Brennan awoke to the faint, scratchy sound that passed for 'knocking' when one's door was merely a canvas flap on a large tent.
"Mmmph... come in," she called throatily, sitting up to search out the slit in her mosquito netting. It was the normal rhythm of the days in Guatemala, to nap through the hottest part of the afternoon. Even though sunlight hours were precious, Brennan had only made the mistake of charging through a full day of work once before she found herself sunburned and dehydrated enough to require an IV bag of fluids. Since that experience had laid her up for two full days, she'd respected the local wisdom and come to enjoy the daily nap time.
And also, to enjoy Dr. Cristoba's daily visits.
"Temperance," he called quietly, "time to wake up. Your dominoes aren't going to lose by themselves..."
Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she shuffled to the small table and grabbed a bottle of water. Sleeping in the heat always made her feel somehow thick when she woke up. Thick and slow and sultry. Yawning, she pushed a chair companionably towards Dr. Cristoba and offered him a water.
"No thank you, I've brought some Gallo," he laughed, raising a hand threaded with three bottles of the local beer. "Join me?"
"Maybe later." It had taken Brennan a week or so to relax to the fact that the volunteers at the dig tended to drink while they were working. Not to excess, but any time after noon seemed fair game to find them with a beer in their hands when taking a break. At first she'd found it deplorable and unprofessional, but the pragmatic part of her realized that most of the volunteers were here on vacation time and seemed determined to eke at least a little bit of fun out of several weeks spent identifying human remains. All in all, she was proud of herself. The Dr. Brennan they all knew at the Zacapa dig was a very different woman from the Dr. Brennan her coworkers knew back in DC. She complimented herself on adjusting very well indeed.
"You have a faraway look in your eyes, Temperance," he commented, leaning forward across the table to gaze at her more closely. She couldn't help but notice, not for the first time, how handsome the masculine lines of his face were. And he had a habit of doing just this—leaning in, staring at her as if she was the most fascinating creature he'd ever discovered, listening carefully to everything she said, almost studying her. She realized it was all probably an act, and one that likely brought him a lot of success with a lot of women, but she couldn't stay immune from his charms even so.
"I was just thinking about my coworkers back in DC."
"Just coworkers... no one ...special?" he asked slowly, a crafty grin spreading to reveal even, whitened teeth.
She returned his grin and shook her head coyly. "Do those dimples work on other women?"
His smile brightened. "I'm not concerned about other women right now."
Ignoring his flirtation, she shuffled the bones in the middle of the table and flipped her doublets over. She enjoyed the casual friendship that the two of them had developed. And the sexual tension underlying that friendship was making a fairly routine dig much more interesting than expected. She hadn't yet decided if she would return Dr. Cristoba's advances but she liked that he was making them anyway. She had just broken up with Peter before flying to Guatemala, and was generally irritated by men at the moment... but it was possible that a brief fling with Dr. Cristoba would be just what she needed. He certainly looked like he would make an acceptable sexual partner, and his confidence was intriguing.
Untying her handkerchief from around her neck, she grabbed the Nalgene of lavender water that she'd concocted and doused the cotton liberally before wringing the excess water onto the ground. The lavender smelled pleasant as it evaporated, and helped keep biting insects away. It also, she found, had created a strong scent memory to her time in Guatemala. Lavender... and the lingering burnt vanilla of the tiny cigarillos that Dr. Cristoba smoked after dinner.
"Temperance," he whispered, breaking her reverie with the soft lilt of his accent.
Looking up, she was surprised to find his face so close to hers; the subtle shadow of his mid-day stubble pixelating his jaw in a most attractive manner, drawing her curiosity. He knelt before her on the grassy ground, one strong arm still leaning on the table, the other reaching slowly towards her face... she didn't quite like the arrogance in his expression, as if he knew that her consent was a foregone conclusion, but she allowed his kiss anyway. His lips were soft, unhurried as they shifted slowly against hers.
She twisted her fingers into the thick hair at the back of his head and allowed his mouth to trace down her jawline and over her throat. As her head tipped back, she felt pleasantly dizzy, the heat of his body pressing more fully into hers. She stared thoughtlessly at the buckshot of sunlight streaming through the holes in the tent top, at the scattering of bones on the little table, at the bird on the label of his bottle of Gallo. A rooster, she thought idly. It looked familiar...
...It looked... like the belt buckle she clenched between her hands as she brought a man's hips crashing against her own, demanding the delicious pressure of hard contact. Cristoba had morphed somehow into Booth, and immediately became a thousand times more appealing. She couldn't hear the cicadas anymore, couldn't smell the mildewy fustiness of her canvas tent. She could only hear his breath rough in her ear, smell his soap on his skin. Feel the slide of his tongue against hers, slick, wet, surprisingly hot. Urgent.
She couldn't understand how he'd come to be here, how he had usurped Cristoba. After all, she barely knew him; her mind spun with confusion. He was an FBI agent she'd worked with once, and he had irritated her immensely. She'd hoped never to see him again, yet here he was in Guatemala, magically planted in front of her, staring her down with lit embers in the dark charcoal of his eyes, a look that she somehow felt she'd seen before. She didn't know how he was there, but she also didn't care.
She returned his kiss with vengeance, sinking off her chair and down against him as they kneeled together on the soft ground. His arms felt strong and dependable as a cage around her and she arched back, gratified to feel his fingers shoving the spaghetti straps of her tank top impatiently over her shoulders. His mouth attached to the skin he'd just bared, the even curve of his teeth biting down ever so slightly.
"Yes," she moaned, her hips fiercely grinding an unconscious rhythm against his.
His hands gripped her breasts and he growled into her ear, "Now I know what you've kept hidden."
And then... nothing. Confused, she rolled over to find an alarm clock staring back at her that wasn't her own. What the hell? A blanket that wasn't hers... an unfamiliar wall... she sat up and scanned the small room, lost in several moments of fog before she remembered where she was. Her room at The Moonlight looked different in the daylight, an irony that amused her even in her sleepy state.
She was absorbed in a particularly delicious stretch when a fragment of her dream came hurtling into her mind. And then another, and another. Guatemala, her memories of Cristoba. Booth. Now, where had he come from? Why had her brain decided that her non-fiction recollection of Dr. Cristoba needed to be spiced up with some partner-flavored fiction?
Brennan raised her fingertips reverently to her lips, as if checking for any physical evidence of Booth's searing, belief-shaking kiss. Was this because he'd called her sexy? Or because she hadn't yet had a chance to admit the same thing to him?
Either way, she felt dirty. Ashamed and vaguely... unkind, somehow, as if she had betrayed a friend. She knew very well that she shouldn't think of Booth in a sexual manner. She knew that. And yet lately, it was become increasingly difficult to follow her own advice. Thinking about him when Trish dressed her up, enjoying the soft gravel of his voice in her ear, and now dreaming about kissing him... oh God, it was embarrassing. If he had any idea that she'd dreamed of such a thing, Brennan had no doubt that Booth would kindly but firmly annihilate her ego in one well-intentioned speech about professional boundaries. He simply didn't feel the same way about her and she would have to come to terms with that. Temperance Brennan, the woman smart and hard-working enough to achieve almost all of her goals in life, was simply unable—through either intelligence or diligence—to make a man who thought of her as a partner, a friend, want more.
AN: Hope that wasn't too confusing; in terms of canon, I'm picturing this particular trip to Guatemala as the one that Brennan was just returning from in the pilot episode. Btw, individual wooden dominoes are traditionally called 'bones'. Funny, no? Also, Gallo really does have a rooster on the label, and as far as beer goes it's not bad... Of course, it's not good either. ; )