Almost Too Much
May 2011
It was bizarre, really, how for every moment of the last year it had felt like an eternity since he last saw Bones, but now that he was just a few hours away from seeing her again all that time had faded and it felt like only moments had passed.
Booth couldn't help wondering if it felt the same to her. Did she still think of him the same way? Had she changed over there in the jungle? The emails he got periodically were perfunctory, emotionless. At the time he'd been sure she was just protecting herself, but now, pacing his apartment in the middle of the night, Booth was no longer certain. Was she covering up the fact that she had found someone and didn't want to tell him through email? Did she write him only because he wrote to her first?
Booth slumped down on the floor, leaning back against the couch. He rested his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking somewhere between a laugh and a sob. The man he used to be would have gone to her right now, screw the plan.
The first time he went off to war, Booth didn't have a child, didn't have a partner—had no one but Jared, who shared his own exhilaration with danger, with war. He went to fight with just enough caution to keep him alive, and more than enough bravado to make him effective. If there had even been a chance this woman was waiting for him, he'd have run to her without a second thought.
This time was different. In Bones' absence Booth had had to fill her role in his life for himself. In Afghanistan he held himself back from unnecessary risks. Over and over he let her voice in his head remind him to slow down and listen carefully to the specialists and their big words. He was no longer the most impulsive guy on the team, no longer someone with little to lose. He grew more like her than he'd ever have imagined. At some level he'd never admit, he wanted to make Bones proud.
Booth sighed heavily. The plan was to meet tomorrow. The coffee cart near the reflecting pool on the mall. Bones liked plans, and he knew for a fact that rushing into things made them unpredictable, made them dangerous. Booth glanced at the clock. Two AM. He could make it.
