1 : :
The old movie has rolled to an end. The screen is dark, yet moving with the subtitles and Booth has an ache in his left shoulder. He glances down at his partner and smiles to himself. She is fast asleep, her head again resting painfully against his side.
The white bandage, shockingly bright against her skin, causes regret for her injury to well up from inside of him. She shouldn't have been hurt.
She moves slightly, her cheek nuzzling in to his bandage. He bites his lip to keep the low moan of pain down inside.
It could have been worse. She could have opened the refrigerator. It could be her lying here instead of him, if she'd survived. That's an even more chilling thought and he pushes that down.
He should just be happy. Happy that they're both alive and mostly intact.
Bones shifts again, farther away from him this time. The regret comes back full force but it's tinged with the loss of her presence so close. Booth knows as soon as she wakes she'll leave. Give some sort of excuse and disappear out the door.
He smiles to himself. Leaning slightly to his left, he swallows hard, ignoring the drumming of agony at the pressure on his injury, and rests his head on top of Bones's. She'll have to wake him to leave.
2 : :
Sometimes, when the weather is particularly damp, Booth still aches in the general vicinity of the cracked ribs he's finally healed from. And sometimes, climbing through the desert does just fine as well to aggravate the injury.
He's hot and sticky and feeling about a million miles from his usual cocky and well groomed self. Bones had taken the shower first. Then Angela. Now, cool and refreshing water streams down his torso and he sighs in release.
Another case closed means another killer put away and he's one step closer to the redemption he so actively seeks. Closing his eyes, Booth enjoys the victory.
"Booth! Get out of there! I have to use the bathroom."
He sighs and finishes up. His partner, hands on her hips, gives him an irritated look before pushing past him to access the facilities.
He'll be happy to get back to the city. And air conditioning. His t-shirt is already gathering moisture not even two minutes out of the shower. He glances at the small cot Angela has set out for him and shakes his head. He is far too sore to be rolling around in that. He lays down on the hide-a-bed without a second thought and stretches his tired muscles.
Bones will just have to sleep with Angela. She surely won't be too upset about him stealing her spot.
Perhaps only a few minutes later he's woken up with a sharp jab to the previously mentioned sore ribs. Booth sits up with a start only to find Bones, again with the irritated look, sitting on the side of the hide-a-bed.
"Booth, I want to go to bed and you're on the couch."
It's during the few minutes between contemplating booting her butt to the floor and complying with her wishes he takes that she crawls over him and pulls the sheet to her own body. Booth watches on in amazement as Bones turns her back to him and falls in to her own sleep.
There will be no repercussions. At least not tonight. And the ache in his chest is really damn heavy.
Booth lays back down, not at all irritated that Bones has stolen the sheet completely.
3 : :
Cam calls them a cab at midnight.
The party is still raging around them, but the two of them, they are drunk.
Not regular drunk, Booth muses, but fall down drunk and sloppy at that. He's passed out once already on Bones' lap in the cab and he's having a hard time keeping his eyes open even upright though he is.
They get to his place first and he's half way out of the cab when the words come flooding from his mouth telling her to stay with him. Bones gives him a silly grin and nods before handing the driver a twenty, telling him to keep it.
At his door she's leaning on his back and he can imagine the look of concentration to keep upright that's sure to be gracing her face. When he finally gets the lock undone and the door open, it surprises the both of them and they tumble forward in to the foyer. Booth instinctively tries to rotate in mid-fall and catch Bones.
He manages neither and she ends up beneath him. They stare hard at one another for a long moment, both unsure of what's just happened, why it's happened, and how the hell they managed it.
Bones laughs first and that makes Booth laugh because his partner is serious and all business and she's laughing up at him. He thinks she's never looked more gorgeous. Her hair came down about two hours ago, he thinks, and somewhere along the way she lost that ridiculous bow. He wants to kiss her. It sounds like a fantastic idea. He lowers his head, intent on her lips and wondering what they'd look like around his-
Her soft snore breaks his thought train and he glances at her eyes. They are closed tight.
Booth swears softly and pushes himself up, grousing about the tux for the aborted wedding he was asked to be Best Man for two days prior. He manages to get Bones up in his arms. Balancing a forensic anthropologist who's more interested in impersonating a limp noodle than a human he shuts and locks the front door before he carries her to his bed. He takes off the tie, overcoat, and the shirt before kicking off his shoes.
In his tank and dress pants he pulls Bones close and hopes that having something solid to hold on to will keep the world from spinning quite so much.
4 : :
He can smell her on his sheets the first night he's back from the dead and in his own apartment again.
The bed is rumpled, just like he left it, but there's a distinctly feminine shape to the comforter and an indention on his favorite pillow that wrenches his heart.
There are boxes, spread about. He realized, when he'd first come home, that someone had started packing up his life in preparation for him never returning and it hurts. It hurts that for two weeks he's been dead to one of the most important people in his life. He hates Sweets even more at that moment.
His finger tips trace where her head has lain for a moment before he kills the light next to his bed and he crawls in to go to sleep. Her perfume, the unmistakable smell that is Bones, fills his senses and he turns his face deeper in to the down.
The front door opens almost silently and he sits straight up in bed. His hand automatically reaches for his gun and he's got one foot out of the bed when he sees her silhouette in the doorway.
"I can't sleep."
She sounds torn down, run clean through from the inside out.
Booth holds the blankets back and she comes forward without further invitation.
5 : :
In the hospital again, there's another old movie on the TV. This time, however, Bones isn't here and he's pretty sure she's not coming back tonight.
She's come and gone. Citing unresolved business back at the lab, her eyes had seemed almost guilty when she'd squeezed his hand and walked away.
For someone who's got deeply seated abandonment issues, Booth is amazed at how often she can just leave him. From somewhere deep inside of him a little voice whispers that she didn't leave him. She came for him and because of her tenacity, he's alive and she's still closed off behind her walls.
He sighs and flips off the TV. He pushes his morphine button again and wills the pain to go away. Especially the one that's squeezing his heart and making wine out of his internal organs.
The world moves on. The Gravedigger is behind bars. Booth is intelligent and he knows that the woman wasn't working alone. He's got a long road ahead of him already and there's a price that someone out there needs to pay for what they've done to himself and to his partner.
That first day after he'd pulled her from the sand was hectic and terrifying and so full of relief that his eyes had teared up when he'd finally managed to visit her in her own hospital room. It had been full of flowers and he had felt like a million bucks just to be able to smile at her and get a response.
Booth looks around his own bare room and he scratches absently at the IV in the back of his hand. He's had few visitors. His closest relative is in jail and his closest friend is too busy working to bother with keeping him company.
A quiet shuffling at the door brings his eyes up and the smile that lights up his face causes Bones to smile in response. In her hands, she holds a vase of daffodils.
"I don't know what kind of flowers you liked so I got my favorite."
He accepts them graciously and instructs her to put them on the table next to his bed. She takes up residence in the chair that's also next to the bed.
The TV gets turned back on and the morphine is working it's way through his blood system like a drunk on payday.
A few hours later the movie is over and Booth wakes. He's groggy and not sure what's going on. He knows he wasn't just dreaming and he's awake now. There's a pressure against his side and his eyes come open fully to find his partner stretch the length of him, carefully sharing the narrow hospital bed.
She shifts slightly and her hair tickles his nose.
Booth breathes deep and he presses a kiss to her forehead before he has a chance to process the action. With a satisfied smile, he slips back in to sleep.