Bones Fanfiction - Like Puppies
Title: Like Puppies
Author: apohdiopsis
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Rating: G
Spoilers: Season 5 finale, season 6 teasers
Summary: "It is everything she thought love would be." Fluffy, hopeful angst about love and friendship and puppies. One-shot.
Notes: I'm trying out a new, more succinct style. Is it working? Yes, no, maybe? How's that tense change? Awkward? Let me know. Also, let me know about the characters. This is my first Bones fanfiction, so I'm still playing with characterization.
Like Puppies
It is everything she thought love would be. It is irrational. It frightens and consumes her. She cannot bear it. She cannot shake it.
Hemingway wrote, "Maybe away from Paris I could write about Paris as in Paris I could write about Michigan." That was how it was for Brennan and Booth.
She came back to Washington with "I love you too" on her lips. She practiced saying it to everyone she met. To her taxi driver, it sounded like, "Keep the change. All of it." To the old woman in the park, it sounded like, "You have the most beautiful smile." To the stray brown puppy she rescued, washing and watering him in the bathroom of a gas station on her way to meet Booth, it sounded like, "Don't worry. I'll take you home with me, wherever home turns out to be." It wasn't.
From the time she stepped off the plane she said only, "I love you too," accepting that she loved and was loved immediately and forever.
Only Booth came back to Washington with something else on his lips.
Her name is Elizabeth. She was a war correspondent in Afganistan. She is stunning and Catholic and Brennan likes her immediately. Everyone does. She believes in love and fate. She trusts her instincts. She smiles at everyone as though they were the only person in the world. When she smiles at Booth, any onlooker could tell she really thinks he is.
It does not make Brennan love him any less. It does not make her any less open. That's why it hurts the way it does. She cannot not slam logic against fact and close off her heart behind two steel doors, so she becomes a conduit for the sort of helpless, hopeless pain she had honestly believed she would never feel again.
She takes the puppy home to a strange apartment where pets were not allowed, and wakes to find that he had passed away during the night.
There is no ground, only cement, around the apartment building, so she had to bury the puppy in the park where she found him.
She is still pale and despondent when Booth comes to pick her up for their first case together in over a year. He is beaming. Next to him, she seems little better than one of her corpses. He notices immediately.
"It's not uncommon for stray dogs to die unexpectedly, especially if the person who adopts them doesn't have the foresight to take them to a veterinarian immediately," she tells him, speaking with ice and precision.
"C'mon, Bones." He wants her to discuss her feelings with him, but she doesn't have the words. He makes an awkward attempt to hug her across the center console of his SUV. She doesn't move. Eventually he pulls away. She can't decide whether or not she's grateful. "Our meeting should be over before five. What do you say we go down to the pet store after we're done? You can call right now and make an appointment with the vet, get him in tonight."
She shakes her head. "Animals in pet stores are usually provided by breeders who raise their animals in crowded, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions. They aren't provided with proper veterinary care, and many of the animals sold are injured or ill or both. Anyway, pets aren't allowed in my building."
They fall silent. He is thinking of ways to lift her spirits. She is measuring the distance between his right shoulder and her left. It is unreachable, but it is not very far.
His grin lifts one corner of his mouth before the other. "What are puppies good for, anyway? They're cute. They're loud. The chew on your shoes. They pee all over the furniture. I can do that."
She looks at him for the first time. "I don't know what you mean."
"I'll be your puppy, Bones."
Her shoulders are shaking. Something contracts in her stomach. She doesn't know how to answer him. She doesn't know if she is laughing or crying. So she says what she does know, as simply and surely as she can.
"I love you, too, Booth."
He looks startled, then a little angry. They have missed each other again, this time by a year. Maybe they will have another chance. Maybe it will be a long time coming. Maybe it will not come at all.
For now, it is enough to reach over and ruffle his hair affectionately. He is stiff for a moment. Then her hand brushes the back of his ear and he begins to pant slightly. He nuzzles her hand and licks at her fingers, startling a laugh from her.
When they reach their destination, he opens her door. He hugs her, hard, and more than anything, she wishes their love could be this always--simple, like hugs and puppies.