Bones Fic: on the importance of being
on the importance of being booth/brennan, pg.
when it’s complicated and everyone else is longer waiting to watch. spoilers for the parts in the sum of the whole. 3,133 words.
notes: so this EPISODE. i have FEELINGS and i’m not entirely sure if they’re ready to be completely worked out, due to the number of times that i've watched this and those scenes. this was also written during my never-ending search for a spanish guitarist. if there’s any blame to be had, it’s on that. WEDDINGS. enjoy!
-
They stop when they get to the car. Booth turns to her and leans against one of the doors, smiling that smile of his, the one where she knows that everything’s not okay but there’s nothing she can do.
The problem is that there is still this awful sensation in her stomach, the kind that makes her head spin and that when Angela’s around, she can depend on the proverbial escape route. With Booth, she thinks, she just has that face.
“It’s a nice night,” he says finally, looking at her as she looks back. The corners of his mouth tug up and she can see the creases in his skin, the worry lines and the old lines, lines that have days when they look like small scars.
She knows the show is for her. “Remarkable,” she agrees.
Her gaze wanders off to the side. She studies the mix of street lamps, the low lights from the building behind them seem to shift and waiver over the few cars that are still in the parking lot. They’ve been here before though, many times, and still, everything seems to have the illusion of being too open.
She still pinpoints familiarity and sighs. Sweets’ car is off to the corner, graying under a lamp. Her hand brushes against her arm, settling into the crook of her elbow as if to retrace the sensation of being close to Booth again.
Her hand drops. “Will you go home now?” she asks instead, and tries to avoid thinking about the scenarios, each and every one she’s attached herself to. She can’t take the silence either.
“I don’t know.”
Booth shrugs and pushes off the door. He pulls his keys out of his pocket. The ring slides over his finger and swings from side to side. He clutches them in a fist and his skin turns to an odd flush, tight even.
She almost reaches for him. His hand goes back into his pocket.
“We’ll be okay,” he says quietly. “It’s going to take some time, I think, but we’ll be good. You don’t have to worry. I don’t want you to worry.”
“I am worried.”
“You shouldn’t.”
He says it quickly. He looks away too. Their space is interrupted too. There’s a break in conversation, heels clicking on the sidewalk just as Booth turns away from her. There’s someone close and it’s instinctive, between the two of them to just stop. They talk about things, these things, within the lines of each other.
Brennan frowns and digs her hands into her pockets. Her fingers curl tightly into the fabric. She listens to the sound of the footsteps as they slow. She hears keys as they drop and instinctively wants to look to Booth. But it all feels wrong, so wrong; they’ve never not been able to stand close and he’s never not been able to look at her. The summer comes to mind, but the summer was the summer and those things are supposed to be frightening.
She’s responsible, she thinks. Slowly, her hands pull out of her pockets. She touches his arm. Her fingers stretch against his coat.
Booth freezes. “I am worried,” she repeats and shakes her head, just as he pulls his arm back, “There’s this part of me - I accept that it will take time. I accept that there’s a part of this that will forever adhere to this moment. I do not - we are not this moment.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
There is a lump in her throat. He falls back against the car, studying her with an unreadable gaze. She tries and reads his face again, the long, distinct lines that she knows and understand; bones are bone and flesh is flesh, but what makes up Booth is entirely complicated and incredible to her. Does he know, she thinks, because Booth always knows; she understands that there are always going to be pieces of her, too many pieces of her that he knows.
“I - ” she starts and hopes to respond, but the will stops and her breath catches and she feels so, so incredibly small with him this way. It’s not supposed to work this way with Booth and she’s not supposed to feel this way with Booth. But everything’s changed too quickly.
She doesn’t know how to handle this. It’s the one thing she wanted him to understand.
Brennan clears her throat. She meets his gaze and tries to recover, but he watches her and she can’t really hide from him. She tries again.
“But we’ll still - ” she stops and motions between the two of them with her hand, and it’s trying again without anything else to lose, “We’ll still be us, right?”
He looks at her. Brennan looks away.
“Yeah,” he says. “We will.”
Going home is harder. After Booth leaves her at her car at the Jeffersonian, she takes it goes to the other side of town and to Angela’s. It’s the only other thing she understands as being right.
