The Stasis of Benches
Title: The Stasis of Benches
Author: Stablergirl
Fandom: Bones
Characters: Booth, Brennan
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Genre: UST, Romance, Inner-monologue
Rating: E for Everyone
Prompt: 03. a park bench @ story_lottery
Summary: Booth and Brennan have a cryptic conversation while stuck in traffic.
Spoilers: Vague spoilers for Season 4.
Warnings: Just the usual warnings for these two - frustration, mostly.
Word Count: 2,245 (according to Mic. Word)
Disclaimer: Bones does not belong to me in any way, shape, or form. And because of that, I promise to do dirty things with it later. Not now, but soon.
A/N: This is my maiden Bones voyage. Never before charted territory for me, so I'm sorry if it's not quite up to par. I figured a story lottery was as good an opportunity as any to broaden my fandom horizons. Unbeta'd, so let me know what you think!
She had a dream of them sitting together, holding coffee cups in wrinkled hands with aching joints, taking slow deep breaths in unison.
It was a strange kind of scene. It was the kind of thing she never planned on imagining, something set aside for other kinds of people, and it had stayed with her since she dreamed it and it had haunted a back corner of her brain with pulsing curiosity - with symbolism heavy and weighted and infinite.
She is not romantic, but she understands poetry well enough. While she has never been an expert on metaphor or simile by any means, and while she has been known to be primarily literal, the fact of the matter is that in order to succeed as an anthropologist a basic understanding of symbols and hidden meaning is undeniably necessary. That fact, combined with her comprehension of human emotion which has been growing consistently stronger, turned this dream of hers and the stillness she had felt beside him in that dream, into something that’s caused her to pause, to tilt her head, to glance at herself a second time in every mirror.
She finds herself wondering.
And, needless to say, wonder is not something Temperance Brennan is used to.
A few months ago she might have taken this issue to Doctor Sweets or to Angela. She may have explained to them that it was foolish to read too much into it, but that it had been bothering her, and she might have relied on them to inform her of the best course of action, the best way to purge herself of this recurring imagery. She might have asked them what to do, how to get rid of it.
But that was a few months ago, and things are no longer the same…
She doesn’t know why.
She’s in the passenger seat of the SUV and they’re stuck in traffic with the AM radio mumbling in the background and the rush hour dusk covering the atmosphere like mist. Most of her time on this seemingly endless car ride has been spent staring out the window at nothing much at all, considering things quietly.
She’s been practicing her understanding of emotions diligently, honing her skills of empathy and expression, learning from her friends and colleagues, and in conjunction she’s started to think of him too often, she’s noticed, or at least more often than before. Whether it’s because of her attempts to study him, to read him, to learn from him, or because she buried him once, or because she sat in waiting rooms for him, or because she clasped her hands tightly and sat beside him while machines beeped and codes were called for the patient next door, it doesn’t seem to matter much, in her opinion.
It matters more the act of her thinking about him.
The wondering about him and the sporadic dreaming of him matter more and she doesn’t know why.
She’s confused.
Again, something she is unaccustomed to feeling.
She stares out the window and she frowns at the scenery creeping past them.
“Will you shut up over there?” he grumbles suddenly and it startles her out of her circular inner monologue.
“I haven’t said anything,” she counters, swinging her head to look at him and pursing her lips in defense. He heaves a heavy sigh and looks out the window to his left, away from her, his fingers swiping against his lips in irritation.
“Yeah, well, you’re thinking…loudly,” he responds, his mouth spreading wide on the diphthong in loud, and she is nervous - inexplicably.
She is illogically feeling caught by him.
Her thoughts do seem loud, but she has no idea how he could quantify such a thing, or how he could know such a thing when there are armrests and consoles and gear shifts between them. She fiddles with the jewelry at her wrist and glances down at her lap in concern.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she informs him finally. “A person cannot think loudly - thinking doesn’t produce sound waves.”
