She was completely thrown off balance when he kissed her.
This was so not what she'd expected. Yeah, she thought they'd get drunk, vent to each other and go their separate ways like they always did, but she didn't think he'd KISS her.
This had become a ritual for them lately. After tough cases, they'd go and drink away their sorrows, talk about old times and vent.
Him about Brennan, her about Michelle, about anything really.
But it'd always end the same way. With him waving goodbye to her through her cab window, with that goofy drunken smile on his face. And she liked that. It was nice, actually TALKING to someone, someone who knew her before she was Camille Saroyan, head of the forensics department at The Jeffersonian. Someone who knew her when she was just Cam, trying to waitress her way through med school. And Seeley was that someone for her. And it'd been working out great.
Until he went ahead and kissed her.
God, why'd he have to screw up a good thing?
Of course, she could've pulled away. Told him that it was completely inappropriate and that they were just friends, and a whole lot of other bullshit, but she didn't.
She couldn't, and he knew that. Seeley Booth had always been her weakness, her soft spot.
That's why, when he called her up, sounding like a kicked puppy, telling her to meet him at their usual bar, she accepted without a second thought. That's why she listened to his account of his standoff with the murderer, and about his fight with Bones.
That's why she'd nodded and chugged down just as many drinks as him. Because he needed her, and she was there.
But now, as she stands outside the bar, lip-locked with him like high-schoolers, she realizes she doesn't regret it one bit.
Yeah, he's drunk out of his mind and his mouth tastes like whiskey. Yeah, she probably is too. And yeah, they would probably both regret it in the morning, but she couldn't say no.
Even though she knew he clearly loved someone else. But some part of her, some young naïve part, just wants to be accepted; wants to be loved.
Even if she knows that it's just for one night.
So that's why she doesn't protest as he orders one cab instead of the usual two.
As he directs it to his place, and they spend the whole ride making out in the back seat.
She knows it won't last, and that it'll probably just hurt the next morning, because he only had eyes for someone else, but at that moment, she didn't care, she didn't protest. At that moment, it didn't matter.
Because it seemed just like old times.