Author's note: Yes, I'm reposting this. Most everything I am reposting. Just need to figure out how to continue this. I'm thinking the last chapter I posted before I took it down was weak. Give me a few days and it will be great! I hope. Anyway, please help me by leaving reviews and send an PM if you want to chat. I love to chat and need help bouncing ideas around and brainstorming.
I
At midnight, Booth and Brennan sat on a futon and didn't look at each other. Sofas and pillows surrounded them and their drunken party of agents left them alone an hour ago.
Booth held his tie in one hand and his belt in the other. His tuxedo lay open and disheveled. He glanced down and saw his open fly. Behind him, Brennan stared at her feet, her heels gone. They lay strewn on the floor. The designer gown she bought earlier that day looked rumpled but not ruined, her light make-up smudged and her perfect hair no longer perfect, but tousled all on the right side of her face.
For a moment, Booth surveyed the room. He saw the disheveled state of the futon and Booth dropped his belt to the floor. When it clattered against the hardwood, Brennan jumped and her head spun to Booth in a blur. She stared at him in shock. Booth's own head turned and he took in the fact that Brennan did not look like her usual golden self, but pale and weary. Their eyes met and Booth saw the shock in her eyes.
A half hour later Booth opened Brennan's hotel room door and held it open for her, but didn't look at her. Somehow Booth managed to retain more motor control than Brennan. As she walked in, Brennan's heels dropped from her hands and she stumbled over them.
On reflex, Booth tried to catch her. Handicapped by his inebriation, Booth moved slow, missed her arms and grabbed her torso. His fingers caught her by the rib cage and dug in. Brennan shrieked in pain.
She tried to turn enough to hit him or kick him, but her momentum sent them both into the wall. They ended up on the floor, Booth on top of Brennan. Brennan struggled and gasped for air, trapped under Booth's weight. Her lungs couldn't take in oxygen. She panicked and fought. When Booth hit his head he saw stars and forgot that Brennan lay beneath him. Her knee came up and connected with Booth's thigh. He rolled over and groaned.
Brennan retreated into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She hit the light switch and the bulb blew. Brennan jumped, felt the doorknob connect with the small of her back and yelped.
Booth heard Brennan cry out and that sound scared him more than any sound he heard before. He didn't know if she screamed from fear or from pain or both. They sounded the same. Booth lay on the floor for a minute. He held his head in his hands and prayed but his head continued to pound. The booze, combined with the wall, made for one major headache.
Brennan held in her tears as she felt her way to the sink. She refused to give a doorknob the ability to make her cry. Her hands found the cold-water valve, cranked it, punched down on the water stopper and filled the sink to the brim. Brennan counted to sixty as she held her breath under the water. The cool water calmed her thoughts and swirled her hair in a halo around her head. She expelled the air from her lungs and splashed some water on the back of her neck. One drop slid down her spine. Brennan bolted up and missed the faucet by half an inch.
"Breathe. Breathe Tempe, breathe Tempe, breathe Tempe, breathe Tempe." With this mantra, Brennan tried to extinguish her fear and confusion of the nights' events.
When the world stopped whistling in his ears, Booth gained his feet, shut the door and managed to stagger over to Brennan's bed. His legs wouldn't hold him well and he collapsed on the mattress when he reached it. Booth stared at the ceiling, pulled the pillows over his head and screamed into one of them. The sound didn't carry as far as the bathroom.
For a few minutes Brennan tried to get her eyes to see in the dark. It didn't work. She dug in the drawer for the matches and lit the candles on either side of the mirror. The soft light filled the bathroom.
Brennan stole a look at her reflection. Her red eyes and the tears she refused to release scared her. The make-up disappeared with the help of a hand towel. The other side of the towel Brennan ran through her wet hair to straighten it out.
Brennan removed her dress and examined every inch of her body. She rubbed the skin on her upper thighs, chest, ribcage, arms and wrists, and waited for the twinge of pain that would indicate a bruise. She never felt the bruises and breathed relief. Brennan grabbed a small hand mirror to check her vaginal area.
