Been reading a bit of Bones fanfiction lately (I finally have time, yay!) and I slowly started to realize I couldn't leave them alone - Booth and Brennan, I mean. I watched 5x16 and 6x09 again (the good parts, anyway) and I was struck by just how tragic it all is. And so today I just opened Word and started writing. As a result, this is written on a whim and may not be entirely logical all the time - I apologize for that.
Title comes from the song Kryptonite by Three Doors Down. "I really don't care what happens now and then / As long as you'll be my friend in the end." I thought it was fitting.
Enjoy the story!
This was not the way it was supposed to happen.
He was in bed, lying next to the woman he was living with –the woman he loved, damnit– and he couldn't stop thinking about his friend, his best friend who had just told him that she'd made a mistake turning him down on that fateful night a year ago.
The woman he'd loved for several years. The woman he –if he was fair to himself– still loved as more than a partner, more than a friend.
Was it possible to love several people at once?
He looked at the woman lying asleep next to him, facing him with a carefree expression on her face. Hannah was so sweet, possessing a cheerful kind of happiness which had been one of the things that had attracted him in her. Conversation with her was easy: as a journalist, she knew exactly when to stop and when to push, and she had an acute ability to read people's minds that sometimes scared even him. She was intuitive, easy-going, fun – a woman with whom a relationship was easy.
So why was he thinking about that other woman, with whom he had a turbulent past, with whom a relationship was anything but easy?
No, that was not true, he corrected himself. Their relationship had been easy for a long time. She'd been the first woman he had really felt at home with – even before there was a hint of anything romantic, back when they'd simply been friends. The nights of working late, with take-out near them, bantering back and forth between serious conversations and careless flirting – that part of the relationship had been easy.
But they shared so much more. They knew so many things that weren't simple. His father, her father, Jared, Sully – they had shared their pain and had become so much closer because of it.
And now – now what? He had told her he loved her almost a year ago, and they'd both cried – he had cried because he'd seen his future blown away, had seen the pain in her eyes, and had known –known - that she felt it too. The attraction. And maybe she'd rationalized it all away, but he knew that it would have to come out someday.
He'd never expected to find anything in Afghanistan. He'd gone away depressed, hoping that the distraction of prepping young men would suffice, and had instead found himself dreaming of her, replaying their conversations over and over, wondering where he'd gone wrong.
And then Hannah – it hadn't been love at first sight, but she was a fun distraction in the desert, a way to take his mind away from the daily reality of death and the nightly dreams of a woman he couldn't have.
He hadn't expected it to last. But Hannah had been good to him. She'd healed parts of him he had barely known were hurt at all, and she'd made him feel something other than pain.
But Bones…
He loved her. He couldn't hide the truth from himself, and he almost laughed out loud at the irony of becoming one of those men he'd always loathed – being with one woman and loving another.
Now he was in that exact same position.
Restless, he slipped away from under his covers. Hannah made a protesting noise, but she didn't wake up, and he was grateful for that.
She'd asked him what was wrong when he'd come home – of course, she had noticed the pain in his eyes– and he, fool that he was, hadn't told her. Didn't want her to know. Hannah didn't know his history with Bones, didn't know about that first kiss, all those years back, or the one under the mistletoe, or the one most recent. She knew they were close, but he had told her nothing of how that bond had formed, how much they knew of each other. She hadn't asked him how he felt about her and he hadn't offered. When they'd first met he'd wanted to keep that part to himself -what goes on between us, that should just be ours- and now it was just easier to not talk about it.
But her tear-stricken face kept flashing before his eyes and he couldn't think straight, didn't know what to feel.
He'd never seen her this way. Not after the discovery of her mother's body, not when Zack had left, not even last year, when she had turned him down.
She'd looked defeated. She'd never looked defeated.
And with that, realization came – he couldn't just leave her like that. He didn't know what she would do. Maybe he knew how she felt, he could relate to her, after all, but he didn't know how she would cope.
He had to find her.
He wrote a quick note for Hannah; although she was quite a heavy sleeper, he didn't want her to worry. Then he put on a shirt and shoes, grabbed his keys and left.
He made it to her house in record time; thankfully, traffic was sparse at 3 a.m.
Her face… as he stood in front of her door, debating whether he'd made the right choice, he couldn't forget her face. He wondered what she'd done afterwards – had she gone to sleep, gone out? Maybe she'd been drinking – god, what if she wasn't even home?
His decision made, he raised his hand and knocked – his signature knock.
She opened almost at once, which greatly relieved him; it also told him that she'd never gone to sleep. She looked thoroughly distressed. Her eyes were red and her hair was a mess. She was still dressed in the same wet clothes and his first thought was for her safety.
"Booth!" Her voice held both surprise and sadness, and with a pang in his heart he realized he was the source – the only source – for that sadness.
"What are you doing here?"
He didn't want to, couldn't, answer her question. Instead, he stepped aside her and into the apartment.
"Bones, come on, you've got to get out of those wet clothes!" he exclaimed, almost immediately wishing he hadn't said that. "I mean, you're gonna get sick this way," he adjusted quickly.
"What?" she asked, distractedly. She was still looking at him with large eyes, obviously unsure what to do.
"Booth, why are you here?"
He sighed, knowing he couldn't avoid the question.
"Look, you get out of those clothes and then we'll talk, OK? I just don't want you to get sick."
He saw something in her eyes – gratefulness, perhaps – before she turned around and simply left. While she was gone, he stared at her bookshelves, realizing the lay-out had changed. There were more books and more trinkets, too. He held his breath as he realized what exactly those trinkets were. He saw a picture of the team, laughing and toasting to something he couldn't remember. There was a picture of them, cut from a newspaper, as well as a picture taken on the night of the Anok exhibition – he smiled automatically as he remembered that night.
And Jasper. The little pig rested on the highest shelf. He couldn't remember ever seeing it before in her house.
With a start he realized how long ago it was that he'd last visited her house. Before Afghanistan at the very least – which made it almost a year.
God. He'd been neglecting her for almost a year. Their friendship, which, although she hardly ever mentioned it, meant so much to her, had been put on a halt. First naturally, since they were half a world away from each other, but since they'd both been back in D.C., he'd spent his free time with Hannah rather than Bones.
He'd left his best friend alone – no wonder she felt lonely, no wonder she'd surrounded herself with memories of them. He'd hardly seen her outside of work – when was the last time they'd gone out together, just the two of them, non-work related? He couldn't even remember; maybe tonight was the closest they'd been in a while.
He started when she came back into the room, dressed in a pair of thick sweatpants and a shirt. She caught him looking at the bookshelves, but didn't comment.
Now that she was here again, the reality of the situation struck him.
They were going to have to talk.
It's not going to end here - I mean, it's just plain cruel to end it here - but I don't know when part 2 will be up. Probably soon, since I suck at holding out... I can tell you that it will contain a lot more dialogue.
Please tell me what you think! I really want some feedback on this - if you write yourself, you know how much reviews can mean!