Fic: Blind Situation (3/3)
Title: Blind Situation (3/3)
Fandom: Bones
Author: Constantine
Pairing: Brennan/Cam
Rating: R
Summary: Brennan and Cam take a chance.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bones. That is all.
A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read this story and a special thanks to everyone who took the time to write a review. I’m sorry it took so long to get this update out. I actually wrote it a few times, but was unhappy with the finished product. I finally got back to it this week and this is what I came up with.
Feedback: If you like it let me know. If not, you can let me know that too.
I've never run faster in my life. Lactate builds in my muscles. It burns through my legs as my boots pound into the pavement. It churns in my chest. My breath barrels in and out in short grunts. The Anacostia River snakes a freezing path on my left. The smell of raw sewage lifts from its banks and conspires to make me nauseous. Bile rises from deep within the center of my gut and coats the back of my throat.
The doctor in me knows I can only maintain this pace for another few minutes before my body rebels against the acidic environment I've pushed it into. The rest of me knows I'll run until my hands are clutched around Travis Nielson's throat or I collapse dead on the ground trying.
The short warehouses lining the docks blur. They whiz by in grays and blues until the only color I see is white. Travis turns onto a bridge that crumbles pieces of itself into the water with every step he takes. He stumbles on a loose plank, twists his ankle. The pain makes him smile. He always smiles. Its imprint is a bloody failure on my fists.
He hobbles to the railing of the bridge, throws one foot over. I push myself harder. My body convulses against the abuse. He throws the other foot over and grins back at me when I shout his name. I lunge. My bones jar against his body with a bruising crush as he jumps off the bridge.
A screamed 'where is she' retches from the pit of my soul as we fall. He answers me right before we hit the deathly icy water and I finally understand that this is how he wins.
My eyes open with a strangled scream trapped at the back of my throat. The bedroom is pitch black, but I feel Brennan beside me and my breath transitions from short gasps to heavy gulps.
I haven't slept in over two weeks. Not since Booth pulled me out of that river and I barely whispered Travis Nielson's dying words through my chattering teeth and blue lips. Not since I surrendered to the collapse of my battered body, believing I was too late.
The darkness behind my eyes paint a canvas of failure in bright and gruesome colors every night until I wake up soaked with fear. Every night I stare at Brennan until the sun comes up and temporarily pushes the fear back down. It's a destructive cycle I'm not smart enough to break.
I slide out of bed and glance at the clock on my way to the closet. Almost midnight. I get dressed in the living room. The only sound in the apartment is the front door as it closes behind me.
**))**((**
I finish my fourth scotch. I don't bother listening to the voice in the back of my head that tells me I should have stopped at two.
"Cam, what are you doing?" Booth asks as he sits next to me at the bar. He doesn't look at me when he speaks. We've been broken since the day Brennan baked me an apple pie and told him to leave.
"You're talking to me now?" I ask. I signal the bartender for another drink but the traitor listens to the negative shake of Booth's head instead.
"Listen-" he continues.
"I'd rather not," I cut him off. My words are not as crisp as they should be, but I don't really care. "I'm not interested, Seeley."
"Cam, what are you doing?" Booth asks again. It's the simple question with the difficult answer I don't think he wants to hear. "You should be at home with--," he cuts the sentence short. "You should be at home," he finishes.
"She won't wear my ring," I say. My unexpected admission plummets onto the bar and breathes between us like a living organism.
"What?" Booth asks, confused.
"Brennan. She won't wear my ring." I pull our wedding rings out of my pocket and place them on the bar. I've been carrying them with me for the past two weeks; waiting for the moment when Brennan finally says yes to the question I suddenly can't ask. Every time I try, it gets lost somewhere between the sickening moment I realized Brennan was missing and the image of Travis Nielson's grotesque smile promising me I'd never find her.
"You asked Brennan to marry you?" Booth finally turns to look at me.
"We're already married. In San Francisco."
It's as if I just punched him in the gut. He pales with the blow. "You've been married since you came back from San Francisco?"
"It doesn't make sense," I say.
"You and Bones being married?" His exasperation is loud and angry in the quiet bar.
