Maybe it was silly. Maybe she was crazy. Or, perhaps more than silly, maybe it was just plain ludicrous. Whatever way you chose to look at it, she was certain that she was now quantifiably insane. There she stood on his stoop; on a dead man's stoop, under a rather large black cloud dripping wetness down upon her. No, not dripping. Pouring. Torrential downpour, emptying in droves upon her beautiful crown, high cheekbones, drooping, defeated shoulders. Yet she remained standing stiffly, silent and drenched, unsure of what she expected to happen next.
She knew that if she bent over and picked up the obviously fake white stone a foot to her left, she would find a key to his apartment. But part of her, a frighteningly illogical part of her, wished that all of it was untrue. Wished that what she had seen with her own eyes was in fact a horrifying delusion. Wished that at any moment, she would hear footsteps from the other side of the door and seconds later find it flying open. Find a large, warm, and surprisingly welcome hand on the small of her back, pulling her into the warmth. Into the warmth, offering a towel and a hundred questioning exclamations as to why she would stand in the cold and the rain for so long.
Cold. Rain. She was only now becoming aware of a growing numbness in her fingers, toes, ears, nose, knees. How long had she been standing there, not hearing footsteps, not being welcomed by large warm hands, not being scolded for being foolish? She recognized her sudden desire to bend over and take the hide-a-key in order to obtain the dryness and warmth that her body needed, but she also acknowledged a conflicting desire to continue standing in the rain, drowning her misery in physical pain. She had no experience with this kind of desire before, and was quite confused.
Stooping, she extracted the hidden key and delicately replaced the fake stone where she found it. She whispered an inaudible apology and slipped inside, deciding that she would warm herself up and then take the time to explore this sudden desire for physical misery. She gasped in surprise when she stepped into a hall no warmer than the gloomy street outside, painfully reminding her of the absence of life that she was trying to escape. Painfully aware that this apartment, usually so full of warmth and life that it spilled over into the street, was as dead as its owner.
She had only been in his apartment a handful of times; more than she could count on two hands, but still less than frequently; yet she maneuvered through the darkness with ease. For reasons that she did not understand, or perhaps was simply unwilling to examine or explain, she kept her eyes half closed and averted from the furniture, pictures, decorations. Glued to the floor. She couldn't bear to see him, quasi-existent, staring back from wooden frames with glittering eyes. Glittering eyes now dull, closed, dead. Gone. Even more, she could not bear to not see herself there. She could not bear the lack of evidence of her existence in his life.
Without really thinking about it, she found herself in his room. Suddenly, it dawned upon her. She was in his apartment. She was standing in his room, at the foot of his bed. His bed, that he slept in every night, rolled out of in the morning. His dresser, his closet, housing the clothes that he rifled through as he chose what to wear at the start of each day. The chair in which he sat while he tied his shoes. And there, just off to the left, the bathroom where he stripped of his sleepwear, showered, brushed his teeth, shaved. All of it would retain evidence of his presence for as long as it was undisturbed. His clothes would have traces of his skin. His sheets and pillows would for a long time radiate the scents of his sweat, cologne, soap, shampoo. Not a single picture in the room, and yet this place held the most of him left in this world, save for his decomposing corpse which lay in an ornate box in the Arlington cemetery.
She didn't know what made her do it. It was not one of her more rational moments. However, the next action she was aware of was slipping out of her clothes and into one of his overly large t-shirts, slightly wrinkled from recent use. Sliding between the sheets in the darkness, sinking into the groove in the mattress made by his body. Squeezing her eyes shut, she allowed herself to become engulfed by his scent wafting from his pillow. With her eyes tightly closed, she could almost pretend that she wasn't slipping, sliding, sinking into the oblivion of loneliness. The oblivion that she had worked so hard to get herself out of. The oblivion that she had spent her life trying to build walls around; thick, impenetrable walls which allowed her to pretend she couldn't see what lay behind them. Walls that he had just started to break down, promising her that what lay behind them couldn't hurt her because he would always be there beside her.
He lied.