When she knocks, she hears nothing. It’s late and she imagines that Angela, after a fashion, is elsewhere living the things that she knows Angela to do. She waits and leans against the wall, studying the door. But after a moment, the door shudders and there’s a loud click, and Brennan’s left with no time to turn around and leave.
“Sweetie?”
Angela’s eyes are wide. Brennan bites her lip and digs her hands into her pockets. The other woman is hiding in a large sweater and her hair is pulled back tightly, covering a few lines of paint.
Oh, she thinks. “Sorry,” she says. “I - I’m - it’s late,” she mumbles. “I was close-by and of course, I was thinking about calling but these are those things where it’s easier, I suppose, to just come and … talk.”
“What happened?”
Her friend softens and then steps back, drawing the door back and open. Brennan moves into the apartment, into the silent gesture, and feels her discomfort as it starts to grow.
“I don’t know,” she says and means it, closing her eyes and listening as Angela locks the door behind her. She stays standing in the hallway. She smells paint and tea and the collar of her jacket is starting to rub against her throat.
She says it again. “I don’t know.”
“Bren.” Angela smoothes her hands against her shoulders and then sighs. “You have that look on your face, and when you get that look, I usually know that it’s either a good glass of wine or something sweet. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to settle with the booze because the sweet stuff is on vacation here.”
She shakes her head. But Angela’s hands tighten over her shoulders. She pushes the two of them forward and down the hall. They move into the kitchen and Brennan forces herself to relax as the other woman pulls her jacket off.
“I just want to talk.”
Angela tosses her jacket to the side. She frowns curiously, looking back at her.
“Talk?”
Brennan lets a deep sigh go. She leans against the counter and studies the row of mugs the rest at the edge. There is one with tea, another with water, and the third has a fist of paintbrushes peeking out. She sees no canvas, but doesn’t ask.
They ask to be respectful of each other’s space.
“I’m - I’m unable to go to Booth,” she says slowly and looks up at Angela as she brings two glasses to the counter. She bites her lip, “When I’m unable to go to Booth, I come to you. I know how to come to you.”
Her heart is racing. Angela stops.
“It’s about Booth.”
She nods. “It’s about Booth.”
Angela frowns. She doesn’t say anything like Brennan expected, or wanted expect. She is thinking in predictability and variables again, the odd ends of her comforts and the way she’s supposed to know and take on these aspects of her life.
But Angela looks at her and Brennan can feel the expectations too, the way they loom and watch her, waiting the ultimate confession that she can’t give to anyone. She doesn’t know how to tell this to Angela, but she doesn’t want to be alone with this in her head.
“What happened?” the other woman asks finally.
“I don’t know.”
Brennan shrugs and tries to be sensible.
“There’s a lot of things, I suppose.”
“Brennan -”
“ - and my mind is prone to certain conclusions, specific conclusions. That is what I do. That is what I understand. I understand.”
But Brennan injects without acknowledging her name, or the way Angela continues to look at her. There is a bottle of wine behind the other woman and Brennan watches absently as Angela doesn’t turn and picks it up. She drinks scotch with Booth, wine with Angela, and the wine is usually the first thing between the two of them. She usually does, she thinks.
She finally looks at Angela. She’s serious. She feels too serious.
“I told Booth no.”
The implications are there. The weights are there. And when Brennan says it, when she really says it, it drives her into the temptation of wanting to close off. She doesn’t want people to see her like this.
“I told him no today,” she says and rubs her eyes. “He asked - and I -“
Angela’s eyes widen. “Sweetie.”
“I had to.”
She pushes away from the counter. Her hands reach for her pockets but she realizes that she’s not wearing her coat. She moves around the counter and then out of the kitchen, only stop to turn and face Angela. She catches a glimpse of a canvas, but really pays no more attention.
“He’s … and I’m,” she stops and weighs her words again, “- I’m - things are as they should be.”
Angela stands then, following her to the living room. They both stay standing and she lets her fingers run against the edge of Angela’s couch, only to look away.
“I don’t understand,” her friend says slowly, finally, and turns her gaze up to Brennan’s. It softens and Brennan swallows, trying not to look away. It’s harder, she thinks. It’s harder when there’s no sure reason of why. Angela knows the most of what anyone else can know.
“This is okay,” she says.
“Is it?”
