The Restraint in the Relationship
Spoiler tags to Season 6 of BONES - Episodes 6x01 & 6x02
Disclaimer: BONES does not belong to me; it belongs to FOX. No infringement of rights is intended.
A/N: This scenario came from my creative left-field & wouldn't let me dismiss it. Not that this would ever happen, but it is a semi-plausible ending to the ending of the Booth / Hannah relationship. This story gets a weighted T rating for some adult themes and some cursing. I also have no knowledge of military protocols, so if I get some of this wrong, let me know. I'm considering an M-rated follow-up to this one-shot, dependent on the response from readers. As always, reviews are appreciated and cherished.
Multi-National Peacekeeping Compound – Afghanistan
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Sergeant Major Seeley Booth led his latest assorted bunch of enlisted kids and Afghani regulars on a morning compound perimeter patrol. At four weeks into their six week training program, the team were finally starting to find some cohesion, and for the majority of the time they worked as a well oiled machine. For Booth, this was a small measure of comfort, because in a fortnight, this bunch would be getting reassigned to the pointy end of the conflict. The brass liked to talk about acceptable losses, but his whole reason for being here was to cram as much knowledge and skill into the trainees as possible, no loss of life was acceptable in Booth's mind.
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The teams had piled into their Humvees and once outside the speed restrictions compound walls, the allocated drivers accelerated immediately, heading to their assigned patrol coordinates. As the driver of his own vehicle understeered around a bend in what passed for a road in this hell-hole, Booth was bounced around like a rag doll as the Humvee lost some traction before bouncing back into the ruts. His back complained in eloquent spasms of misery, making him curse.
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"Where the fuck did you get a licence to drive, the Seven Eleven?" yelled Booth over the throaty growl of the diesel motor.
"X Box Driving School, Sarge!" quipped one of the guys in the back seat. The driver flipped his gloved middle finger at his peer.
Booth shook his head. "Hey! Both hands on the wheel, kid. And for Christ's sake slow down!" reprimanded Booth.
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The signal tone for his comms gear sounded in his earpiece. Activating his throat mike, Booth spoke with the Ops Centre and acknowledged the message. Hailing his team as they approached the building complex that made up the processing and holding centre for refugees, and detainees, he informed the soldiers of the reported intruder. The team went on alert and Booth ordered the search pattern grid that they were going to use to sweep the compound. They had been training for this for the past month, a quiet sense of satisfaction settled over him as he observed the orderly dispersal of camouflaged figures, weapons held and ready.
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Ten minutes later, with the morning sun and desert wind beginning to add dry sapping heat to their progress, Booth noted a flicker of movement 20 yards ahead, betrayed by the flash of a white singlet shirt beneath their jacket. 'Amateur', surmised Booth. The intruder was too small to be a man, perhaps a woman or a child; that white shirt too damn clean and bright to be one of the locals. He alerted the team, gave a series of hand signals, and they closed in.
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"Hold it. Right there!" commanded Booth. Seeing the intruder freeze in response. "Get your hands up where I can see them." The intruder raised their hands, the right one holding some sort of non-military issue binoculars.
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Booth moved in, shadowed and flanked by his team.
"Get down on your knees. Keep your hands where I can see 'em. Now!" he instructed the intruder.
"I'm unarmed. I'm American!" protested the intruder. A woman. American.
"What you are, is an Unauthorised Intruder," said Booth. "I don't recall asking for an explanation. So let's try this again. On your knees. Now."
She dropped to her knees. Booth signalled to one of his team to move in retrieve whatever she was holding on to.
"I'm a member of the Press!" she protested loudly.
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"You're a member of the Press who is under arrest for trespassing." Snapped Booth. What did she expect, a get out of jail free card? He lowered his weapon and made a short hand gestures to his team, indicating that they were going to take the intruder into custody. He heard a slightly garbled exchange over his earpiece, as one of the guys behind him reported in to Ops, notifying that they had apprehended and detained the intruder – just like they'd trained to do, he thought with another hint of satisfaction.
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"Move your hands behind your back. Slowly," he barked. Unclipping a pouch on his gear, he extracted a heavy duty 'cable tie' flexicuff and dropped to one knee behind her to apply the restraint. She appeared to be panicking a little now, breathing rapidly, suppressing a small sob.
"You're gonna cuff me?" she asked, her voice wavering a little, shifting her knees against the rough, stony surface of the ground. Her hands moved behind her back, shaking a little.
"That's right, lady. It's part of that whole 'being arrested' thing," replied Booth snarkily.
