Disclaimer: This takes place about a month following the 100th episode. Let it be noted that I was so furious with the ending that I threw things and generally made a fool of myself, and now, in the wee hours of the morning, I've at least tried to correct it. I'm keeping the ending in place [I'm sure there'll be an absolute ton of rewritten endings soon] but adding my own twist on it. Enjoy!
Booth sat in his office, feet on the desk, hands hooked together in his lap. He'd been staring at the same blank corner of his computer screen for over an hour now. Sweets knew because he'd been timing him. Booth was by nature an energetic man, but increasingly, whenever Sweets passed by, he'd see Booth in a now-familiar pose, almost languishing, except for the intense stare. Staring at what? A blank screen? Sweets knew better than that. He had the degree hanging in his office to prove it.
Since the night they'd corrected his findings, things had been spiraling out of control. Superficially, Booth was fine. Nothing was wrong. Nothing had happened. End of story, end of discussion, move the hell forward. And yet there were these periods of repose, hours and hours of valuable investigation time spent concentrating, Buddha-like, on his blank computer screen.
Brennan wasn't out in the field with him as much. She'd come to him, said it herself, Booth isn't calling me as often. Well, what did she expect? Sweets knew without asking exactly what had happened, because he'd seen the intention in Booth's face before they left. As to how it'd turned out, well, here was his answer.
Sweets knew Brennan suspected Booth of going out alone, of purposefully leaving her out of it, but Sweets knew it had more to do with the fact that Booth was simply not doing half as much as he used to. Sweets had gotten a call from Booth's immediate superior, asking what the hell was going on, and Sweets was honest. Sort of.
"Give him time and space."
Yeah. Like that was helping. How long had it been? Two weeks? Four? No, five. Something long and grotesque. Too long to have to watch Booth like this, sucked completely dry. When Dr. Brennan came around he'd put on a show, bound around like it was business as usual, and then when she left he'd flop into his chair, exhausted, as if he'd run a marathon.
There was a quiet whisper of clothing to his right, and when he turned his head, he saw Angela standing beside him, arms folded as she observed Booth's meditation.
"This is bad," said Angela, and Sweets gave a nod. "You know what she told him?"
"I can guess," Sweets answered. "The specifics aren't really important at this stage. Look at him. He didn't put his tie on straight this morning and hasn't noticed it once."
"Can we fix it?"
She wasn't talking about his tie. Sweets took in Booth's expression—as in, none—and the defeatist hunch to his shoulders. It hurt in all the wrong places to admit it, but Sweets said anyway, "I really doubt it."
Tempe was going insane.
Her partner wasn't calling her anymore. She'd gone on a date and when he'd kissed her, her first thought had been that he didn't kiss the way Booth did. She went to lunch alone and there was no one to eat the vegetables she didn't want in the chicken chow mein. She spent more time checking her phone for messages than she did actually working, and the longer it went on, the more she realized things weren't going to go back to normal. It wasn't going to be like before. They weren't going to get over this.
Angela came back from Sweets and Tempe asked, "Did you see Booth?"
Her best friend ignored her. Walked right on past. Tempe was baffled by this until she overheard Hodgins saying to Angela, "Poor bastard. Can't say I don't know how he feels."
"Hey, I didn't lead you on for six years," was Angela's answer, and Tempe went into the bathroom and cried.
That's not what she'd meant to do. It wasn't what she'd wanted. He was sexy and they were friends and she liked him better than she'd ever liked anyone else, but she'd tried her best to keep it platonic and on the level. It wasn't her fault it'd gone beyond that. Hadn't she been clear? There was a line. He'd crossed it, not her. His fault. His fault.
It didn't feel that way. It felt like it was her fault. Who said no, again? the voice in her head inquired, and she shut it up by splashing water on her face, to hell with her makeup. The best way to fix this was to find someone else, someone better, someone sexier and kinder and more Booth than Booth could ever be. Scratch the last part, but the intention still made sense.
Tempe went to a bar. He was tall and dark and handsome and he was a traffic cop. Close enough. She took him home but while she kissed him all she heard was He's not doing it right. You know who does this really well? So what if she did? Her reasoning was still sound. She got to the bedroom and had her shirt off before she realized she wasn't going to be able to go through with this.
"No worries," said the traffic cop, undoing the damage her eager fingers had done. "Getting over an ex can be shitty."
She never opened her mouth to tell him Booth wasn't her ex, but she managed a goodbye well enough, and even thanked him. It was too bad his hair wasn't a little longer, so he could do that little swoopy-spiky thing Booth always did.
Her only consoling thought was that Booth would be over it by now. If he was anything, he was resilient, and she was sure he'd had to deal with rejection in the past. It would be narcissistic to assume this was the worst he'd ever had it, or ever would.
At two AM, a combination of booze and lack of sleep had her driving across town to his apartment, and genuine irritation that she hadn't been able to sleep with Traffic Cop made her bang on his door. It took a minute, but the door opened, and Booth gazed at her with bleary eyes. His chin was scruffy and his boxers, the only piece of clothing he'd bothered with, were wrinkled.
