone so they both know they're in for something . . . something.
The original plan, the photographer's vision, is for David to be in jeans and leather, wearing the handcuffs, with Emily trussed up in a corset and pencil skirt playing the enforcer of sexy law and order. Or something.
When David gets to the studio about five minutes late, Emily's already in makeup with one eye rimmed in smokey glittering black and her hair being brushed back into a snug low pony tail. He tugs a strand of hair out of place on his way by as he takes a sip of his coffee and easily dodges the slap Emily reaches out to deal him.
"Morning honey!" he calls good naturedly as he continues toward the woman in a headset and holding a clipboard who seems to be flagging him down.
"Morning David." He can hear the eye roll in her voice, and smiles to himself when she begins to apologize to the hair stylist.
It's a light exchange, but it's marked by the same tension that's sat itself down between them lately. It's something about this season. Things between Booth and Brennan have been progressing, growing, and it feels like a balloon between them filling with yet another gasp of air as the weeks go by and scenes get heavier and looks last longer. They work their characters closer and closer together and try at the same time to work themselves further apart.
Their tears in the closing scene of the one-hundredth were real; it was their goodbye to the hard-dying habit of falling into bed (or where ever) together time after time. They were brief and spectacular in their indescretions, breaking the bright golden rush of anticipation a little more each time. Eventually it came down to the simple fact that their timing was wrong and it had made them wrong for each other. Forbidden relationships have a fairly non-romantic tendency to run their courses in the same stilted and inevitable ways the non-illicit ones do. It was easy to point at all the reasons they couldn't be. And yet it still wrenched in a way that left each of them gasping beneath their carefully light-hearted interactions.
So there was David, and Emily. There was a man, and a woman, who had recently and repeatedly collided and were unable to deny that they were now stumbling apart for all the same reasons they'd stumbled together.
And there were handcuffs.
The leather jacket sticks and creaks against itself as David places his hands behind his back with his wrists together. He shrugs his shoulders forward and back, trying to adjust the fabric so it doesn't bind so much. Jackets never fit him right unless he has them tailored, and he wishes the wardrobe people would have just told him so he could have brought his own. His hair is exagerratedly messy, sticking up in all directions on top and it makes him still just a bit taller than Emily even though she's in four inch heels.
They're black, strappy, positively killer stilettos complete with metal studs and silver-tipped heels. The wardrobe girl had informed Emily that the shoes were vegan in a tone that suggested she thought vegans were half-deaf and didn't quite speak English. Emily flexes her knees against the tight black skirt and sighs a little. She stares at David's back; they're still positioning everything before they begin to shoot, so they're just standing in the center of a whir of activity, not talking. She hates it. Understands it, but hates it. She knows it's selfish, but sometimes she wishes he'd act a little more miserable. He just stands with his feet in partially un-laced combat boots spaced a little wider than shoulder-width and his hands hanging limply from the cuffs. He looks positively relaxed.
"Em," David says, turning his head so he can look her way from the corner of his eye.
"Yeah?"
"I-"
The lights come on, glaring from multiple directions to over-expose the shot. The white backdrop only intensifies the effect. Emily stifles a sigh but she and David both wince and blink at the bright flood that envelopes them.
"Okay, we're going to start now. David! Give me bad boy, give me charm, give me . . . " the photographer interrupts. They begin to follow directions.
Emily steps closer and David feels one of her hands on his shoulder while the other holds the chain that connects the bracelets of the handcuffs. He dutifully plasters on a smirk and cocks an eyebrow up and down, lifts and lowers his chin, and pivots his upper body to and fro as instructed. His mind wanders, and he feels her.
Her fingernails scrape and dig at the sides of his hands and his wrists, and her other hand clenches and relaxes on his shoulder a few times before it migrates to his hair. When she tugs he tips his head back and he thinks about having her pressed against him when he'd sit at the edge of the bed and she'd wrap her arms and legs around him and rest her chin on his shoulder. He'd called her a spider monkey once when she did that and that weekend they'd rented the Discovery Channel Life mini series and left it on while they fucked in her bed. Surrounded by her unbleached cotton sheets, daylight filtering in through the shades, and sharp brilliant colors sliding along the tv screen, ignored. He never did find out if there were actually spider monkeys in the movie or not.