Brennan folds her arms against her chest. Angela reaches forward. Her hands slide over Brennan’s arms and she tugs, causing her to frown. But her tension seems to slide, loosening only slightly as they stare at each other.
“What happened?”
“I told him no.”
Angela shakes her head. “That’s not what happened,” she murmurs. “Look, I love you. You know you can tell me anything. You know that you can come here anytime and that I’m just really, really great at listening.”
She pauses and Brennan smiles weakly. She’s supposed to laugh, she thinks. This is all that she can manage.
“But,” Angela continues, “I’m also your best friend and I see you like this -”
“I’m fine,” Brennan cuts her off.
But Angela shakes her head, and this is how she knows her, Angela knowing her in the way that Booth can’t or doesn’t know how to yet. In the way that she hasn’t let him, she thinks too. Neither is comforting. Neither works for her either.
Angela’s hand rubs lightly against her arm. She smiles and kisses her forehead, drawing back if only to look at her.
“You’re not okay, sweetie.”
She says it and Brennan knows, Brennan knows but there’s no other way to put it out there. It’s soft and warm and kind, something that makes her feel entirely childish and too out of place. It’s supposed to be enough. She’s not comfortable. She’s not ready and maybe, maybe that’s what she needs people to understand.
“But I’m here,” Angela adds and wraps an arm around her. She tries and ignores her thoughts and lets her head drop into her friend’s shoulder.
Still, there’s that feeling in her stomach, twisting and pulling. It hasn’t left.
“I told him no,” she says.
It’s always too quiet in the morning. She walks in, and walks past the lab, her jacket over her arm and her bag in her hand. In her head, she’s imagining all sort of outcomes; all plausible, all sensible, all outs that should never have the chance to exist.
The door to her office is open though. She frowns and catches Booth, just as she walks inside. He’s leaning against her desk.
“You’re early.”
She bites her lips and stays standing in the doorframe. “You’re here.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he murmurs and shrugs. She watches him as he picks up an artifact from her desk. The piece balances curiously against his palm but Brennan does not step forward to take it out of Booth’s hand. She watches his fingers as they brush over the small bone, over the long arch and the small end.
He’s careful, she thinks. When he puts it down, she watches him turn to her.
“You look tired too,” he comments. “I thought about heading over to give you a ride in the morning, but I wasn’t sure if you would want one.”
“Booth …”
Her throat tightens. She tries and smiles. He smiles softly.
“Hey,” he says.
She takes a step into the office. She takes another to the couch. She hovers without looking away, wondering if today, today she might have the right thing to say to him.
But looking at him brings back the memories of his face, of the speech; she can count all the lines and edges of him that are familiar, that she knows and that are indefinitely Booth, the Booth that she knows. It’s not about that familiarity anymore and she can’t count on holding onto that either.
“You’re important to me,” she says and finds herself still smiling. The feeling is awkward and almost shy. She keeps the distance because it’s safe.
“I know.”
He nods too. But she shakes her head.
“I don’t think you do.”
The weight of her jacket over her arm is getting heavier. She tries and keeps his gaze. He’s studying her, but almost as if he’s waiting, waiting all over again.
They stay quiet.
She tries and forces herself to say something, something that may erase whatever just happened between them the night before. The problem is that she remembers the first time, and the second time, and the summer before all of this stepped out from underneath the surface and made itself a reality without waiting for her to catch up.
She thinks she’s even angry, a little more than confused and a little less than feeling rejected; she’s always been faithful to how she feels but Booth and feeling things about Booth is entirely different from everything else.
“You’re worried.”
He steps forward. She looks away.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“No,” he says. “I told you,” he tells her. “I told you that it’s going to take some time and that I need that time. But you and I, we’re okay. We’re fine.”
“It’s different this time.”
She puts her jacket down first, then her bag. She lingers over the couch and faces Booth with a kind of apprehension that she hasn’t had in a really long time. She didn’t want this, she wants to say, and she didn’t want to feel like this when this was supposed to come out.
“It’s different this time,” she repeats, and means it in a way that makes her breath catch. She feels her throat start to burn. She knew this was coming, that this talk was meant to come and hold itself over them. She was ready to be patient, to talk it through in the ways that they usually do.
They are supposed to understand each other. She doesn’t want to think about them slipping. She doesn’t know how to.