She didn't see the point of crying. It showed weakness, and although no one was present to bear witness to her weakness, she didn't understand the value of crying for her own lonely self. Yet here, here in his bed, between his sheets, his scent encasing her, and large melancholy raindrops pattering on the window beside her … it was too much. The apartment of a dead man. The bed of a dead man. The scent of a dead man. A dead man that she loved too late. There in the darkness, encapsulated by everything trivial that remained of a man that she only now realized how deeply she loved, she began to cry. She cried for her pain, for her loss, for her missed chance. She cried for the loneliness that his death created in her; a loneliness deeper than any loneliness she had ever felt; a loneliness she didn't know could ever exist.
She had begun to drift asleep with tears still wet on her cheeks when she became vaguely aware of a presence in the doorway. One red and puffy eye cracked open groggily, painfully swollen with salty tears. Something about the outline of the figure in the doorway was familiar to her. Too familiar. Too much like it belonged to a dead man she loved. A dead man whose house she was now occupying, for reasons she really couldn't understand. But she didn't believe in ghosts. And she hated psychology. So she chalked it up to delusion and shut her eyes. This could be a good delusion.
Moments later, however, the presence was stronger. The scent was stronger. Laying on her side, she became acutely aware of the bed dipping behind her, a gentle hand on her shoulder. At this point, she should have jumped. She should have attacked. She should've screamed. She should have reacted. But something, something she couldn't name and wouldn't even try because she really didn't need to, something told her that it was okay. This was okay. Whatever it was.
"Bones?" His voice. His sweet, tender, delicate voice, riddled with confusion.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she rolled over until her stomach was pressed against his side. For a delusion, he was unbelievably solid. She didn't dare open her eyes, fearing that he would disappear as soon as she tried to bring him into focus.
"Bones?" he whispered again. Her name. Her name on his lips. Would it be the last thing she ever heard from him? If so, she was okay with that, but it was too early. Too early to have to say goodbye. Other things needed to be said before goodbye. And it was too late. Too late, now.
"What are you doing here?"
"You were dead. You are … dead. You're gone….." she spoke so quietly that he had to lean in to hear her, and she became conscious of his heat surrounding her. By now she was avoiding all sorts of bells going off in her head which were attempting to explain why this could not be real, this conversation with a dead man who was showing too much physical evidence of life. "You're gone and I didn't get to say goodbye…… I don't want to say goodbye……" The hot tears leaking from her tightly closed eyes burned her skin.
Burned, until she felt his thumb gently wipe them away. She couldn't keep them closed any longer. Preparing herself for the painful realization of her insanity, for the searing pain of reopening this fresh wound which went so deep, she slowly allowed her eyelids to part. There on the edge of the bed, his large, warm hand still hovering just beside her face, one thumb upon her cheek, concern flowing from his dark eyes, sat none other than her one and only Special Agent Seeley Booth.
"Bones…. I'm not dead. You were supposed to know that…"
Speechless. Breathless. Her heart pounded so painfully that nothing else even seemed relevant. She was going to die. Her heart was going to pump so hard that it was going to burst into a thousand tiny pieces, and no one would be there to pick them up.
"How can you be real? I saw you die… I watched it happen. I ….. I…. I thought you left me. I thought you were gone. I thought I was alone ……"
Booth turned his head, attempting to hide the shame on his face. "I blacked out. At the hospital, they faked my death so I could catch a criminal. They were supposed to tell you." Suddenly, he looked back at her, and his gaze was so intense that she found herself holding her breath. "You were supposed to know. I never meant to hurt you."
She had never felt anything quite like this. She had never experienced relief so powerfully that it actually hurt. Wave upon wave of relief wracked her body, and she found herself sobbing uncontrollably into his pillow. Before she knew what was happening, he had wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest, allowing her soul to pour out onto his shoulder. She trembled and sobbed and gripped him as if she would never let him go.
"Booth," she choked out, "you can't ever leave me again. You can't. You just can't. You promised you wouldn't and then you did and I realized there's so much I needed to say and …… you ….."
"Shhhhh," he whispered softly, stopping her mid-sentence. "I know. I know, and I'm sorry, and …. I know." He placed the gentlest kiss of all time against her forehead and joined her beneath the covers. The last thing she remembered was falling into a deep, peaceful sleep, entangled in his clothes, his sheets, his scent, his arms. His very real, living arms.
Maybe it was silly. Maybe she was crazy. Or maybe love had finally caught up with her. All she knew was that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be okay.