She lets go of his hair and a stylist rushes up to fix it. He feels Emily step away, and then her hand is on his shoulder again and when he glances back she's steadying herself as she adjusts one of the thousand straps caging her ankle. He catches her eye briefly. Emily's hand tightens and she opens her mouth, but then the photographer's flapping his hands and exclaiming that they're moving on to a new pose. David's released from the handcuffs and gingerly flexes his arms and hands. It actually hurts, and he realizes he'd been actually restrained so it makes sense. Emily stands next to him blinking toward the ceiling as her makeup is touched up and soon the makeup girl descends on him, muttering about the sweat that's beading on both of their brows.
He looks over again. When she does as well they share a look. This is one of those stories they'll tell about the shoot, when they're interviewed about it - because they'll certainly be interviewed about it. It was so hot with the lights and the hand cuffs and the shoes but didn't it turn out great and yeah we're really looking forward to getting started with the new season again. He looks ahead and reaches out to brush the side of her hand with his pinky finger.
Their fingertips catch and shuffle together for a few seconds, and then they're being told to reposition and it just sounds complicated and it's hot and they're both sweating and his jacket doesn't fit and her shoes are pinching her toes and it's all these annoyances on top of the quiet losses they're feeling and they've each had enough.
Later they're not quite sure which of them started making the suggestion, but one of them starts and the other jumps in and it only takes a sentence or two before the photographer and the crew are standing at the edge of the mini-set, watching skeptically as David shrugs off his jacket and Emily begins undoing tiny buckles on her shoes. They've done this before, unknowlingly the first several times; usually it's with interviewers, and they'll start their own conversation in the middle leaving the poor schmuck with the recorder to try to jump in. It's made it onto the show in some of their scenes with Sweets, they're so good at it.
Now it's not an un-self-conscious outpouring of excitement, it's a carefully orchestrated mutiny. The photographer catches on or gives up somewhat quickly and just starts snapping photos without issuing anymore instructions, his shutter speed increasing when Emily sits and David kneels to help free her feet from the ridiculous heels.
She studies him covertly, each of them working on a different shoe. It's a jumbled collection of images and sounds and memories that surface for her, from his laugh to his toes to the taste of his sweat when she would lick the well above his collarbone. Her air conditioning was out for a few days the previous summer and they'd just laid half-clothed on her cool, tiled kitchen floor, sucking on organic popsicles. He'd told her they'd decided on a name for the baby and she'd told him that she wasn't in love with him. The conversation ended with her cold purple-stained lips on his throat as his fingers slipped between her thighs.
"Emily," he starts again, "we-"
She shakes her head, sets the shoes neatly aside and stands. She reaches out a hand. The camera clicks wildly. David reaches up for her hand and stands. The regard each other for a moment, and what flies across the air between them is almost visible. He reaches around and tugs the elastic out of her hair, runs his fingers through it and musses it dramatically and she laughs. They both laugh. When she holds her hands up to him, wrists together, they quiet.
He picks up the handcuffs from where they'd been discarded on the floor and holds one of her wrists, pivoting her around so she stands with her back to him. He snaps the cuffs on carefully.
The camera clicks almost non-stop. It's quiet in the studio.
David runs his fingertips down Emily's arms as she leans back into him, her head tipped back against his shoulder and her back arched into a curve. He links a finger around the chain of the cuffs and she steps forward, tossing her hair back and glancing at him over her shoulder with a put-on annoyed expression. He smirks back, holding his other hand up as he restrains her with a finger, drawing her arms back until she spins and he's dragged closer so they collide, hands tangled together behind her back, noses brushing together briefly.
The game was always going to end eventually.