"Nocturne," Angela/Booth, PG-13
TITLE: Nocturne
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Angela/Booth, some Rebecca/Booth
SUMMARY: So, a guy and a girl meet at a bar.
PROMPT: a sidecar, a tavern, coffee; written for the bones_alt_ships ficathon #1.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: A million thanks to my phenomenal beta reader, myhappyface. You’re uniquely gifted at giving me direction and focus and - most importantly, sometimes - telling me where to cut. I cannot thank you enough.
He doesn’t remember Angela spilling coffee on him. His chest is raw from the burn, and when he finally finds his shirt, it is marred with a bloodspot identifiable only by its insistent, offensive odor, the unmistakable scent of old coffee spiked with something happy. When he buttons up his shirt, the stain lies right above his heart.
***
“Chablis, please. On him.”
“You know what would be great? A little time away from the science set-”
“Right. You really need some alone time to hone your drinking skills.”
He paid for her drink. He remembers that. He can’t remember who paid for the cab.
***
Angela smells so, so sweet, like moonlight pale petals. Scents Booth can’t identify, because that kind of thing was never important. Cordite, baby powder. Those he knows. Rebecca smelled - smells? She’s not dead; why does every conversation have to take place in past tense? - clean but faintly chemical, detergent and moisturizer and hairspray. She wore a perfume he could never smell except for the puff-quick moments when she sprayed it, filling the room for one instant in a supernova of fragrance.
Angela’s smell could be a part of her, pheromones. Something. Smaller fucking words. He’s almost certain he’s too drunk to know the word “pheromone.”
***
“So, Booth,” Angela says once her wine arrives. Her fingers curl around the glass’s stem, a magenta-tipped forefinger resting on the pregnant swell of the bowl. “Drowning our sorrows?”
“So, Angela,” Booth says, not bothering to modulate his tone. He finishes another glass of whiskey and enjoys the burnburnburn from his teeth to his gut. “Scouting for one-night stands?” It takes a moment, but the resonance of his statement finally hits him, and he frowns, dark clouds gathering across his face. “I’m sorry, that was-”
“Mean,” Angela says, and she meets Booth’s eyes. “And you’re usually not mean. So. Really. What are we doing, here on our tenth scotch? I hope you’re not upset about Brennan; sometimes she gets a little . . . you know, without people skills. And, to be fair, you were kind of on her turf-”
“It’s whiskey. And it’s not ten. It’s . . .” He tries to tally mentally, but soon becomes dizzy on the memory-echo flurry of empty glasses. “. . . a number less than ten.”
“And that was really the important part of my question.”
“What was the important part?” he asks. He can feel himself drooping. “What part-what was important?”
“You’re drunk.”
“You’re right. That’s important.”
Angela slides her hand around his waist. Her touch is cool from the wine, and for a moment it seems perfectly logical that the delicate weight of her palm on his back is the only thing keeping him from tumbling to the bar floor.
“Let’s get some coffee.”
“Let’s get another drink.”
“The fact that you’re getting all Terms of Endearment on me, in public no less, kind of leads me to believe that the bartender should cut you off.”
“I saw that movie. It wasn’t my idea; there was a girl-”
“That’s great, sweetie. I think we should-”
Booth stares into his empty glass. He can see the worn wood of the bar, distorted through the layered curves of the clear crystal. The bottom of the glass is coated with that last tiny bit of drink that you never can seem to swallow, and it makes the dark wood seem faintly gold.
“I had a plan, you know? I mean, I worked hard, I got good grades in school . . . and when I got into the Army - which was a plan, Angela, I didn’t just . . . get drafted or enlist to avoid jail or any of that punk . . . it was a plan - I worked hard there, too.”
Angela takes her hand from Booth’s waist. They aren’t going anywhere for a while. “Then what happened?”
Booth looks up at the girl from the bar. The distortion is starting to hurt his head.
“You-Angela, you’re into all sorts of that . . . new-age, hippie crap, right? What’s . . . what do they say about fate?”
“The crappy new-agers?”
Booth just glares at her, so she drops it and continues, “Well, divine providence is pretty much a Christian thing, Booth. Aside from kismet - but that’s Islam, another one true Lord kind of religion - fate isn’t really seen as predetermined by most ‘hippie’ religions.” She pauses, studying Booth’s fallen face. “But do you want to know what I think?”
He nods. Please, yes.
“I think that, mostly, there’s free will. People do what they want, how they want, and the universe keeps out of it. But if something important needs to happen, if a person’s rudder needs to be turned . . . then sometimes the universe steps in and does something to change your course.”
Booth doesn’t look any better, so Angela places her hand over his, lying heavily on the bar.
“I used to believe a lot in fate,” Booth says. “I mean-”
“You’re Catholic.”