“I’m just trying to understand.”
Booth says it and steps forward again, and then again. He stands in front of her and hovers over her, too close but almost kind in the way he places himself.
“I want - I want to say the right thing.”
She confesses and tries not to turn away. He sighs.
“I know you do.”
“I don’t think you do,” she says quietly. He looks at her and she looks back. Her nerves make her uneasy, but it’s the way things are, she tells herself. It’s the way things are now and might always be. She said no.
He doesn’t frown though. He doesn’t look defeated. He doesn’t look like anything she can recall or place that might help her understand. He’s distant without being distant and that makes her sad, really sad.
He’s pulling away, she thinks. He still reaches forward though, his fingers brushing against her face. He pushes her hair back and tucks it lightly behind her ear. She waits for him to linger, hopes, but his hand drops just as quickly.
“I’m sorry.”
She says it and means it too. She doesn’t pull back or turn away; there’s no place to go and no way that anything like that is meant to make sense.
Booth shakes his head.
“You have to tell me something. You have to tell me more than that - I can’t, Jesus, Bones. We can’t talk about it this way if we’re going to keep ending up at the same place. I don’t want to keep doing that.”
“I understand.”
Her gaze drops. She tastes her reply and drops to sit. Her hands brush over her knees and she waits, waits for him to say something else. She expects something else. It’s the way he is.
But he says nothing yet and Brennan turns her gaze to the glass, watching the slow arrivals of everyone else. Soon, it’s going to be like nothing happened again. She can do this. They can do this. They do partners well.
It’s Booth’s hand that presses into her shoulder though, his fingers tightening into the arch. She looks up at him and his mouth shifts. It’s not a smile, but it’s something and she feels herself expect something from the night before, the very same.
His hand doesn’t move. “I promise you,” he mumbles.
The grip is too tight. She remembers taking his arm. She remembers when he hesitated. His fingers remain tight though. There is the weight of the palm. His leg as it rests close to hers. She can count the times and the moments where this might’ve meant something else, something different without the weight and the opportunity. She hopes for simplicity. Just for now.
“I promise,” he says again.
She nods and leans into his arm. This is what it is.
when it’s complicated and everyone else is longer waiting to watch. spoilers for the parts in the sum of the whole. 3,133 words.
notes: so this EPISODE. i have FEELINGS and i’m not entirely sure if they’re ready to be completely worked out, due to the number of times that i've watched this and those scenes. this was also written during my never-ending search for a spanish guitarist. if there’s any blame to be had, it’s on that. WEDDINGS. enjoy!
-
They stop when they get to the car. Booth turns to her and leans against one of the doors, smiling that smile of his, the one where she knows that everything’s not okay but there’s nothing she can do.
The problem is that there is still this awful sensation in her stomach, the kind that makes her head spin and that when Angela’s around, she can depend on the proverbial escape route. With Booth, she thinks, she just has that face.
“It’s a nice night,” he says finally, looking at her as she looks back. The corners of his mouth tug up and she can see the creases in his skin, the worry lines and the old lines, lines that have days when they look like small scars.
She knows the show is for her. “Remarkable,” she agrees.
Her gaze wanders off to the side. She studies the mix of street lamps, the low lights from the building behind them seem to shift and waiver over the few cars that are still in the parking lot. They’ve been here before though, many times, and still, everything seems to have the illusion of being too open.
She still pinpoints familiarity and sighs. Sweets’ car is off to the corner, graying under a lamp. Her hand brushes against her arm, settling into the crook of her elbow as if to retrace the sensation of being close to Booth again.
Her hand drops. “Will you go home now?” she asks instead, and tries to avoid thinking about the scenarios, each and every one she’s attached herself to. She can’t take the silence either.
“I don’t know.”
Booth shrugs and pushes off the door. He pulls his keys out of his pocket. The ring slides over his finger and swings from side to side. He clutches them in a fist and his skin turns to an odd flush, tight even.
She almost reaches for him. His hand goes back into his pocket.
“We’ll be okay,” he says quietly. “It’s going to take some time, I think, but we’ll be good. You don’t have to worry. I don’t want you to worry.”
“I am worried.”
“You shouldn’t.”
