He was her first in a lot of ways.
She'd never held anyone's hand in the darkness of a movie theatre, or felt lips greasy with popcorn salt slide across hers as the heroine on the screen came to some conclusion about the murdered.
She'd never snuck out before, her mind amazed by the fact that she was actually doing it even as she avoided the creak in the second stair. He'd been waiting outside, leather jacket ready to wrap around her shivering frame, his newly bare arms ready to wrap around her.
He carried her books for her when he walked her home from school, and he kissed her neck in a way that made her want to float away. His eyes were light brown and sometimes she lay with him on the grass and just looked at him, wondering why he'd picked her when there were other girls who spoke more, or read less, or were closer to his age.
She'd never really had a boyfriend before. She loved being in his room, so foreign to her own. They made out on his bed while gothic posters of bands she'd never heard of stared down at them from the walls. Sometimes he'd play his guitar, letting her hands trace his over the strings, drinking in the notes, and the rhythm, and him.
Lying awake at night, thinking about him, she realised she'd never thought about anyone like that and it scared her. Then he'd call her, as if he was reading her thoughts, and they'd whisper at each other until the moon was resting on the horizon and the filaments in the street light were dulling at the promise of dawn.
Her mind overflowed now with issues she'd never had to consider before; how to explain to her parents where she'd be Saturday night, when she was going to fit in the advanced chemistry paper that was due too soon, how she could cover up the obvious purpling marks on her neck.
On her fifteenth birthday she told her parents that she was going to have dinner with friends. He met her outside the dark schoolyard and gave her roses, and chocolates, and love bites on her shoulders and bruises on her thighs. They lay together afterwards, hands loosely clasped, eyes on the stars. He told her he loved her, that she was his life. She smiled into the dark.
Three weeks after that, he stopped showing up at her school. Her phone didn't ring at midnight anymore, and the marks on her neck faded when his lips didn't reopen the skin deep wounds.
It was the first time she'd walked to his house on her own, her feet unsteadily crossing terrain that was familiar only when he was beside her.
The front door was closed, the windows revealing an empty interior. She stayed until after dark, but no lights shone from inside.
He was gone, without a trace, or an explanation, or a goodbye. She had nothing to prove he'd been there now the marks on her skin were gone.
He was the first to leave her, the first to break her heart a little. She learnt that crying could be done most easily in the shower, that if she avoided anywhere they'd been it was easier to forget him and that, if she closed her eyes and really thought about it, she could pretend he'd never existed.
When her parents left, three months later, she cried in the shower, and she avoided the pancake house where they sometimes went on a Sunday, and the park where she'd fed ducks with her father, and the art gallery her mother had taken her to four times when they had a show themed around dolphins.
And she closed her eyes, and she tried to forget. It had worked for her the first time, slowly erasing the scent of his clothes, and the feel of his hands, and the taste of him.
The first time someone left her, she'd survived.
But the first time someone left her, it only broke a little of her heart.
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The CBPC for this month was 'feels like the first time'.
I, uh, think this kind of, a little, slightly stays within that guideline. Otherwise it's a purposeless vignette written at 2am by someone who should be asleep.
I think it goes some way to explaining why Brennan didn't go with Sully, and why she didn't ask him to say (Booth aside). She could be ready for this pain… Instead of throwing herself into something that might end up like this.
Thanks for reading.
And for those who were wondering; 'Is Fuit Sua Premoris translates to 'he was her first'. Thanks to Megan for pointing out the previous titles' discrepancy.