“Yeah,” Booth says slowly. Angela’s hand is a feather upon the back of his, bird-light and so soft. “I thought . . . not that I didn’t have to work, because God would take care of everything . . . but more, you know, that I had a set path-”
“Your plan.”
“Yeah. My plan. I mean . . . I thought about it, and I was careful, and I did everything right, and then . . .”
“You must have done something right,” Angela urges. Her voice is a strangely clear note in the muddied cacophony of his conscious. “You ended up in the FBI.”
“That wasn’t . . . my dad was in the service. It always seemed . . . clean. Honest. Good. Like . . . there weren’t a lot of people in the world trying to protect innocent people, and I thought . . . I wanted to do something important. Something that mattered. Something that helped people.”
“Yeah, while killing other people.”
Booth is quiet, because there’s nothing he can say to take those words from the air. When he doesn’t take it as a joke, Angela recants, her other hand, the one not blanketing his, fanning in apology, in defense. White flag. “Hey, I’m sorry; I was trying to lighten things up, but apparently you’re all Murky Dismal tonight-”
“I like your sense of humor, Angela.”
She smiles. “Thanks.”
“You’re . . . you don’t talk like a scientist.”
“Well, I didn’t start life as a scientist; my path got diverted, too. I was going to be the next Monet, living in France with my paints and my mistress and all the time in the world.”
Booth is almost smiling. “Mistress?”
“There’s not really a masculine for ‘mistress.’ I guess linguists assume that women will never have a man on the side . . .”
“What happened to France?”
“I did it. It got boring. Like you; I wanted to do something that mattered.”
The almost-smile fades completely. “I didn’t get bored.”
“Booth-”
“I worked hard. And I was good. I wanted to be good, the best, to serve my country . . . and I was good. The best. And the best get reassigned.”
“To the FBI? But you love-”
“I was recruited by the Bureau after I left the Rangers.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“I wanted to help people. I wanted to do good. I ended up not sleeping at night.”
“Seeley-”
His mouth twists into a completely humorless smile. “You never call me that. None of you do.”
Angela is quiet for a long moment, studying his drawn face. Her hand slips around his waist again. “Come on, honey. Let me take you home.”
He’s on his feet, and Angela’s cool hand is pressed into the soft space beneath his ribs, supporting and driving him.
***
“You probably shouldn’t go home alone,” Angela says as he fails to clear the tavern’s doorframe properly. “You’ll need someone to maneuver you into bed and pump you full of water and aspirin.”
“I’m fine.”
Angela rolls her eyes, then lets go of Booth. He promptly trips over his feet and would have crashed to the sidewalk, face first, if Angela didn’t steady him just in time.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go home alone.”
***
Angela’s apartment is old and beautiful. The walls, where he can see them, are cream-colored plaster. But mostly the plaster is covered in riots of color: paintings, pieces of sculpture, sticky notes with schizophrenic messages on them: “B 10 Tue NatMus;” “Call G B4 Sun;” “PAINT!” (a directive, or a shopping list?); “Remember,” and then a big empty nothing except a doodle of a duck in the corner.
“You’re remembering ducks,” Booth says into the dip of Angela’s collarbone. She all but carried him across the threshold once he bruised his eye tripping over her neighbor’s sidecar. Whatsamotorcycledoinginthehallway, Booth said, and then went silent, his face smashed against the worn wooden floorboards.
“Right,” Angela says, and then loses Booth to gravity again as he falls into the mouse’s nest soft of her sofa.
“Mmph.”
Angela goes to collect him, because the sight of him draped across her futon reminds her forcefully of stuffing a Cabbage Patch doll into the bed in Barbie’s Dreamhouse, and because he’s laying on several pointy painting implements.
She was unaware, however, that Booth weighed a thousand pounds.
“Oof! You’re too heavy for me to do this by myself, champ; you’re gonna have to help a little.”
“It’s comfy here,” Booth argues, not helping at all. If anything, he becomes heavier.
“It’ll be comfier in bed.”
“You wanna take me to bed?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Booth cooperates, and in a moment he is standing, half-draped across Angela’s shoulders. The two of them three-legged-race down the hallway. Angela wishes she weren’t wearing fuck me pumps.
Once they reach the bedroom, Angela dumps all two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of Booth’s FBI standard issue muscle onto the bed, then slips off her heels and sets them at the foot of the bed, side-by-side, patent leather sentries.
“I’ll get you some coffee.”
“No, just . . . just stay . . .”
Booth is looking up at her with alcohol-narrowed eyes, and Angela feels herself flushing at his honest, unmodest observation. She begins walking toward the door.
“I’ll just get you some coffee.”
***
Angela has painted her ceiling. Snakes and apples, lush flora. Booth is spending an inordinate amount of time studying the design, the knots of leaves and scales and wicked smiles.
