Disclaimer: Don't own Bones.
Warning: do not read if you are completely spoiler free. I don't like writing about future speculation that much, but I had this idea before reading those stupid spoilers and I refuse to change it. I'm really considering going spoiler-free for season 6! Who's with me? :)
Word courtesy of the lovely Cheri Goodman. Enjoy!
INVITATION
It had been a while since they sat at the diner together. He didn't even want to think about exactly how long, but by the look on her face Booth knew their absence from the diner was the least of his problems.
"What's this?" he asked, picking up the piece of paper she slid across the table to him.
Her silence unnerved him and he glanced down at the paper in his hand with an inevitable sense of doom. Whatever the hell this was, Booth was almost certain he wasn't going to like it.
He read the letter, the words jumping out at him, each one a sucker-punch. Ancient remains. Dig. Indonesia.
"You've been invited to participate in this dig?" Booth asked the question even though the answer was right there in his hands.
"Of course. I'm the best there is," she replied automatically, but there was no satisfaction in her tone, maybe because she was already starting to feel numb.
"And you're going." It wasn't a question this time and he laughed bitterly because it seemed she wasn't done tearing little pieces out of him. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised you're running. Guess I should be surprised you didn't do it five months ago."
His voice was low and slightly disdainful and she jerked in response.
"I am not running …"
"Oh, please," he interrupted brutally. "Lie to yourself if you want, but you can't fucking lie to me."
Brennan almost gasped at the hard language she so rarely heard from him. His hand fisted and he crushed the paper, tossing it onto the table and standing up abruptly.
"You go ahead and run, Bones," he hissed, pain and panic mixing wonderfully with fury. "Accept your goddamn invitation and go. But you better fucking remember that it's you leaving me."
He stormed out of the diner and started walking, leaving behind his partner and his car. He wanted to go get roaring drunk, maybe pick up a woman and pound out years of frustration inside some faceless stranger. Except he felt dirty just thinking about it and he refused to give her the satisfaction. She was not going to drive him into the kind of self-hating behavior that …
"Booth!" He kept walking, without bothering to slow down. "Booth!"
He heard her feet pounding on the pavement and he whirled around to face her. The thought assaulted him suddenly that she was the source of his frustration and she should damn well be the one soothing it. Everything was rising up—his fears, his anger, his yearning— and he was done bottling it up.
"Don't say a word," he warned, grabbing her arm and whistling for the cab pulling up to the curve.
The last time he grabbed her like this, she had slapped him unceremoniously, but now the thought didn't even cross her mind as he hustled her into the cab. She was struck speechless as he gave the driver his address.
During the ten minute cab ride, he didn't say anything, his face remote and nearly expressionless. Getting out in front of his apartment, he wrapped his fingers right above her elbow and guided her through his front door.
Brennan watched him flick the deadbolt on the door, the sound strangely loud in the silence.
"Booth …" she began tentatively, but he walked in her direction and she took an involuntary step back.
"What did I say?" he growled, one arm going around her back, the other behind her knees as he lifted her in one swift movement and carried her to his bedroom. His mouth was on hers instantly, kissing her with every iota of anger, love, and passion coursing through him. Her hands tightened convulsively in his hair as she kissed him back, unable to do anything else.
Setting her on the bed, Booth straddled her, every button popping as he ripped open her blouse.
"You wanna run, Bones, fine," he said darkly, leaning down until his chest touched her laced-covered breasts. "But you're going to remember this every damn day you are gone." And he fell on her, lips running feverishly over her skin as his hands rid her of every stitch of clothing.
His hands cupped her naked breasts reverently and she moaned softly, arching into the touch. Her own hands, small and efficient, glided over him, discarding jacket, shirt, and pants. His skin burned wherever she touched him and once he was naked on top of her, Booth was certain every single inch of him was on fire.
He watched her eyes drift shut as his hands glided over the curves of her body and his throat closed at the unexpected sweetness of her response. The anger drained out of him as if sucked into a vacuum and his forehead rested against hers, thumbs stroking in small circles across her hipbone.
