This is just my short little tag for Beaver in the Otter. Hope you enjoy :)
(I edited this, by the way. Stupid POV mistakes I found were bugging me. I bet they were bugging some of you too.)
She was eating her salad with slow, deliberate bites, her mind clearly on something else. He watched in silence out of the corner of his eye, carefully making sure that she didn't noticed he was staring at her.
He'd gotten really good at it, this watching her without her realizing it thing. And if she did happen to notice, he just passed it off as 'oh, you have a piece of food on your lip,' or 'there's a strand of hair sticking up on your head.'
He liked the second one best, because then he'd reach out and touch her hair to fix the nonexistent problem.
Right now he was just content with quietly chewing his burger while she methodically ate one piece of lettuce after the other, though.
"Would you have left?" she asked so suddenly that he almost choked on the bite of burger he'd been about to swallow. She never was one to ease into a question; she'd just ask it outright. As usual, he needed help just understanding the question. She'd been thinking about it for the past five minutes, whatever this was that she wanted answered, and since he hadn't been so lucky as to listen in on her thoughts, she'd need to tell him what had led up to the sudden outburst.
"What?" he managed to get out as he reached for his glass of water and hurriedly took a sip to wash down the burger that sure felt like it was caught in his throat.
"Would you have gone with Jared?" she rephrased.
"...I told you I would have..." he said, not really sure where she was heading with this.
She nodded slowly and went back to her salad as though that was all she needed to hear. Okay, he was so not letting the conversation end.
"Why?" he questioned.
"No reason. Just curious."
He could tell when she was lying. He always could. And she was lying right now. He raised an eyebrow at her and waited for her to look up at him like he knew she would. She did.
She frowned. "What?"
"Come on Bones, why?"
She opened her mouth, still confused, and then shut it again, realizing he was repeating his question from only a moment ago.
"I just... I would have... missed you," she muttered.
Oh. His gaze immediately softened.
"What, are you worried that I might go away?" he murmured. Their food was completely forgotten in front of them.
She didn't answer him for a very long moment, and then she bit her lip in that cute way that she always did. He carefully kept his smile from appearing. They were discussing something serious; he couldn't get distracted.
"I suppose that, objectively, that would be correct," she said at long last.
Sciencey words. She only did that around him, when they weren't on a case, when she was trying to cover up her fears or her emotions. But at least it was an admission of sorts.
"Bones, if your brother needed you," he started slowly, cautiously, "Would you leave DC and go to help him?"
She frowned at the slight change in topic, but nodded thoughtfully.
He spoke again, "If my brother needed me, and I really did think he did before you talked to me... then I would have gone with him."
"I think I understand," she said softly, nodding again. She did look like she got his reasoning, but he still wanted to make sure she wasn't worried. She probably thought that if he would consider leaving so quickly that perhaps he might just leave for some other reason too.
"But, Bones, you see..." he trailed off until she looked up at him again. "The thing is... I'd always come back. Right here, right to you."
He caught the relief in her eyes before she quickly masked it and just nodded again.
"And Bones, if I ever did have to leave, it would never be fully. I'd always be right here with you, no matter where I went."
"Booth, that isn't even possible," she started to complain.
"Hey, this is like what I told you, about two people becoming one... it's one of those things that you just have to understand... without science. Just know that I belong here, and that this is where I'll always come back to. And of course," he chuckled softly, "You are impossible to forget, so don't think I wouldn't spend every day missing you and even that lab. Heck, I might even miss those late nights of paperwork if I stayed away long enough..."
She smiled softly, and he hoped that she'd gotten everything he'd said to the fullest. Although she probably hadn't fully understood just how much he would have missed her if he had gone with Jared...
"Thanks, Booth," she murmured.
He smiled at her. "Anytime, Bones, anytime..."
She returned the smile and then turned finally back to her salad.
"Booth?"
"Yeah?" He looked up again.
"We aren't going to diner and dash again after this, are we?"
He laughed, "No, Bones, not today. Today... we're just going to sit here, and eat, and talk..."
So, what did you think?