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He deftly looped the black plastic over her wrists, and she gave a small whimper of protest. 'Yeah, lady. You're in deep shit now,' he thought. As the flexicuff zipped closed, she let out a wail. As it pulled her wrists together tightly, her body bucked forward pulling the end of the tie out of Booth's hand, pitching her onto the ground, where she began writhing and screaming. Booth sprang back to his feet, glancing around to see if this was some sort of planned distraction.
"What the…Ma'am? Are you injured?" he asked loudly, his eyes taking in the response of his team. The three other guys stood watching were as surprised by this sudden outburst as he was. "Are you injured?" he repeated.
He heard the Deep Southern drawl of his second in command, and the most notorious Horn Dog in the 1st Battalion over their team bandwidth. "If y'ask me, I'd say she's far from injured. In fact, I believe she's enjoying this just a little more than is *ahem* necessary, if you catch my drift, Sarge."
Snickers of agreement emanated from those gathered, as the gasping and writhing woman on the ground in front of them began to wind down.
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In the end, Hannah Burley turned out to be a smart, funny, attractive Journalist; who just happened to be happiest, and horniest, when she was hog-tied.
Washington D.C
After six weeks back in the States, Booth found himself having difficulties adjusting, more so than any of the previous returns to civilian life that he had undertaken in his past. In many respects, the civilian world, the FBI, his work colleagues, and family were still the same; left on pause for seven months, while he played drama teacher in the Afghani theatre of hell.
Hannah had helped him through that hell in Afghanistan, given him an opportunity to address his promise to himself to move on. She represented something light in an otherwise dark place. Over time, the Journalist started to get under his skin, got him to enjoy himself, relax. But deep down, under the muscle and fascia, his bones were still saturated with the truth, and bones didn't lie. It was Bones, always Bones.
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With the complete absence of places to go on 'dates', things got physical fast, and he wanted to please Hannah. Inevitably, he never found himself going anywhere without flexicuffs and a pocket knife. It had started out as a bit of a private joke between them, but by the time Booth got his call from Caroline Julian, he was ready to take a break from his Afghani bonds, in more ways than one. Booth decided to go back to the US, Hannah stayed on in the Middle East.
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The whirlwind return to D.C. was a mixture of pleasure and pain, the same and different. Parker, Pops, the Squints,…Bones. As usual, they'd been superficially honest, yet fundamentally evasive; dancing their deceptively candid dance. That old black magic feeling stirred the moment he set eyes on her again, and Booth tried to tell himself that it was jet lag, but he'd seen an echo in her too. To the casual observer, they'd embraced like long lost lovers. He took a page out of the Rationalist book of Bones; that love was lost, he had moved on, he had the picture to prove it.
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He had expected (and missed) her candour, but hadn't expected her admission that she had remained celibate. No time for sex? No inclination for sex? Who was this woman, and what had she done with Temperance Brennan? This was Bones, the woman with a biological urge schedule, right? And how busy could you possibly be out in the Indonesian jungle?
Hannah had turned up in D.C. out of the blue. She planned to stay, and stay she did. As they settled into a bizarre domestic bliss, Booth was sincerely hoping for some stability in his life. His new live-in lover enjoyed the comforts of home, and plastic cable restraints were supplanted by FBI-issue handcuffs, something which didn't sit quite right with him. Each time he snapped the cuffs onto her wrists, something inside him twisted. It was beginning to cause a permanent ache, to add to the list of other aches and pains that burdened him.
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Despite going through the motions with the team back together again, there was something missing. The centre had been replaced by a third-party lynch pin, he and Bones had to work around the scar tissue that puckered their relationship. The more he tried to keep it professional, the more she reached out to him. It was confronting, whereas a year ago, it was what he craved from her. When he tried to reach out to Bones, she would detach herself. It was a lose-lose scenario. Booth became increasingly brusque in his approach to work, a fact that was noted a hell of a lot more than it was mentioned. In retaliation, Bones would openly call him out on his point of view, dig at it within the context of his new relationship with Hannah.
Over their first six weeks back in the saddle, they took up their caseload, working effectively, but missing their usual spark. It chafed, it burned. It hurt him, and he saw the signs that it hurt Bones too. For the most part, he put it out of his mind and put on his tough guy persona; but like some sort of cosmic ballast, it still weighed down his soul. For both of them, after case drinks of beer and wine became hard liquor, in an attempt to self-medicate the pain. Cracks were starting to show that even their baby duck Psychologist couldn't ignore.
