AN. Hi, I just want to say a few things before we start.
Firstly, I started writing this pretty much after the episode with the mac n cheese thing -I can't even remember which one it is exactly. How sad is that. Some fan I turned out to be- aired on Australian TV and have been writing it, on and off, since then when the mood takes me so, although its really set after that episode, parts of it are influenced by different stages of the series up to about the middle/end of Season 5. Just FYI.
Secondly, this is the first story I've posted that I wrote on my own and is actually serious. I put a lot of my own issues into stories as a sort of coping mechanism so I haven't really wanted to post them-much to the disappointment of my friends who also want to read them. I wont let them either. But today in a rare moment of courage-or it could have more to do with the other stuff in my life at the moment is so ...ick... that I feel like taking a chance on this one.
So the reason I'm telling you this... I don't really know, I guess I'm just asking you not to judge too harshly and please review if you liked it. Reviews brighten up my days.
Oh and thirdly, I do not own these characters, how they think, or their issues. I may sympathise with them but I don't own them.
Sorry, that was a bit long winded - I'm just like that - but now on to the real reason you're here...
Please, Happy Reading!
Dr Temperance Brennan looked over at her partner, Booth. They'd been working together for the past two years now and she thought she was beginning to understand him. Then he would do something like this. I mean who'd have thought he'd be the person who could get her to enjoy cooking. It was nothing special, just mac and cheese but she had felt different making it. Cooking tonight had not just been a mechanical process of converting pieces of matter in to warmer, more desirable foodstuffs. It had been something else, some chemical reaction had occurred in her neural pathways that hadn't occurred before… well at least not while she was cooking.
"Bones, woo-hoo Bones you in there?" Brennan blinked shaking her head. Oops. She must have got too caught up in her thinking again. Booth was busy waving his hand in front of her face.
"Sorry Booth," she said choosing to ignore his question about whether she was 'in there': in where? "I was just thinking about cooking."
Booth raised his eyebrows, "The mighty Dr Temperance Brennan was 'just thinking about cooking'? Impossible. What would your squints think if they knew their fearless leader thought about something like cooking?" He laughed.
"Even if my intelligence is superior to the majority of people in this country, it might surprise you to know that even I, on occasion, devote time to thinking about 'normal' things like cooking." She replied, mock insulted.
He decided to leave it at that, the way she'd put vocal quotation marks around the word 'normal' seemed to indicate he'd unintentionally hit a nerve. Bones was an intelligent scientist, a magnificent anthropologist, a great author, and if she wasn't his partner he'd say she was one very hot woman, but she'd had some tough times. And on top of that, as brilliant as she was, she chose to run from the things that hurt her. She didn't speak about her past if she could help it and he accepted that. Mostly.
Booth just tried to be as helpful as he could; they were friends after all, as well as partners. He just couldn't be too obvious about it. If he was, that might bring them way too close to the line they fought so hard to maintain. Not that he'd really mind crossing the line, it was just he didn't want to see her hurt again, or for that matter to ruin the friendship they already had.
"Oh really? Well I've been told then." He stuck with teasing sarcasm and yet still admitting defeat.
Brennan looked up from the salad she was forking onto her plate. "Booth, is something wrong?" she asked, not sure if she was imaging it or if the last thing he'd said had not been quite right.
Damn! He thought. How could she have seen through me so easily?
Then, this is Bones we're talking about of course she could tell. Bones had a knack for telling when he was lying to her. Unfortunately.
She was sure it had not been her imagination. Something was up with Booth, which lead to the question what had she said? It couldn't have been anything else really as it was so sudden a change. All they'd been doing for the time previously was talking and eating. What had she just said, before he went funny? Oh, they'd been teasing each other and she'd pretended to be insulted. She did that a lot and there was nothing wrong with that, except she might have gone a bit far. Booth was the people person. He got the confessions; could always read things in what people said that she couldn't even detect. If there had been the slightest inflection in her language he would have heard it.