I should just say yes and leave it there, but the scotch, the fear and the doubt make me tell the truth. "It doesn't make sense that I love her this much. It's not..." I pause, searching for the right word. "It's not ...logical."
"It's not logical," Booth repeats slowly and I see the cost of hearing Brennan's words leave my mouth slice through what's left of our friendship.
Booth stands and closes the distance between us. His face, a mask of everything he just lost. He reaches into my jacket pocket, grabs my car keys and walks away.
**))**((**
I sit at my desk weighing painkillers in my hand like they are the last strands of DNA on planet Earth. It's been a long time since I've had a hangover and the pounding in the back of my skull is reason enough to ensure that it'll be never before it happens again.
The quick opening and loud slamming of my office door makes me wince and drop salvation onto my desk. I watch helplessly as the pills roll to the floor.
"Sorry." Brennan doesn't really look all that sorry as she walks up to me, glass of unidentified liquid in her hand. "Drink this." She shoves the glass in front of me. It looks like it wanted to be green at one point in its molecular configuration. I recoil at the smell.
"What is it?" I ask.
"If I told you, I'd have to kidnap you," she says with a self-satisfied smile. Brennan walks around the desk, pushes some paperwork out of the way and takes a seat. "Drink. You'll feel better."
Somehow over these past few months I've become this person who does everything my wife tells me. It happened in a lost moment somewhere between the first time I made her breakfast in bed and the first time she let me be smarter than her.
"Don't look so terrified. Trust me."
I shut my eyes, close my nose, and chug.
Surprisingly, Brennan's hangover remedy doesn't taste bad. "That was pretty good--" I stop talking as Brennan leaves her perch on my desk and straddles my legs. She settles on top of me slowly; the precise weight of her body, a sense memory for every nerve ending beneath my skin.
"That was just part one."
"Part one?" I ask.
"Of my personal hangover cure. This is part two," she says, a breath away from my lips. Her tongue slides into my mouth without the prelude of foreplay. Her kiss is like a flood, drowning my dry and damaged landscape.
It's been this way since I came home from the hospital; like she believes her touch can fix what the medical staff didn't even realize was broken. Today, it's too much. Her lips are too many places and my heart beats against my ribcage, desperate for a way out. Heat throbs to the beat of her hips rocking against mine. Each thrust is searing and beautiful and wrong.
My brain wants me to stop this, but its signals barely make it to the surface before being slashed down by the wet swipe of Brennan's tongue on my neck and the twinge of her fingers twisting my nipples.
Wait...
It takes me a moment to realize I only said that in my head. "Wait." I try again. My voice scratches against her lips.
"Wait." I say it louder this time. My hands press against her shoulders. Slowly, she pulls away, but her hips keep rocking against me.
"What?" Her breath is hot, moist, centimeters away from kissing me again.
"Don't you want to know?"
"Know what?" She pulls further away.
"Why I left and didn't come back last night."
Her hips slow to a stop, the respite a blessing I need, but don't want. She tilts her head to the side. Her eyes settle on the small birthmark near my collarbone, just peaking out of my shirt. The first time we spent the entire day in bed she confessed it was her favorite part of my body because nobody else new what it did to me every time she kissed it.
"You were drinking scotch. On the rocks," Brennan says, her voice softer than I've ever heard it before.
"How do you know that?" I ask. Booth telling her where I was isn't out of the question. No matter how he feels about me, he's a good man. A better man than he usually gives himself credit for being.
Brennan looks at me in silence, the analysis of the pros and cons of her next words read clearly in the slight crinkle around her eyes.
"You drink cabernet sauvignon when you're stressed like when the boss we forgot you had came to visit." She kisses the corner of my mouth.
"Ice cold Stella when you've spent the entire day ruminating on the many orgasms you plan on giving me when we get home." Her kiss becomes bold again. Deep, wet, and gone before I'm ready to let go.
"Martinis when I've hurt you," she whispers, "like when you rub your fingers against the rings in your pocket waiting for me to say yes ...and I don't." Her voice trails off in a whisper, but the silence is brief. "And scotch when you wake up afraid in the middle of the night, expecting an empty space where I should be."
I shiver at this sudden exposure. It's raw and beautifully painful. "This is not you," I say. Tears I've never let her see stir against my words. "Seeing me. This is not you."