He shifts in the driver’s seat, annoyed, and he shakes his head at the red light seven cars in front of them. Usually, she knows, he tries to avoid streets with heavy traffic because of his impatience and general dislike of monotony, but the case they’d been working on hadn’t given them a choice and sitting here for almost an hour has soured his mood. She can tell, because of the practicing that she’s been doing, that it has soured his mood.
“You know,” she hedges, “There’s nothing you can do about the traffic, so reacting emotionally to it defies logic.”
This, she realizes belatedly, was the wrong thing to say.
He turns on her quickly, shooting her a glare. “It’s like compulsive with you, right? You can’t help it or something that you have to explain to me that I’m being illogical even though I don’t care? Because sometimes I’d like to just be allowed to say something even though it” he makes quotation marks in the air and her eyes follow the movement skittishly, “defies logic and doesn’t make sense.”
It’s an argument they’ve had a million times before, she notes silently, it seems foolish to discuss it again. His tone as he had said it seemed to hint that he realized his own foolishness in some tucked away corner of his mind, though, so she remains quiet and chooses not to respond. This is, like empathy, something she’s been practicing.
His jaw clenches and the muscles beneath his skin move, tighten, release, entrance her momentarily because his jaw line is so unequivocally masculine and square and at times she is transfixed by it. She is also at times transfixed by the straight line of his shoulders, by the height of him, by his smell - which she knows was designed biologically to attract and seems to do its job well…
She’s started to think of him too often.
It seems girlish.
She feels ashamed by it which only serves to confuse her further because she has never been ashamed of her biological attraction to him or any other male, in the past. She has never had the stain of embarrassment or puritanical guilt. So to have it now, or at least to have some hesitance or second thought, seems strange.
She looks away and out the window at nothing.
He clears his throat. She ignores it.
“Bones,” he prompts and she doesn’t respond. She is practicing. “What’s going on over there? You’re like a 120 watt bulb of brain juice and I’m starting to get worried you’ll spontaneously combust.”
Sometimes she hates his talents of observation and instinct.
She resists the urge to explain neuron synapse to him and disabuse him of the notion that juice has anything to do with it, which is to say nothing of her urge to explain the scientific unlikelihood of spontaneous human combustion.
The car moves another two inches forward and the tiny motion brings relief even though the light has turned green and still nobody can go anywhere. The metal around her wrist clinks lightly, syncopated against the rhythm of the drone of the talk radio DJ.
She shrugs because she’s seen him do that before when he’d rather not respond.
“Traffic sucks,” he exhales, apparently accepting her shrug as answer - possibly something he learned from her. “Come on,” he urges the cars ahead of them, a pointless plea considering the sheer number of brake lights lit up in every single lane. He honks the car horn at nobody in particular. “Let’s go already, huh?”
“Maybe there’s been a car accident,” she suggests.
“Maybe,” he agrees, and he reaches out to fiddle with the radio as if it will explain things to him. They missed the traffic report, though, because of his outburst earlier, and once he realizes this he flicks the radio off completely in frustration.
They are left with echoing silence.
She is reminded of everything she’d managed, for a moment, to forget.
They breathe in, both of them, and she seems to hear his voice in her head explain that it’s like ripping off a band-aid - confessing, saying something, blurting something out - and so when they both breathe out she is restless and her confession tumbles from her mouth with the air.
“I had a dream that we were sitting on a park bench.”
The silence returns.
When she hazards a look in his direction he’s offering her a facial expression that she seems to recall is meant to be an accusation of insanity, and so she feels she should explain further, despite her overwhelming awkwardness and insecurity on this particular subject. He has a tendency to ease her worries more successfully than almost anybody else, so she figures she should forge ahead.
“It was…strange,” she expands.
“It sounds strange,” he agrees.
“It was,” she repeats.
Silence stretches and they breathe in unison.
“We were old,” she says, “and drinking coffee.”