“Do you like it?”
Her hair tickles his face. He would definitely lie in this situation. But he doesn’t have to.
“Yes.”
“What do you like about it?”
Her warm, soft hand glides onto his stomach, bare beneath the sheets. He shifts to get closer to her without abandoning his view of the ceiling. The movement makes him dizzy.
“I didn’t ever get that symbolism stuff. I mean, I got it, but-”
“I know, sweetie.”
“But I look at this, and I feel something.”
Angela turns her face against him. He can feel her smiling, the shape of her face, the heat the expression itself seemingly radiates. He wonders, suddenly, where “beaming” comes from.
“That’s good,” she whispers. Her warm breath tickles across his skin, and it’s possible that he feels the letters take shape on his flesh rather than actually hears them. “That’s the point.”
***
Angela returns with a mug of coffee steaming in her hand. Booth hasn’t moved. Then there’s a moment Booth can’t remember, and his chest hurts and Angela is apologizing, her mouth a perfect pink ‘o.’
“Here,” Angela says, and her quick fingers have three of his shirt buttons rescued from their eyes before he realizes what she’s doing.
“What?” Booth says, and then realizes that’s not a very good question. Angela helps him maneuver his large shoulders from his shirt, and then she drapes it over her bedpost, where it hangs like a depressed phantom.
She takes off his shoes and sets them on the floor. Aside from a few medical personnel, no one’s undressed Booth like that since he was a small child getting ready for bed, and the action makes him feel drowsy and comfortable. Ready to be tucked in.
“Angela, you’re very . . .” Booth says.
Angela grins.
“Don’t forget it,” she says, and begins unbuttoning her blouse.
Booth squints at her. “What are you doing?”
Angela raises her brow, then lets her shirt fall to the floor. She is wearing a black lace bra that Booth suspects is more ornamental than architectural. She’s done something to him, he knows it, because now he can’t seem to look anywhere else.
“That’s my bed you’re sprawled across, bucko. Think I’m taking the couch? I believe in chivalry-”
“I thought you were one of those . . . liberal . . . people . . .”
“Yup. Liberal enough that I fully support my right to be pampered by a man.”
Angela unzips her skirt, and then steps out of it. The filmy material makes whispering sounds as it travels down her thighs. Her panties are tiny and match her bra, and Booth is suddenly having difficulty remembering English. Not only the grammar rules and the vocabulary, but also the physical mechanisms of speech.
“Um, that’s . . . yeah, good . . .”
Angela crawls onto the bed beside him, her smile mellowing, her hair falling around her shoulders in dark waves. Booth feels stupid looking up at her, and tries to sit up. It seems more manly.
Angela pushes him gently back to the mattress. “Don’t worry about it. You’re drunk; I can take care of everything.”
“Um,” Booth says. Then Angela starts unbuckling his belt and completely empties his mind of anything other than sensation.
***
He wakes in the dark. His head is throbbing, but he is mostly clear and competent. Last night could have been a year ago.
Except Angela is curled up against his chest like a kitten, her hair splashed against his chest, one of her tiny hands curled around his.
***
“Okay, you’re driving me crazy.”
Angela starts to smile, pleased with her handiwork, but then Booth surprises her by, in one smooth movement, turning her to her back and settling atop her.
And then she laughs.
Booth stills for a moment, broad frame hovering above her, dark eyes studying her exultant face. He hasn’t made a woman laugh like that - not from a well-timed line, but simply from joy - for longer than he can remember, since he bedded cheerleaders and winter dance queens in high school. He discovers, in this instant, a gnawing sense of its loss of which he was previously unaware. Joy, the kind of trust for reckless abandon: these things are important. So much more so when everything has become the same argument over and over again, when you have to litigate for hours to get half a Saturday with your son.
He doesn’t know how Rebecca got so angry, so bitter, but it’s been long enough that he no longer cares. At first, he wished he could turn her back into the girl he’d fallen for, but now he just wants time with their son and for her to just say it already. Dear Seeley, I don’t trust you to be a husband or a father because all I can see when I look at you is the gun.
Another girl, a girl who paints and dances and laughs. Against the intimate curve of her ear: “Do you trust me?”
At first nothing, she slows but doesn’t say anything.
“Tell me you trust me.”
She does. Again and again and again, and Booth matches the rhythm of her soft aloe voice.
***
Now clothed, he wanders the apartment until he finds her. She is pretending she knows how to cook breakfast, and making a huge mess in the charade. There is flour in her hair.
“Angela, the coffee? Did you do it on purpose?”
Angela grins.
“Why would I do that?”
She flicks flour on him; he’s just close enough to get hit, soft, white speckles forming instantaneously over him. In a second, his hands are around her waist, and he’s lifting her from her feet, into the air.
She’s laughing.