Wow, I really must thank you all for the response I have gotten on this story. I was rather surprised by all of the story alerts I received with this. So thank you, especially to those of you who took the time to review. I appreciate it.
Now, when it come to the chapter let me just say that this is where a bit of the romance aspect plays in. I have never written much concerning that so I am unsure as to how well it may have come out. Hopefully it went okay. I do hope you enjoy it and that it at leasts meet your expectations to some degree. Also, I have not yet completed the third and final installment so perhaps there is a certain button of which you can push in order to persuade me into doing so more quickly. Just saying.
An hour later and Booth was finding himself so horribly torn. The coughing seemed to get so much worse ever since Brennan had gone and lain down. It sounded violent and painful, her muscles must be hurting at this point. And never did it seem to stop. He was beginning to wonder how she was even breathing by now. She just coughed and coughed, he could even tell she was trying to fruitlessly muffle the sound by burying her face into a pillow at some point. His heart ached as he heard the awful sounds coming from her bedroom. She must be in misery at this point.
He walked to her room, knocking gently on the door before opening it and poking his head in. Her eyes stared up at him tiredly and he could see her struggle to hold back a cough, only to be . "You don't sound so hot, Bones."
She shakes her head at him, as though trying to say she is fine. Something that was clearly the very opposite of what she was considering her flushed face and watered eyes. Along with the fact that as she tried to inhale it was all forced out so harshly it was hard to believe that something like that could not cause pain.
After seeing her it takes him but a minute to make his final decision. His shoes were previously kicked off and his jacket long ago removed as he gestures for her to sit up. She does so silently and he lays himself behind her, his legs encircling her sides and allowing her to lay back against his chest.
Brennan hacks as she falls back against him, but the feeling of comfort that fills her automatically takes over her in an inexplicable manner. "Here," Booth says reaching over and removing the peeling of a cough drop. "These are here for a reason." She takes it from him and sucks on it, trying to ignore the poorly concealed gross flavor that infiltrates her mouth. He says nothing as her coughing continues, just strokes her hair, lovingly or subconsciously Brennan neither knew nor cared, and his other hand rested on her stomach. She felt so relaxed and loved in that moment. A warmness coursed through her veins as she laid against him and she did not think it was more possible for two people to ever fit together any better than this.
"Better?" he asks her after a few minutes.
"Yes," she whispers to him, her voice now hoarse. The intimacy of the moment did not go unnoticed by either, but Brennan had every intention of using it to her full advantage. Her head fell into his shoulder and her fingertips began tracing patterns on the hand that was laid across her abdomen.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to her, continuing with her quiet tone even though it was only the two of them.
"Didn't you just do so?" she asks and smiles to herself.
"Smart ass," he tells her and she tries to laugh only to find herself burying her face into his arm to cough against. He hears a muttered "sorry" but doesn't find the need to address it. Instead he just returns to the question he'd had in his mind for quite a while now. "Why do you fight letting people take care of you when you're sick so much?"
She thinks about it, considers the reasonings and finds herself contemplating the idea. "I suppose," she starts as she reprocesses her conclusion once more. "It may have something to do with when I was younger." Booth's hand stops for a moment on its journey through her hair but picks back up a minute later, continuing the gentle strokes. "I was sixteen at the time," she tells him and he automatically knows what that means, foster care. "I was terribly sick, the worst I had ever been and they just..." she trails off, falling silent at the memory. "They just kept screaming at me for it, beating me as though it were my fault."
Booth feels his heart pick up its pace, both in anger and in anguish at hearing her words. Brennan curls into him, trying to bury her face and hide her tears that were forced out by the roughness of her next coughs. "Every time I tried to get out of bed everything would spin and go black, but I learned to push myself and get it together so they wouldn't be so angry at me for it. Ever since then, I have refused any illness to control me in any way."
"You know that I would never-"
"Of course, Booth," she interrupts him before he can even finish the absurd sentence. Of course she knew, Booth would never dare do such a thing to a woman or another human being for that matter. "I know," she murmurs against his chest in a reassurance as she feels her eyes slipping shut, giving into the fever that was helping her heal on the inside and wearing her down on the outside. The coughs racked her body now and then but eventually she drifted into a restful slumber.
The sudden choking caused her to awake in an alarming manner. She sat up swiftly, trying in vain to stop the chokes and catch her breath. Booth somehow appeared by her and began to rub her back, the look of concern etched into his face as her eyes watered. "I'm sorry," she whispers out and he kisses the top of her head. Something that sends tingles down through her entire body despite how awful she felt at the moment. His touch was causing her entire body to react even more so today. Perhaps from the intimacy of it all, him in her bedroom, her laying against him, certainly could explain it some.
"I hardly think being sick warrants an apology," he tells her and glances to the clock. Nearly five hours had passed, surprising him quite a bit. He had not had the intention of falling asleep with her. There came a point where he had just unintentionally drifted into unconsciousness though. "You need to take some more medicine. How do you feel?"
Brennan clears her throat, feeling the heaviness of sleep and mucus lingering in it. "Similar to how I was before," she admits to him. She had slept for hours and yet her eyelids still felt so heavy. She wanted nothing more than to curl back up against him and sleep more, well that and for the coughing to cease.
Booth's eyebrows furrowed in discontentment on hearing that. He had been hoping that she was at least feeling a little better. "You need to eat something."