She'd had sex, but it wasn't rough. She stood rigid and for a couple of seconds Brennan stared at the door. When she felt she could move, Brennan slipped into the dress and inhaled a sharp breath of air like a scream as the fabric touched her back.
The pillows didn't stifle the sounds that came from the bathroom. Booth heard Brennan squeak, or make some kind of sound between a squeak or a yelp and a short, panicked scream and he threw the pillows to the ground.
Brennan grabbed the hand mirror to study her back in the other mirror and brushed her hand against the spot where the doorknob hit her. It stung, but not bad.
Booth sat up, took his service weapon from his ankle holster and checked the magazine.
Brennan zipped up her dress, opened the door and froze. What she saw threatened to unleash the tears she tried to hide.
Booth sat on her bed with his gun in his hand and prepared to kill himself.
"Booth." Her voice wavered.
"Temperance." Booth never called her that before.
Brennan wouldn't let him do it.
"Booth, give me the gun." Brennan stepped toward him but Booth cocked the gun and stuck the barrel to his temple.
Brennan stopped.
With the safety off the weapon, if Booth pulled the trigger...
Brennan made her decision.
"Don't you dare do that, Seeley Booth."
Booth shook his head, his eyes filled with tears.
"Why, Booth? Why?"
"Temperance, I think I raped you."
What he said shook Brennan down to her soul. Her legs wobbled and Brennan grabbed hold of the curtain.
"What? No, you didn't…we drank way too much alcohol and…" Brennan struggled for an explanation.
"And I took advantage of you." Booth closed his eyes and wept.
Brennan made her move. She ran across the plush carpet on the balls of her feet in three long strides and wedged the web between her thumb and finger into the gun safety. Booth pulled the trigger but the gun didn't fire.
"Don't do that, Booth! Don't you ever do that!" Brennan yanked the gun from his hands, removed her skin from the safety, and pulled the magazine.
"Why did you do that?" Booth whispered.
"Why did you try to kill yourself?" She grabbed his chin and made him look at her. "Booth! Answer me!"
"I hurt you!"
"No! You couldn't have hurt me. You would never do that! We were drunk and we-"
"Bones, you never said yes. I don't remember you saying yes. Do you?"
"I," Brennan couldn't remember. "I don't remember anything, Booth."
Booth didn't speak. He couldn't look at her.
"I'm going to keep the bullets and the gun until morning, when we are both not drunk." She took the gun and the magazine into the bathroom, closed the door halfway so Booth wouldn't see and placed them under the sink. "You can have them back then if you promise to forget this happened and not kill yourself."
She waited for Booth to answer, but he wouldn't nod or shake his head in a yes or no. At least he didn't see where she'd hid his weapon.
"Hit my head against the wall." Booth spoke at last, his voice slurred.
"Booth, are you sleepy?"
"No." His head drifted down and came to rest in his hands. "I don't have a concussion Bones. Besides the building hangover and overwhelming feeling of guilt, my head feels great! Will you just please give me back the damn gun?"
"Stop talking like that, Booth! You would never hurt me. No matter how drunk we got."
"You don't know that!"
"Booth, you are completely incapable of hurting me! Besides, I checked myself in the bathroom. If you attacked me, we would both be covered in bruises. I would've kicked your ass and you know it. It doesn't matter how drunk I was, I'd beat the hell out of you. And I don't have a single bruise on me, except from hitting the bathroom doorknob two minutes ago. I have not been raped. I checked my vaginal area and I have no bruises there either. We did have sex, but it was not rough or forced. So until we have a very definite reason to believe otherwise, and I don't think we will ever find one, then we will agree that this was consensual sex, not rape!"
Booth looked up when Brennan admitted they'd done it.
"Drunken, but consensual. Okay?" Brennan crouched in front of him. "Okay, Booth? Hey! Answer me!"
"Okay."
"Okay, what?" She said.
"Okay, I didn't..." Booth found he couldn't say the word this time.