"Tell me to stop." His voice was raw, pleading for her to stop this because he didn't have the willpower.
"No," she whispered hoarsely, eyes opening, hands wrapping around him and guiding him to her as she parted her legs to accommodate him between smooth, white thighs.
His breath hitched, throat working desperately as the enormity of the situation hit him. She was leaving him and he was about to lose any chance he ever had of ridding himself of his addiction. If he touched her, if she was his for even one night, how could he ever be free of her?
"Bones …" he choked out, one thumb trailing a soft path from hipbone to the soft flesh between her legs. His finger glided smoothly up and down the edge of her soaked sex. The butterfly caress along her slick folds made her shudder as her hands released his rigid length and stroked over his body.
"Please," she pleaded, legs locking tight around him. "Don't stop. Please, Booth, don't … please."
"Temperance …" Her name was surrender and anguish as he slid inside in one clean stroke, twin moans of completion vibrating the room.
Head thrown back, she moved under him in abandon, starving for this part of him she'd denied herself for so long. Booth couldn't take his eyes off her, cataloguing every reaction, absorbing every sound, every gasp of pleasure on every slide in, every whimper on every stroke out. He pressed kisses to her chest, her shoulders, her neck, desperate to imprint every part of this forever on his soul. The desire was quite masochistic, considering the circumstances, but this, this was perfection and he felt nearly frantic to remember every second of it because he might never experience it again.
Her gasps of pleasure washed over him, fingers digging into his back urging him to join her in the cresting avalanche of rapture crashing over her. His own fingers tangled in the waves of mahogany hair spread over the white pillow, lips capturing hers as he poured everything he had inside the woman that was everything.
Falling onto his back, Booth stared blindly at the ceiling, listening to her ragged breathing. Next to him, her body pumped heat like a furnace and he closed his eyes trying to stop himself from doing something crazy. But when he felt her shift on the bed, his eyes snapped open and he turned his head to look at her.
Brennan turned on her side and the clean line of her spine broke him. His arm snaked out to curve around her tiny waist and he rolled her under him.
"Don't leave," he breathed, bracing his forearms on the bed at either side of her and looking down into sapphire blue eyes. "Say no to that damn invitation and stay."
"Booth …" She cupped one hand around his face, eyes bright with unshed tears.
"Bones, for the love of god, don't run," Booth pleaded, voice low and intense. "Don't tell me you don't feel this, don't tell me I'm not what you need." His lips crashed down, kissing her desperately. "Because I am. I damn well am. You've been waiting for me all your life, just like I've been waiting for you."
"I … you said … you said you were moving on," she said in a tiny, uncertain voice. "I don't want to get in the way of …"
"Bones, does it look like I'm moving on?" he asked point-blank, hands tunneling in her hair and holding her head. "Does it look like I even can?"
"I nearly interrupted your last date," she confessed, remembering the irrational feelings that had left her staring at her phone ready to dial his number for endless hours. "That's when I knew the most efficient course of action would be to go away for a while."
His heart thudded at her confession, the first tiny trickles of elation creeping through him. "Without exception, every date I've had in the past few months has been nothing but a damn exercise in futility. Now ask me why."
"Why?" she whispered breathlessly, mesmerized by his glittering eyes.
"Because I compare every single woman to you and they all come up short," Booth answered. "Because maybe they can make me laugh or feel less lonely, but they can't make me burn with just one look, they can't make me feel alive just by walking into the room, they can't make me happy for the next fifty years."
Booth lowered his head, lips brushing whisper soft against her cheek. "Only one woman can," he breathed in her ear. "Care to take a guess as to who that woman is?"
"M-me?" Brennan exhaled in wonder, arms going around him almost unconsciously and stroking up and down his back.
"You," he confirmed softly, untangling one hand from her hair and brushing his fingertips along one cheekbone.
"You are staying." It wasn't a question or even a request, more like an affirmation of what he could read in her eyes. Relief crashed through him and Booth struggled to keep from drowning in it. "Say it."
"I'm staying."
Yes. Heck yes.
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Thoughts? and/or J words?