Office of Dr. Lance Sweets, Hoover Building
It was going on 6:00 p.m. Booth found himself, sprawled broodingly on the couch opposite Lance Sweets. Waiting for Bones, who had almost proved that it was possible to rip someone a new one over a cellphone connection. She was on her way from the Jeffersonian, her tardiness was case-related, so he had no right to give her a hard time about it.
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"So, Agent Booth, how is Hannah?" asked Sweets, trying for a little light conversation.
"Fine," snapped Booth, then huffing in frustration at his own snarky tone. It was guaranteed to have the kid on the psychological warpath. "Hannah leaves for Kabul in the morning. She's covering a peace summit."
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What Booth hadn't mentioned was that Hannah had left his apartment last night after a confrontation about her sexual preferences versus his values. They had agreed to go their separate ways for the time being, in an uncomfortable stalemate that allowed them both to retain some dignity. He had tried and failed to move on, learning some painful lessons and some lessons in pain along the way. Bones was still the standard.
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"You sound upset about it, Booth. Will she be in danger?" asked Sweets.
"No more than usual, Sweets. It's what she does. What she was doing for a long time before we even met, y'know?" replied Booth.
"I see. But you would prefer it if she didn't put herself in harms way?" suggested Sweets, uncrossing his legs and leaning back in his chair.
"Hey! Enough already, Sweets. Hannah is streetwise and keeps a handle on things." Except when it came to being cuffed, thought Booth darkly.
"I'm picking up on a but there, Booth."
"Yeah, well," hedged Booth. "She liked me to be in charge sometimes."
"You mean like the story that she told us about the day you met?" asked Sweets. "Her rendition of that meeting indicated that she enjoyed being restrained by you."
"I wouldn't use the word 'enjoyed', Sweets"
"What other word would you use, Booth? Preference? Predilection? Titillated...?"
"Geez Sweets! You make it sound perverted. Let's just stick with enjoyed..."
"You know, submissive role play is just another form of dominance and control in a relationship, Booth. The fact that Hannah publicly disclosed her enjoyment of being cuffed by you, in front of your peers, is indicative of her confidence. I imagine she would have no qualms with this kind of role play in a sexual situation..."
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Booth cut off Sweets, there was no way that he was going to talk about this.
"Not going there, Sweets!"
"Not going where?" asked Brennan, entering the office, removing her trench coat and taking a seat at the opposite end of the couch. "I apologise for being late Dr. Sweets. Ms. Julian was most insistent that I 'dumb down' my presentation for the Jury tomorrow."
Sweets nodded in acknowledgement, and made a gesture toward Booth. "Agent Booth and I were talking about the story that Hannah related to us a couple of weeks ago at the Founding Fathers."
Brennan gave a grin, and leaned forward in her seat. "You mean when Hannah told us that she was aroused by being cuffed? I found her story to be both refreshing, and amusing."
"There is nothing funny about using cuffs on my girlfriend, okay?" announced Booth.
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"Nobody suggested that you had ever used cuffs on your girlfriend since the day you met," Sweets said in a conciliatory manner, seeing signs of agitation in the FBI agent.
Booth gave a derisive snort and folded his arms defensively, glancing sideways at Brennan. The banter tennis tournament was on, it was 30, Love to Booth.
Unfortunately for Seeley Booth, Brennan chose that moment to place seemingly innocuous fragments of information into the context of the discussion. As their eyes met, she saw the truth confirmed; after all, she was the undisputed Master of Awkward Ice-breakers. He saw the penny drop as her eyes narrowed in recognition, her face lit up, awash with mirth. It was the first time she had smiled at him this week.
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"No, wait," she said, holding up a finger to pause the conversation; preparing to serve. "On Tuesday, you forgot your handcuffs. You left them at home, right?"
"Yeah. So what, Bones. I had a spare set in my office at the Hoover. Big deal!" deflected Booth.
Sweets picked up on the shift of the conversation and sat forward in his seat. Dr. Brennan had been on the losing end of too many discussions since her return from Indonesia. Now she appeared to be poised to turn the tables on Agent Booth, who had been playing the 'I've moved on' card in their sessions far too often of late.
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"The big deal is that you insisted on returning to the Hoover for your spare cuffs, despite the fact that your place was ten minutes closer. We kept everyone at the crime scene waiting, Booth." Unaccountably, she had relaxed back into the corner of the couch, assuming an open pose, arms resting gracefully along the armrest and back of the couch. Sweets swallowed nervously. She knew something, empirically, logically. The Psychologist mused that he could make a killing if sessions like this were made available as 'Pay per View.' The score was 30, all.
