Killing Two Birds
By: dharmamonkey
Rated: M
Disclaimer: Hart Hanson owns Bones. But people like me who play in his sandbox give you all those delicious little moments that Hart and friends leave out. In this case, AU do-overs for that gap between Seasons 5 and 6 that wrought so much havoc for our heroes. That's why you read fanfic.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed, especially all those first time reviewers and de-lurkers. I'm unspeakably psyched that you folks are digging this story.
Chapter 4: Closing the Distance
Booth stood right behind Brennan, holding her heavy canvas duffel bag—surprisingly heavy, he observed, wondering what on earth she had in there—in his left hand as she wiggled the key in the door. He leaned over her shoulder and took a deep breath through his nose, a smile breaking across his face as his nostrils filled with the smell of her—the coconut/ginger scent of her shampoo, now very faint after two and a half days of traveling, and the sweet smell of her sweat, a scent he'd never really forgotten even after all the months they'd spent apart.
She turned the key and opened the door. "Ugh," she groaned at the sight of the room, with its ivory-colored walls, dingy, commercial-grade beige carpet and the full-sized bed covered with a cheap, red and orange abstract print comforter. "This is what I imagine the worst, most poorly-constructed and haphazardly-furnished college dormitory ever built would look like."
Booth laughed. "Welcome to military housing, Bones," he said, closing the door behind them as he followed her into the room and dropped her duffel on the floor next to the bed. "Hey, at least you get a comforter and a private room. This is contractor's housing, and let me tell you, it's a damn sight better than the accommodations they give to us military personnel." He winked. "It's a shame all the four-star hotel rooms in town were booked," he snorted. "Better luck next time, I guess."
Brennan slid her messenger bag off her shoulder and deposited it on top of the wood-laminate desk near the window. She glanced out the window, which overlooked a service road and loading dock across the street, then looked up at Booth with an awkward smile.
"I missed you, Booth," she said quietly, a faint smile on her lips as she took in the sight of him.
The skin of his face, neck and hands looked very tanned, which the rational part of her mind knew meant he was once again ignoring her advice to use sunscreen, but the irrational part of her mind—awash in hormones and responding to the baser instincts of her limbic system—noted he looked even more handsome with a darker tint to his light olive complexion. Brennan noted how short his hair was cut, even shorter on the top and sides than it had been when she last saw him at Dulles, and she was surprised by how much she liked it that way. She felt a vague tingle in her fingertips at the thought of running them over the razor-short hair above his ears. Her smile turned into a frown as she observed once more the ten black stitches along the hairline adjacent to his temple and the swollen, bandaged cut above his left eyebrow.
"I missed you, too, Bones," he said, closing the distance between them with two strides. Their eyes locked, his warm brown eyes glistening as her cool gray eyes stared back, and their faces leaned in close to one another, their noses separated by just a couple of inches. "I-I…" Booth's lip quivered as he hesitated. "I'm so glad you're here."
"I thought about you a lot while I was in Maluku," Brennan said.
"I'd think about you all the time, Bones," Booth replied. "Every day." He took a breath and was about to say more, but instead closed his mouth and pursed his lips.
Brennan felt a smile flash across her lips and a strange flipping sensation in her belly as she looked into her partner's deep, warm brown eyes. "Booth, I—"
She blinked, then raised her hands to gently cup his jaw between her hands. Booth's skin felt so smooth and warm against her palms, and her nostrils flared at the smell of his menthol shaving cream. She stroked her thumb over the pebbled, pockmarked skin along his jawline and pulled his face to hers, pressing her lips to his in a moment of raw impulse. For a moment, she felt his lip quiver beneath hers, then, just as his free hand came to rest on her right hip, his mouth opened to hers and she felt his tongue slide against hers. Brennan felt a warm pulse between her legs as their tongues tangled, their mouths grasping at one another as all the unresolved emotion of the preceding years and months poured into that kiss. Feeling his mouth clutch at hers once more before she ran out of breath, she pulled away and stared at Booth, open-mouthed and breathless.
For several seconds, they looked at each other with lopsided smiles but neither of them said a word.
"Bones," Booth said finally, his heart racing and his breath coming in pants. "I—" His voice faltered before he could formulate something intelligent or meaningful to say. For the lack of anything else to fill the silent void between them, he glanced down at his watch.
"Yes," she said quickly. "I really should—"
He smiled and shrugged. "I'm sure you need to rest and freshen up after all of your travels," he said, his voice cracking slightly.
Brennan nodded. "Yes," she replied. "I assume there's some kind of cafeteria or canteen where we can get dinner?"
"Of course," Booth answered, glancing once more at his watch, since the time didn't really register in his mind the first time he looked at it. "How 'bout I see you downstairs by the front door at, say, five-thirty?"
"Perfect," she said with a smile.
"So," Booth said as he slid his tray over the steel rails. "It's not the diner or the Founding Fathers, but they do serve a decent burger here."