"You're not talking to me anymore," she said, when she'd really intended to blame him for Traffic Cop. Later she would realize neither route made much sense, and that she should have stayed at home.
He stared at her, dead in the eyes, and then shut the door in her face.
He hadn't shut the door to send her away. He didn't want her to go away, not even for a second, but really, honestly, he couldn't look at her face anymore. So she couldn't change, huh? Who'd asked her to? Booth was pretty well sure he'd take her however he could get her and to hell with the rest. The past month had been god-awful and he was just about at his wits end. He couldn't work with her, not really. Could barely even look at her. Or hear her voice, for that matter.
"I call you," he said through the door, and he heard a dull thunk that might have been her fist hitting his door.
"Barely. You used to call me every day," she said, her voice barely carrying through the wood.
"Can't see you anymore," he mumbled.
"What?"
"I said," Booth repeated, louder, "I can't see you anymore."
"You mean recreationally?"
He thought about moving to Siberia. "I mean not ever."
The door bounced open. He let it. She was glaring at him, a real 100-watt glare. "You said we could work together!"
"Sucks, doesn't it?"
Her brow furrowed momentarily. "What does?"
"Rejection." Booth left her standing in the doorway, but she followed him in the kitchen, where he snagged a beer out of the fridge. He didn't offer her one. "I want you to listen to me really carefully, Bones." He set the beer on the counter, faced her squarely, and looked her in the eyes. "I can't work with you."
"We can't put this behind us?"
"It's still in front of me, Bones, staring me in the face."
"You mean I'm still in front of you."
"What am I supposed to do? You don't love someone for six years and then just—poof—turn it off."
Her face blanched. "So you're leaving?"
"Leaving?" His jaw spasmed. "Like your dad left? Like everyone else has left? No. I'm not. You're sending me away, Bones, practically packed my bags for me. Yeah, they left you. But you can't call foul on this one. It wasn't me who said no."
"You know why I said no."
They stared at each other for the space of one heartbeat, two, and then Booth leaned forward and kissed her, briefly, but far from chastely. "One for the road," he murmured, and then marched her out of his apartment. Before he could shut the door on her, though, she put out her hand and said, "You know me. You know why I did it."
"I know you're going to die alone unless you do something else," he replied, and shut the door.
This time he locked it.
Tempe didn't like crying. She held it together long enough to park her car, and then went out into the night, stumbling and crashing through the trees at the side of the road, until she couldn't hear the ding-ding-ding of her open car door, and sobbed until she was sick. Her face was hot and swollen and her throat felt like she'd tried swallowing sandpaper. She wasn't sure how long she stayed out there, alone in the emptiness, but her car was waiting for her when she came back. She locked the doors and slept.
The sun awoke her, practically blinding her through the windshield, and after a minute of pure disorientation she turned the key in the ignition and drove like hell on wheels to the Hoover building. The clock told her Sweets would just be sitting down at his desk. He was a creature of habit. He'd be there. Had to be there. Had to.
People looked like she was insane as she ran through the lobby, but no one stopped her. She was entirely winded by the time she reached Sweets. Her makeup was dried into streaks from crying, her hair was sticking up in odd directions, and the hysterical color the running had lent to her cheeks turned her into a completely different woman than the one Sweets was used to seeing. There was no trace of the calm, collected Temperance Brennan now.
"I am not going to die alone," she told him fiercely. "Right? I'm not going to die alone, am I, Sweets?"
He just looked at her. His mouth opened briefly as if he was going to answer, but then he shut it again. She leaned angrily forward across his desk. "He's wrong! I won't be alone!"
"No," said Sweets. "There'll be the preacher. If Angela's still around, if you haven't pushed her away too, she might be there. Your friends will come. But that's not what you meant."
Tempe shook her head.
"Do you really expect to have a family if you can't even allow yourself to be with the man you love?"
"I don't—"
"Cut the bullshit," Sweets said, and stood up abruptly. She looked at him in surprise. "This isn't the time for denials. My professional opinion is that you fucked up, Dr. Brennan. Now, if you'd excuse me—"
"Fine," said Tempe. "I made a mistake. I still can't change. It wouldn't work."
It was Sweets' turn to look surprised. "I don't recall Booth ever asking you to change."
She looked at him.
"Well, did he?"
"The fact remains."
"He didn't. Well, now you're just a coward."
She flinched, visibly flinched, and took a step back from his desk. Sweets was by nature a kind man, patient to a fault, and for him to treat her like this was—horrible. She felt like she'd been given a reprimand by her favorite teacher.
He leaned in for the kill. "What's really the harm in trying? By which I mean to say, what more can you lose that you haven't already?"
Booth was standing in front of his boss, tie straight for the first time in a month, about to hand in a transfer request when something collided with him and sent him crashing in the far wall. The envelope fluttered to the ground as Bones said, "Okay."
His neck was cricked at an awkward angle, his back was hurting, and he was pretty sure his feet were splayed in two different directions, but Bones was leaning over him, a total mess, and he couldn't care. "What?"
"Okay," she repeated.
"Is that like a yes?"
"It's not a no," Bones replied, and this time, she kissed him.
"I'm guessing you don't want that transfer anymore," said his boss.