How It Should Have Been
Hacker walked into Booth's office with an air of uncertainty about him, and that, among other things, was what made Booth so sure that their conversation was about to be in no way professional.
The small talk began, about the case, about his efforts towards the case, all complimentary but Booth hated that, firstly, he was involved with Bones' relationship with his boss at all, and secondly, that he was Hacker's go-to guy on how to date Brennen. If he knew that, he would be doing it himself.
"Sir, if we would just kill the compliments and say what's on your mind, I'd appreciate that." Booth interrupted, hoping that this conversation would be like a band-aid and could be over and done with sooner rather than later.
"Right," Hacker agreed, taking a seat in front of him. "Let's cut the agent-boss thing for a minute. It's been a while since I've met someone..." Oh no, Booth thought, terrified of the words about to escape his boss' mouth. Not sex. Not sex with Bones. "... special, and uh, well I just don't want to make a fool out of myself if Temperance is only going out with me because I'm the boss."
Booth thought for a second, first feeling relief that it wasn't anything too personal they were discussing, but also toying with the idea that as a go-between, it was almost like he had power over their relationship... "Listen sir, Bones doesn't feel the pressure to act, to do or to say anything that she doesn't want to, and no one, no one, can make her. That's what makes her..." Booth thought for a moment, trying to find an apt word to fit, but she was just "Bones." He smiled.
Hacker smiled in relief, "Ok." Booth inwardly knew he wouldn't play with the kind of go-between power he dreamed he could play with, he wasn't that guy. Bones and Hacker were both decent people and he knew he shouldn't mess with that, no matter how he felt. "Thanks, really."
"No problem." Booth replied, watching him as he got up to leave, and turning back to his work.
"Listen, next time you're at the Founding Fathers, you should try the meatloaf with the egg. You'll like it, tastes nothing like a human eye." As the words were coming out of Hacker's mouth, Booth felt the feeling of goodwill towards Brennan slip away just slightly, and disappointment that he had been a subject of discussion at dinner despite telling her not to talk about him. That was supposed to be just between the two of them, something they shared together. He'd never told anyone else about that, and he'd hoped that Bones would feel the same compulsion. Ultimately, he'd been let down, and felt slightly displaced, as if he was now the second man in Brennan's life, not the first.
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"Oh, boss?" Booth's head popped outside his office, hoping to catch Hacker before he left entirely. Success – Hacker was talking to another agent in the corridor and began walking back to Booth's office.
"Something else on your mind Agent Booth?" Hacker presumed as Booth closed the door behind him. Booth immediately hated the way Hacker said that, with such an air of authority and as if their personal conversation never even happened – of course to him, it didn't, they were equals then, but not now.
"Well, I just thought that we should get some things straight between you and I." Booth smiled as he took his seat behind the chair. "That remark you just made, well, it made me realise that I might come up in conversation, and I'm sure you can appreciate that I would feel uncomfortable with that." He leaned back in his chair, looking laid-back, feeling tense. Actually, that last remark made him realise that actually, a little puppeteer playing may not be all bad.
"Yes, of course, I completely understand. It won't happen again." Hacker reassured him.
"I'm sure it won't." Booth nodded, then added. "It's not so much you I'm worried about though, it's..." His eyes flicked to his and then away again, seemingly agitated. "Oh never mind."
"No, what is it?" Hacker asked, looking somewhat curious if not worried. Perfect, Booth inwardly smiled.
"Well, it's nothing important." Booth emphasised. "It's just, Bones has more of a habit of steering conversation, she likes to be in control. You know, of the situation, of conversations..." Hacker looked blank. "You haven't noticed it? Well, why would you, you've only been on one date." Booth nodded to himself, painfully aware that what he was doing was wrong, but he couldn't help it, it was too funny.
"We've got another one on Friday." Hacker said, almost to himself with just a slight tone of worry.
"Right, but hey! Bones is great. I mean, did you know," Booth started off again, leaning in for effect. "That she won't even let you pay for dinner, she hates it. I mean, that's saving $40 right there."
