Author's Note: I'm not dead!
Summary: Tag for Pain in the Heart. I always get so sick of people blaming and bashing Booth for everything in this episode. Well... what the heck about him? It wasn't like he was away at Summer Camp. Seriously.
The companion piece to this specific shot should be up later tonight.
He's in the middle of his kitchen, a little directionless, when he hears the knock at his door.
He doesn't react right away. He's trying to decide what to bring over, if he should order a pizza or Thai or just beer. Or nothing. He doesn't know, for once, how to behave in this situation. It's a little daunting, he has to admit, but really… all he wants is to just be with her.
He hates to think that she's angry at him. It makes a cold fist seize his heart and a knot twist painfully in his stomach. There's a separate ache, though, too. One he hasn't been able to identify yet.
He's tired. The knock comes again.
He blinks out of his thoughts, but not entirely. Uncertainly, he approaches his door and momentarily disregards his original motivations.
He's noticeably surprised to see her. He thinks it shows on his face, but is too confused to conceal it. Her dark hair is still in limp curls—all the limper with the time of night—and there are sad circles under her soft eyes.
"Angela?" he utters. He forgets to invite her in, but she speaks before he can amend his neglect of manners.
"Hey, Booth," she says quietly. It's chilly, but she seems tired as he to not bother tugging her coat closer around her slim shoulders.
There's a silence that's not exactly awkward, but makes them both shift a little uncomfortably. Booth breaks first. He is always first to break. "Um… I was just—I was going to head over Bones' place…" It's a feeble, disgrace of a sentence, but he's too exhausted and too puzzled by her presence to offer anything more than that.
There's a dull throb aggravating his shoulder and he remembers he hasn't taken any painkillers today. He's a little faint because of it, and the threat of a headache comes with it. He's tough. He's one of the first to admit that. But these past few days… weeks… have been hell.
He thinks he won't come home tonight. Just crash on Bones' couch, if she'll let him.
He wants to be close to her. He'd been away from her against his inclination for two weeks. Away from his son, his friends. He'd been released from the hospital almost immediately, had been forced to recover from a pretty damn severe gunshot wound under the roof of a glorified shack in the middle of nowhere, and three days after he was able to walk was then expected to attend his own funeral to catch the bad guy.
The icing on the cake was the pressure of that rifle on his still bruised and tender shoulder, the wrestle match that left him dizzy and wanting to empty the contents of his stomach in the barren casket or behind that tree he'd been standing by, and then the awesome right-hook from his dearly missed partner that finally knocked his beaten form to the ground.
Head spinning and body throbbing with pain, confused and stung by her greeting, he'd sat there in the grass for almost ten minutes. Not because he desired a sea level ground for contemplation, but because he wasn't sure he could stand up.
He'd been so deliriously happy to see her. But the punch she'd heatedly delivered left him shaken and hurting.
Cam came over and slapped him. Thankfully not on the face, but on the back of the head. Before he could form together a "what the hell?" she'd been gone, too.
Angela seemed lost in the middle of the small gathering, her expression mirroring her posture. Caroline was uncharacteristically clutching at her chest in what appeared to be relief, he dared hope. She tossed her hat on the ground and made off with a stomp, muttering, "Damn fool," over and over. Sweets… waved at him. Seriously, what the hell?
Zack, as always, appeared observant. With that open-mouthed intensity and furrowed brow. Uncertainly, he followed after Cam and the others.
The crowd began clearing out, and Booth was left alone in the grass. His eyes swept over the place of his false funeral, dazed expression becoming more and more disconsolate. The roses that had rested on his casket were fallen now in crude disarray, some of the petals crumpled. The circle of chairs were all empty.
The wind blew the idle bulletin with his picture frame over into the grass. It broke the silence like a gunshot, but he didn't hear it. Couldn't.
Could barely form a thought, much less a sensory response.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over him, and he looked up bleakly in disorientation.
"Hey, man," Hodgins said gently. "Need a hand up?"
Booth swallowed the sudden and unacceptable lump that formed in his throat. The Bug Man's hand extended out, his blue eyes kind. Concerned, even. Unsteadily, Booth reached up to accept it. "Um, yeah. Thanks."
With a heave, the shorter man tugged the agent to his feet. Booth felt a nauseating wave of lightheadedness take hold of his bearings. With a lurch, he sunk against Hodgins with embarrassing dependency.
"Easy, big guy," Hodgins said, struggling for a brief moment to keep him upright. He was entirely too pale for Hodgins' liking. "You all right? Do you need to sit down?" He tried not to notice the way the agent's hands were shaking beneath those foreign white gloves.