"I am really not hungry at all." Whenever she had a fever her appetite disappeared. She had gone an entire week without eating a thing once when she'd had the flu. Right now the idea of eating anything solid made her stomach churn in disgust. "I would rather not spend my night regurgitating Thai food either."
"I was thinking I could just make you some soup," he suggests, not preferring the idea of her simply not eating. Surely there must be some sort of logical reasoning to back him, not getting enough nutrients or minerals or something.
"I suppose that may be okay," she agrees and moves to get up from bed, her breath whisked away by a cough and her headache reminding her of its painful existence. She groaned at how awful she began to feel in that moment.
Booth holds himself back from holding her up and allowed her to walk by herself to the kitchen table, knowing she would desire the small amount of independence. He starts by giving her the medicine and her drink and then begins to search for a can of Campbells or Progresso. "Don't you have any basic soup in a can, Bones?" The more he looked the more he realised just how little she actually had to eat. Did the woman ever have a meal in her own house?
"No," she mutters in reply, her head now cradled in her arms having decided to just allow Booth to view her as the weakling she was in that moment. "The amount of preservatives in those is simply disgusting. I have something organic somewhere I think."
He rolls his eyes at her typical response, finally discovering the small can of vegetable soup in a nearly otherwise bare cupboard. He sets off to work with preparing it, scanning the directions quickly to make sure that it was prepared as all the others were. Shortly after he deposits the bowl of steaming soup in front of her and takes a seat across from where she was. "Aren't you going to take your Motrin?" he asks her while gesturing to the two small pills still sitting next to her glass of juice.
"You can't take it on any empty stomach," she explains simply while taking a small spoonful of the soup. "It can damage your liver and cause you to be nauseous."
"Good to know," he says and watches her eat in silence. His own need for food had been forgotten long ago. "Are you still tired?"
"Not tired necessarily," she tells him and furrows her eyebrows in confusion of her own response.
"I was thinking we could watch a movie," Booth suggests with a tinge of excitement to his voice.
"I don't have a television," she reminds him pointedly and then pushing her still half full bowl of soup away.
"You have a computer," he reciprocates with a slightly devious smile.
"But no DVDs," she smiles, feeling as though she had one, the coughing fit quickly reminded her of the fact that she was certainly not winning anything at the moment.
"I have some in my car." His eyes scan across her, watching carefully as she coughed, seemingly in pain from the look that came upon her face. "If you're up for it, I mean," he adds suddenly feeling guilty. Although he was not sure as to why.
"I suppose a movie would be fine. I never find them all that interesting though," she warns. "Plus you may not be able to hear anything over the sounds of my coughing."
"They have subtitles on them for a reason." He smiles at her and she returns it with one of her. Albeit it was half-hearted and did not quite reach to her eyes but it was still beautiful. "I'll be right back," he says and dashes down to his car to gather the films he had laying around in there. He runs back upstairs and finds her sitting on the ground trying to plug her laptop in, all the while coughing violently enough to shake her entire body. "Let me help," he says and she looks surprised to see him suddenly. She backs away and allows him to plug the computer in though.
Brennan falls back on to the bed, only to sit up and desperately rip off the paper to a cough drop, depositing it into her mouth and beginning to catch her breath again.
"Are you sure this is only bronchitis?" he asks with concern. Wasn't it supposed to be a fairly common illness? Who knew it could cause so much agony.
"Certain," is her short response. Brennan watches as he pulls the lap top over to the bed, his eyes scanning across the bed as though in wonder as to where he should sit. To her concealed disappointment her takes a sits next to her, plopping his body down and adjusting the pillows to lay comfortably against the headboard. He inserts the disc to the player and brings up her rarely used DVD player. She's unsure what the movie is, her mind occupied too much with trying to breath along with her desperation to curl against Booth and just hide against him while seeking comfort.
A series of coughs racked her body heavily. They caused her to jolt upright and hack forcefully while trying desperately to inhale, that was the part she hated the most. The fact that she could not just get a decent breath in, feeling like she had held her breath for a long time and then couldn't get that wonderful release of allowing air to rush and fill her lungs. When she finally stopped she allowed herself to collapse back against Booth, his arm extended to hold her. She turns into him, burying her head into the crook of his neck and just allowing her coughs to go against his shoulder, something that she was sure he must find unpleasant but allowed her to do so anyhow.
"You can go to sleep you know," he says quietly to her as he saw her fighting to keep her eyes open.
"My eyelids are heavy but my mind doesn't seem to want to allow my body to submit to sleep," she admits to him and lets her eyes slip shut, although still completely aware of everything around her. She breaths Booth in deeply, expelling it moments later but enjoying his scent before hand. Her mind began to focus on how he stroked her back the soft laugh he gave at something said in the movie.
"What are you thinking about?" he asks her quietly, wanting to know what it was that kept her up when she was so exhausted.
"You," she tells him honestly and smiles to herself when she can feel his heartbeat, which her hand had conveniently rested over, quicken.
"Oh yeah?" he asks teasingly. All the while he was really trying to hold himself together. For once in her life Brennan couldn't just lie and say something that wouldn't cause his heart to beat from his chest. God, she was even more beautiful here, resting against him and just allowing him to support her weight.
"Yeah," she says and neither of them say another word after that. Both to avoid any possible awkwardness and also because neither of them was sure they would be able to hold back their desires in that moment. Suddenly the movie was the last thing either of them was paying attention to.