Hacker looked a little confused, "But I paid for drinks last night... But then she did offer to buy all of dinner for the both of us on Friday..." Hacker looked to Booth for answers. "So she prefers to pay for all of it?"
"Absolutely." Booth confirmed, nodding his head in seriousness. "And don't even try to help her into her chair, I tried that once." Booth shook his head in mock regret. "She's a self-sufficient, successful, intelligent 21st century woman boss, and they like to be treated as such."
Hacker looked at his desk for a moment; Booth feeling like he was about to burst from laughter, barely containing his smile, but knowing he must for the sake of his performance. "So if I do all these things at dinner: let her steer the conversation, let her pay, basically don't do anything that wouldn't belittle her womanhood, I'm in?"
"If the trend continues the way it always has, you're as good as in." Booth confirmed, leaning back in his chair, feeling success penetrate his bones.
Hacker thought for a moment and nodded, looking very uncertain that this was the kind of woman he wanted. "Thanks Booth. You're a good friend."
As Hacker left for the second time, he knew that was possibly the last time he would be in his boss' good graces. To be honest though, Booth knew it was worth it. Ok sure, he had just made sure that both Bones and Hacker would have an awful evening on Friday, but their dating was strange and unnatural to him. Deep down it annoyed him that anyone would go out with Bones, for weeks now he'd been wanting to tell her how he felt. Cam knew, Sweets knew, but both of them said the same thing, that his feelings may be a side effect from the coma and that they may subside. It had been weeks now, and his feelings for Bones hadn't changed a bit, if anything they had grown stronger. It was only with Hacker's interest in her that had made him realise that waiting to see if anything had changed was pointless. He'd always had these feelings for her but it was the coma that awakened them. The only thing gnawing in his mind was what Cam said about Bones, that he would have to be sure about this otherwise not only would Bones never trust him again, but supposedly it would be unlikely for her to trust anyone again in the same way. At this point, he just hoped she would forgive him for sabotaging her date with Hacker.
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Friday morning....
"Booth!" Bones stormed into his office first thing on Friday morning and by her tone he sensed he'd done something wrong.
"Bones, hey, what a surprise. What's on your mind?" Booth dropped his paperwork and stood to greet her, but kept his distance behind the safety of his desk.
"What did you tell Andrew?" Bones asked, standing with arms crossed.
"Me? I didn't tell him anything." Booth shook his head and laughed, trying to keep the mood light. "Why? What happened?"
Bones looked dissatisfied with his response, and sat down. "Andrew cancelled our date for tonight." Booth's face fell, he didn't mean for Bones to get dumped. "Something about me not being the right type of woman for him."
"Oh, Bones, I'm really sorry." Booth walked round his desk and sat down beside her. "He doesn't know what he's missing."
"Yes he does. He's missing a controlling feminist who won't let a man pay for the check." Bones replied, sitting up straight and crossing her arms once more.
Booth straightened up as well, leaning as far back as the chair would go. "What? That's crazy, who said that?"
"You, apparently." Brennan replied. He stood up to close his office door, the last thing he needed was this conversation brought up by every agent in the building. Brennan stood up behind him, "Booth! Why would you do that to me? I'm not controlling and I certainly don't mind when the man pays, in almost all societies, the males have to appeal to the females of the group in order to win favour and mating privileges."
"Bones," Booth winced, stepping back from her again. "I do not want to know about mating privileges between you and my boss."
"Well you don't have to, it hasn't been initiated yet." Bones replied off-handedly. "But that's not the point. Why would you tell Andrew those lies about me? They were hurtful and not in the least true."
Booth sighed. "Ok, I'm sorry, they weren't meant to be hurtful, but Bones, you told him about the egg thing and that was hurtful."
Bones squinted. "What egg thing?"
"You know, the egg being like a human eye in meatloaf..." Booth saw the spark of recognition in Brennan's eye. "The egg thing!"
"What? You're angry about the egg story?" Bones asked, her voice remaining below a shout but above a normal decibel.
"You said you weren't going to talk about me and you talked about me." Booth pointed out.
"I didn't mean to talk about you, I told him I didn't want to, but you know I like that story, and I guess it just popped out." Bones defended herself, and felt a warm ting inside her thinking back to the time Booth told her that story the first time.