Brennan rolled her eyes. "That doesn't really make me feel any more comfortable that I'll be able to find a decent meal here," she said. "Oh—but look, this looks like spanakopita. That's impressive." She reached for the tongs and put a couple of the feta and spinach-stuffed phyllo dough squares onto her plate next to her salad.
"This is a pretty good gig, as far as hot meals go," Booth explained. "When you're a serviceman stationed at smaller FOBs—forward operating bases—you're lucky if you get a hot meal that doesn't come out of an MRE pouch."
"So your palate is happy, Booth," Brennan observed with a crooked-mouthed smile.
"Yeah," he agreed. "But not just my palate." He raised an eyebrow and waited to see her response. "You got what you need there, Bones? Let's find a seat."
They sat down at a small table with a red vinyl tablecloth and four metal, cushion-backed chairs that reminded Brennan of the kind one would see in a take-out Chinese restaurant back home. She raised her chin and looked over at the content of Booth's tray: a hamburger, overcooked fries, two small paper cups of ketchup and a slice of apple pie. Booth saw her surveying his dinner and reciprocated, noting her usual garden salad (with tomatoes that were far redder than he expected them to be), a little paper cup with salad dressing, the two squares of spanakopita, and a cup of vegetable soup.
"Guess some things never change, right?" she said with a laugh.
"Guess not, Bones," Booth replied with a grin, rotating his plate so Brennan could reach his French fries. "But that's good, right? You know, to know that some things between us will never change?" Except, he added silently, I sure hope this all means we're going for a different outcome here. "I mean, you'll never order your own fries, as long as you can steal mine."
"Well," Brennan said with a smile. "It's only efficient to have the two of us share an order of fries. No sense letting the food go to waste, never mind wasting the resources washing an extra plate, and—"
Booth rolled his eyes and shook his head. "So you stealing my fries was really about efficiency and a desire to prevent global warming?" he asked. "Huh," he grunted. "I always figured it was because those salads of yours never quite satisfied your desires."
"Not global warming," Brennan corrected him. "Climate change. And in response to your other comment, well—" She arched an eyebrow at his apparent innuendo. "Maybe," she replied noncommittally. "Or maybe I was never quite hungry enough to eat a whole order on my own."
He snorted and took a bite of his hamburger. "Hmmmph," he murmured as he chewed. "So," he said, tapping his index finger on the table. "I think the key to getting Wendell here to help you is getting him through the security clearance process."
"Wait," Brennan said, fumbling with her salad. "I thought you didn't know where he was."
"I tried calling Wendell but the phone number I had for him kept going to voice mail," Booth said with a shrug. "And, since time is of the essence, I knew I needed to track him down. And, while Wendell has his own place, I know his mom lives in town." Brennan looked at him strangely. "Remember when we had that hockey game and he got clocked by that jerk Pete Carlson and I broke my hand? Wendell spent the next couple of days with his mother, who looked after him after that bad concussion he got. I know he's pretty close to his mom."
"Oh," Brennan said. "Yes, I guess I do remember that."
"So I made a couple of calls, and got ahold of Wendell's mother, who told me he's been working the last few months for DCPS—"
"What?" She gave him a blank look.
"District of Columbia Public Schools," Booth explained. "As a mechanic, fixing up broken-down school buses." Brennan's brow furrowed in puzzlement. "I know, but hey—the kid needs to pay rent, and he's a hard worker. So anyway, I made a few more calls and caught up with him at work."
"You spoke to Mr. Bray?" Brennan asked, the excitement clear in her voice. "That's wonderful."
"Yeah," Booth said. "He sounds good. So, I told him that you were here on request by the U.S. Army, doing some forensic work, and that you wanted to know if he would be available to help."
"And?"
"He is," he confirmed. "But—"
"So when can he get here?" Brennan asked quickly. "Don't worry about his salary or his expenses. I'll take care of that. So, how quickly do you think you can arrange to get him here?"
"Hold on there, Bones," Booth said, holding his hand up in a gesture of caution. "He's gotta get a full military security clearance—not just the FBI background check that he had to have to work at the lab. And that's gonna take a little bit of time."
"How long?" she asked.
Booth hesitated. "Under expedited circumstances and with some assistance from the brass at CENTCOM," he said. "Maybe a week."
"Alright," Brennan said. "So maybe he'll be here in ten days. That will be immensely helpful."
"Just don't count your chickens before they hatch there, Bones," Booth said, a certain caution fraying at the edge of his voice. "Wendell had kind of a rough time as a teenager, you know." She looked at him with a blank, nonplussed expression. "He apparently got into some trouble, minor stuff mostly, when he was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. I can't be 100% sure that he's going to get the necessary security clearance."
"But, Booth," she pleaded. "There must be something you can do."
"I'll do what I can," he promised with a vague shrug.
Brennan nodded but did not answer, instead focusing on her dinner, allowing herself, from time to time, to steal a glance at her partner as he ate his own meal in thoughtful silence, his gaze dissolving into a space just above her right shoulder. He was tanned and strong, having put on ten or so pounds of muscle since she had seen him last, and he looked healthy—except for the obvious injuries from which he was now healing—but she felt a hard lump in her throat as she wondered if she was truly alright after the incredible trauma and loss he had suffered. She thought about all the letters she wrote to him but never mailed—all of them still folded in their envelopes, tucked away in the bottom of her duffel bag—and all of the emails she had composed, all of them still in her Drafts folder, not one of them having ever been sent. What kind of friend am I? she asked herself glumly as she watched him eat in silence.
