AN- This is not the first time this story has been told, but it is the first time for me to tell it. It is all outlined and partially written, it will be posted completely. I hope to get back to Gain at some point, but I really hope you will embrace this story. Please read and review. I can't wait to see what you think
Introduction:
"Yeah thanks, Cam," Booth said into the phone. "Cops solve crimes, not squints… but at this point, I'm willing to try anything."
"No offense," Cam replied with a laugh.
"I wasn't talking about you," he replied. "You're a cop."
"A cop who spends her days in the basement of the New York City Morgue up to her elbows in dead bodies," she said.
"Okay," he agreed. "You're a squint."
"I gave Charlie her information," she told him. "I only know her by reputation, but if anyone can help you find justice for Gemma, she can."
"Thanks again, Camille."
"You're welcome, Seeley. And don't call me Camille," she said, smiling as she hung up the phone.
"Hey Charlie," he yelled across the bullpen.
"Yes, sir," the junior agent answered, walking up to his desk.
"You don't have to call me 'sir,' Charlie," he said. "Just Booth is fine. Listen, did you have any luck tracking down that anthropologist Dr. Saroyan told us about?"
"Yes, sir," he answered. "Uh, Booth. She's lecturing over at American University. She's got a class from 5-7 tonight." The younger agent handed Booth a folder with the class information.
"Good work," Booth replied. "I'm gonna head over there."
He opened the door to the cavernous, darkened lecture hall. When he looked up at the woman standing at the front of the room, he was surprised. She was not the elder scholar that he expected. He only saw her from behind, but her auburn hair fell just above her shoulders and she had curves filling out that red dress in all the right places.
Then she turned around.
"Holy shit," he whispered to himself. "No way. It can't be."
He stepped over into a shadowy corner of the doorway before she could see him. He closed his eyes and listened as she lectured to the class. He let the husky tones of her voice wash over him. It was then that he was sure his eyes were not deceiving him. He would never forget the sound of her voice.
He leaned against the darkened doorframe and let himself get lost in his memories.
"Hey Doc," he called down from the top of the trench the scientists had been excavating. "You can't stay down there all night."
"I can, Sergeant, and I will if you continue to interrupt my work," she called back, and though he couldn't see her, he could just picture the fire in her eyes. Teasing that fire out of her had become one of his favorite pass times.
When he'd first been assigned this duty, it had really pissed him off. He couldn't imagine whose panties he'd twisted in a knot to be sent into the god-forsaken jungle to babysit a bunch of squints. But Seeley Booth was nothing if not a loyal soldier, and he had taken the assignment as seriously as he would any other.
The other guys in his unit looked at it like a vacation, and as such they'd stuck him with the pain-in-the-ass grad student who refused to play by the rules. Temperance Brennan was sure to be the death of him… but man, what a way to go. She was definitely a royal pain, but she was also drop dead gorgeous. He really thought it was a sin to waste that beauty and all those luscious curves on a squint who spent all her time digging up old graves.
The girl was hot, but she definitely had a stick up her butt. Booth had made it his personal mission to dislodge it. He'd tried all the usual tricks, but nothing worked. She was probably the first girl to not succumb to his famous charm. Never one to back down from a challenge, he hadn't given up. They'd been in El Salvador for about a month before she'd finally deigned to speak to him like he was a human being.
It was then that the ice began to melt and he'd found a few cracks in the walls she built around herself. Once she allowed herself to be human, he found that he actually enjoyed her company. She was funny in an awkward sort of way, and he found it hilarious that at twenty-two, she was clueless about anything having to do with popular culture. He was falling hard for the quirky scientist, and he didn't have a damned clue what to do about it.
The sound of books and laptops closing pulled him from his reverie. She'd obviously dismissed the class, and now he wasn't sure what to do. He'd come here to ask for help in solving Gemma Arrington's murder from one of the country's leading anthropologists… and he still needed her help, but he wasn't sure he was ready to face the "one that got away."
He decided it was best to slip out the door with the students. He'd have to formulate a plan on how to approach her. After all, it had been nearly five years since he'd last laid eyes on her. They had spent an incredible few months together in that Central American jungle, but after they'd returned stateside, he'd never heard from her again. He thought back to what she had been like in the early days of that dig, and he knew that he'd have to tread lightly when it came to asking for her help.
"It can't be," she thought, as she watched the retreating form of the man in the suit as he attempted to blend in with the students filing out of her lecture hall.
He had often been on her mind over the past five years, for good reason, but she wasn't in the habit of seeing him in places that he wasn't. She was certain that it was not her mind playing tricks on her… Seeley Booth had, in fact, been standing in the back of her class. But why? And why did he not stay to speak to her?
Not that she would have wanted him to. She had spent too many years running from the memory of him. It wasn't fair. They were finally settled. She was enjoying teaching at American and she had a fulfilling position at the prestigious Jeffersonian Institution. In Washington, DC, she was finally feeling as if she'd found a true home. She hadn't counted on the one man that she'd ever allowed herself to have feelings for crossing her path.
Her thoughts were nearly two-thousand miles away as she watched him walk away.
"Come on, Doc," he called down to her. "You gotta get some rest, and I need my beauty sleep." Even from her position in the trench deep below where he was standing, she could hear the smile in his voice. "Looks this good don't come easy."
He was incorrigible, and she had found herself growing fonder of his ridiculous charm over the past month. When they had first arrived in El Salvador and were introduced to the handful of Army soldiers that were there to help guard the dig, she hadn't paid much attention to any of them. But after a few weeks, she realized that she couldn't go anywhere without seeing one of them, one in particular that is, somewhere in her vicinity. She assumed he'd drawn the short straw and was assigned to watch over her. This happened whenever she participated in a dig in a particularly volatile area. She had a tendency to get more involved in her work and to stay at the excavation site more than some of her colleagues.
Eventually, he began to speak to her. She'd learned that he was Sergeant-Major Seeley Booth from Philadelphia. He was kind to her, and she felt as if he genuinely wanted to get to know her. His interest in her seemed different than that of Michael, Professor Stires, who had shown an obvious sexual interest in her since before they'd left Evanston. She had planned to accept his advances on this trip, but that was before she had met the handsome soldier.
No one had ever really treated her the way Booth did. He made her feel things that she knew existed, but never thought she would feel. It scared the hell out of her, and thrilled her at the same time. She had begun to the think that perhaps it would be the brash young man in Army fatigues, and not her handsome professor, that would introduce her to the world of sexual pleasure.
It was with those thoughts in her mind that she climbed out of the excavation trench late that night. As always, Booth reached out a hand to help her out of the trench and up onto terra firma.
"Thank goodness, Doc," he said. "I thought you were gonna stay down there all night."
She rolled her eyes, again with the sobriquets.
"I don't know why you insist on calling me 'Doc,'" she said. "I have yet to present my doctoral thesis…"
"It's just a nickname," he said, casually. "Didn't anyone ever give you a nickname?"
"No," she answered. Her dad and her brother used to call her Tempe, but that was just a diminutive form of her given name, not really a nickname, she thought as she went to let go of his hand.
He didn't release his hold however, he actually pulled her closer to him.
"That's a shame," he said to her, with a wink. "Everyone needs a nickname."
She felt her breath hitch as he looked down to meet her eyes.
"Hey Doc," he said.
"Yes?"
"I'm gonna kiss you now."
AN2- So, what do you think? Yes? No? Did I leave you wanting more? Review, please.