Author's Note: I want to write more of these little snippets so if you guys can think of anything you'd like to read please send me a prompt! This snippet was inspired by Frankie and her prompt "thunderstorms." I'd love to be able to write several of these a week so the more prompts the better. Send them on and I'll try my best! Thanks to NatesMama for the super quick beta job!
She had always hated thunderstorms.
She could remember nights as a child when she'd lie covered up to her nose in bed, jumping each time a crack of thunder filled the night air. Flinching every time a flash of lightning sparked through the window and illuminated her room. But without fail, her father would open her door and, seeing that she was awake, he'd walk into the room with a casual comment about anything but the weather. He never acted like he knew that she was scared. And with him in the room, she wasn't.
Until the first night that it stormed after her parents left. Russ didn't know that she was afraid. And he didn't know that he was supposed to come into her room to calm her down. At the first shutter rattling gust of wind she ran into his room instead. It only took a simple, "I'm scared" for Russ to allow his little sister to crawl into his bed. After that he knew that she was afraid of thunderstorms. But it didn't matter, because by the next thunderstorm, he was already gone.
None of her foster parents cared that she was afraid of thunderstorms. Not even the ones that she finally worked up the nerve to tell; they'd simply laughed. And especially not the ones who had left her locked in the trunk of a car during a thunderstorm. She had held her hands over her ears and shivered with fear as hail pounded on the trunk. She wished that her father were there to talk to her but she knew it was a foolish wish. It was inside of that trunk that she had promised herself that she would never rely on another human being to calm her fears again.
There had been storms in the jungle while she was on digs. There were storms in Maluku when she was searching for the origins of humanity with Daisy. She was still afraid of those storms but she was amongst colleagues and had not broken out of her professional, "Dr. Temperance Brennan" mode. Her insides were shaking but she refused to tell anyone about her fears. She had learned her lesson and she knew that she could not always depend on someone else to get her through.
But then there was the night at Booth's apartment that it had stormed. The thunder had woken her, but Booth was still snoring softly. She slipped unnoticed from his bed to check the weather channel. Convinced that the storm was not severe and would soon pass, she tried to go back to sleep. But sleep wouldn't come so she sat up in bed and pulled her knees underneath her chin, holding them with her hands.
She chided herself for being afraid. She was too old, too intelligent and too successful to be rendered immobile by a simple scientific principle such as thunder. She reasoned with herself as she kept an eye on Booth, hoping that he'd remain asleep. Only he didn't. It started with a yawn, then he turned over in bed and finally his eyes opened when he sensed that she wasn't lying beside of her. And when he sat up and found her there, sitting in bed looking everything like a frightened little girl he grinned. "Don't like storms, huh?"
She hadn't answered him then and just like her dad before, he knew that she didn't want to talk about it. Instead he had sat up with her and started to talk about the case that they were working. As the storm passed she settled into his arms and thanked him. They had never talked about it again. There wasn't any reason. Any time it would storm she would roll as close to him as possible, snuggling against him as he slept. Unless he woke up, in which case he'd hold her and they'd talk until the thunder slowly faded out of ear shot.
She wondered if Booth knew that it was storming where she was now. She wanted to know if he was thinking about her. If he knew that she was afraid. She clung to Christine, holding her tighter each time the thunder would boom and shake their dinky hotel room. For her part, the baby would occasionally open an eye to glare at her mother, squinting up at her as if to say, "Please just go to sleep Mom."
This was the third night it had stormed since they had left DC and Brennan was considering asking her dad to consult the Weather Channel before making his next city selection. Her nerves were already shot from being a fugitive, the thunder was an annoyance she could do without. She gripped Booth's shirt, which she had swaddled the baby in every night since they had ran and breathed in his scent. If she closed her eyes and pretended hard enough she could almost feel his arms wrapped around them both.
As she lay there in that cheap hotel room, listening as the rain pounded against the air-cooling window unit, and the thunder began to move further and further away, she realized that she had done the very thing that she had promised herself that she never would. She had allowed herself to rely on Booth. But, much to her own surprise, that thought didn't make her sad.
Because unlike her father, she knew that Booth was waiting for her. She smiled, knowing that just maybe, by the next time she found herself awake and afraid during a thunderstorm that she would be able to roll over and shelter herself in his warmth. That thought was just what she needed to give her the courage to get her through the storm.