"I'm sorry, Booth," she said vaguely. He blinked and turned to look at her.
"What?" he said as he was snapped out of his haze. "Sorry."
"No," she said quietly. "I was just saying—well, I'm sorry I didn't write or email you these last few months, Booth. I'm sorry. I don't have a good explanation for my failure in that regard, it's just…I don't know—"
"Look," he said. "It's a two-way street, and, well, after the first couple of letters I sent went unanswered, I gave up. Email access when I was down in Helmand was pretty hit and miss, and—" His words trailed off and he glanced down at his half-eaten hamburger. "But it's okay, really. You're here, and we're good, right?"
"Yes," Brennan replied. "We're good."
"We're good," he said again, popping a French fry in his mouth with a dramatic flourish.
Booth followed Brennan up the stairs to her dormitory room but lingered at the door as she walked inside.
A part of him—and not just the obvious part—wanted to take her in his arms and kiss the daylights out of her the way she had kissed him that afternoon. But another part of him hesitated, and he knew why. After the night at the Hoover, the night when everything could have gone right but instead it went horribly, horribly wrong, he was afraid to push her in a direction she didn't want to go. He finally had her back in his life after six long months—without a doubt, the six longest, most miserable months of Booth's life—and he was determined to do everything in his power to keep her there, even if it meant not doing what the other part of him desperately wanted to do. So he stood at her door, watching her quietly as he tried to silence the voices of his own inner conflict.
"You can come in, Booth," she said to him with a smile.
"Okay," he replied with a sheepish grin, closing the door behind him with his foot as the thought suddenly crossed his mind that he was probably violating a half-dozen different Army and/or DOD regulations by being in a female government contractor's room after lights-out. But at that moment, he decided that he didn't really care.
Brennan shrugged out of her tan canvas jacket and draped it over the desk chair. "Hey, Booth," she said, looking up at him as she stood near the window.
"Yeah, Bones?" he said, lifting his eyes to meet her gaze expectantly. She pursed her lips together tightly and swallowed, but for several long moments she said nothing. "What is it, Bones?" he asked softly, pulling his beret off his head as he sat down on the edge of her bed. "I-I…umm," he stammered. "It's just, I needed to sit down and, there wasn't any other place to sit."
She laughed. "It's alright, Booth."
For a moment, Booth felt relief wash over him. She reached up to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear, which gesture he recognized as a sign of her anxiety as he soberly watched the emotion wash over her. "Okay, Bones," he said, fussing with the soft wool felt of his beret.
"I made a mistake," she blurted out, turning her head to stare out the window as soon as the words left her mouth.
"Bones," Booth said, standing up and rolling his beret in his hand. "Look, you don't have to—" He walked towards her but she held her hand out, and he stopped, leaving a three feet space between them.
"I really do," she said firmly and quickly. "Please."
"Okay," he whispered.
"I made a mistake," she said, her voice burdened with sadness. "That night at the Hoover, when we met with Sweets about the book he wrote, when you—" She stopped, knowing she did not need to rehash the events of that evening because every word, every glance, every tear was seared into both of their memories as if with a branding iron. "I was scared, and foolish, and while I didn't recognize it at the time, what I did that night was a mistake. I'm sorry, Booth."
"Bones," he said pleadingly, stepping towards her. "You don't need to apologize."
"It's not that, Booth," she said, glancing once more out the window at the empty service road illuminated by a fluorescent street lamp. "I've spent the last six months, Booth, thinking about that night, and what I wish I could've done differently. I—"
"Bones…"
"No," she said, frustrating biting into her voice. "Let me finish. This is hard enough for me as it is, don't you see?" She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm sorry, it's just—I didn't mean to snap at you like that, but…" She uncrossed her arms and put her hands on the top of the desk chair, then turned to meet his eyes. "If you still wish to, Booth, 'give this a shot,' well—I would like to try to do that. I want to give us a chance. If you still want me."
Booth's mouth fell open with surprise, but his face quickly shifted into a bright smile.
"If I still want you?" he asked, barely suppressing a laugh. "Yes," he said, closing the distance between them and bringing his free hand to cup her face with his palm, his fingers stroking the soft skin of her delicate jaw. "I want to give this a shot," he said. "God, Bones—it's all I've ever wanted."
And with that, he kissed her.
A/N:
Well, we certainly moved the ball down the field. Of course, things won't be that simple or without complication, but all signs so far are positive.
So what happens next? I can't wait to tell you. Same drill as before. You simply have to tell me what you think of this chapter and the concept so far. Do you think this is realistic in terms of how this might have gone, had this scenario come to pass? I want to know.
Press that little review button and do your thing. Yes, that one—right down there. That's the one.
Thanks!