Disclaimer: Bones and its characters doesn't belong to me, but I thank FOX for creating such great ones!
A/N: The following is my first fanfic of any sort, Bones or otherwise! I'd love to hear your thoughts when it's done. This fic comes out of my rewatching of all the Bones episodes during the summer hiatus after season 6. Specifically, Bones says some things to Angela about regrets in "The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House" that immediately made me think of S6's "The Doctor in the Photo" episode... and I wanted to bring out those resonances about Brennan, decisions, and regrets, in a way that also makes sense for the revelations in ep. 100. This will certainly have another chapter to follow (it's almost finished and will probably be posted quite quickly); I'm not sure if I want to make it any longer than that, so ... feed back will be appreciated!
Story Title: To Live Without Regrets
Chapter 1 – Love in the Air
Dr. Temperance Brennan stood in her kitchen with an unusual feeling in her abdominal region, an unsettled feeling. She wasn't quite sure why. Booth would be arriving for the promised mac n' cheese meal any minute now, and the preparations were well underway. Brennan had the sauce and noodles cooking, the oven preheating with some fresh bread from the bakery keeping warm inside, and the table was mostly set. Why, then, was she so disturbed?
She chuckled a bit, thinking about the recent events at the lab. Love, and whatever everyone meant by it, was in the air, it seemed. Hodgins was trying to get Angela to marry him, and when he wasn't proposing, he and Angela couldn't keep their hands off each other. Whether the computer was running an analysis, or whether it was a lunch date at the "Egyptian place"—that place being the replica of Cleopatra's bed, and not a fine dining establishment—they always seemed to have their bodies connected in one or another sensual way.
Brennan took the pasta off the stove, poured it through a colander, and stirred it in with the cheese sauce. She poured the whole mixture into a baking dish and sprinkled breadcrumbs liberally over the top, placing the dish into the waiting oven.
Angela and Hodgins weren't the only ones talking about love. Booth wasn't helping matters either, constantly talking to her about what Hodgins had said about the proposal process, or his beliefs about "love." Brennan chuckled again and felt another flutter of uncertainty when she heard a knock on the door, in the usual pattern that signaled her partner's arrival.
"Hey Booth," she said, opening the door to let him in. Booth moved past her quickly, sniffing the air. "Geez Bones," he responded, "it smells great in here!"
"Thanks. It's just about ready, I only have to caramelize the top of the mac n' cheese under the broiler."
"Can I do anything to help?" Booth asked, arms open at his sides. He walked towards the fridge to help himself to a beer. Suddenly he paused, this night seemed different than their ordinary evenings of takeout with a side of bickering. "You don't mind if I help myself, do you?"
"No Booth, of course not." She paused, too, remembering the incident as she usually did. "Just don't get injured!"
Booth made a slight grunting sound at the memory but opened the fridge anyways, pulling out a light beer. "I'm serious, let me help."
"Thanks, but I have it all," she replied easily. "Just sit down." As she spoke, she moved around the kitchen, taking the warm bread to the table. She glanced at her partner occasionally, trying not to be obvious, but the t-shirt he was wearing could in no way hide his well-formed upper arms, and Brennan found the sight quite intriguing.
"Really? Because I don't want to come off as some male chauvinistic caveman while you're doing all the work… you, being a woman, you know" he bantered, flashing a charm smile.
"O-ho, so I'm not just one of the guys anymore, huh?" Brennan said boldly, not really daring to wait for a response. "But yes," she rushed on, "the fact that you're thinking such an enlightened thought proves that you can't be, as you so colorfully put it, a chauvinistic caveman, not to mention that prehistoric humans, despite being far more socially advanced than is commonly thought, likely did not have a well-developed concept of something like chauvinism."
"Ok, ok, it was just a phrase. And assumptions aside, I'm glad you don't think I'm one of them!" he retorted with a patient smile.
"I mean it, Booth, dinner is almost ready, so just sit down." As she spoke, she removed the mac n' cheese from the oven and laid it on the table.
Ever persistent, Booth responded, "You know, you should let me help."
"No," responded Brennan, setting an empty bowl in front of Booth, as if that would settle the matter. "Cleaning up. You can do that."
"Great. Wow!" Booth laughed a bit, and Brennan observed again just how unusually relaxed and happy he seemed. "Mac and cheese!" As he spoke, she returned to the kitchen and brought back a bowl for herself, sitting down kitty-corner from her partner.
Booth surveyed the table laid before him, his beer now in a tall glass, white wine in front of Brennan's place, the basket of rolls, the music playing softly in the background. "Wow! Bones! This- this looks fantastic!"
Unsure of what to make of his repeated enthusiasm for such a classic, and essentially simple, dish as macaroni and cheese, Brennan could only respond, "Yeah? Really?"
"Oh, I mean, you shouldn't have, I mean, all this work just for me?" Booth's apparent bashfulness caught her off guard. When was her partner ever bashful? Didn't he like a home-cooked meal?