"Um…" Booth found himself involuntarily gripping at the smaller man's arm for support before he became more at ease on his own two feet. "No, I think I'm good. I just need… just need my daily drug dose, is all," he attempted pitifully at humor. He winced at the intense bolt of pain that shot through his chest as his shoulder was jostled. "Wasn't able to take it this morning with the… you know, with the scheduling of funeral crashing."
"Yeah. Gotcha."
The lump was back. "Bones… she…"
Hodgins wanted to cringe in sympathy at the lost, kicked puppy look that now assumed the agent's expression. He feared he might have allowed the passing flicker of it across his face. Dude. This was bad. He figured it'd do more damage than not if he beat around the bush. "You know she didn't know, right?"
That was so obviously not the case, Hodgins realized with a sinking in his gut at the anguished look the other man suddenly wore.
Now he wanted her to punch him again. "Oh God."
And now… he was staring in flummoxed dazedness into the eyes of his partner's best friend. He hoped she wasn't here to slap him too, but he was pretty sure he deserved it.
Waste of time.
If only he'd been able to contact her.
I knew that funeral was a waste of time.
The unidentified ache intensifies, unbidden. He frowns.
He'd been so out of it he probably wouldn't have been able to call her even if he'd wanted to. Needed to. But he knew also that if he'd been aware of her being in the dark, forced to grieve unnecessarily at another person close to her gone, he'd sure as hell have tried. Trippy pain meds, trippy pain in all its agonizing glory, immobility and all. He'd have tried.
Anything for her. How could she not see that?
Did that bullet they'd had to carve out of his chest mean nothing?
The woman he'd took it for, had almost sacrificed his life for, the person he cared for most in the universe other than his child, thought the ceremony of his passing to be a waste of her time.
Ache. In the back of his mind, in the back of his heart. There, and hurtfully escalating.
"I figured you'd be headed there," Angela's quiet voice shatters his thoughts once again.
He nods. He doesn't know why. Everyone knows that's where he'd be headed.
Hell, he'd even said it, if anyone was on the fence about it.
"You should be with Hodgins," he finds himself saying in response. Not an order, or suggestion, or point of obligation, but an observation. He wonders why she isn't with her fiancé, but here with him.
Changing the subject is a way to avoid your feelings, Sweets' voice fills his head. Stupid kid. Twelve-year-olds shouldn't be so wise. It was unnatural.
Angela releases a shaky breath and nods quickly, looking down at her feet. "Yeah, I was just headed over to his place. I told him I had to make a quick side trip."
"Oh."
He doesn't know if he's supposed to say something. He stands aimlessly, goes to put his hands in his pockets, but stops and looks around. His eyes search out his feet, too.
"That's good that you're going to her," Angela says. She nods again. It seems to help solidify her statement, or all the things she's saying. He isn't sure.
When is he ever not sure?
"Yeah." He thinks that maybe a speech is coming on what an idiot he is for not telling Bones, not calling her.
He hadn't been able to call his son, either, he wants to despair. Explain. Or his family. No contact, whatsoever. Two weeks of being alone. Hurting, disoriented. Missing everyone he cared about. A single day in such circumstances could feel like a decade. He knew that all too well. All too keenly, even now—miles and years away from that foreign prison.
He could kill Sweets. But Bones wouldn't like that.
He's pretty sure the FBI wouldn't like that either. But he's more worried about her.
Angela surprises him though. Quickly, lips parted, eyes flickering nervously around, she steps forward and brings her arms around him in a tight hug. He flinches a little at the stab of pain this awakens, but mostly, he's just surprised. Startled, at this particular display of affection he hasn't been on the receiving end of in longer than he'd like to admit.
Uncertainly, and a little lost, he returns the embrace with careful measure. He hears her exhale, and some of the tension rushes out of her slight frame, a great weight evaporating from her shoulders.
"What's this for?" he asks at long last, after what seems like an age. He fears the answer, fears to hope. Fears… things. Events, tribulations, metaphorical chasms, walls… everything and nothing. He isn't sure.
It's alien and it's annoying.
But then Angela Montenegro says something that leaves him… calm. He hasn't been calm in a long time. He suddenly feels like a little boy again, being embraced and cherished by a mother, or sister. Just being cared for. His well-being important to someone other than the government, and for very different motivations.
"For being alive," she says.
Immediately, his eyes are brimming with emotion. Something breaks out of his throat like a wave once trapped in a cul-de-sac of boulders and harsh barriers. He's horrified to realize it's a sob, but that feeling quickly passes when her hand begins to smooth a gentle pattern over his back in consolation.
He hugs her tighter.
It's nice to be cared for, valued. Nice to be… missed.
This is the ache that needed mollifying.