She hadn't intended to put any emphasis on 'normal' but it was almost impossible not to. All those years of people around her thinking- and not even trying to hide that they were thinking-that she was far from normal had had their effect. Even now she caught herself wondering sometimes if her friends still thought of her like that and were just better at hiding it. Logically she knew that was irrational and had absolutely no grounds. You couldn't really believe Hodgins or Zach would have any idea of what 'normal' was let alone blame her for not being it. Angela was closer to 'normal' but then again she was considering marrying Hodgins so Brennan thought she was pretty safe on that count. She ticked her friends of on her fingers as she thought- mentally ticked of course.
The person it turned out, as she followed that line of thought, that she was most afraid of thinking she was not normal was the person who was sitting right next to her. Booth. She had to accept it, despite the fact the idea of normality was relative and the need to have others accept her as fitting an undefinable stereotype was irrational. She needed Booth. She relied on him and at that moment wanted more than anything else to know for certain that he at least accepted her for what she was.
It was childish. She wasn't an awkward little girl anymore; having to justify everyone leaving or ignoring her with rationality or science. She was a mature adult, acclaimed author and anthropologist. She didn't need Booth, or anyone else for that matter, to tell her how great she was. So act like it, she thought, though even as she thought it she recognised how hard that was really going to be.
He wasn't going to say anything. He was going to deny there being anything wrong and just move on as usual. Then he saw her face. Just for a second, she looked like she was going to break down and cry. Then as quickly as it came it was replaced by her usual 'concerned' face. But that moment changed his mind Bones, his Bones needed him. Line or no line.
"Bones…" he said softly putting down his fork "Do you want to tell me what's wrong?"
That was it. That small, innocent sentence managed, in one fell swoop, to bring her so carefully and well built defences tumbling down like a tonne of bricks. She hated it, the way he could always read her, always knew what buttons to press and most of all she hated the way he got her to feel. She had been perfectly fine before he came along, happily compartmentalising everything and just getting on with her life but with his increased presence it seemed as though her world was repeatedly being shifted off balance. Sometimes she thought that might be a good thing.
Tonight, as it turned out, was not one of those times. She just wasn't up to it. It had been a long few days, with the case and all, she hadn't been sleeping as much as she should have been. As a result she was tired. Too tired to have complete control over her emotions. Which was why his caring, open question about her well being just when she was thinking about one of her deeper fears which just so happened to also concern him was the simple catalyst; it opened the flood gate- well, metaphorically speaking. She was going to break down and cry any second now. She had to leave, to run away before she did something or said something she'd regret later.
Without a word, though not quickly enough that Booth didn't manage to see the tears starting to fall, Brennan pushed away from the table and grabbing her bag half ran from the apartment, not remembering or perhaps just not caring that it was her own apartment she was fleeing.
It took him the barest fraction of a second to react, "Bones…!" he called out as he too rose from the table but it was too late. Even as he said it he knew it wouldn't be enough. She was gone. Into the elevator and away, he really didn't have a chance now in finding her. Especially, if she didn't want to be found.
But wait, he didn't have to find her. He could let her have her space and wait for her to think through whatever was bothering her and then she'd come home. To her apartment. Her apartment, in which he was now standing. All he had to do was stay here. Then talk to her when she got back, hopefully feeling better and less inclined to the flight part of her defence reflexes. He hoped she'd be alright though. She hadn't taken her coat and the weather was turning a bit colder at nights now.
Brennan ran. She didn't notice where she was running. She didn't notice the people who stared as she passed. She didn't notice the tears still streaming freely down her cheeks. She just ran. She ran, just as she always had, from fears, from friends if they got too close and most importantly, feelings. She ran to leave it all behind, trying in the physical act of running to enable her mind to do the same.
It was all in vain. Very soon she had to stop. She wasn't exactly dressed for running as it was and there was only so long she could distract her mind from its vicious circle. Her treacherous thoughts returned to the problem at hand. The reason why she had run crying from her own apartment probably leaving a very stunned Booth in her living room. Oh God, Booth. Never-mind what he'd thought of her before, she'd practically signed her own death warrant. Tonight would surely be the straw that caused him to re-evaluate their friendship and dismiss her like everyone else she'd ever been close to.
