Fic: Bones Fandom
Title: Domina
Author: Kita
Fandom: Bones
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 1000 words to all the girls he’s loved (before)
Warnings: None
*
Seely is eight when he takes his First Holy Communion. His most vivid memories of his mother are from that day, her eyes shining as he sits on her lap before they leave for Church. She calls him her little man, and opens a long white box.
"This belonged to my mother," she says, "and now it's yours."
The Rosary is heavy. Seely runs his fingers over the ruby beads, watches the solid silver cross twirl and glitter. He realizes now she must have known she was dying; it was a gift too expensive for a child. It was also the last time she'd have strength enough to hold him.
Hank takes Seely and Jared away from their father in the middle of the night. Jared is half-asleep and crying, clinging to Seely's hand and his favorite GI Joe doll. Seely leaves his father's house at the age of nine with a broken nose, and his mother's Rosary tucked carefully into his pajama pants.
From then on, it's a comforting, familiar weight. He carries the Rosary in Basic Training, through Ranger School, during every tour of duty.
(Not long into his gambling addiction he will pawn his mother's Rosary for less than three hundred dollars. He will tell himself he cannot remember the look on her face when she gave it to him. He will stop going to Confession.)
*
"You aren’t in love with me," Rebecca says. There are tears in her eyes. Seely is down on one knee.
"Of course I love you," he insists, hand on her belly. She isn't showing yet. "You're carrying my child."
(And Seely loves all the women he sleeps with; from Catherine, his first, who blows him under the bleachers after he scores the winning touchdown for their high school; to Hannah, who thanks him for saving her life by climbing into his lap and fucking him like Eve under a fig tree. Seely loves them all, because that is what good men do.)
He spends the rest of Rebecca’s pregnancy trying to convince her to marry him. Like some sort of archaic knight’s quest, Seely catches every bad guy, hits every mark. None of it is enough.
By the time their son is born, they’re no longer together. Every so often, Seely still spends the night.
“Remind me again why we didn’t just get married?” he asks, through the haze of cigarette smoke (she only smokes after sex) and tangled linens.
Her hair is a mess of curls; she’s flushed, beautiful, and looking at him the way she used to.
“Because I won’t play house with you,” Rebecca answers without malice.
Seely frowns, plucking the cigarette from her fingers.
“That’s- I don’t know what that means,” he says.
It will take him years to figure out. Bones is a very different woman, but somehow, they’ll still be having the same damn conversation.
*
Seely changes his cell phone number three times to avoid the debt collectors, and sets his eviction notice on fire in the kitchen sink. But the day he gets the letter from Rebecca’s lawyer- hand delivered, return receipt requested to his office- he goes to his first Gambler’s Anonymous meeting. He hasn’t seen Parker since Christmas.
It’s Easter when he returns to Church. Seely has confessed to a host of grievous sins in his past. This is the first time he’s ever felt ashamed.
The Priest gives him a new Rosary, and instructs him to pray the will of G-d.
But the beads feel wrong in his hand, the Our Father rote and futile in his ears. He finds himself thinking of his father’s belt buckle, about punishment rather than absolution.
It isn’t until he begins to recite the Hail Mary that everything becomes clear.
(He’ll tell Bones about this moment, years later as they lay in bed together, arguing over what to name their daughter. How the realization was like a slap to his head; what he really wanted, what he’s always been searching for. It had never been about sex - and here she will mock him a bit for stammering as he tries to get the words Mary and sex together in the same sentence- it was about family. It was about needing somewhere to belong.)
All Seely wants is a woman who will love him the same way he loves her. On that day, that’s exactly what he prays for.
*
“See Bones? That’s why it took us all this time.”
“You believe that because you talked to an imaginary-”
“Hey. The Blessed Virgin isn’t imaginary.”
“A mythical goddess construct about your specific desires for a partner, the result was being unable to have intercourse for five years?”
“Yes! No! I had-”
“Not with me.”
“Right! That’s exactly what I’m trying to say!”
“Booth. That makes no sense.”
“No, what doesn’t make sense is naming our daughter Amenirdis. It’s gotta be a name I can spell. Or you know, at least pronounce.”
Then she smiles at him; and he’s a man, stupid and in love, but he would swear she shines. Because sometimes you get what you ask for, and sometimes you get what you need, and sometimes you get all of that, wrapped up in a woman who wants to name your kid after a two thousand year old dead Egyptian priestess.
He tugs the sheet off her shoulders as she straddles his waist.
Her smile goes wicked. “Or. Maybe I’m teasing you.”
“Oh,” he gasps. “Maybe I’m still working on navigating your newfound sense of humor.”
“I’ve always had a sense of humor. I have empirical evidence that I am in fact, very funny.”
This is another one of those bright silver moments that Seely will hold onto, will count like one of the beads on his Rosary. How Bones looks at him, how she makes words like ‘empirical evidence’ sound like sex talk.
How she might not believe in the significance, but she does believe in him: They name their daughter Grace.
-End