He nods his head at the brake lights and pushes a bit at his rolled up shirtsleeves. “On a park bench, huh? Did we eat a box of chocolates?” he asks and she frowns, searching her mind for what he could be referencing.
“No,” she states, “I just told you we were drinking coffee,” and he chuckles and she feels her feathers ruffle a bit in irritation. But again it is an old fight and she bites her tongue instead of scolding him.
“It’s from Forest Gump, Bones.”
There is silence as she tries to figure out what he means quickly so that she will avoid looking foolish.
He stares at her, bewildered, and expands: “The movie, starring the critically acclaimed and award winning actor Tom Hanks?”
She hazily recalls something and her eyes light up with it, “From Tootsie!” she guesses and Booth continues to pin her with his incredulous stare.
“No,” he answers adamantly. “No, not from Tootsie from Forest…from Sleepless in...you know what? Forget it, Bones,” he dismisses. She does, almost instantly, and this is inherently her pop-culture downfall. “So that’s what you’ve been thinking about? A park bench?” he asks, his tone innocent and straight-forward, curious.
She chews on her bottom lip and wonders when the traffic will move again.
“Yes.”
The simplest of answers for such a complicated issue.
Why so much thinking about this, she wonders? Why has she been dreaming of this?
The simplest of answers makes her extremely uneasy.
She should’ve talked to Angela.
“You know, If I were going to conk someone over the head with something,” he non-sequitors, and she blinks at the dashboard, “I would never choose a hammer.” He’s referencing their earlier case, possibly in an attempt to ease her discomfort, and a very present part of her mind appreciates that for exactly what it is.
“It does seem like an illogical…” her voice catches on the word he had mocked earlier and she rephrases, “It seems messy,” she states simply.
“Stupid,” he adds, “He had a whole tool shed there to pick from and the guy picks a hammer. People should start to consider making it a little easier on the poor schmucks who have to clean up their mess when they murder somebody, you know? Just…like…a shovel,” he proclaims, “Bam, you’re done. One swing.”
She nods.
“Or everybody should just use poison or something. That would make everything a lot easier. Although I guess there’s nothing ‘crime of passion’ about poison so the insanity plea goes right out the window if you do that…”
“I think,” she interrupts uncontrollably and he goes suddenly motionless, quiet, waiting as she pushes at her bracelets and frowns at her shoes, “I think, in my dream?” she clarifies. She sees him look at her out of the corner of her eye and, simultaneously brave and not brave at all, she goes on, “I think I didn’t want to do anything else.”
He breathes beside her and she tries to ignore it.
He’s simple and just himself beside her and she tries to ignore it, consistently, but she seems to be failing.
“It was so calm,” she confesses. “And I could feel you there and we didn’t say anything, we just…”
“Drank coffee?” he asks, hushed, heavy like she feels.
She looks over at him and nods her head.
“Yes.”
The simplest of answers…
“I didn’t want to do anything else, I just wanted to sit there forever,” she tells him.
He blinks at her and gets that look - that look that she hasn’t figured out yet, but that makes her pulse speed up and makes her mind go silent. The air is thin in her lungs and she’s feeling caught by him, and she thinks of burying him, and she feels sad…or…
She feels something.
“I would sit with you forever on a park bench, too, Bones,” he whispers to her and there’s water in her eyes because of it.
And just like that, in moments, in seconds, he’s made her feel better like she knew he would and the traffic doesn’t seem so bad, suddenly. She turns and looks at the window and she sees her own reflection, and the shadow of him in the driver’s seat behind her, and she knows that once she looks away she’ll have to look back again a second time to be sure he’s still there.
She buried him once.
She sat in waiting rooms.
She clasped her hands tightly and sat beside him while machines beeped and codes were called for the patient next door.
And she doesn't know why, but she’s been thinking of him more often than before.