Looking down as she spoke, Brennan could only say, "What? No, I mean. It wasn't that much." She knew, though, that it was something, something she did gladly, and she found herself inordinately pleased by the sight of Booth sitting at her kitchen table, eating a simple meal, rather than sprawled all over the couch with a box of takeout in his hands. Not that she didn't end up enjoying his take-out surprises, but this evening was shaping up to be something different, something good.
Brennan looked up again and she caught Booth's eyes looking at her, warm and inviting, and couldn't look away. He took a second bite of mac n' cheese and breathed out slowly, exhaling. "Mmm," he said. Brennan smiled back widely, happily; he really seemed to like the food. "This is unbelievable." His face melted into a smile, and Brennan saw his eyes sparkling, the corners crinkling as he ate and spoke. Their eyes met and held as they looked at each other with unashamed smiles of—was that delight? She almost didn't know when she'd seen him like this, except that once, after their very first case together, almost three years before.
"You like it?" she asked quietly, her words containing an emphasis she wasn't sure she wanted to understand.
Booth's toothy grin diffused her uncertainty. "I'd like to be alone with it," he said with gusto, laughing. He'd expected her to make a disparaging and logical remark, or to comment on the socio-cultural significance of food and solitary existence. But Brennan could only kept smiling broadly.
"She said I could go with my instincts, so I put in a little fresh ground nutmeg."
The nutmeg must be that homey flavor, Booth realized. "Well, she taught you well," he told her seriously, remembering how his partner had tried to hide the strain of knowing the victim. "Thanks, Bones," he added, and he tried to convey how much he really meant it.
Unhcharacteristically, Booth though, she failed to take full credit, and he was surprised when she said only, "Yeah, well, you know. We have to eat, right?" She smiled widely at her partner as he continued to eat with sounds of obvious satisfaction.
Booth certainly couldn't deny the logic of her statement, especially when applied to him, so he only responded, "Yeah. Gotta eat. Always gotta eat."
The meal continued in the same happy, quiet vein, the conversation resting mainly on topics as seemingly trivial as mac and cheese: Parker's latest antics at school and sports, Brennan's latest communications from her publisher, and just what Brennan had missed by passing on the toro at the sushi bar.
Only occasionally did they pause to eat in silence, and Brennan caught Booth looking at her, this puzzled look on his face. She almost realized it mirrored her own, and she almost called Booth on it, but something held her back. The moment felt too perfect, too right, to risk conversation—and for these partners, that said something.
Eventually Brennan laid her fork down on her plate. "Well, I suppose we do need to get these cleaned up. You promised, Booth! Come on, time to get up, let's move these dishes into the kitchen." Booth paused before standing, clearly wanting the meal to last longer, the happiness to continue. After a moment he stood too, and followed her into the kitchen with his plate.
"I really do think Hodgins is going to do something," he told her. "He came up to me today, making even less sense than usual, and I thought he was going to ask me for advice, ag—"
Brennan interrupted, holding out a dish for Booth. "Hodgins has asked you again for further proposal advice?" She saw Booth stiffen and added, softer, "I didn't mean that like it sounded. I didn't realize you were that close to him."
"Um. Well, yes, he has, fat lot of good it's been to him, right?" Booth said, turning from her to put more dishes into the dishwasher.
Brennan interrupted again. "Does he really think she'll say yes sometime?"
"Well, you're her best friend, I'm sure you have some inside insight." Booth turned to her as he answered.
"I think she wants to be able to say yes, but feels – or thinks, I don't know – that she shouldn't, because she sees herself as a free spirit. And she tells me that I'm the one causing her to think of the social ramifications of entering into the marriage contract, as if I'm trying to deny her happiness. But I do want her to be happy, Booth, I really do." Brennan rambled on, not watching Booth, trying to make sense, when she noticed that the clinking of dishes into the dishwasher had stopped entirely as Booth focused only on her.
Booth noticed she had bitten one side of her lower lip between her teeth, a universal Bones signal for the discomfort of uncertainty. He took a step closer, still holding the dishtowel. His response was gentle. "No Bones, it doesn't work that way. Angela's a grown woman, and she'll make her own decisions. It's good for both of you that you can talk, but whatever decision she ultimately makes? Is in no way your fault."
Brennan looked away from her partner for a second, her thoughts turning to the conversations she'd had with Angela earlier that week.
"What if I want to say yes," Angela had asked, after Brennan practically instructed her to decline. They were walking back to the latter's office, and Brennan's response had been surprised in the extreme. "You get married?" she'd said, just a little stress on the word "you." Angela, after all, had once let a "perfect" man be with her for only three weeks out of the year; she was not exactly the marrying sort.
Angela's next response surprised Brennan just as much as her previous statement had. "Sometimes your brain just shuts off, because you're... in love."
While Brennan might have taken the moment to point out, as she had to Booth at the start of the case, her oft-cited believe about love being composed of chemicals, she stayed focused on the matter at hand, Hodgins's unwavering pursuit of Angela's hand in marriage. "One can't logically base a decision on momentary happiness," Brennan told her friend clearly.
The pair entered Brennan's office and sat down. Angela, not deterred by Brennan's forcefulness, pushed her friend's comfort zone just a little more. "Haven't you ever just looked at a guy and said, 'Screw it'?" Her voice took on its usual sultry tone when alluding to sexual innuendo. "...Well, maybe not the best choice of words, okay, but... Like, when you were with Sully. Don't you regret letting him go?"
