Once again, thanks for the reading and the reviewing and the love. I love love. You know that song? What the world needs now, is love sweet love...It's a good old song. Hm, sorry. Tangent. Back to the story.
"You feel like eating something?" Booth asked, slipping on his sunglasses as they sped down the road in his SUV.
"Hm? Oh. Yeah, that's fine." Brennan answered absently, before returning to where she was looking out the window.
Booth frowned. She'd been quiet ever since they left Sweets. He wondered if he'd maybe freaked her out a little with everything he'd said. If he had, he wasn't really surprised, he'd freaked himself out a little.
He chanced another look at her at the next stoplight. She didn't really look freaked out, she more had that...'mouth parted, eyes wide as she tries to think of an appropriate response' look. No, she really seemed more thoughtful than anything. Of course, it didn't take a genius to figure out what she was thinking about.
Brennan heard him say something about food, but it took her a second to realize he was talking to her and that she would be required to make a response. So she did, noncommittally, hoping it made sense. It was a little strange, she wasn't really the type to obsess about things, nd she'd always found mulling to be a waste of time. And yet, she couldn't get the things Booth had said out of her mind.
August 1992"Seeley! Seeley, wake up!"
Booth awoke from fitful sleep to his father shaking his shoulders and calling his name.
"I'm awake. I'm awake, Dad." He pushed the hands away and sat up an, swinging his feet over the opposite side of the bed to where his father sat. He let his head drop into his hands as his heart raced in his chest, a cold sweat chilling his skin. He shivered.
"You were screaming." Joseph Booth's naturally deep voice seemed especially low, weighted with something like worry and sadness as it mingled with the dark. He sat hunched over, staring at his hands, convinced the sound of his son's terrified screams was something he would never be able to forget.
"Yeah. I do that." Booth muttered, suddenly standing and reaching for his jeans.
"Where are you going?"
Booth pulled on his pants, feeling claustrophobic in his skin and craving either a cigarette or a pair of dice to keep his shaking hands busy.
"I need a smoke." He answered in another frustrated growl, realizing that not only was he incapable of sleeping for more than three hours at a time, he wasn't even going to be able to pass his time spent awake trying to make a little extra cash. Then he swore and rubbed hard at his eyes with the heels of his hands, remembering he'd thrown his pack in the toilet earlier.
"What?" Booth's father asked again, feeling a little bit like a mother hen for asking his son so many questions. He just couldn't shake the feeling of needing to hold on tight to Seeley, like he was afraid he'd lose him again, forever this time.
"I threw them in the toilet." He said with a sigh, pressing his forehead against the wall in aggravation, using all his control not to bang it instead.
His father slowly rose from the bed, trying not to act as uneasy as he felt. He tied his robe as he walked toward the door.
"Probably for the best, those things'll kill you, you know. How about I buy you a beer instead?" He put a large hand on his son's shoulder ignoring how tense it felt beneath his palm, and Booth shrugged in defeat.
"Got any Jack?"
They sat on the back porch steps, Booth sipping a shot of vodka, his father a glass of warm milk.
"Shooting craps helps." Booth said finally, after they'd sat for several minutes in the dark and he'd grown tired of waiting for his father to say something. "With the nightmares. I didn't mean to..."
He heard his father turn to look at him, but didn't even glance up from the old oak tree stump that sat six feet from the house. He remembered when his parent's had had it cut down, he'd been ten and completely devastated at the fact that Fort Christopher would be torn down along with it. "I didn't mean to hurt anybody."
Joseph cleared his throat, speaking softly, staring at the same stump, remembering the way his youngest son had watched bravely from the driveway, putting on a tough front to hide the tears, while the tree men hauled away half his childhood memories. "Seeley, those five weeks when you were MIA were hard on all of us. We didn't know if we'd ever see you again. You're brother didn't mean to...attack you. He's just worried about you, he doesn't want to lose you again." He swallowed the rest of his milk. "None of us do."
Booth's shoulder's slumped slightly and he grabbed the bottle of Vodka beside him and poured another glass.
"When you started disappearing at all hours of the night, and no one could find you on the weekends. And...when money started disappearing for weeks we just..." Booth sighed and dropped his head once more, Joseph frowned. "We're just worried about you, Seel. No one's angry at you."
Booth nodded. "I am." He muttered, low enough that his father didn't hear. Booth rolled his head from side to side, briefly wondering what time it was, before he decided he didn't care.
"Rum was mine."
Booth looked up, confused as to what he meant.
"How I coped." Joe clarified, "When I got back from Vietnam we were...nobody's heroes. And I mean, the Air Force taught me a lot of things about teamwork and leadership and flying…but they never taught us how to go back." He shrugged, and frowned at his empty glass. "So everyone kind of stumbles through it on their own. Some guys come back and…it's like they never left, and some need a little help learning how to be a civilian again. I drank. And I wasn't that great of a person when I did. One night your mother came to bail me out of jail…I'd, uh, cracked a barstool across somebody's back, and she told me I had to give it up, or she'd leave me." He held out his milk glass proudly. "I haven't touched the stuff since."
Booth was quiet for a long time and finally his father looked up at him, surprised to see tears running down his cheeks, and Joe was struck witht the knowledge that for all the things Booth was, strong, independent and stubborn, there was a part of him that, at least in this moment, was still his young son, scared and needing guidance.
"Oh, my boy." Joseph whispered, hooking a hand around behind Booth's neck and pulling his son toward him, Booth pressed his face into his father's shoulder, hugging him tight.
"It'll get better Seeley. I promise you."
Booth's only response was to hold on tighter, feeling safe for the first time in nearly two years.
Brennan jumped a little when Booth touched her shoulder, he'd come to her side of the car and was grinning at her like a little boy with a bad idea.
"Hey, there Bones, you back with me? I was beginning to think you were catatonic."
She smiled shyly. "Yeah. C'mon let's eat."
Booth smiled and led her inside by the small of her back. They settled at the bar with drinks, waiting for Sid to bring their food.
"Hey Booth?"
"Yeah Bones."
"What...was it like for you?"
He folded his arms on the counter and looked at her, frowning. "What do you mean?"
She shrugged, swirling her straw around in her glass with the blue liquid. "I mean, you told us what everyone else thought and about their points of views. What about yours?"
Booth looked away, starring hard at the beer nuts in the little black bowl before them. He knocked back the rest of his drink and sighed.
"You just can't stand easy questions, can you?"
Brennan only smiled shaking her head a little. Then she followed when, a moment later, Booth picked up her drink and his own, and moved toward a secluded booth near the back of the restaurant.
Okay, one more chap, I don't think it will have a flashback, but it should be fun. See you there.