Summary:
The silence of Temperance Brennan, Seeley Booth knew from experience, hit with the force of a Category 5 hurricane. Missing scene from Con Man in the Meth Lab. Many people did Brennan's point of view, so I thought I'd do Booth's. One-shot. Just for fun, albeit angsty fun. Enjoy!
Author's Note: One of those little things that bugged me for a while, rather persistently. Kind of angsty, but the episode deserved it.
Disclaimer: Wish they were mine.
God Keeps Us Guessing
The silence of Temperance Brennan, Seeley Booth knew from experience, hit with the force of a Category 5 hurricane. Hell, one would have to invent a whole new category – no, a whole new scale - to describe the impact.
She'd kept silent about what had happened during those two weeks after he'd got shot. Her silence burst levees, uprooted carefully-nurtured seedlings of hope, left whole swathes of devastation inside him. The perfect storm.
But now...
Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good... right, buddy? Just holding on is gonna be difficult enough.
Seeley Booth did not see himself as an introspective man. Instead, he liked to think of himself as a man of action, moving swiftly and decisively towards a solution for any problem. Right now, the problem was that she'd been shot while they'd become involved in the world's most inept attempt at hostage-taking ever. One he'd put an end to soon enough, but not before that bastard had managed to blow a hole in her arm.
He'd been having trouble doing the simplest things since their argument. He'd had to remind himself to breathe, to talk, to walk, to drive. Hell, to shoot, even, since it had taken him several attempts to take down the sheriff. Now, he was just waiting for her to emerge from the room where the doctor had taken her in order to tend to the wound. And he hated waiting.
What are they doing in there?
A man of action isn't supposed to sit around twiddling his thumbs, is he? It briefly occurred to him that Sweets would have probably told him that his past as a sniper also had something to do with it - waiting endlessly for the perfect shot meant to end a life. He quashed that thought quickly, but this had the unfortunate effect of prompting his mind to return to the argument they'd had earlier.
The silence of Temperance Brennan had, once again, been a true force of nature, breaking down his defenses with roaring winds, with thunder and lightning. God's birthday present – well-deserved, perhaps, yet no less destructive.
Last time, only a few months ago, all he could do was hold on to her, so that they wouldn't be swept away with the debris. OK, maybe that smacked of desperation – just a little. He preferred to think of it as the sheer determination of a man of action, a man who knew what he wanted, a man who understood. The busy bee has no time for sorrow, and that's what Brennan had done, right? She'd probably drowned himself in work, trying to forget about what had happened to him. Right? Right. That, at least, was his best guess.
Friends. Partners. Just friends. Just partners.
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, turning the words in his mind, wondering whether they still described them in any meaningful way. Bones had been spouting a lot of second-hand knowledge at him – first from Jared (he made a mental note that he'd have to deal with that later) and then from her beloved anthropological books. The collected wisdom of anyone but herself. Three years and a half later, and Temperance Brennan was as elusive to him as she had been the day when they first met.
The calm after the storm, he thought. It left you breathless, barely hanging on, waiting for the next hit. It suddenly struck him that he was apprehensive about her coming out of that room. What would she say to him? What other anthropological insight would she insist on sharing? Would she say, in that blunt, matter-of-fact tone of hers, "You killed another man today, Booth"? Or maybe "You should've let me carry my own gun". Or even "I don't want to come out into the field with you any more – you're clearly unable to protect both of us".
God keeps us guessing. And I've been guessing very hard, Bones. But I don't know, I just... don't know any more.
The rhythmic sound of heels approaching him pulled him out of his reverie. He raised his head to see her advance towards him, her usual determined stride only slightly impaired by having to tilt her hips in order to compensate for being unable to balance herself properly with her right an arm in a sling.
"Booth, could you take me home, please? I'd like to get changed before your party."
"OK, Bones. Uhm... what party?"
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OK, part of the inspiration for this lies with the fact that I've got really eclectic tastes. I would read almost anything and remember quite a lot of it. Not something that I'm entirely happy with. But this is why this ficlet references Led Zeppelin, George Clooney, Jennifer O'Connor, and William Blake.
Just in case you were wondering. Brownie points to anyone who finds the references.
Please read and review. Especially review (well, you can't do it unless you read it first, right? Gotcha).
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