Brennan rubs her thumbs underneath my chin, finding the spot where my tears are caught. "No, it's not," she says.
Something shifts then like refracted light on a rainy day; each raindrop an individual sketch of Brennan loving me that falls silently against my skin.
"I love you," she says. It's the first time without the camouflage of seven syllable words and scientific explanations of pheromones or the mating habits of exotic species. "It makes me..." she trails off, searching her vast vocabulary for the perfect word. "Better," she finishes simply. "Loving you makes me better."
Her words are like a rush of blood to the head. It's not a Buddhist proverb, so much as melancholy British rock. Zen never really worked for me anyway. I threw all the books out the day I was released from the hospital.
"Loving me makes you better?" I ask.
"Yes," Brennan says with a smile and a kiss that breaks the oxygen atoms in my blood before binding them back together. "Now we have to go."
"What?"
"The FBI delivered the remains we found at Rock Creek Park," she says. Brennan makes her way to the door before my body has a chance to fully cool down. "The bones are completely translucent."
"Translucent?"
"Yes, translucent," she says as she opens the door. "Do you require a definition of that word?"
**))**((**
I find almost everyone in the lab bent over the translucent bones of eighty-nine year old Samuel Felix. Booth paces just outside the group waiting for a lead that will give him someone to arrest.
"This is incredibly cool," says Hodgins.
"Dr. Hodgins, I'm certain you mean that in the most respectful way possibly," I say, stopping next to the victim.
"Absolutely," he smirks.
"Come on, Cam," Angela looks up from the remains, "you have to admit this is kind of cool. Disgusting, but cool."
"I have to agree, Dr. Saroyan," Sweets says while he looks through Mr. Felix’s translucent skull.
"I disagree," Brennan starts, "This is one of the least disgusting remains I've examined. The blood has been exsanguinated and the tissue has been removed with no immediately apparent traces of scarring on any of the bones. What is really fascinating is how the bones were able to maintain their integral structure, while concurrently succumbing to the coring process normally found with most pome fruit."
"Yes," Booth says, taking a break from pacing. "That is what's interesting about see through guy. You know what's even more interesting? Finding out who did it, so can we get to that part?"
We all pause at Booth's agitated questions. Things had gotten a little better after Brennan was found, but I see last nights confession has changed that.
There has been an uneasy truce among the team since the entire Jeffersonian realized that Booth was out and I was in. No one had to say anything. In fact, everything that remained unsaid hung from the three of us like broken chemical bonds. It only took one day for a building full of scientist to piece the story together.
Angela and Hodgins look between the three of us. They're waiting for Booth to finally call Brennan out on what they could have had. They’re waiting on me to tell Brennan we need to find another FBI Agent to work with. They're waiting on--
"No, we can't get to that," Brennan says.
At Brennan's words, Booth looks even more like this lab is the last place he wants to be. "What?" His question sounds like there's gravel lining his throat.
"You're mad at me," Brennan states the obvious.
"No, I'm not."
"Actually, Agent Booth, you display the common--"
"Shut up, Sweets." Booth doesn't bother to look at him when he speaks. Instead he keeps his focus on Brennan. "I'm not mad at you."
"I don't need to be well versed in Sweet's inadequate psychological theories to know that you are upset. You have shown obvious signs of anger toward Dr. Saroyan and myself. The earliest male hominids often displayed--"
"Bones, I'm not mad at you, okay?" Booth walks closer to Mr. Felix's translucent body. He and Brennan now stand on opposite sides of the table. "I'm mad at myself."
"Why?" Brennan asks.
Booth stares at her for so long that I begin to think he's not going to answer.
"Because I never took the chance," he says quietly. "I never took the chance and I know that I'll never get another one."
"Oh." It's the most inarticulate thing Brennan has ever said, yet somehow the most profound.
"Yeah, 'oh'" Booth says, "just let me know when you've got something." He walks out of the lab before any of us can respond.
Felix Samuel gets all of our attention once Booth leaves. He's the only safe place to look in the entire room.
"Wow," Angela finally breaks the silence.
"Yes, the bones are quite magnificent," Brennan, says awkwardly.
She knows Angela wasn't talking about the bones, but for the moment we're all happy to pretend otherwise.