She felt suddenly faint and, reaching out to a nearby tree, slowly sunk down to the pavement, still clinging to the tree as if it were her lifeline in the raging storm fuelled sea that was her mind. This was it. This was why she could never form a concrete relationship, never let anyone in past her defences. Because she was too damn insecure. It was a horrid loop going round and round in her head; tearing away at her sanity. Did her parents leave because they knew she was already abnormal and insecure? Did Russ? Did this cause her to have the problems connecting with people today? Or did they leave for other reasons? Is she more flawed than she'd originally thought? In thinking that does that just confirm her initial fears?
So many times she'd asked herself those questions as a teen. But not for so many years. Or at least not often. Not until he had forced his way into her life, her work, her heart. She wanted to hate him for the way he made her face things; forced her not to run and hide from society, from everything. Line or no line, the way Booth made her feel...she hated it. It made her want to run and hide, even in the relative safety of solitude but that, she was finding, increasingly to be no longer possible.
She wanted his company. No, she craved it. When he wasn't by her side she missed him, missed the now familiar, solid, and dependable presence. Even if it was just for a few hours while she was working in the lab and he at the Hoover building doing normal FBI things, his absence nagged at her. She would probably go so far as to say it was in danger of becoming distracting. Outside of just his physical presence she found she even relied on him to accept her for who she was and like her for it. It was pathetic, she thought, how much she had let her life get tangled with his. How much she actually needed him.
And the worst part was, she didn't really know how he felt about her. Well, evidently, he didn't mind her; they'd worked together for over two years and were clearly friends, at least so she supposed. All the evidence pointed towards it–he showed up at her house at all hours bearing food when he knew she was working on a case through the night; she had cooked, actually invited him to her home and cooked, for him; he'd been there when she'd needed it and she was there for him–but would he be like everyone else? Would he eventually reach a point where she became to much for him?
That she thought, at this point, might be the end of her. She didn't know how many more times she could take people she cared for leaving. And she did care for Booth, not that she'd ever admit it, but she did and deeply. That was why he had managed to provoke such an emotional reaction from her tonight, why he always managed to open doors in her mind and heart which she'd thought well sealed off or awaken any insecurities she'd thought well buried. Insecurities that in existing caused themselves to exist and had probably also caused themselves to be grounded in facts.
It was all very confusing as she sat alone, crying and cold on a sidewalk in DC in Autumn, clinging to her tree. However even in this dismal state of three things she was certain; firstly, she was a mess, emotionally and physically; secondly, she would soon have to begin the slow, weary walk back the way she had come and return to her apartment; and thirdly, at some point she would have to face Booth and give him some sort of explanation for her behaviour tonight. Hopefully, enough time had passed that he would no longer be waiting in her dining room, or anywhere else in her apartment for that matter. She still didn't think she could face him without tears tonight–an eventuality she would like very much to avoid–and also she could really use the extra time to work out what exactly she was going to tell him.
Brennan sighed, wiped away the last stray tears and using her tree for support laboriously dragged herself to her feet. How had such an enjoyable evening after a hard case turn into such a mess? Well, she could tell. In a word, feelings. That was how. They could make a mess of everything in life if you let them. Sighing again she looked around to get her bearings, she really had run a fair way. Then squaring her shoulders, she turned–finally setting off towards home and whatever fate was awaiting her there.
Booth felt it had taken all of his self control to wait patiently in her apartment for her to return. However, when Temperance Brennan walked through her front door almost an hour and a half after she'd left, looking like she death warmed up, he suddenly found that the amount of control he'd had to employ previously was nothing compared to the level he needed now not to rush forward, take her in his arms and tell her over an over that everything would work out. Whatever it was it would be fine. They would work it through. Together.
Instead, like with a startled gazelle he had to have the strength to be still and patiently for her to come to him on her own. Only then could he begin to be helpful if she would let him.
Well, that was it. I hope you thought it was ok. If you would even go so far as to say you might have liked it. Please review. Press that little hyperlink and tell me what you thought.
I don't know if I'll continue or if this'll just be a oneshot. It'll depend mostly on how many reviews I get and if by some divine intervention I am inspired.
Well, ttfn.
...Don't forget to Review...!