He says it quickly. He looks away too. Their space is interrupted too. There’s a break in conversation, heels clicking on the sidewalk just as Booth turns away from her. There’s someone close and it’s instinctive, between the two of them to just stop. They talk about things, these things, within the lines of each other.
Brennan frowns and digs her hands into her pockets. Her fingers curl tightly into the fabric. She listens to the sound of the footsteps as they slow. She hears keys as they drop and instinctively wants to look to Booth. But it all feels wrong, so wrong; they’ve never not been able to stand close and he’s never not been able to look at her. The summer comes to mind, but the summer was the summer and those things are supposed to be frightening.
She’s responsible, she thinks. Slowly, her hands pull out of her pockets. She touches his arm. Her fingers stretch against his coat.
Booth freezes. “I am worried,” she repeats and shakes her head, just as he pulls his arm back, “There’s this part of me - I accept that it will take time. I accept that there’s a part of this that will forever adhere to this moment. I do not - we are not this moment.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
There is a lump in her throat. He falls back against the car, studying her with an unreadable gaze. She tries and reads his face again, the long, distinct lines that she knows and understand; bones are bone and flesh is flesh, but what makes up Booth is entirely complicated and incredible to her. Does he know, she thinks, because Booth always knows; she understands that there are always going to be pieces of her, too many pieces of her that he knows.
“I - ” she starts and hopes to respond, but the will stops and her breath catches and she feels so, so incredibly small with him this way. It’s not supposed to work this way with Booth and she’s not supposed to feel this way with Booth. But everything’s changed too quickly.
She doesn’t know how to handle this. It’s the one thing she wanted him to understand.
Brennan clears her throat. She meets his gaze and tries to recover, but he watches her and she can’t really hide from him. She tries again.
“But we’ll still - ” she stops and motions between the two of them with her hand, and it’s trying again without anything else to lose, “We’ll still be us, right?”
He looks at her. Brennan looks away.
“Yeah,” he says. “We will.”
Going home is harder. After Booth leaves her at her car at the Jeffersonian, she takes it goes to the other side of town and to Angela’s. It’s the only other thing she understands as being right.
When she knocks, she hears nothing. It’s late and she imagines that Angela, after a fashion, is elsewhere living the things that she knows Angela to do. She waits and leans against the wall, studying the door. But after a moment, the door shudders and there’s a loud click, and Brennan’s left with no time to turn around and leave.
“Sweetie?”
Angela’s eyes are wide. Brennan bites her lip and digs her hands into her pockets. The other woman is hiding in a large sweater and her hair is pulled back tightly, covering a few lines of paint.
Oh, she thinks. “Sorry,” she says. “I - I’m - it’s late,” she mumbles. “I was close-by and of course, I was thinking about calling but these are those things where it’s easier, I suppose, to just come and … talk.”
“What happened?”
Her friend softens and then steps back, drawing the door back and open. Brennan moves into the apartment, into the silent gesture, and feels her discomfort as it starts to grow.
“I don’t know,” she says and means it, closing her eyes and listening as Angela locks the door behind her. She stays standing in the hallway. She smells paint and tea and the collar of her jacket is starting to rub against her throat.
She says it again. “I don’t know.”
“Bren.” Angela smoothes her hands against her shoulders and then sighs. “You have that look on your face, and when you get that look, I usually know that it’s either a good glass of wine or something sweet. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to settle with the booze because the sweet stuff is on vacation here.”
She shakes her head. But Angela’s hands tighten over her shoulders. She pushes the two of them forward and down the hall. They move into the kitchen and Brennan forces herself to relax as the other woman pulls her jacket off.
“I just want to talk.”
Angela tosses her jacket to the side. She frowns curiously, looking back at her.
“Talk?”
Brennan lets a deep sigh go. She leans against the counter and studies the row of mugs the rest at the edge. There is one with tea, another with water, and the third has a fist of paintbrushes peeking out. She sees no canvas, but doesn’t ask.
They ask to be respectful of each other’s space.
“I’m - I’m unable to go to Booth,” she says slowly and looks up at Angela as she brings two glasses to the counter. She bites her lip, “When I’m unable to go to Booth, I come to you. I know how to come to you.”
Her heart is racing. Angela stops.
“It’s about Booth.”
She nods. “It’s about Booth.”