Brennan took his hands in hers and tried to comfort him.
Booth imploded. He dropped her hands and stood up.
"We can't just act like nothing happened, Temperance!"
"Stop. Calling. Me. Temperance! I. Absolutely. Hate. It. When. You. Call. Me. Temperance!" Brennan exploded and the confusion and worry from the nights' events caught up to her.
She shoved Booth and he fell onto the mattress.
"Well I thought you hated being called Bones, Temperance!"
"No! I hated, past tense, I hated being called Bones by you, but now I hate it when anyone else calls me that," She planted her hands on her hips. "Don't you use my first name, Booth. I absolutely hate that. When you call me Temperance I feel like something's wrong!"
"Something is wrong, Temper...Bones!" Booth switched names fast when Brennan gave him a dark look. "This is wrong! You're refusing to acknowledge what happened."
"No, I'm choosing to ignore your insane behavior. I am acknowledging that we had sex. Drunk sex, yes, but it's still sex! Not rape. You would never rape me. If you tried you wouldn't be walking around!" For emphasis on that, Brennan kicked him in the shin with the ball of her foot. It hurt like hell. "I don't know why you keep insisting that you committed such an evil act..."
"Because we would never have sex otherwise!"
Booth regretted his words when he saw Brennan's reaction.
His words made his Bones cry.
Tears fell down her cheeks and Brennan attempted to hide them.
Booth thought that Bones would hit him, throw him across the room, kill him, hurt him in some physical way, perhaps even go grab his gun and shoot him. He begged for any of those, because this emotional pain hurt more than he could stand to bare.
"Bones, I didn't mean that the way it sounded!" Booth tried to fix the situation, but discovered there is no quick cure for foot-in-mouth.
"What?" Brennan creaked.
"I didn't mean that."
"Oh?"
"I um, you...probably have every right to be mad at me for saying that, but if you let me explain..."
"Explain, then."
"Um." Booth didn't realize that the word 'um' is the worst way to begin and he paused way to long as he tried to come up with what to say.
Brennan snapped. She growled, low and pained and slapped him across the face.
"Bullshit!" Brennan bitch-slapped him for good measure.
"Bones!" Booth cradled his head against her continued blows.
"Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! You are...you are just bullshit! Screw you, Booth!"
Brennan hugged her arms to her chest and sobbed in silence.
"Yeah, I deserved that." Booth muttered under his breath.
"You deserve far worse! I should kill you for that. I should...I should...kick your ass! Go to hell! Burn in hell, Booth!""
"Already there Bones, but please, yes, kick my ass!" Booth begged her. "I've been waiting for you to do that since I saw that freaked out look in your eyes back at the damned club!"
"Oh I would love to, I would really love to kick your ass, but you already tried to kill yourself with your own gun, you tried to blow your brains out with your own gun, so I thought maybe we should move on to something not homicidal or suicidal, but now clearly you don't want to move on, because you've got some crazy Catholic guilt thing going on, which by the way is only made worse by alcohol and is really, really annoying, and we drank way too much and had sex, and you must be the only guy on the planet who believes you raped a woman when in fact the sex was consensual, drunk, but consensual, and why, Booth, why are you so convinced you raped me and why would you say something so horrible like you would never have sex with me unless we got drunk and you raped me, that's even worse than how you think you raped me!" Brennan finished her ramble.
She needed to breathe.
Before Booth could even respond, Brennan screamed at him. "Are you suicidal? I should kick your ass for saying that! I really should!"
But Brennan didn't move to hit him. She paced the length of the bed.
Brennan began the 'Breathe, Tempe' mantra.
"Bones?"
"Do you not find me attractive?"
"I do find you attractive!" Booth defended Brennan's beauty. "So attractive that at times you can be very intimidating. Bones, I just never thought we would end up together, in bed together, because I didn't think I was good enough to attract the love of a woman like you."
"But...you are good enough, Booth." Brennan blurted and slapped her hand over her mouth in shock.