**))**((**
I sit in my office trying to make a small dent in the paperwork that piled up during my convalescence. If it were up to Brennan, I'd still be in bed eating chicken soup. She made a point to tell me that she absolutely does not believe in it's healing powers, but Angela insisted she feed it to me.
"Are you ready to go?" Brennan asks as she walks in.
"Fifteen minutes," I say without looking up.
"Sure," Brennan says, right before taking her favorite seat in my entire office. She pushes my hands away from the paperwork and settles herself onto my lap. "You've done enough work today."
I lean back in my chair and smile, "That's your professional assessment?"
"No, that's my wife assessment."
It's the first time she's referred to herself as my wife. After wanting to hear them for so long, I'm not sure what to do with the words now that they've fallen into my lap.
"Give me the rings."
"What?" I ask as my heart slams into my chest.
"The rings in your pocket. Give them to me."
I am afraid to ask why because the answer might be what kills me after Travis Nielson failed. I grab the rings from my pocket; the smooth metal is warm against my fingertips as I place them in Brennan's palm.
Brennan stares at the wedding bands like their shape and color tell a significant story. She studies them with the intensity of a groundbreaking archeological find. Then she throws them into the trashcan next to my desk.
My mind fast-forwards to a terrible place where I become Booth and he becomes me. I instantly weigh the options of watching them have the happiness that should be mine or leaving and never seeing Brennan again.
"Cam," Brennan starts, but I don't want to listen. I move to push her away from me, but she turns my face toward her and gently holds it in place. "These last few months have been different from anything I've ever experienced before. They've changed me on a structural level." She pauses, "you've changed me."
Brennan lets go of my face, confident that she has my complete attention. My heart still hammers against my chest.
"I don't believe in love. I don't believe in the patriarchy of marriage. I don't believe in the merits of chicken soup as a remedy for illness." She traces my lips with her thumb, contemplating her next words. "But I love you. I'm married to you. And you ate every drop of chicken soup I put in front of you."
Brennan reaches into her pocket. What she pulls out erases all thought from my brain, all breath from my body. She holds a ring between us. All excessive adornment eliminated; a platinum band, a deceptively simple diamond.
"Will you marry me?"
All that spirits desire, spirits attain. It was my grandmother's favorite quote and she repeated it to me every Sunday after church. I realize now that I never truly believed her until this moment.
"Will I marry you?"
"Yes, will you marry me? I'd like for us to remember it this time." Brennan smiles, kisses me softly.
"So, you want an actual ceremony," I ask, disbelievingly.
"You, me, Angela, Hodgins, a justice of the peace."
"Of course you want to get married in the courthouse," I say.
"I still believe that marriage is a patriarchal system that--"
I lean forward and kiss Brennan with the love I've been trying to control for the past three months. It washes over us. Cleanses everything we were until all that's left is something new. The heat is instant like always, but different. The fear that it's all going to go away is missing. In its place sits the only thing Brennan worships. I am a fact of her life now. I can tell by the way her lips slant against mine. By the way her hands slide into my hair. By the way her body fits perfectly against me.
She pulls away slowly, "Is that a yes?"
"Yes." My answer floats between us like it's the first and last thing I'll ever have to say.
Brennan grabs my hand in hers, slips the ring on my finger, and has the decency to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
"I think you should change your name," she says.
"What?" If Brennan had asked me to graffiti the Lincoln Memorial, I’m sure I’d be less shocked.
"If I'm going to bend to society's norms, it seems appropriate that I bend all the way."
"Oh, is that why? Because of society?" I'm starting to think that secretly, underneath the analytical outlook, the genius IQ, the disbelief in anything that can't be proven by science, Dr. Temperance Brennan wants the same things we all want, but life made her too afraid to take the chance of never finding it. "Maybe you should take my name. Dr. Temperance Saroyan. It has a ring to it."
"I think Dr. Camille Brennan sounds better," she wraps her arms around my shoulders, "but I could be convinced otherwise."
"Is that so?" I lean forward, my lips a touch away from hers.
"Yes."
"Then I guess I should get to work," I say, right before my lips touch hers. Kissing Brennan is the only thing I've ever been a genius at and I plan to spend the rest of my life in a scholarly pursuit of perfection.