Brennan paused. The face that came to her mind was not Sully's, leaving on the boat, but her partner's, at the close of their first case a year before he'd detained her at the airport and forced her to work with him again. They had stood outside the Founding Fathers restaurant and bar, stepping closer, kissing, but she watched his face get smaller as she looked out the back of a taxicab, alone.
Clearing her mind, Brennan looked at Angela, saying, "I made a decision. Regrets serve no real purpose. If you want to be impulsive, why don't you just say yes?" As she spoke, though, the memories continued. She remembered how she turned to look back at the incredibly handsome man whom she had teasingly (but not decisively, she thought) turned down. The next morning she called him stupid, slapped his face, and threw him out of her life. Her gut clenched as the memory raced quickly through her mind.
Brennan mind moved to the continuation of her conversation with Angela. She wanted to explain how she made decisions. "It's just... If a relationship seems more than casual, I feel that I need to posit the potential problems. Probabilities of success and failure, or..." she'd told her friend, her mind flashing to that long ago kiss with Booth. He'd told her he was working on his gambling problem, and he'd done that because he thought they had something together that might go somewhere.
With those words, Brennan's calculator-like brain started figuring positives and negatives, factoring in what admittedly little she knew of Booth so far, and of herself, and determining that to let her attraction to him go any farther than it had, was quite far enough. He seemed to be a good enough man, but he didn't know her background; she couldn't cause him the pain that being with her certainly would produce. Not to mention their differences in socio-economic background, education, and overall worldviews. She had come to the clear conclusion that despite how well they got along together, enough was enough. She would at least do him the honor of not giving false hope. The next morning, she donned black glasses in the lab, as much a cover for her hangover as a symbolic wall around her emotions and her privacy that no one, especially not the cocky FBI agent, would be allowed behind. It was a year before she saw him again.
Angela had interrupted her reverie with a brief statement. "You get scared."
This time, her mind still dwelling on that case and the agent it introduced her to, she responded quietly. "But I miss so much, don't I?"
Angela sounded almost sad as she replied honestly, "I want to say no, but... yeah. You do. And so does whoever you're keeping yourself from." Unbidden, though by then not surprising, images of Booth flashed through Brennan's mind.
"Bones? Bones?" Booth waved his hands in front of his eyes. One minute they'd been talking about Angela and Hodgins; the next Bones was just gone, gazing quietly at the floor, lost in thought. Her head snapped up at his words and she looked at him, her eyes slowly coming into focus. His face was directly in front of hers.
"Whoa, I was really out of it there for a second, wasn't I?" she laughed uneasily, a slight flush rising to her cheeks.
"Yeah, Bones, you were. Where did you go?" Booth straightened, but stayed near her.
"I didn't go anywhere Booth, I was right-"
"No Bones, I don't mean physically, I mean here," he said, tapping his skull with his fingers.
Brennan smiled. "I don't know how she'll make a decision like that, Booth. I don't understand!" Brennan declared, stomping her foot slightly for emphasis. "When I make decisions, I make them carefully. I weigh the positive and the negative outcomes and come to the conclusion least likely to result in long-term pain."
"You really think it's that easy, don't you, Bones." Booth said, his voice suddenly quiet. He knew Bones much better now than he once had, but she still surprised him with how far she carried her reliance on logic.
"Yes, Booth, I do. … That wasn't a question, was it." She took a step away from him, as if trying to clear her thoughts.
"No, Bones, not really." Not wanting to break the moment, Booth paused before speaking again. If he'd learned anything from working with Brennan these last two years, it was that he had to speak and act much more carefully with her than with anyone he'd ever known. She had become his partner and his friend, and often he remembered that at first it seemed they could have been more. One wrong word, and he'd end up with her palm across his cheek again. That slap on the face, so soon after what had been a heck of a kiss, had hurt in more ways than one. They'd come so far since that first case, that Booth didn't want to make a single mistake, didn't want to do anything that might cause this woman to run again.
When they had first met, she'd stood in front of a classroom, strong and utterly unafraid to take a stand. Plus, she was beautiful. Not exactly what he'd imagined from a professor and a forensic anthropologist. He hadn't lied to her when he told her that night at the Founding Fathers that he thought their attraction might be leading somewhere; he'd been honest, too honest, and therein lay his mistake. Any other woman might have appreciated such forthright emotion coming from a man, but Bones was no ordinary woman.
"Come on Bones," he said gently, reaching out to touch her arm. "I'm through with these. Let's sit on the couch."
Booth watched Brennan take in the dishes that still remained to be done, look at him with a question in her eyes, and open her mouth. He answered the unspoken bicker that was sure to emerge. "You're right. I'm not quite done, but the dishes can wait, and whatever's going on in that genius brain of yours can't. Let's sit." His hand slipped down to around her wrist as he led her to the couch. Her blue eyes, so happy earlier in the evening, now seemed far away, quiet, and even a bit nervous. They sat down next to each other, their bodies not touching, and Booth released his hand from her wrist.
To be continued (soon)
