With Brennan focused exclusively on Booth's injuries, the inevitable soon happened-the wispy flames inside the fireplace began to fade. Another second of benign neglect and the mound of glowing sticks would be nothing more than a bucketful of useless white ash.
Darned close to being naked, the shivering G-man had more than enough reason to notice the looming catastrophe first.
He snatched a twig from the nearby stack and jabbed it into the smoking brick cavity, touching the dry, leafy end to the sputtering heap in the hopes of keeping the enterprise alive. There was absolutely no way his stiff, frozen limbs could wait for Bones to practice her fancy girl scout moves all over again, even if she did have a butane lighter for a spiffy new best friend.
In an instant Brennan was a blur and a flash out of a corner of the agent's eye, careening towards him like a wild woman from the other side of the couch where she'd been rooting through their supplies. She leapt forward, firmly took a hold of her partner's wrist and pulled him towards her, almost yanking his arm out of its socket.
Booth felt his knees buckle under him as another round of searing pain knifed right through his already dislocated shoulder. For the second time that day, he came dangerously close to passing out.
"What the hell..."
Fighting to catch his balance, he lost his grip on the half-lit branch. It slipped harmlessly to the ground where it quickly fizzled out, but not before showering the bridge of his bare left foot with a hundred incendiary flecks.
"Jesus-what'd you do that for?' he asked angrily, jumping back and almost tripping over the pile of soggy clothes on the floor. He crucified Brennan with a prime 'what-the-f-k' glare as he rubbed his mangled foot.
Cuts, whacks, frostbite-and now a burn.
What was it with this blasted day, and why wasn't it over with already?
"Don't, Booth. Don't do that again-please" Brennan said in a tremulous voice, obviously deeply shaken by whatever her companion had unwittingly done to offend her. "Your hands are almost certainly still numb; the neurological receptors on your fingertips aren't able to transmit impulses to your brain's synapses with their usual speed. Not now, and probably not for a while."
Taking a deep, deep breath, Booth shut his eyes tight and pinched the narrow space above his nose until it turned white. One, two, three, four...he was going to count all the way to ten before he opened his mouth again, just in case something awful came out.
Why-oh why-couldn't she ever give him a straightforward answer to anything?
"What?"
"You currently lack the ability to judge whether your hands are too close to the fire" she explained, consciously moderating her tone to sound less shrill. "As a consequence of your provisional sensory deficiency, you could easily get burned. You might not notice until it's too late."
Booth's countenance immediately lost most of its harshness. Mouth ajar, he stared at his partner and then down at the pale, delicate female hand digging into his forearm.
She was right about the first part of that statement, of course; his fingertips still couldn't feel a thing, though a little unpleasant prickling sensation told him they might slowly be coming back online.
But as to the 'might get burned part'?
Too late for that, Bones, he intoned silently; her fingers were already scalding the skin they were resting on almost to the point of blisters. He was burning just from being this close to her.
Had, in fact, been burning for years.
Confined to hell's eternal damnation for loving a woman who'd believed for the longest time she lacked the capacity to love him back even though he knew better-always had, since the very beginning.
It was the height of frustration and also the bane of his existence, this unwillingness of Bones to accept that her heart was big enough for two when an entire continent could have easily fit in there. The blind refusal to recognize what was so obvious to those who knew her even remotely was bewildering, to the point where sometimes he just wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her.
Best not to try. He strongly suspected-hell, he knew-it wouldn't go over well.
Recently though, specifically since that gloomy night when he'd just barely managed to push her out of the way of a speeding car and then she went on to confess she regretted not giving him a chance-and oh God, what a nasty, bloody war that little conversation had started between his heart and his principles-there seemed to have been a steady shift in her views.
All he could say was, Amen to that.
An unguarded smile here, an edgy pause there, a look he'd caught only by an act of providence-and the bickering, of course. Always the bickering. So much of it now that he was sure its only purpose was to blind them both to the fact that they were actually moving towards each other at celestial speeds.
And by celestial he meant fast, of course, although Bones would doubtlessly correct him on that point. When had she not?
Patience, he reminded himself.
And patience meant waiting however long it took-he got that now. Moving on was not an option, and had never been; he'd learned that lesson too the hard way. There simply was no way for a love struck mope like himself to get over a woman like Temperance Brennan. He was clearly in over his head on this one-might just as well wait for her to come around, even if it took forty or fifty or sixty years more.
"Thanks" he whispered, already awash in guilt for having been too hard on her yet again when she was obviously only looking out for him.
"You're welcome," came the equally soft-spoken reply.