THE END.
Fandom: Bones
Author: Constantine
Pairing: Brennan/Cam
Rating: R
Summary: Brennan and Cam take a chance.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bones. That is all.
A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read this story and a special thanks to everyone who took the time to write a review. I’m sorry it took so long to get this update out. I actually wrote it a few times, but was unhappy with the finished product. I finally got back to it this week and this is what I came up with.
Feedback: If you like it let me know. If not, you can let me know that too.
I've never run faster in my life. Lactate builds in my muscles. It burns through my legs as my boots pound into the pavement. It churns in my chest. My breath barrels in and out in short grunts. The Anacostia River snakes a freezing path on my left. The smell of raw sewage lifts from its banks and conspires to make me nauseous. Bile rises from deep within the center of my gut and coats the back of my throat.
The doctor in me knows I can only maintain this pace for another few minutes before my body rebels against the acidic environment I've pushed it into. The rest of me knows I'll run until my hands are clutched around Travis Nielson's throat or I collapse dead on the ground trying.
The short warehouses lining the docks blur. They whiz by in grays and blues until the only color I see is white. Travis turns onto a bridge that crumbles pieces of itself into the water with every step he takes. He stumbles on a loose plank, twists his ankle. The pain makes him smile. He always smiles. Its imprint is a bloody failure on my fists.
He hobbles to the railing of the bridge, throws one foot over. I push myself harder. My body convulses against the abuse. He throws the other foot over and grins back at me when I shout his name. I lunge. My bones jar against his body with a bruising crush as he jumps off the bridge.
A screamed 'where is she' retches from the pit of my soul as we fall. He answers me right before we hit the deathly icy water and I finally understand that this is how he wins.
My eyes open with a strangled scream trapped at the back of my throat. The bedroom is pitch black, but I feel Brennan beside me and my breath transitions from short gasps to heavy gulps.
I haven't slept in over two weeks. Not since Booth pulled me out of that river and I barely whispered Travis Nielson's dying words through my chattering teeth and blue lips. Not since I surrendered to the collapse of my battered body, believing I was too late.
The darkness behind my eyes paint a canvas of failure in bright and gruesome colors every night until I wake up soaked with fear. Every night I stare at Brennan until the sun comes up and temporarily pushes the fear back down. It's a destructive cycle I'm not smart enough to break.
I slide out of bed and glance at the clock on my way to the closet. Almost midnight. I get dressed in the living room. The only sound in the apartment is the front door as it closes behind me.
**))**((**
I finish my fourth scotch. I don't bother listening to the voice in the back of my head that tells me I should have stopped at two.
"Cam, what are you doing?" Booth asks as he sits next to me at the bar. He doesn't look at me when he speaks. We've been broken since the day Brennan baked me an apple pie and told him to leave.
"You're talking to me now?" I ask. I signal the bartender for another drink but the traitor listens to the negative shake of Booth's head instead.
"Listen-" he continues.
"I'd rather not," I cut him off. My words are not as crisp as they should be, but I don't really care. "I'm not interested, Seeley."
"Cam, what are you doing?" Booth asks again. It's the simple question with the difficult answer I don't think he wants to hear. "You should be at home with--," he cuts the sentence short. "You should be at home," he finishes.
"She won't wear my ring," I say. My unexpected admission plummets onto the bar and breathes between us like a living organism.
"What?" Booth asks, confused.
"Brennan. She won't wear my ring." I pull our wedding rings out of my pocket and place them on the bar. I've been carrying them with me for the past two weeks; waiting for the moment when Brennan finally says yes to the question I suddenly can't ask. Every time I try, it gets lost somewhere between the sickening moment I realized Brennan was missing and the image of Travis Nielson's grotesque smile promising me I'd never find her.
"You asked Brennan to marry you?" Booth finally turns to look at me.
"We're already married. In San Francisco."
It's as if I just punched him in the gut. He pales with the blow. "You've been married since you came back from San Francisco?"
"It doesn't make sense," I say.
"You and Bones being married?" His exasperation is loud and angry in the quiet bar.
I should just say yes and leave it there, but the scotch, the fear and the doubt make me tell the truth. "It doesn't make sense that I love her this much. It's not..." I pause, searching for the right word. "It's not ...logical."
