Fic: Harbingers Tag - The Heart Knows What the Head Can't Say
He decides, early on, that he’s going to have to lie.
He doesn’t have a problem with this, not until she’s back.
The first week after he woke up, he felt like he was trying to fight his way out of a box. He knew that she was his wife, and they owned a club, and he loved her, just loved her, in this amazing, monumental, substantial, and almost tangible sort of way. A way that made his heart feel heavier in his chest, because it felt so damned full.
But she wasn’t his wife. They kept telling him, and he wanted to explain, that they couldn’t understand, that evidence didn’t mean anything, and finally…he just remembered. That the club and the marriage were all a dream. That he was 37, and had a beautiful son, and worked for the FBI, and she was his partner. His friend.
Not his wife.
The dream started feeling more like a dream. It faded over time, less vivid; he remembered that he had conversations in the dream but not what they were about. His real life came back in color, and he remembered so much, to the point where remembering didn’t feel like remembering anymore; it just felt like his life.
But his heart.
She asked him if he wanted her to stay. She told him she’d do whatever he needed. He knew she wanted to go, needed to go, because he knew her, not dream her, but her. He told her to go.
But his heart.
He didn’t tell her about his heart.
He didn’t tell anyone.
Because even now, after over six weeks, after she went and came back, after he went and came back, and he’s still coming back…
After that.
His heart is still so, so heavy in his chest.
So damned full.
Sweets tried to tell him it had something to do with a brain scan. That his brain was making him think that his heart didn’t really know what it was telling him. That something had happened that made him think he was in love, when he really wasn’t.
He has a drink with her, after the case. He’s already thought about the moment he tried to tell her how he felt no less than a thousand times. It was the right thing, not to really tell her. He’s convinced of it. The clown, the socks, the ties, the belt buckle…maybe he’s not himself. Maybe he’ll never be himself again, and he’s always going to be altered by this.
Beyond repair.
That’s what he’s always been most afraid of, anyway. Alone, in his bed, at night, before he goes to sleep. That all the people he’s shot, all the death he’s seen, all the bad things that have happened, and people who didn’t love him…that he would be beyond repair.
They’re in the bar, and she is stirring her drink with the tiny straw in it. It’s a companionable silence between the two of them. He hears the sound of bits of conversation, the thud of glass against wood, the TV on over the bar, and the clink of the ice cubes in her drink, hitting one another and the glass, as she stirs.
He sees her smile just a little bit.
“What? What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“You’re smiling. What about?”
“I know the case didn’t turn out exactly the way we wanted, and I know that you’re still trying to remember some things, but I….”
“You what?”
“I’m glad you’re back.”
He shifts a little bit on his seat. He feels uncomfortable, because he’s not back, not really, not the way he wants to be.
“I don’t feel like I am.”
The words pop out, quiet, like a confession. He doesn’t mean to say it, but he does, and to her. Saying it to anyone else is just stalling until he tells her, anyway.
“It’s normal to feel like that, Booth. You’ve been through a lot in a short period of time. It’s okay that you can’t remember some things right now.”
“I’ll remember everything.” When he says it, he almost feels like a child, too stubborn to take an adult’s help when doing something complicated.
“I believe you will. All of your tests indicate that you will have a full recovery. But if you don’t, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re still you.”
He feels like his heavy heart bursts through his chest. She keeps talking.
“You are still quite good at your job. You did good work on this case. You followed your instincts to go after Fargood, and you were right. You even followed them when Avalon told you I was in danger, however coincidental that situation may be. You were an instinctual, sometimes highly irrational person, and you remain to be one now. You care a great deal about your work. You try to protect the others who work around you. You’re still you.”
He smiles, but he doesn’t say anything in return.
He doesn’t know what he would say.
Thank you seems too small, because it’s not just that the words make him feel better, but that the words are hers. She believes in him right now, when he can’t believe in himself.
When he can’t believe in his heart.
His heart.
She believes.
He takes another sip of his drink. He’s going to be ready, someday, to tell her. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, but he’s going to tell her, really tell her, that he loves her. He’s going to tell her in a way where she can’t be confused about it, where she will know it’s not just friends, not just partners, not just anything, but everything.
Everything. All the stuff.
It’s not that he’s not sure he loves her, he realizes, sitting on the stool. He has thinks back to the time before the operation, before his brain apparently became “lit up like Christmas.” He thinks of Christmas. He thinks of a Christmas when he brought her a tree outside of jail. He thinks about walking into her office, and her telling him that they were going to kiss. He thinks about the way her lips felt against his, the way she grabbed his lapels, the way his heart beat so, so fast, pounding in his chest, right before their lips met….
He thinks about his heart.
And his heart has loved her for longer than his mind knows. Before his coma, before the dream, when he was in control of everything, he made sure he didn’t think about what it would be like to be with her. What it would be like to kiss her, to touch her, to wake up with her, to have sex with her and make love to her, and how those two things would be different and the same. He wasn’t allowed.
But when he dreamt, and when she read to him, he was not in control. It was her. It was his heart.
His heart is sure, and has been sure, that he loved her. His head is just now allowed to catch up.
So, he’ll tell her. But before he does, he has to be sure that she is sure about him. He doesn’t want to tell her, then have her see him without his ties, or socks, or shaking hands with a clown, or turning down pie, or doing something, anything, that would make her question it.
Until then, he thinks, he’s just going to have to lie.
I feel like I have more of a post-ep than this in me, but this is it for now!