Brennan looked away, the warm, heavy weight of her partner's stare suddenly making her feel light-headed.
The vertiginous sensation wasn't something new, much as it pained the scientist to acknowledge that something so clichéd could ever happen to her. But the truth, clichéd or not, refused to be silenced.
There was no denying it; for the last few months her concentration had wavered dangerously around Booth. An unmitigated disaster as far as their work went because they spent almost every waking hour of their day together.
She'd secretly begun to worry that this uncharacteristic lack of focus might eventually lead to a costly mistake.
And maybe it already had.
Gingerly removing her hand from Booth's wrist, Brennan promptly made her way to Snell's makeshift kitchen, anxious to escape the deleterious effects those impassioned brown eyes were having on her well-established sang-froid. Once there she opened the lone cabinet and peered inside as Booth watched with a decidedly skeptical expression.
"What are you looking for?"
"I won't know until I find it. Hopefully, something which may help us to steal some time until help arrives."
"Buy, not steal, Bones. If you steal something someone might want it back" he teased.
Splaying his fingers out towards the fireplace, Booth kept a vigilant eye over his partner in case she got the urge to tackle him again. "You're wasting your time in there-I seriously doubt donut guy had much by way of gourmet supplies. Snell didn't strike me as the Julia Child type."
"We won't know what he had until we look" Brennan retorted, much more settled now that she had had found something other than Booth to keep her occupied. "We don't have the luxury of being complacent while we wait to be rescued."
Wise words from a wise woman, but the former Ranger was pretty sure not even Galileo and Einstein combined could have found anything worthwhile in the kitchen's barren landscape. Besides the fact that the guy had been dead for months, Snell hadn't even bothered to own a fridge-not that there would have been anywhere to plug it into.
No-probably not much there, Booth decided.
Or at least nothing he'd want to put in his mouth. As much as he disliked the idea of starving to death, botulism and salmonella seemed like far worse ways to join the roster of the dearly departed. He didn't need the unpleasant reminder that their sole 'bathroom' was now as inaccessible to them as the dark side of the moon.
Brennan bypassed what she perceived to be her partner's totally irrelevant, unhelpful commentary in favor of something more proactive. Her brow wrinkled in concentration as her eyes followed the bouncing pinprick of light on its sad journey over spider webs, empty wrappers and yet more dust.
Just as Booth had forecast-and much to her annoyance because she vehemently disliked losing at anything-Brennan found nothing of value inside the dilapidated cupboard. A few rusty cans in the back were fatally outdated and bulging in a way that cautioned that the expiration date on the bottom should probably not be taken lightly. Mice, meanwhile, had taken advantage of the homeowner's absence to make quick work of the rest; shredded bits of paper and plastic along with telltale rodent scat were all that remained of Snell's more ephemeral comestibles.
She shut the door with a frustrated slap.
But even if she had been temporarily proven wrong, Brennan wasn't willing to concede defeat just yet. She sullenly marched off to Snell's bedroom to try her luck again, leaving behind another set of instructions for her calamity-prone partner.
"You can cautiously start throwing scraps of wood into the fire, Booth, one at a time; just make sure your hands remain at a safe distance."
"Okay mom" he replied cheekily, his smiling face now lit by an altogether more pleasing glow.
He looked rakish and smug and disarmingly cute with his matted hair, dirt-streaked cheeks and typical self-satisfied grin. But as seductive as they were, Brennan stalwartly refused to reward the lethal, inveigling displays of charm with anything but a half-hearted grimace.
She disappeared into the gloom of Snell's bedroom flashlight in hand.
First on her list, plugging the hole in the window the opossum had scampered out of. Sealing the small crack would not only help conserve what little heat the fireplace was generating, it would also keep wildlife at bay-a result sure to please her partner and go at least part way towards making amends for the bad turn their day had taken.
Brennan grabbed the only pillow on the bed, figuring it would work as well as anything else. She also took the opportunity to evaluate the mattress and the few linens on it for possible future use; given the circumstances, no resource, no matter how seemingly paltry, could be taken for granted.
They needed to work out some sort of sleeping arrangement soon, her and Booth, awkward as that situation was bound to become; the hard, cold stone floor in front of the chimney was not at all conducive to an evening of restorative sleep. If Snell's mattress proved to be even marginally functional, they could carry it into the living room and attempt to share it as civilly as two people who'd been at each other's throats all day possibly could.
The only other viable alternative was the couch.