"It's not logical," Booth repeats slowly and I see the cost of hearing Brennan's words leave my mouth slice through what's left of our friendship.
Booth stands and closes the distance between us. His face, a mask of everything he just lost. He reaches into my jacket pocket, grabs my car keys and walks away.
**))**((**
I sit at my desk weighing painkillers in my hand like they are the last strands of DNA on planet Earth. It's been a long time since I've had a hangover and the pounding in the back of my skull is reason enough to ensure that it'll be never before it happens again.
The quick opening and loud slamming of my office door makes me wince and drop salvation onto my desk. I watch helplessly as the pills roll to the floor.
"Sorry." Brennan doesn't really look all that sorry as she walks up to me, glass of unidentified liquid in her hand. "Drink this." She shoves the glass in front of me. It looks like it wanted to be green at one point in its molecular configuration. I recoil at the smell.
"What is it?" I ask.
"If I told you, I'd have to kidnap you," she says with a self-satisfied smile. Brennan walks around the desk, pushes some paperwork out of the way and takes a seat. "Drink. You'll feel better."
Somehow over these past few months I've become this person who does everything my wife tells me. It happened in a lost moment somewhere between the first time I made her breakfast in bed and the first time she let me be smarter than her.
"Don't look so terrified. Trust me."
I shut my eyes, close my nose, and chug.
Surprisingly, Brennan's hangover remedy doesn't taste bad. "That was pretty good--" I stop talking as Brennan leaves her perch on my desk and straddles my legs. She settles on top of me slowly; the precise weight of her body, a sense memory for every nerve ending beneath my skin.
"That was just part one."
"Part one?" I ask.
"Of my personal hangover cure. This is part two," she says, a breath away from my lips. Her tongue slides into my mouth without the prelude of foreplay. Her kiss is like a flood, drowning my dry and damaged landscape.
It's been this way since I came home from the hospital; like she believes her touch can fix what the medical staff didn't even realize was broken. Today, it's too much. Her lips are too many places and my heart beats against my ribcage, desperate for a way out. Heat throbs to the beat of her hips rocking against mine. Each thrust is searing and beautiful and wrong.
My brain wants me to stop this, but its signals barely make it to the surface before being slashed down by the wet swipe of Brennan's tongue on my neck and the twinge of her fingers twisting my nipples.
Wait...
It takes me a moment to realize I only said that in my head. "Wait." I try again. My voice scratches against her lips.
"Wait." I say it louder this time. My hands press against her shoulders. Slowly, she pulls away, but her hips keep rocking against me.
"What?" Her breath is hot, moist, centimeters away from kissing me again.
"Don't you want to know?"
"Know what?" She pulls further away.
"Why I left and didn't come back last night."
Her hips slow to a stop, the respite a blessing I need, but don't want. She tilts her head to the side. Her eyes settle on the small birthmark near my collarbone, just peaking out of my shirt. The first time we spent the entire day in bed she confessed it was her favorite part of my body because nobody else new what it did to me every time she kissed it.
"You were drinking scotch. On the rocks," Brennan says, her voice softer than I've ever heard it before.
"How do you know that?" I ask. Booth telling her where I was isn't out of the question. No matter how he feels about me, he's a good man. A better man than he usually gives himself credit for being.
Brennan looks at me in silence, the analysis of the pros and cons of her next words read clearly in the slight crinkle around her eyes.
"You drink cabernet sauvignon when you're stressed like when the boss we forgot you had came to visit." She kisses the corner of my mouth.
"Ice cold Stella when you've spent the entire day ruminating on the many orgasms you plan on giving me when we get home." Her kiss becomes bold again. Deep, wet, and gone before I'm ready to let go.
"Martinis when I've hurt you," she whispers, "like when you rub your fingers against the rings in your pocket waiting for me to say yes ...and I don't." Her voice trails off in a whisper, but the silence is brief. "And scotch when you wake up afraid in the middle of the night, expecting an empty space where I should be."
I shiver at this sudden exposure. It's raw and beautifully painful. "This is not you," I say. Tears I've never let her see stir against my words. "Seeing me. This is not you."