"Popped out? I don't need Hacker knowing about my mother's meatloaf." Booth said defensively, crossing his arms.
Brennan noticed his stance and pointed to his arms. "You're crossing your arms, a sign that you're upset and feeling defensive." Booth immediately uncrossed them and looked away. "What are you so upset? Besides, I'm the one who should be upset, you sabotaged my date."
"I did not sabotage, don't make it sound so dramatic. And I'm upset because what goes on between us is ours." Booth lowered his voice, leaning into her.
She looked at him sceptically, "Come on Booth, you must have told a lot of people the meatloaf story, right?" She waited for a reply in the positive, waited for a response at all, but instead, he just looked at her intensely, showing her that he meant what he said. "No one?"
"No one." He confirmed.
Brennan looked momentarily misplaced. "That kind of intimacy between two people would suggest a more intimate relationship Booth, perhaps to the point where you wouldn't try to get rid of any potential male mates."
"Ok, first, please stop saying 'mates'. Second, you're saying that the way we are together means I should support your dates with my boss?" Booth asked incredulously, taking a step back.
"Absolutely. You may feel threatened –"
"I do not feel threatened." Booth replied, feeling angry and frustrated that she was missing the point entirely.
"Yes you do. Look at you Booth, you're crossing your arms, any mention of my date and you don't look me in the eye." It was all true and he was proving her last point much too easily.
"I am not threatened by Hacker, Bones." His teeth were clenched and he was trying hard to maintain an air of decorum. "Has it ever occurred to you that I might have done you a massive favour? Hacker is so not the right person for you."
"And you think you have authority to decide who I am and am not allowed to date?" Brennan scoffed. "I don't need your protection all the time Booth, I can look after myself."
The room went silent, the two just looking at each other; both felt seething anger blazing through them and both felt the other was being arrogant and ungrateful. Without having anything more to say, Brennan left Booth's office feeling that this was one fight that might take some time fixing.
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"Sweets, you got a second?" Booth finally found Lance Sweets moseying around the Jeffersonian with his girlfriend Daisy. They were holding hands and supposedly enjoying some free time.
"Um," He looked to Daisy for her permission and she nodded. "Sure." He walked over to Booth, leaving Daisy to go back to her lab work. "What's on your mind?"
"Well," Booth then realised he had no idea why he sought out Sweet's advice having nothing to say or to be advised on. He maintains he was in the right concerning Bones and Hacker's relationship; his method may have been executed poorly, but his heart was in the right place. "How are you?"
"That's what we, in the profession, call a stalling tactic." Sweets replied, leading him to a vacant office.
"Ok Sweets, don't get all analytic on me, I could just use a pair of ears. That's all, ok?" Booth said forcefully.
"Ok." Sweets nodded, knowing full well that Booth wouldn't have come to him of all people without having a motive to seek him out for his advice, consciously or not.
"Bones isn't talking to me." Booth began pacing. "She thinks I sabotaged her date with Hacker – my boss by the way – because I'm threatened by him. That's ridiculous, I'm not threatened by him, he's my boss, I'm already under him rank-wise. And she told the meatloaf story. What was that about?"
He stopped pacing and looked over to Sweets who looked confused at this point. "I... don't know."
"It was rhetorical, Sweets." Booth sat down beside him. "I did Bones a favour by cutting that guy out of her life, he's not good enough for her."
"But you are?" Sweets presumed.
"What? No, this is not what this is about, so don't go all 'mind games' on me." Booth warned.
"Has it occurred to you that perhaps you did yourself the favour rather than Dr. Brennan when you sabotaged her date?" Sweets asked. "That by removing him, you could now make a move?"
"Ok, first, make a move? Secondly, this was so not about that." Booth said, trying to convince himself as well. He knew what Sweets was about to say next.
"Booth, you said yourself a few weeks ago you love her and now you're scaring away her dates. This is classic territorial behaviour." Sweets concluded. "But we still don't know if your feelings for Dr. Brennan are caused by genuine means or whether they are side effects from your coma."