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"Hannah was asleep, Bones. She'd been on a web-conference call at 4:00 a.m., I didn't want to wake her is all," he replied smoothly. Too smoothly.
Brennan gave a smirk. "So you left your cuffs in your bedroom?"
"What?" croaked Booth, barely managing to return the volley.
She continued on, backhanding her argument at him. "I hope she wasn't still wearing them Booth, or if she was, that you loosened them sufficiently. You of all people should appreciate the risk of trauma relating to prolonged restraint. It would have been a core competency in the delivery of your training program in Afghanistan."
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Booth spluttered and squirmed under the metaphorical restraints of her tight, logical argument, recognising the assured tone of her words. The score now stood at 30 / 40 to the Anthropologist. In desperation, he went for the low blow.
"As much as I appreciate your interest in my sex life, Temperance, I never thought that you'd stoop to conjecture to drag it through the mud in front of a twelve-year old," he sneered.
She flinched. The score was 40, all. But she picked herself up and steeled to serve again.
"I find myself resenting that implication, Seeley," she snarked.
"And I 'find myself' refusing to discuss this further. Because you're wrong. This conversation is wrong, and do y'know what?" he announced, as he stood to leave. "I don't have to listen to it!"
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Brennan pushed herself up from the couch and stepped into his path, her hand making contact with his sternum to stop his forward motion, which she punctuated with a loud and emphatic "No!"
"No?" he asked, as her hand dropped to her side. His eyes flashed in a dangerous challenge, as he met her blazing glaze.
"You are wrong. I don't do conjecture. You know me better than that. I know the truth."
"Yeah, I do know you, Bones. I know that for all the words that come out of your mouth, the truth is that you're wishing you had the chance to get a piece of me too!"
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The jaw of Lance Sweets dropped, as Temperance Brennan gave a derisive laugh in the face of a very agitated Special Agent Seeley Booth. The woman had cojones of steel; and in a converse twist of circumstance had just placed the cojones of her partner in a steel trap. Her laugh announced that she was going to start squeezing.
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"I have proof. So before you continue in your campaign to deflect away from the truth, by throwing cheap shots at me, I suggest you listen to my evidence. Hannah and I had lunch on the day before yesterday, something that I choose to do because we share common interests in cultural and geopolitical issues, rather than our taste in men. Her wrists showed patterns of bruising bilaterally, consistent with being restrained by law enforcement type handcuffs; something that I could prove in a court of law if I had to."
She jutted out her chin defiantly, placing her hands, unrepentantly challenging, on her hips. "Tell me I'm wrong, Booth. Prove me wrong. Show me the conjecture. Refute my logic!"
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Booth stood mute in the light of truth. She'd served an Ace and won the game. But Brennan was pissed now, and aiming to take out the set and match; perhaps even throw down the tennis racket and jump up and down on it for a spell. Sweets could have been behind a glass observation window for all it mattered; the intrepid couple were so wrapped up in each other on one plane, and so torn to shreds on another. The Psychologist saw the non-verbal cues indicating that this was an unparalleled opportunity for truth and catharsis, with Brennan taking a gamble, based on surer odds than Booth's attempt almost a year ago. Her cold rage continued on, not just at Booth, but at herself, at anything in range. She was pumped on adrenaline, bold yet undistressed; approaching the problem from a position of carefully considered confidence.
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"You've moved on. You've made your choice, which doesn't include me. What I fail to understand is why you've excluded me from your heart. Angela said that before we left D.C. that we were in a marriage, without the sex. You're getting what you always wanted with Hannah now, I'm your friend, so why can't we re-establish our partnership?" she asked.
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"You tell me, Bones. Maybe you just wanna have sex with me, huh? I've got my cuffs with me today, so let's go..." Booth cocked his head toward the door in a disrespectful 'let's go' gesture. He was still smarting from being proved wrong, and still trying to score points after he'd lost the game.
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"Fuck you, Booth!" she spat. Fists clenching, delivering the curse up close and personal, right in his face. He could feel her angry exhalations on his lips, as she attempted to stare him down.
"Exactly what I'm talkin' about! Cuffs on or off, Baby?" he sniped. His heart rate rising with his anger.
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Brennan's lip curled in fury, swinging her arm around to deliver a full force slap to wipe that cocky sneer off his face, once and for all. The hand never connected, because it was intercepted and restrained by the steel grip of Seeley Booth. She tried to pry the grip loose by using her other hand to deliver a nerve blocking blow, but that too was captured. Sweets was aghast. It was like a Pro-Wrestling version of a trust exercise.