Brennan rubs her thumbs underneath my chin, finding the spot where my tears are caught. "No, it's not," she says.
Something shifts then like refracted light on a rainy day; each raindrop an individual sketch of Brennan loving me that falls silently against my skin.
"I love you," she says. It's the first time without the camouflage of seven syllable words and scientific explanations of pheromones or the mating habits of exotic species. "It makes me..." she trails off, searching her vast vocabulary for the perfect word. "Better," she finishes simply. "Loving you makes me better."
Her words are like a rush of blood to the head. It's not a Buddhist proverb, so much as melancholy British rock. Zen never really worked for me anyway. I threw all the books out the day I was released from the hospital.
"Loving me makes you better?" I ask.
"Yes," Brennan says with a smile and a kiss that breaks the oxygen atoms in my blood before binding them back together. "Now we have to go."
"What?"
"The FBI delivered the remains we found at Rock Creek Park," she says. Brennan makes her way to the door before my body has a chance to fully cool down. "The bones are completely translucent."
"Translucent?"
"Yes, translucent," she says as she opens the door. "Do you require a definition of that word?"
**))**((**
I find almost everyone in the lab bent over the translucent bones of eighty-nine year old Samuel Felix. Booth paces just outside the group waiting for a lead that will give him someone to arrest.
"This is incredibly cool," says Hodgins.
"Dr. Hodgins, I'm certain you mean that in the most respectful way possibly," I say, stopping next to the victim.
"Absolutely," he smirks.
"Come on, Cam," Angela looks up from the remains, "you have to admit this is kind of cool. Disgusting, but cool."
"I have to agree, Dr. Saroyan," Sweets says while he looks through Mr. Felix’s translucent skull.
"I disagree," Brennan starts, "This is one of the least disgusting remains I've examined. The blood has been exsanguinated and the tissue has been removed with no immediately apparent traces of scarring on any of the bones. What is really fascinating is how the bones were able to maintain their integral structure, while concurrently succumbing to the coring process normally found with most pome fruit."
"Yes," Booth says, taking a break from pacing. "That is what's interesting about see through guy. You know what's even more interesting? Finding out who did it, so can we get to that part?"
We all pause at Booth's agitated questions. Things had gotten a little better after Brennan was found, but I see last nights confession has changed that.
There has been an uneasy truce among the team since the entire Jeffersonian realized that Booth was out and I was in. No one had to say anything. In fact, everything that remained unsaid hung from the three of us like broken chemical bonds. It only took one day for a building full of scientist to piece the story together.
Angela and Hodgins look between the three of us. They're waiting for Booth to finally call Brennan out on what they could have had. They’re waiting on me to tell Brennan we need to find another FBI Agent to work with. They're waiting on--
"No, we can't get to that," Brennan says.
At Brennan's words, Booth looks even more like this lab is the last place he wants to be. "What?" His question sounds like there's gravel lining his throat.
"You're mad at me," Brennan states the obvious.
"No, I'm not."
"Actually, Agent Booth, you display the common--"
"Shut up, Sweets." Booth doesn't bother to look at him when he speaks. Instead he keeps his focus on Brennan. "I'm not mad at you."
"I don't need to be well versed in Sweet's inadequate psychological theories to know that you are upset. You have shown obvious signs of anger toward Dr. Saroyan and myself. The earliest male hominids often displayed--"
"Bones, I'm not mad at you, okay?" Booth walks closer to Mr. Felix's translucent body. He and Brennan now stand on opposite sides of the table. "I'm mad at myself."
"Why?" Brennan asks.
Booth stares at her for so long that I begin to think he's not going to answer.
"Because I never took the chance," he says quietly. "I never took the chance and I know that I'll never get another one."
"Oh." It's the most inarticulate thing Brennan has ever said, yet somehow the most profound.
"Yeah, 'oh'" Booth says, "just let me know when you've got something." He walks out of the lab before any of us can respond.
Felix Samuel gets all of our attention once Booth leaves. He's the only safe place to look in the entire room.
"Wow," Angela finally breaks the silence.
"Yes, the bones are quite magnificent," Brennan, says awkwardly.
She knows Angela wasn't talking about the bones, but for the moment we're all happy to pretend otherwise.