Angela frowns. She doesn’t say anything like Brennan expected, or wanted expect. She is thinking in predictability and variables again, the odd ends of her comforts and the way she’s supposed to know and take on these aspects of her life.
But Angela looks at her and Brennan can feel the expectations too, the way they loom and watch her, waiting the ultimate confession that she can’t give to anyone. She doesn’t know how to tell this to Angela, but she doesn’t want to be alone with this in her head.
“What happened?” the other woman asks finally.
“I don’t know.”
Brennan shrugs and tries to be sensible.
“There’s a lot of things, I suppose.”
“Brennan -”
“ - and my mind is prone to certain conclusions, specific conclusions. That is what I do. That is what I understand. I understand.”
But Brennan injects without acknowledging her name, or the way Angela continues to look at her. There is a bottle of wine behind the other woman and Brennan watches absently as Angela doesn’t turn and picks it up. She drinks scotch with Booth, wine with Angela, and the wine is usually the first thing between the two of them. She usually does, she thinks.
She finally looks at Angela. She’s serious. She feels too serious.
“I told Booth no.”
The implications are there. The weights are there. And when Brennan says it, when she really says it, it drives her into the temptation of wanting to close off. She doesn’t want people to see her like this.
“I told him no today,” she says and rubs her eyes. “He asked - and I -“
Angela’s eyes widen. “Sweetie.”
“I had to.”
She pushes away from the counter. Her hands reach for her pockets but she realizes that she’s not wearing her coat. She moves around the counter and then out of the kitchen, only stop to turn and face Angela. She catches a glimpse of a canvas, but really pays no more attention.
“He’s … and I’m,” she stops and weighs her words again, “- I’m - things are as they should be.”
Angela stands then, following her to the living room. They both stay standing and she lets her fingers run against the edge of Angela’s couch, only to look away.
“I don’t understand,” her friend says slowly, finally, and turns her gaze up to Brennan’s. It softens and Brennan swallows, trying not to look away. It’s harder, she thinks. It’s harder when there’s no sure reason of why. Angela knows the most of what anyone else can know.
“This is okay,” she says.
“Is it?”
Brennan folds her arms against her chest. Angela reaches forward. Her hands slide over Brennan’s arms and she tugs, causing her to frown. But her tension seems to slide, loosening only slightly as they stare at each other.
“What happened?”
“I told him no.”
Angela shakes her head. “That’s not what happened,” she murmurs. “Look, I love you. You know you can tell me anything. You know that you can come here anytime and that I’m just really, really great at listening.”
She pauses and Brennan smiles weakly. She’s supposed to laugh, she thinks. This is all that she can manage.
“But,” Angela continues, “I’m also your best friend and I see you like this -”
“I’m fine,” Brennan cuts her off.
But Angela shakes her head, and this is how she knows her, Angela knowing her in the way that Booth can’t or doesn’t know how to yet. In the way that she hasn’t let him, she thinks too. Neither is comforting. Neither works for her either.
Angela’s hand rubs lightly against her arm. She smiles and kisses her forehead, drawing back if only to look at her.
“You’re not okay, sweetie.”
She says it and Brennan knows, Brennan knows but there’s no other way to put it out there. It’s soft and warm and kind, something that makes her feel entirely childish and too out of place. It’s supposed to be enough. She’s not comfortable. She’s not ready and maybe, maybe that’s what she needs people to understand.
“But I’m here,” Angela adds and wraps an arm around her. She tries and ignores her thoughts and lets her head drop into her friend’s shoulder.
Still, there’s that feeling in her stomach, twisting and pulling. It hasn’t left.
“I told him no,” she says.
It’s always too quiet in the morning. She walks in, and walks past the lab, her jacket over her arm and her bag in her hand. In her head, she’s imagining all sort of outcomes; all plausible, all sensible, all outs that should never have the chance to exist.
The door to her office is open though. She frowns and catches Booth, just as she walks inside. He’s leaning against her desk.
“You’re early.”
She bites her lips and stays standing in the doorframe. “You’re here.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he murmurs and shrugs. She watches him as he picks up an artifact from her desk. The piece balances curiously against his palm but Brennan does not step forward to take it out of Booth’s hand. She watches his fingers as they brush over the small bone, over the long arch and the small end.
