A/N: So I wrote this short piece in response to a writing exercise at the ABY. It's just a little something, hope you enjoy.
The prompt was: Write a short scene in which one character reduces another to uncontrollable sobs without touching him or speaking.
He was older now, nearly sixteen. He hadn't cried yet. He was, as his dad said, very strong. His mother was hysterical as soon as she found out; they had grown closer in the past few years and now he was gone.
It seemed weird to him that his dad was dead. Last week, they were at the diner, joking and laughing and then he was gone.
Everyone was there. A ton of FBI agents, government officials, every single one of the squints. He saw Angela press her face into Hodgins' jacket, her body shaking.
Everyone but her.
He kept looking around, thinking she was coming, but she didn't. He found himself getting angry. She was his partner, she should have been here. And they were in love. Theirs was an unconventional relationship that at the age of fifteen he didn't understand.
How could love someone and live apart? They never moved in together, never married, but more often than not when he woke up in the mornings, she was there, smiling and teasing his dad about something.
The funeral ended and they were on their way back Hodgins' for the wake. He heard Angela tearfully ask where Brennan was. Hodgins' had replied that she would come in her own time.
After arguing with his mom, she finally let him go and he went to every place he could think of. Wong Foo's, the diner, the Jeffersonian. She wasn't anywhere. He decided to walk through the park on his way home, the park where he and his dad had played so many times.
As he walked by the carousel, he saw a figure sitting on the park bench. It was her.
He hid behind the closest tree and watched as she rocked back and forth, tears pouring down her face. Her hands gripped the sides of the bench as she tried to catch her breath. Her despair was overwhelming, it choked him like a vice and he lowered himself to the ground, feeling the tears well up in his eyes and suffocate his throat.
And then, for the first time since his father died, Parker Christopher Booth cried.