Chapter 7
Day 7: Thursday
She came back with him to his apartment that night. She was quiet, obviously deep in thought. He let her be knowing she would talk when she was ready. Thursday morning they got called to a crime scene. Those always took forever, this one was no exception. Morning turned into afternoon and it was evening before they finally wrapped it up and were able to leave. By the time they buzzed by the Hoover and Jeffersonian to make sure everything was in order and had been delivered as requested it was getting late. Takeout dinner on Booth's couch. Drinks to try and relax. A hot shower together to unwind. Which led seamlessly to a repeat of their making love experiment purely for the sake of science, of course.
The whole day and night seemed to just happen. It wasn't forced at all. On the contrary, it seemed disturbingly natural to be with Booth in this way. Somewhere along the way time got blurry for her. It was no longer linear and equidistant, it sped up and slowed at all the wrong places. She was lost in it.
Two bodies tangled into one, finally, they fell asleep together.
Booth was alone when he woke up, which admittedly worried him. Quietly he made his was out of his bedroom. The tiny apartment left little room for hiding or privacy. He found her standing still, arms wrapped protectively around her body, looking out his living room bay window. Moonlight bounced off the white dress shirt she was wearing, his dress shirt. He held back and watched her for a long time then made his way across the room to stand behind her. She leaned back against him and let out an almost painful sigh.
"Whatcha doing?"
"Just looking at the city. Your view is very different than mine."
Booth laughed softly. "Yeah, you're right about that." He lived in a poorer, grittier neighborhood than she did.
"I like your view." His arms wound around her as he rocked her gently back and forth.
"I like my view too." He wasn't talking about his neighborhood. He nuzzled into her neck and hair taking in a deep breath of her.
She didn't know how he could be so casual knowing that the experiment was ending in minutes, if she were to be absolutely precise.
"It's been seven days." Turning in his arms, she pulled him into a long passionate kiss. It reminded him of that first kiss under the shelter of that shallow doorway outside the pool hall. It was deep and open, filled with so much that could never be said.
It didn't dawn on him that it was a goodbye kiss.
She was gone when he woke up but he knew she would want a crack at the new case as soon as possible. It was normal for her to jump obsessively into her examination of bones that way. In fact, he'd been surprised he got her to come home with him last night at all. He thought for sure she would have insisted on staying at the Jeffersonian to examine the bones.
He cringed when he tried to reach her and Zack answered. Clearly she'd given him her phone to filter her calls. That wasn't normal, hadn't been for a long time. Zach was ridiculously rigid about following her orders. Today his orders were to stop all calls, she wanted to talk to no one, not even Booth. She'd effectively buried herself in the new case. All the jobs she usually delegated to Zach, today she did herself.
By lunch time Booth walked purposefully into her office, pulled the door closed behind him, and demanded an explanation. "What the hell, Bones?"
She looked at him blankly but she knew what he was talking about. "It ended, the experiment is over. We completed it. We agreed to go back to the way things were before, we agreed we had to."
"Before the experiment you talked to me, answered my calls and texts. Exactly how far back before the experiment are we going here?"
Lips pursed, shoulders squared and stiff she just looked at him. She didn't answer.
"Is that what you want? To go back?" There such a deep sense of pain in his voice she couldn't help the tiny gasp that escaped when she heard it. But she didn't cave to it, she fought it.
"It doesn't matter what I want, Booth." She barely got it out. She felt the pressure, like a dam about to overflow or burst from the weight behind it.
"Of course it matters, Bones." She got up and busied herself around her office, she put files away, straightened magazines, organized her desk making everything perfectly straight and orderly. He watched, then tried to get her to stop and talk to him. She couldn't stop, she was sure if she did she'd lose what little control she had. He looked around him, they needed privacy and her damned office was a fishbowl.
"Can we go somewhere private to talk about this?"
"No, I need to work."
"No, we need to talk."
"Booth." Her eyes begged him not to pursue it, begged him to let her be. "We have a case." It came out weak and small.
"Bones, this is more important."
"It's over, Booth, the experiment is over. You proved your point, I concede that making love is different. But it's over. Now, if you don't mind I need to get back to work."
"Dammit Bones this, between us, what we shared this week, doesn't have to be over."
It was back and forth – no matter what he said she had an argument to counter. This, what they were doing, this argumentative dance, was not productive. He stopped pacing, with his hands on his hips he stared at her.
Then shook his head, shook himself loose of his frustration with her.
"Come here." It was tender and soft. "Please."
"I'm at work." She looked out towards the forensics platform, all the people purposefully walking around the lab, everyone that had a perfectly clear view of her. It felt like the whole world could see her, see her pain, her frustration, and hurt.
"Bones, baby, come here." Closing her eyes it felt like his words pierced her. He moved to the couch and sat down. "Can we just talk, just for a minute?"
"I have nothing to say." Everything about her posture, her expression, her eyes, all said otherwise.
"Okay, okay, but I do and then, you know, I'll leave you alone if that's what you want."
She came and sat on the edge of her couch, her body proper and stiff.
