Reaching a Decision.
Author: love ends with hope
Summary: For Booth and Brennan, nothing comes easy, especially when they're trying to figure out exactly what "they" are. One-shot.
Feedback: is much appreciated. I'd especially like constructive criticism on the characterization and the flow of the story.
"What are you doing here, Booth?" Brennan asked, entering her office early one Monday morning to find her partner already there, and already being annoying. "And put that down- skulls are not toys."
"I was just checking if this one was real," Booth answered, returning the skull in question to Brennan's bookshelf.
"What use would a forensic anthropologist have for a fake skull?"
"Hideous conversation piece?" Booth asked with a grin.
"In my office? Where the only "non-squint" I see is you? Why would you think I would need anything for us to have a conversation around?"
"Geez, Bones, lighten up a little. it's only Monday, you can't possibly be stressed yet."
"Starting the week with you in my office isn't enough to justify some stress?" Brennan asked, her expression innocence itself.
"You wound, Bones, you wound," Booth struck his chest dramatically.
"Unintentionally, I promise." she replied with a glint in her eye that said it was anything but. She was getting good at their little game, he had to admit.
"Are you here for a real reason, or did you finally give up looking for pretenses and are willing to admit you just like coming by here to see me?" she asked with her characteristic bluntness, her back turned to him as she looked through a file on her desk.
"I- I what?" Booth stuttered, then cleared his throat and tried again. "No, Bones, I come cause we've got cases. You know, murders to solve, bad guys to catch. it's what we do."
"I had a look at our records, and I've found six days in the last month that we didn't have a case, and either you or someone who stole you ID card has been in the lab. Also, with the invention of things such as the telephone and the internet, it is no longer strictly necessary to be in the same building as someone in order to speak with them. Does your boss even know what you look like anymore?" Brennan asked with all sincerity as she handed Booth a piece of paper. He looked down on it, and could see his name highlighted six times along with dates and times.
"Highlighted, Bones? They don't give you enough you do around here? Looks like you even took the time to use a straight edge on this." Booth was stalling and they both knew it. How was he going to get out of this one without upsetting the delicate nature of their dynamic?
"Why do you come when you don't have to, Booth?" Brennan a voice that betrayed her naivete beneath the non-nonsense exterior; this gorgeous woman actually wondered why he would spend more time with her than his job alone demanded?
"Because I like seeing you, Bones,. Throws my whole day off if I don't learn at least three new words I'll never have reason to use," Booth answered. Well, it was true, even if it wasn't the whole truth.
"I think I know why you come here, and that's not it."
"Here we go," Booth said with a weariness that comes with ground that has been tread and retread. "Why do I come here?"
"You need me." There was a simplicity to Brennan that Booth sorely missed in all other women he had contact with. Why couldn't they all learn to be as awkward and direct as his Bones?
"I need you?" he asked in amusement, wondering just where she was going with this.
"I am the only constant female presence in you life, excepting Rebecca, and you need a female to counteract you role as the alpha male. You can't provide when there's no one to provide for. I make you feel strong, because you suffer delusions that you have to protect me. In the past two years, I have lost count of the women you have had relationships with, though I doubt you have. You remember them even though they invariably don't last long. But me? I'm safe. I'm not going anywhere. You life changes so much and so rapidly, and you haven't had a constant female since before you joined the military. And that's why you need me."
"Got me all figured out, haven't you, Temperance?" Booth asked quietly.
"Temperance? What happened to Bones?" Brennan was suspicious.
"I figure since we're getting all close and personal here, Temperance felt more appropriate."
"You haven't refuted what I said."
"Because you're almost right."
"Almost?"
"I do need you, Temperance, I don't deny that, I need you as much as you need me," he paused and looked at her, giving her the chance to argue. She didn't argue, but she did drop her gaze, and he continued. "I don't need you to make me feel strong, and I don't need you because you're safe. Cause you're not, safe, that is. This relationship is the most dangerous one I have ever had. Because I stand to lose more here than in any other relationship I've ever had."
"What are you talking about, Booth?" Brennan asked, her mind working rapidly in an attempt to figure out just how the conversation had gone from fake skulls to here…wherever here was.
"We dance around each other, Temperance, both afraid to make a wrong move and lose it all, wondering just how far to push. And it's dangerous. Cause if one of us makes a wrong move, and we lose this, whatever this may be… Well, that's not something I much like to think about."
"So how do we make it safe?"
"Make it safe?"
"Survival instinct, Booth. We have something that neither of us wants to lose, we perceive a threat to it. The logical thing to do is take the necessary steps to minimize the threat and protect it. So what do you propose to do?"
"First, we stop talking about "survival instincts" and "perceived threats" ; we get away from theory and we talk about reality, we talk about us."
""Us"? That makes it sound like we're romantically involved, Booth."
Booth groaned. She was going to make this is as tough and awkward as it possibly could. He knew this was part of her nature, a part of her; but sometimes, he got the feeling that she enjoyed making life difficult for him. He was waiting for solid evidence to call her on it. Time to fight fire with fire.
"Would that be so bad?" he asked her, perversely enjoying her reaction; that was not at all what she had been expecting. And he was right-- it was fun.
"Us? Being romantically involved, would that be so bad?"
"That's what I asked you, Temperance."
"Is that what you want?" she asked indifferently, as if it was no concern of hers if he answered one way or another. Ball back in his court.
"Well, that we be one way to eliminate the threat to our relationship," he answered, his voice as neutral as hers.
"There would be obvious benefits to a relationship. But it would also open up new risks and dangers. Could cause problems at work," she reasoned.
"One of us is going to have to give a definitive answer. And I asked first," Booth looked at her with a small triumphant grin. She was not one to back down from a direct challenge. He had her cornered. He watched her closely as she debated how to answer. He could see her expression change from trapped, to resigned, to thoughtful; saw as she was about to answer and changed her mind and thought some more. Just when he thought he was going to go insane watching her make a decision, she moved closer to him, stood so that they were eye to eye, without much room between them. She looked into his eyes, leaned in and kissed him. It was a quick, decisive kiss; neither as passionate or lengthy as those often described in novels about seas captains and windswept vixens, not that Seeley Booth would know anything about that.