The traffic light ahead of them turns green and she watches, waiting, as the rows and rows of cars almost…almost…begin to move…
::end::
Author: Stablergirl
Fandom: Bones
Characters: Booth, Brennan
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Genre: UST, Romance, Inner-monologue
Rating: E for Everyone
Prompt: 03. a park bench @ story_lottery
Summary: Booth and Brennan have a cryptic conversation while stuck in traffic.
Spoilers: Vague spoilers for Season 4.
Warnings: Just the usual warnings for these two - frustration, mostly.
Word Count: 2,245 (according to Mic. Word)
Disclaimer: Bones does not belong to me in any way, shape, or form. And because of that, I promise to do dirty things with it later. Not now, but soon.
A/N: This is my maiden Bones voyage. Never before charted territory for me, so I'm sorry if it's not quite up to par. I figured a story lottery was as good an opportunity as any to broaden my fandom horizons. Unbeta'd, so let me know what you think!
She had a dream of them sitting together, holding coffee cups in wrinkled hands with aching joints, taking slow deep breaths in unison.
It was a strange kind of scene. It was the kind of thing she never planned on imagining, something set aside for other kinds of people, and it had stayed with her since she dreamed it and it had haunted a back corner of her brain with pulsing curiosity - with symbolism heavy and weighted and infinite.
She is not romantic, but she understands poetry well enough. While she has never been an expert on metaphor or simile by any means, and while she has been known to be primarily literal, the fact of the matter is that in order to succeed as an anthropologist a basic understanding of symbols and hidden meaning is undeniably necessary. That fact, combined with her comprehension of human emotion which has been growing consistently stronger, turned this dream of hers and the stillness she had felt beside him in that dream, into something that’s caused her to pause, to tilt her head, to glance at herself a second time in every mirror.
She finds herself wondering.
And, needless to say, wonder is not something Temperance Brennan is used to.
A few months ago she might have taken this issue to Doctor Sweets or to Angela. She may have explained to them that it was foolish to read too much into it, but that it had been bothering her, and she might have relied on them to inform her of the best course of action, the best way to purge herself of this recurring imagery. She might have asked them what to do, how to get rid of it.
But that was a few months ago, and things are no longer the same…
She doesn’t know why.
She’s in the passenger seat of the SUV and they’re stuck in traffic with the AM radio mumbling in the background and the rush hour dusk covering the atmosphere like mist. Most of her time on this seemingly endless car ride has been spent staring out the window at nothing much at all, considering things quietly.
She’s been practicing her understanding of emotions diligently, honing her skills of empathy and expression, learning from her friends and colleagues, and in conjunction she’s started to think of him too often, she’s noticed, or at least more often than before. Whether it’s because of her attempts to study him, to read him, to learn from him, or because she buried him once, or because she sat in waiting rooms for him, or because she clasped her hands tightly and sat beside him while machines beeped and codes were called for the patient next door, it doesn’t seem to matter much, in her opinion.
It matters more the act of her thinking about him.
The wondering about him and the sporadic dreaming of him matter more and she doesn’t know why.
She’s confused.
Again, something she is unaccustomed to feeling.
She stares out the window and she frowns at the scenery creeping past them.
“Will you shut up over there?” he grumbles suddenly and it startles her out of her circular inner monologue.
“I haven’t said anything,” she counters, swinging her head to look at him and pursing her lips in defense. He heaves a heavy sigh and looks out the window to his left, away from her, his fingers swiping against his lips in irritation.
“Yeah, well, you’re thinking…loudly,” he responds, his mouth spreading wide on the diphthong in loud, and she is nervous - inexplicably.
She is illogically feeling caught by him.
Her thoughts do seem loud, but she has no idea how he could quantify such a thing, or how he could know such a thing when there are armrests and consoles and gear shifts between them. She fiddles with the jewelry at her wrist and glances down at her lap in concern.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she informs him finally. “A person cannot think loudly - thinking doesn’t produce sound waves.”