He looked up, ready to pour his heart out in one last ditch effort.
"Look at me Bones. I need you to look at me and really listen." She wasn't looking at him, she wasn't sure she could. Turning her face towards him, she closed her eyes tightly. He looked at her, really looked at her, her fear was overwhelming. It broke his heart.
"Open your eyes please. I need to see those beautiful stormy blue eyes of yours." She opened them, it took everything in her to sit still and look at him. It hurt so deeply she was ready to concede another long time argument and acquiesce to the fact that a heart could indeed be broken. She felt this in her heart. A physical manifestation of emotional pain.
"Can I hold your hand?" He asked softly. She shook her head, no. "Okay, okay. I'll accept that. Here's what you need to know, Temperance, for me this was never about the experiment." Her eyes snapped to his, a painful confused look. "And I don't think it was for you either." Watching her strain to hold back the tears was torture. Her eyes forced open, pooling with tears, he knew she was about to lose the battle whether she knew it or not. He wanted, more than anything in the world, to take her in his arms and somehow make it better.
"I have loved you for a very long time. I believe that you love me too, though you might not know it. It's been building in us, this thing we share." Her mind pulled connections opening an array of thought. Wednesday night, make, Old Frisian makia, to build. Eyes darting across his face she was still fighting to maintain.
"I think we were both looking for some way, something to help us get to the next step. A way to share it. The experiment, for me, was a way to show you how much I love you, how long I've loved you." Tears fell fast and hard down her cheeks, there was no more holding them back, she gasped, a single sharp intake of air.
Reaching out he grabbed her hand squeezing it then running his thumb gently over hers. She let him, then another shuddered breath. He was everything, he had become so intertwined in her life she couldn't imagine it without him and it scared her. What if he left like so many others had done? It would be hard now, today, it would be hard but she would recover. But in a month or two or year from now, if he left then she knew she would be decimated. It had to stop now, it had to be this way. She had to hide behind the end of the experiment and cut her losses. A few hard days or weeks and they would get back to where they were and she would be safe.
"I want to believe, I hope, that for you the experiment was a way to tell me you felt it too." She looked argumentative, he quickly qualified his statement. "Even if you didn't know what you were feeling or why you were feeling it, you knew it was building, that it needed to be expressed, it had to be."
A stillness fell between them. Her tears continued their trail down her cheeks, His thumb stroked a steady rhythm over her hand. He gave her this time, let what he'd said hang in the air.
"I won't pressure you, Temperance, I'll let things be the way they were before." The strain in his voice evident, he cleared his throat as he tried to stave off his own tears. "When you're ready, you come to me, okay? Until then I'll just, it'll just be what it was, okay?" He caught her eyes and nodded as he waited for her nod in return. She did. He got up and started to leave. God, he hoped she would stop him but she didn't. Right before he reached the door he stopped and turned quickly.
"That first kiss, on that first case, you ran from me. You ran to that cab and I followed. Remember?"
"Yes."
The softest look overtook him, in his eyes, his expression, his whole demeanor. "I asked if you were afraid that when I looked at you in the morning I'd have regrets." A soft laugh fell from him.
"I said that would never happen."
His hands deep in his pocket, shoulders slumped, he looked up from the floor where his gaze had been and straight into her eyes.
"I don't, Bones, I don't regret it and I never will."
He left.
As promised, she answered his calls, even called him herself with updates on the case. It was awkward but they were determined to make it through it. Somehow, together, they would shove everything that had happened back into the tight little box it had come from.
When they figured out the identity of the victim he made arrangements to go talk to the family. He called and asked her if she wanted to come with him. Admittedly he was relieved when she said she was too busy at the lab to leave. He didn't know if he could do small talk yet. Everything still felt raw.
He worried about her and contemplated asking Angela to check on her but in the end thought better of it. The last thing they needed was Angela, though well meaning, in the middle trying to fix what they had broken. Instead he sent Bones a text message.
Worried about you
That's all it said.
She tried to be brave about it. reminded herself frequently that this was for the best. There were too many complications with starting a relationship with Booth. The eventual end of such a relationship was only one of them.
It took her a long time to answer his text, the better part of an hour. She would type one thing then delete it, then type another which would suffer the same fate. One after another, until she finally settled on something simple and pressed send.
Thank you
She locked herself in her office and the bone room. She couldn't go down to limbo, the thought brought back too many recent memories. She managed to avoid just about everybody all day and when it was almost over she left. Straight home, a beeline, she'd held everything back all day. She needed to be someplace where she could just be. She stripped and collapsed on her bed and sobbed. It was late in the evening when she texted Booth again, the weight of how her own inadequacies had fallen on him, crushed him. It weighed heavy on her mind.
I didn't mean to hurt you
He was home by the time he got that one. His apartment had never seemed emptier than it did that night, empty and cold. He read her text over and over as he downed the rest of the scotch he'd poured himself when he got home hoping the warmth of the liquor would take the edge off. It didn't. It took him a long time to answer. There was so much he wanted to say but in the end he just acknowledged it.
