AUTHOR: omelette73
TITLE: AFTER
GENERE: Just romance.
TIMELINE: One day, maybe.
RATING: K+
SPOLIER: No spoilers.
PAIRING: Booth/Brennan
DISCLAIMER: not mine, too bad.
THANKS: to my Lotus and Forensicmama, as always.
The 'before' had been under everyone's eyes. Made of waiting, bickering, logic vs. gut, friendship, repressed passion, fear, support, and a great amount - hidden and soothed - of that unmentionable L word.
The 'while', well... that exact moment should be the two lovers' secret, the experienced momentum awaited with trepidation, fear and endless sweetness. The perfect moment in which two people became one, occupying the same space. But he wasn't worried about that either; he had never been worried about that.
The 'after'.
He was truly afraid of the after.
The very moment in which the restless heart begins to beat at a normal rhythm again, in which the pupils, dilated with passion, start to look at their surroundings with the usual prospective. In which the bodies, slightly sweaty, feel the first shiver out of the temperature in the room.
The one in which you look the other person in the eyes, and you recognize each other. In which you know-- you feel you have to say something, because what you have shared doesn't have to be just a moment of a physical release, but something more profound, true and special.
Exactly what you have shared with her.
He had always imagined it had to be him taking this first step, making sure she wouldn't run away, confining one of those moments they spent together, in an umpteenth scientific proof, to combine with the others that made that brain of her so mysterious and unintelligible to his eyes.
On the contrary, it was not like this.
Booth simply found out he didn't have those words.
He found out he was scared.
Scared of a woman's eyes, how he had never been in his entire life.
Scared to death to lose her.
Scared to not to find the right words--he, who had a talent of using words.
Still tense in her arms, her scent in his nose, he laid his head in the hollow of her neck, without even worrying his weight would be too much to her to bear.
He had no doubt about his feelings for Bones, but he could have filled up an entire encyclopedia listing all the objections she could have made about their relationship.
For a moment he asked himself if what they had just shared was an ending or a beginning, and he shivered when he realized he preferred not to know the answer, rather than to find out he had ruined everything.
Coward, he thought, you are a real coward, Seeley Booth.
And then, he felt her hand slowly sliding over his arm to join with his own and he clearly heard those soft words whispered in his ear.
"What are you scared of, Booth? I'm here. I'm always here."
The shiver through his body became a fall of emotions as he slowly raised his head to look for her eyes, without finding the heart to part himself from that silky and soft body of hers.
He looked at her. And the sweet smile he discovered on her lips was the answer he was looking for.
The only certitude he needed.
He welcomed those words with his greatest relief.
They would have had their after, after all.