He shifts in the driver’s seat, annoyed, and he shakes his head at the red light seven cars in front of them. Usually, she knows, he tries to avoid streets with heavy traffic because of his impatience and general dislike of monotony, but the case they’d been working on hadn’t given them a choice and sitting here for almost an hour has soured his mood. She can tell, because of the practicing that she’s been doing, that it has soured his mood.
“You know,” she hedges, “There’s nothing you can do about the traffic, so reacting emotionally to it defies logic.”
This, she realizes belatedly, was the wrong thing to say.
He turns on her quickly, shooting her a glare. “It’s like compulsive with you, right? You can’t help it or something that you have to explain to me that I’m being illogical even though I don’t care? Because sometimes I’d like to just be allowed to say something even though it” he makes quotation marks in the air and her eyes follow the movement skittishly, “defies logic and doesn’t make sense.”
It’s an argument they’ve had a million times before, she notes silently, it seems foolish to discuss it again. His tone as he had said it seemed to hint that he realized his own foolishness in some tucked away corner of his mind, though, so she remains quiet and chooses not to respond. This is, like empathy, something she’s been practicing.
His jaw clenches and the muscles beneath his skin move, tighten, release, entrance her momentarily because his jaw line is so unequivocally masculine and square and at times she is transfixed by it. She is also at times transfixed by the straight line of his shoulders, by the height of him, by his smell - which she knows was designed biologically to attract and seems to do its job well…
She’s started to think of him too often.
It seems girlish.
She feels ashamed by it which only serves to confuse her further because she has never been ashamed of her biological attraction to him or any other male, in the past. She has never had the stain of embarrassment or puritanical guilt. So to have it now, or at least to have some hesitance or second thought, seems strange.
She looks away and out the window at nothing.
He clears his throat. She ignores it.
“Bones,” he prompts and she doesn’t respond. She is practicing. “What’s going on over there? You’re like a 120 watt bulb of brain juice and I’m starting to get worried you’ll spontaneously combust.”
Sometimes she hates his talents of observation and instinct.
She resists the urge to explain neuron synapse to him and disabuse him of the notion that juice has anything to do with it, which is to say nothing of her urge to explain the scientific unlikelihood of spontaneous human combustion.
The car moves another two inches forward and the tiny motion brings relief even though the light has turned green and still nobody can go anywhere. The metal around her wrist clinks lightly, syncopated against the rhythm of the drone of the talk radio DJ.
She shrugs because she’s seen him do that before when he’d rather not respond.
“Traffic sucks,” he exhales, apparently accepting her shrug as answer - possibly something he learned from her. “Come on,” he urges the cars ahead of them, a pointless plea considering the sheer number of brake lights lit up in every single lane. He honks the car horn at nobody in particular. “Let’s go already, huh?”
“Maybe there’s been a car accident,” she suggests.
“Maybe,” he agrees, and he reaches out to fiddle with the radio as if it will explain things to him. They missed the traffic report, though, because of his outburst earlier, and once he realizes this he flicks the radio off completely in frustration.
They are left with echoing silence.
She is reminded of everything she’d managed, for a moment, to forget.
They breathe in, both of them, and she seems to hear his voice in her head explain that it’s like ripping off a band-aid - confessing, saying something, blurting something out - and so when they both breathe out she is restless and her confession tumbles from her mouth with the air.
“I had a dream that we were sitting on a park bench.”
The silence returns.
When she hazards a look in his direction he’s offering her a facial expression that she seems to recall is meant to be an accusation of insanity, and so she feels she should explain further, despite her overwhelming awkwardness and insecurity on this particular subject. He has a tendency to ease her worries more successfully than almost anybody else, so she figures she should forge ahead.
“It was…strange,” she expands.
“It sounds strange,” he agrees.
“It was,” she repeats.
Silence stretches and they breathe in unison.
“We were old,” she says, “and drinking coffee.”