"Why do you always have to bring that up? It's not the coma, Sweets, this is... I don't know what this is. All I know is that when I thought of her with Hacker, I wanted to punch his lights out." He clenched his fist recreating the image in his head.
"Ok." Sweets stood up, Booth following him. "Well that's not healthy and it's not going to help you get back into good graces with Dr. Brennan. My advice: just apologise to her, admit you were wrong – chicks love that – and tell her the truth."
Booth was nodding up to his last point when he stopped Sweets from getting away. "Wait, you mean the truth about how I feel about her or..."
"What other truth is there?" Sweets shrugged. "Besides, Angela tells me that if I keep getting in the way of you two she will knock me out, and between the two of us, I think she could do it." Sweets patted him reassuringly on the shoulder before leaving the office, making Booth realise that he would have to decide if he could trust that his feelings for Bones were real, or if he would be content just having her as a friend for the rest of his life.
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"Hey sweetie." Angela greeted Brennan as she walked through the doors to her friend's office. "Pretty exciting case, huh?"
"Yeah, I guess so." Brennan replied half-heartedly.
"I guess so?" Angela repeated. "Yesterday you were raving that this could change history and how big it is for your career. What happened?"
"I was not raving." Brennan corrected her. "I have high hopes for the results this case could bring about in terms of Anok's innocence, but I wasn't raving."
"Ok..." Angela accepted, realising this was not about the case. "Did something happen with Andrew?"
Brennan looked surprised, sometimes she didn't understand how Angela could be so empathic when she so rarely knew what was going on in people's heads. "Yes, did Booth...?"
"No, I just know a sad face when I see one. Those," She pointed to Brennan's face, "Usually come attached to boys."
Brennan realised there was no way to deny it, she was feeling low since her blow up with Booth this morning, and she still couldn't for the life of her figure out firstly why he was so upset to the point where he got rid of Andrew, and secondly, why he wouldn't forgive her about the meatloaf story. "Booth scared off Andrew. I haven't talked to him since."
"What?" Angela said, her mouth almost dropping open. She took Brennan's arm and sat themselves on the sofa. "Tell me everything."
"Well, Andrew called this morning and cancelled out date for tonight. When I asked why, he told me that Booth had told him that I'm some kind of controlling feminist. Ange, I'm not those things am I?" Brennan asked, suddenly feeling that maybe there was more truth to that than what she'd imagined.
"Bren, I've known you a long time. If you're controlling, it's because you're passionate about something and that's never a bad thing. But you're not a feminist." Angela comforted her. "Booth just knows that feminism intimidates men. Good tactic."
"Angela, you're not honestly siding with Booth on this one, are you?" Brennan asked, looking her dead in the eye.
She held up her hands in surrender. "I'm not siding with anyone." They was a moment of silence and reflection for Brennan. "But you guys had a fight?"
"He got so upset, and I don't know how that happened because I should be mad at him." Brennan answered.
"But you're not?" Angela asked.
"I am." Brennan nodded, almost certain it was true. "I just don't understand why he was so upset."
"Have you considered the possibility that maybe Booth got rid of Andrew because he wants you to himself?"
"I can't be with Booth all the time, it's unreasonable. Besides, even with another man in my life, I would never cut Booth out." Brennan replied, playing with her cuticles for the first time in months.
Angela rolled her eyes. "You know sweetie, for a scientist, you really aren't that bright sometimes." Brennan opened her mouth in shock, but before she could say anything Angela added, "He doesn't want you for himself as a partner, Brennan, he wants you for himself as a partner."
"I don't see the distinction." Brennan nodded, and Angela sighed.
"Ok, plain English." Brennan suddenly felt very stupid, a sensation she'd never experienced before. "Booth has feelings for you that exceed a friendship, but I suspect that you know that, but for whatever reason, you're not allowing yourself to accept that or maybe consider that you have similar intense feelings for him."
Brennan was stunned to silence. "Ange, Booth and I have been friends for a long time..."
"And you've both wanted to be more than that for just about the same amount of time." Angela stated. "Think about it: if you were really upset about Booth cancelling your date with Andrew, you would have called him by now to explain what happened. Maybe your fight today was more about Booth trying to tell you something you couldn't hear." Brennan looked uncertain, and looked to Angela feeling exposed. "Maybe that's why you're not talking to him now. Booth's in a place where he wants to say how he feels, but for whatever reason, you're not letting him."