He’s careful, she thinks. When he puts it down, she watches him turn to her.
“You look tired too,” he comments. “I thought about heading over to give you a ride in the morning, but I wasn’t sure if you would want one.”
“Booth …”
Her throat tightens. She tries and smiles. He smiles softly.
“Hey,” he says.
She takes a step into the office. She takes another to the couch. She hovers without looking away, wondering if today, today she might have the right thing to say to him.
But looking at him brings back the memories of his face, of the speech; she can count all the lines and edges of him that are familiar, that she knows and that are indefinitely Booth, the Booth that she knows. It’s not about that familiarity anymore and she can’t count on holding onto that either.
“You’re important to me,” she says and finds herself still smiling. The feeling is awkward and almost shy. She keeps the distance because it’s safe.
“I know.”
He nods too. But she shakes her head.
“I don’t think you do.”
The weight of her jacket over her arm is getting heavier. She tries and keeps his gaze. He’s studying her, but almost as if he’s waiting, waiting all over again.
They stay quiet.
She tries and forces herself to say something, something that may erase whatever just happened between them the night before. The problem is that she remembers the first time, and the second time, and the summer before all of this stepped out from underneath the surface and made itself a reality without waiting for her to catch up.
She thinks she’s even angry, a little more than confused and a little less than feeling rejected; she’s always been faithful to how she feels but Booth and feeling things about Booth is entirely different from everything else.
“You’re worried.”
He steps forward. She looks away.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“No,” he says. “I told you,” he tells her. “I told you that it’s going to take some time and that I need that time. But you and I, we’re okay. We’re fine.”
“It’s different this time.”
She puts her jacket down first, then her bag. She lingers over the couch and faces Booth with a kind of apprehension that she hasn’t had in a really long time. She didn’t want this, she wants to say, and she didn’t want to feel like this when this was supposed to come out.
“It’s different this time,” she repeats, and means it in a way that makes her breath catch. She feels her throat start to burn. She knew this was coming, that this talk was meant to come and hold itself over them. She was ready to be patient, to talk it through in the ways that they usually do.
They are supposed to understand each other. She doesn’t want to think about them slipping. She doesn’t know how to.
“I’m just trying to understand.”
Booth says it and steps forward again, and then again. He stands in front of her and hovers over her, too close but almost kind in the way he places himself.
“I want - I want to say the right thing.”
She confesses and tries not to turn away. He sighs.
“I know you do.”
“I don’t think you do,” she says quietly. He looks at her and she looks back. Her nerves make her uneasy, but it’s the way things are, she tells herself. It’s the way things are now and might always be. She said no.
He doesn’t frown though. He doesn’t look defeated. He doesn’t look like anything she can recall or place that might help her understand. He’s distant without being distant and that makes her sad, really sad.
He’s pulling away, she thinks. He still reaches forward though, his fingers brushing against her face. He pushes her hair back and tucks it lightly behind her ear. She waits for him to linger, hopes, but his hand drops just as quickly.
“I’m sorry.”
She says it and means it too. She doesn’t pull back or turn away; there’s no place to go and no way that anything like that is meant to make sense.
Booth shakes his head.
“You have to tell me something. You have to tell me more than that - I can’t, Jesus, Bones. We can’t talk about it this way if we’re going to keep ending up at the same place. I don’t want to keep doing that.”
“I understand.”
Her gaze drops. She tastes her reply and drops to sit. Her hands brush over her knees and she waits, waits for him to say something else. She expects something else. It’s the way he is.
But he says nothing yet and Brennan turns her gaze to the glass, watching the slow arrivals of everyone else. Soon, it’s going to be like nothing happened again. She can do this. They can do this. They do partners well.
It’s Booth’s hand that presses into her shoulder though, his fingers tightening into the arch. She looks up at him and his mouth shifts. It’s not a smile, but it’s something and she feels herself expect something from the night before, the very same.
His hand doesn’t move. “I promise you,” he mumbles.
The grip is too tight. She remembers taking his arm. She remembers when he hesitated. His fingers remain tight though. There is the weight of the palm. His leg as it rests close to hers. She can count the times and the moments where this might’ve meant something else, something different without the weight and the opportunity. She hopes for simplicity. Just for now.
“I promise,” he says again.
She nods and leans into his arm. This is what it is.