**))**((**
I sit in my office trying to make a small dent in the paperwork that piled up during my convalescence. If it were up to Brennan, I'd still be in bed eating chicken soup. She made a point to tell me that she absolutely does not believe in it's healing powers, but Angela insisted she feed it to me.
"Are you ready to go?" Brennan asks as she walks in.
"Fifteen minutes," I say without looking up.
"Sure," Brennan says, right before taking her favorite seat in my entire office. She pushes my hands away from the paperwork and settles herself onto my lap. "You've done enough work today."
I lean back in my chair and smile, "That's your professional assessment?"
"No, that's my wife assessment."
It's the first time she's referred to herself as my wife. After wanting to hear them for so long, I'm not sure what to do with the words now that they've fallen into my lap.
"Give me the rings."
"What?" I ask as my heart slams into my chest.
"The rings in your pocket. Give them to me."
I am afraid to ask why because the answer might be what kills me after Travis Nielson failed. I grab the rings from my pocket; the smooth metal is warm against my fingertips as I place them in Brennan's palm.
Brennan stares at the wedding bands like their shape and color tell a significant story. She studies them with the intensity of a groundbreaking archeological find. Then she throws them into the trashcan next to my desk.
My mind fast-forwards to a terrible place where I become Booth and he becomes me. I instantly weigh the options of watching them have the happiness that should be mine or leaving and never seeing Brennan again.
"Cam," Brennan starts, but I don't want to listen. I move to push her away from me, but she turns my face toward her and gently holds it in place. "These last few months have been different from anything I've ever experienced before. They've changed me on a structural level." She pauses, "you've changed me."
Brennan lets go of my face, confident that she has my complete attention. My heart still hammers against my chest.
"I don't believe in love. I don't believe in the patriarchy of marriage. I don't believe in the merits of chicken soup as a remedy for illness." She traces my lips with her thumb, contemplating her next words. "But I love you. I'm married to you. And you ate every drop of chicken soup I put in front of you."
Brennan reaches into her pocket. What she pulls out erases all thought from my brain, all breath from my body. She holds a ring between us. All excessive adornment eliminated; a platinum band, a deceptively simple diamond.
"Will you marry me?"
All that spirits desire, spirits attain. It was my grandmother's favorite quote and she repeated it to me every Sunday after church. I realize now that I never truly believed her until this moment.
"Will I marry you?"
"Yes, will you marry me? I'd like for us to remember it this time." Brennan smiles, kisses me softly.
"So, you want an actual ceremony," I ask, disbelievingly.
"You, me, Angela, Hodgins, a justice of the peace."
"Of course you want to get married in the courthouse," I say.
"I still believe that marriage is a patriarchal system that--"
I lean forward and kiss Brennan with the love I've been trying to control for the past three months. It washes over us. Cleanses everything we were until all that's left is something new. The heat is instant like always, but different. The fear that it's all going to go away is missing. In its place sits the only thing Brennan worships. I am a fact of her life now. I can tell by the way her lips slant against mine. By the way her hands slide into my hair. By the way her body fits perfectly against me.
She pulls away slowly, "Is that a yes?"
"Yes." My answer floats between us like it's the first and last thing I'll ever have to say.
Brennan grabs my hand in hers, slips the ring on my finger, and has the decency to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
"I think you should change your name," she says.
"What?" If Brennan had asked me to graffiti the Lincoln Memorial, I’m sure I’d be less shocked.
"If I'm going to bend to society's norms, it seems appropriate that I bend all the way."
"Oh, is that why? Because of society?" I'm starting to think that secretly, underneath the analytical outlook, the genius IQ, the disbelief in anything that can't be proven by science, Dr. Temperance Brennan wants the same things we all want, but life made her too afraid to take the chance of never finding it. "Maybe you should take my name. Dr. Temperance Saroyan. It has a ring to it."
"I think Dr. Camille Brennan sounds better," she wraps her arms around my shoulders, "but I could be convinced otherwise."
"Is that so?" I lean forward, my lips a touch away from hers.
"Yes."
"Then I guess I should get to work," I say, right before my lips touch hers. Kissing Brennan is the only thing I've ever been a genius at and I plan to spend the rest of my life in a scholarly pursuit of perfection.
THE END.