"I'm just worried that, if something goes wrong... I don't want to lose Booth, Ange." Brennan replied honestly.
"Then don't." Angela squeezed her hand.
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It was late that evening and Brennan had been sifting through her work, trying to get some of it done, failing most of the time. She hadn't had the nerve to call Booth, and hadn't heard from him either, which gave her conflicting emotions of relief and disappointment.
"Working late?" Booth was leaning against her door, it almost seemed as if he had been there for a while. Brennan looked up, surprised. "Sorry," He took a step towards her, holding out an apologetic hand. "I didn't mean to startle you."
Brennan shook her head. "It's ok, I'm just feeling a bit jumpy."
Booth smiled. "So you're talking to me, then."
"It would appear so." Brennan smiled. "It doesn't mean I forgive you though."
"I didn't think so." Booth took a deep breath. "I called Andrew, explained it was a joke. He should be calling you tomorrow. I'm sorry, I know it's not my place to interfere with who you date."
"Actually, he already called. He asked me if I wanted to go out this week." Brennan replied, looking him in the eye as he stood above her.
"Oh." Booth's voice sounded dejected, but then he forced some false enthusiasm. "Oh! That's great, glad it could work out."
"You're happy I'm going out with Andrew?" Brennan asked, confused now by what he was saying and what Angela told her. Maybe she was wrong after all.
"Well, not happy, so much as... fine with it." Booth replied, trying to sound as neutral as possible, and taking a turn about her office.
"It doesn't sound – " Brennan began.
"I said I'm fine and I'm – " Booth spoke at the same time as her and for a few moment they were rambling at the same time, not really listening to what the other was saying until his sentence ended and hers continued with, "so I decided not to go out with him."
"You turned him down?" Booth repeated, hoping he didn't just wish she said that.
"Yes." Brennan confirmed.
"Why?" Booth asked, hoping for some form of honest answer that might include an inkling as to how she felt about him.
"Because... we're friends and I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable." Brennan answered. Friends: the magic word that Booth knew meant women didn't see you in a dateable way.
"Friends. Right, we are." Booth mumbled. He reflected on this a moment, before they both started saying something at the same time which moved Bones to rise from her chair to talk to him. "Oh, sorry, after you."
"No, please, you first." Brennan smiled, suddenly feeling exposed.
"Bones, ever since I got out of that coma, things haven't been the same... at least for me." Booth inhaled, hoping the words would just come to him when blatantly, they weren't.
"Well of course not, Booth, you're still recovering. It might take weeks before – " Brennan began.
"Bones. They haven't been the same between us." Booth explained. For weeks he'd been imagining scenarios in his mind on how this talk would go, how he would finally admit his feelings and whether she would reciprocate. The talk always went quite well, but in his mind, at the moment where Bones would respond, the image faded and he never got an answer.
"No, I don't suppose they have." Brennan agreed. "Is that a bad thing?"
Booth shook his head vicariously. "No, not at all. Or at least I don't think so." He stepped round her desk to be properly face to face with her. "Ok, I'm not great with words." With that, he leaned in and softly planted a kiss on her lips, which at first were inanimate, and he wondered at what point she would step back and look utterly lost. Instead, her mouth parted and she responded, moving her hand to his cheek as his arms wrapped around her waist. They kissed, hoping the other wouldn't let go, this felt like such a long time coming, it was something they both wanted but were afraid to ask for, and now it just felt so right.
Slowly, their lips moved apart, breathing heavily, yet quietly; Booth's arms remained around her waist, her hand dropped to his shoulder. Booth smiled, "I've been wanting to do that for ages."
"Why did you wait so long?" She teased, and he laughed.
"I honestly have no idea."
Ok, guys. Thoughts? Please leave reviews, they make me stupidly happy =)
This is a one shot and I very much doubt that I'll be adding more chapters, especially since it was molded onto the 'night at the bones museum' episode. Just fyi.
Thanks,
Feral X