He nods his head at the brake lights and pushes a bit at his rolled up shirtsleeves. “On a park bench, huh? Did we eat a box of chocolates?” he asks and she frowns, searching her mind for what he could be referencing.
“No,” she states, “I just told you we were drinking coffee,” and he chuckles and she feels her feathers ruffle a bit in irritation. But again it is an old fight and she bites her tongue instead of scolding him.
“It’s from Forest Gump, Bones.”
There is silence as she tries to figure out what he means quickly so that she will avoid looking foolish.
He stares at her, bewildered, and expands: “The movie, starring the critically acclaimed and award winning actor Tom Hanks?”
She hazily recalls something and her eyes light up with it, “From Tootsie!” she guesses and Booth continues to pin her with his incredulous stare.
“No,” he answers adamantly. “No, not from Tootsie from Forest…from Sleepless in...you know what? Forget it, Bones,” he dismisses. She does, almost instantly, and this is inherently her pop-culture downfall. “So that’s what you’ve been thinking about? A park bench?” he asks, his tone innocent and straight-forward, curious.
She chews on her bottom lip and wonders when the traffic will move again.
“Yes.”
The simplest of answers for such a complicated issue.
Why so much thinking about this, she wonders? Why has she been dreaming of this?
The simplest of answers makes her extremely uneasy.
She should’ve talked to Angela.
“You know, If I were going to conk someone over the head with something,” he non-sequitors, and she blinks at the dashboard, “I would never choose a hammer.” He’s referencing their earlier case, possibly in an attempt to ease her discomfort, and a very present part of her mind appreciates that for exactly what it is.
“It does seem like an illogical…” her voice catches on the word he had mocked earlier and she rephrases, “It seems messy,” she states simply.
“Stupid,” he adds, “He had a whole tool shed there to pick from and the guy picks a hammer. People should start to consider making it a little easier on the poor schmucks who have to clean up their mess when they murder somebody, you know? Just…like…a shovel,” he proclaims, “Bam, you’re done. One swing.”
She nods.
“Or everybody should just use poison or something. That would make everything a lot easier. Although I guess there’s nothing ‘crime of passion’ about poison so the insanity plea goes right out the window if you do that…”
“I think,” she interrupts uncontrollably and he goes suddenly motionless, quiet, waiting as she pushes at her bracelets and frowns at her shoes, “I think, in my dream?” she clarifies. She sees him look at her out of the corner of her eye and, simultaneously brave and not brave at all, she goes on, “I think I didn’t want to do anything else.”
He breathes beside her and she tries to ignore it.
He’s simple and just himself beside her and she tries to ignore it, consistently, but she seems to be failing.
“It was so calm,” she confesses. “And I could feel you there and we didn’t say anything, we just…”
“Drank coffee?” he asks, hushed, heavy like she feels.
She looks over at him and nods her head.
“Yes.”
The simplest of answers…
“I didn’t want to do anything else, I just wanted to sit there forever,” she tells him.
He blinks at her and gets that look - that look that she hasn’t figured out yet, but that makes her pulse speed up and makes her mind go silent. The air is thin in her lungs and she’s feeling caught by him, and she thinks of burying him, and she feels sad…or…
She feels something.
“I would sit with you forever on a park bench, too, Bones,” he whispers to her and there’s water in her eyes because of it.
And just like that, in moments, in seconds, he’s made her feel better like she knew he would and the traffic doesn’t seem so bad, suddenly. She turns and looks at the window and she sees her own reflection, and the shadow of him in the driver’s seat behind her, and she knows that once she looks away she’ll have to look back again a second time to be sure he’s still there.
She buried him once.
She sat in waiting rooms.
She clasped her hands tightly and sat beside him while machines beeped and codes were called for the patient next door.
And she doesn't know why, but she’s been thinking of him more often than before.
The traffic light ahead of them turns green and she watches, waiting, as the rows and rows of cars almost…almost…begin to move…
::end::