The anthropologist had already considered using Snell's sofa as a possible lounging spot, but she recognized that option was out of the question, at least for her. While she'd never had a problem sleeping in unorthodox places-crumbling barns with cattle and chickens for roommates, dirt floors with nothing but her own folded jacket for a pillow, even guano-laden caves came to mind-there was something so very sinister about Snell's faded, moldering tan sofa with its acrid smell and its thick veil of mysterious particulates that the mere thought of lying on it triggered a rare gag reflex.
Besides, there was only room for a single sleeper.
While in theory that would work out fine for at least one of them-just not her-in reality neither partner was likely to use it. Knowing Booth as well as she did, Brennan didn't think he'd take a shining to the mite-infested cushions any more than she had. If anything, her finicky companion would probably be even more repelled by the suggestion than she herself was.
So therefore here she stood, perusing Snell's old bed with hopeful eyes. Unfortunately, the sustained burst of LED light only confirmed her initial suspicions.
The deceased man's mattress was just as nauseatingly repugnant as his couch, and therefore just as likely to remain untouched by either partner. Dark yellow stains and the sinus cavity-opening smell of ammonia strongly suggested that the opossum and possibly the entire marsupial's extended family had until recently called the primitive cot home.
Considered objectively, the discovery was only a small setback, especially when compared to the much more serious blows the rest of their day had already delivered. But coupled with all the other misfortunes already on the list, the bad news hit the anthropologist hard.
Brennan found herself fighting for air, suddenly grief-stricken and sick to her stomach.
Clicking off the flashlight, she walked to the window and stared out at the impressive spectacle nature was putting on outside for no one in particular.
It'd been years since she'd felt this impotent; possibly not since she'd been locked up inside the trunk of that car when she was forced to live with that dreadful foster family.
Of course, this situation was nowhere as scary. She wasn't a minor alone in the dark wondering whether any of her caregivers would ever come back to get her before she suffocated or starved to death. But in some fundamental ways, it was even more unsettling.
Precisely because she wasn't alone.
Her own life she felt perfectly at ease gambling away in the name of science and justice. She'd faced the possibility of death more times than she could count, knowingly venturing into highly volatile places and situations all around the globe in her mission to expose corruption and depravity wherever it lay buried.
She had never had a problem accepting the risks. Along with her often solitary-and sometimes incredibly lonely-lifestyle, it came with the territory.
But today...
Brennan wrapped her arms around herself, her lined, tired eyes only half-focused on the snowy panorama. Today was an entirely different species of animal. She had dragged someone she cared very deeply about-and she knew that sooner or later she would have to be brutally frank about just how far those feelings ran-along with her into a proverbial lion's den, and there was no way to outrun the fact that she alone would be responsible for whatever happened to him.
Beginning to tremble in the ice-cold room, the scientist finally admitted what she'd been avoiding all along: that they should have turned back at the ranger station just like Booth wanted. Probably should have never set off on this misguided expedition at all.
They could have been sipping a beer and rubbing shoulders at Booth's hockey game, sharing yet another evening together in what was starting to very much resemble...what, she wasn't sure, but a very pleasurable pattern which she had come to hope would not only continue, but eventually turn into something even more intimate, as well as possibly more permanent.
Would tonight have been the night?
After the game, sharing a drink while they flirted with a little more conscious intent than usual in one of their apartments? The night they decided to finally go from partners to more? They were getting closer all the time; she could feel it, and she strongly suspected Booth could feel it too. Closer and closer, and that's undoubtedly why there was so much sniping and over-all unpleasantness in the air.
Although neither of them was willing to say it out loud, she knew that they'd both been waiting for the right moment, the right catalyst, the right set of variables to come along in order to make the switch. Always waiting...and now there might be no sand left inside the hourglass of their relationship.
Brennan shook her head despondently, looking around her with disgust.
Snell's bone-rattlingly frigid cabin with its grimy floors and its decaying, smelly furniture had absolutely nothing right about it.
Not even adequate.
But much worse than the simple loss of a romantic opportunity, if anything happened to Booth because she'd been too stubborn to give up her quest to find their victim's killer in the face of risks which she could now could accept were totally unreasonable...
How could she have been so blind to the very real dangers lurking behind her obstinate pursuit?
Feeling completely hollow inside, she seriously considered dropping to her knees and crying her eyes out until she either passed out from exhaustion or froze to death. But something strong and unbreakable within wouldn't let her give up-not yet. She shook off her momentary fit of depression and turned the flashlight back on.
Almost invisible behind the dresser was the outline of a door. Brennan pushed the heavy chest of drawers to the side, determined to improve her and Booth's questionable odds.