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"Let go of me, you son of bitch," she growled at him, resisting an urge to really assault him by employing martial arts. "I'm not like Hannah, I don't share her taste for bondage. I'm sorry that you have a wonderful woman that you can't please sexually without lowering your precious standards to tie her up, I really am. My own sexual repertoire provides a multitude of alternative options to achieve release without restraint...something that you've never had the guts to try. Which just happens to prove something else to me, Booth. You're a hypocrite. All that talk of making love, versus crappy sex is being seriously undermined by your stubborn refusal to acknowledge that your own approach to sex and romance is just as flawed as my own. At least I'm honest about my preferences for getting myself off, which is more than I can say for you. You professed to have loved me, but you're so wrapped up in your ideals, that I could never reciprocate; because you couldn't step outside of your emotional bondage any more than I could. As much as I despise Psychology, I will concede that Sweets was right about one thing, we keep missing opportunities to do something about it. I'm sorry, Booth, I really am. I only want you to be happy."
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Booth, feeling the fight drain out of her as she released her words, as her lacrimal ducts released frustrated tears, released her wrists. His hands sprug open and remained raised, palms facing her in apology and surrender. He felt a little sick to the stomach. Tears were burning in his own eyes
"I'm sorry, I'm in a bad place right now. Hannah and I split...didn't meet each others standard, y'know," he explained huskily, moving a hand to hover next to her face, not daring to cup her face for fear of a swift kick to the testicles. He was surprised when her head shifted, landing a hot, wet cheek into his waiting palm. Her eyes closed, simply enjoying the contact, the peace.
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Opening her eyes to take in his own stunned visage, Brennan reached up to rub away a tear that was traversing down his cheek. Her thumb lingered, tracing his zygomatic arch. When their eyes met this time, they were sharing their old black magic gaze, the primordial soup that eye-sex is made of.
"I hate you," said Brennan.
"I hate you too," replied Booth.
Their lips collided. Their bodies collided. Their realities collided.
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Lance Sweets for one horrible minute thought that he was having a stroke, and just wanted someone, anyone, to call 911.
Apartment of Dr. Temperance Brennan
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The door to her apartment closed and she strode through to her kitchen, flicking on some lights along the way.
"Beer? Wine? Spirits?" asked Brennan, her head obscured behind the now open fridge door.
"Sex?" suggested Booth.
"Beer," he added.
"In what order? she asked, handing an open beer bottle to him.
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"Funny, Bones. Real funny."
"I try...," she said, taking a sip from the bottle, then smiling as he chugged half of his in one go. "You're on the rebound, Booth. If you want to take some time..."
"More time? What's it been, nearly seven years?" he asked, getting a snort of laughter in response. "You think that's funny?"
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"I was just thinking about what Angela said about our sexless marriage," she replied.
"When you put it that way, technically, I've been on the rebound for almost a year, and so have you Temperance. It's time to reconcile."
"You want to reconcile our sexless marriage?" she asked with a sultry grin, before taking a larger swig of carbonated courage to offset the distraction of the warm, heavy certainty of arousal.
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"I think we both know that's gotta change."
"Booth, I'm just saying..."
He cut off her rationalisation. "We need to be doing, not saying..."
"I know that," she agreed, then laughed again.
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"What now? You're not a giggler, are you Bones?" he teased.
"Under certain conditions, I could be classified as a screamer...But I was thinking back to when Angela made that comment. Something that Clark said," she explained, leaning down onto the kitchen counter next to him.
"Clark is a pretty straight up guy. As close to normal as a squint gets...Hey!" Booth received a swat from his partner in retaliation. "So, what'd he say?"
Brennan chuckled. "In retrospect, it is highly amusing. Although I'll admit to being mortified at the time. His outburst was in front of a platform full of staff. Clark expressed his frustration that everyone else around me, but me, could see that you and I were in a sexless marriage...that at times the tension between us was unbearable...he couldn't fathom how we had resisted the urge to rip each other's clothes off, and..."
Booth raised his brows at the narrative. "...and?"
Brennan stepped in between his legs as he sat on the barstool at the kitchen bench, leaning in close to murmur in Booth's ear. "I don't recall exactly what Clark said, because he had become particularly disruptive at that point of his outburst...it was something about devouring each other in a passionate frenzy. Quite cliched, really."
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"Not a bad way to go though, Bones," mused Booth. "Do you have something else in mind?"
"Nope," she replied, grabbing two fistfuls of his shirt and wrenching it apart.
FIN
Reviews will be given a good home, where B&B will regularly rip clothing from each other and do lots of passionate devouring ;D