I know
With that he turned his phone on silent. Something he never did, he answered day or night as part of his job. He needed a break. He figured if anything earth shattering needed to be addressed Charlie would come find him. He would chalk it up as a mistake, accidental. He couldn't handle anything else tonight. He avoided going to bed but the noise, sports recaps, the news, reality TV as he flipped channels, it all seemed to be making it worse. He had another drink and went to bed where he was carried off by the sound of rain as it pounded his roof and windows. He fell asleep much faster than he thought he would.
She couldn't sleep and when a couple texts to Booth went unanswered her restlessness became unbearable. What had she done? It seemed like hours passed. Her restlessness left her twisted in her sheets and no more comforted or consoled than when she'd gone to bed. Her mind, like the sheets, had twisted and turned, everything seemed upside down or backwards. She needed help sorting it all out. A fresh set of sobs echoed through her apartment as she came to the harsh realization that normally it was Booth that would help her figure this all out.
She gave up, got out of bed, maybe moving would help her think. She dressed and was driving before she'd given any thought to where she was going. When she parked in front of his apartment her heart pounded. She swore she wouldn't get out of the car. She'd just check to see if his lights were on, if he was there, if he was safe. They weren't, his apartment was dark. And before she really recognized what she was doing she found herself walking around his neighborhood, in the middle of the night, in the rain, trying to decide whether to get in the car and go home or go up to his apartment. It was a commitment, she knew it. She couldn't go up there like this, ask for his comfort and not be willing to at least try to make this work between them. It would be wrong and she couldn't bear the thought of hurting him the way she had today. But taking this risk, committing to this with Booth, it was such a big decision. Her mind completely wrapped up in thought didn't even recognize the rain as it pounded her. She came back to her car, held the handle of the door, and looked up at his windows above the Liquor store. She'd decided.
He'd been dreaming fitfully all night, every dream laced with her. Beautiful eyes locked with his as they made love that first time. Her warm body tangled with his. Her secrets, her treasures, her pain, her tears, they were unbearable. He'd wake, curse, and roll over determined to escape through sleep. He'd listen to the rain and let the rhythm and consistency lull him back to sleep.
He shot upright and waited, the knock came hard, it sounded just like her fast, incessant pounding. By the time he'd regained enough consciousness to listen, it had stopped. He thought it was another dream, that this time the whole week had started over again with her pounding on the door in the middle of the night like last Friday. But there was nothing, the apartment was quiet and still. He lay back down but before he got settled it started again. This time he was awake. He knew he wasn't dreaming. Bolting for the door he stumbled into the coffee table hitting his shin. Shit that hurt, he swore as he raced for the door and called out for her to wait, he was coming.
Shivering, her hand hovered over the door, trying to decided whether to knock again or leave. She was about to go when she heard him and though she knew he'd probably hurt himself she couldn't help but smile as she heard him yelling for her to wait for him to get the door. That was Booth, that was the sound of comfort and safety.
One look, that's all it took, she melted his heart. She was drenched, rain dripped from every bit of her and he could still distinguish her tears. He wanted to say something to ease the tension but nothing came. He knew she needed the chance to speak first but he didn't have to leave her there in the hall of his apartment building. Taking her hand he led her through his apartment to his bathroom. Carefully he wrapped a towel around her then grabbed a second one to pat her dry. The soft towel draped over his hands framed her face as he dabbed at her still falling tears.
Looking up into his gentle eyes, she finally spoke. "I'm scared too, Booth." A warm smile, a tender touch, he kissed her, then pulled her into his arms.
"We'll be scared together, okay?"
"Yes, together. You and I, together." He knew she meant it, it would be hard, they both knew it, but she was willing to try.
oooooOooooo
A/N Once again I'd like to thank you for reading, reviewing, following and favorite-ing this story. The response has been overwhelming and exciting. You know how some gifts have a smaller present that dangles from the gift tag? So does this birthday season present for Craftyjhawk. There will be a short follow up tomorrow – an epilogue. I wanted to thank my dear friend Crafty for having a birthday and giving me such great prompts to pick from. I have loved writing this story so much! It has been a great experience.
I'd like to thank my husband, Snowybones, and Givesup for help finding and correcting my errors. There's a reason the first thing waring out on my lap top is the right click button, it's called spell check LOL They caught all the missed words and parts that didn't make sense – not to mention being a great cheer leading squad.
If you didn't already know Craftyjhawk, Givesup,and Snowybones are all writer/readers and have stories here. Crafty and Snowy are also on fiction press. You should check them out.
If you have liked this story you can come chat with me on twitter dg_schneider I'd love to hear from you. I post links whenever I post chapters of a story there. I have a non-Bones story that I have been working on (in my head) since I started my very, very long project Need. I will be posting short stories related to that on fiction press once Need is done (but not before).
For those waiting for the next Need chapter – it will be there soon, I promise.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter – please let me know, I am terrible at reading minds and get quite nervous waiting to hear what people think. Loved it? Hated it? Forming a mob to lynch me?
