Author's note: And they're back, baby! I missed them. And nice touch with the mastodon right at the end. Great use of metaphor and irony. Gotta love this show.
Note 2: Thank you to MickeyBoggs for betaing in such short notice.
Anyway.
On with the story.
With love
Jane
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Flesh
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Silence was a good thing. He dressed himself with silence. No shouts and no bullets. No moans. It was a rare, are moment of almost peace. He missed the peace of the silence of Bones sitting by his side. She did silence well. She understood it. She understood his side of the silence. God, he missed Bones.
What about me? Didn't you miss me?
Booth looked back to the drip. No. He couldn't say that he did. He pulled the blankets up. The relative warmth of the silence was swiftly sucked out of him by the cackling of the malefic child's voice.
He held on to the cell phone as it buzzed again. His hands always warmed up a fraction when the phone rang.
He didn't hear the heavy footsteps until they were by his bedside.
Some sniper, huh?
"Yo, Pretty Boy, you gonna answer that?"
No. No he sure as the hell he was in he was not gonna answer. He lowered his eyes. God, the doctor was tall. In his convulsively tight hands, the phone did its best to warm his hands.
"Hand it over, then. Phones are not allowed in hospitals." He doctor held his palm up. Booth's only reply was to clutch it tighter in his shaking hands. "Simple question: why don't you answer it?"
.
.
The question might have been simple. The answer was not. All he wanted was to hear her voice again. But there was stuff he didn't want her to know, that he didn't want to rub off on her, stuff that he didn't want to burden her with.
But mostly, there was shame.
An embarrassment that paralyzed him.
"She is better off like this."
"Like what?"
Booth's eyes closed shut tight as if that simple movement of his eyelids could stop all the rotten stuff inside him that wanted to come out and be heard, only this was not the time, this was not the place. This was not the person and mostly, he was not that kind of guy. The kind that talks.
"Yo, I asked you a question. Be polite and answer, Pretty Boy."
.
.
There were years and years of silence. There was his mother's finger across her lips shushing him because decent folks don't air their dirty laundry in public. There was his father's fist because Booths don't telltale.
But the phone buzzed again in his clutched palm.
"Because I don't deserve her."
.
.
"You're shittin' me! You're shittin' me, right?"
There was something in the doctor's voice. It made Booth look.
The doctor shook his head. It could have been anything. But when he stood all his height and took the yet again buzzing phone from Booth's clutching hands, it translated disbelief.
"Get off the cross, my man. Other people need the wood and the nails" and he pressed the answer button. "Talk to your girl, Pretty Boy. Don't be a shit."
And he walked out of the room leaving Booth alone with the drip drip dripping morphine and an almost there Bones.
.
.
Her voice had a metal quality to it through the distance between the phone and his year. Slowly, Booth pulled the phone to his ear.
"Hi Bones." He expected a dressing down. He knew he deserved it.
"Booth." He was a tin man without a heart, a lion without courage and scarecrow without a brain. And he was out of road to keep walking. He looked at the morphine and its soothing cadence. "I've missed you."
For the briefest of moments, such was the power of her voice, he believed nothing had changed, that there wasn't half a world between them, that this was only one more Friday night.
"Awww, Bones!" There was an old, out of use levity to his voice that was at odds with the rest of him.
But then the dripping morphine became loud as a grandfather's clock, ticking away time. Or sins.
"I missed you. So much..." And the heaviness resettled on him.
There was a pause on her side. It wouldn't have bothered him, that silence. He was used to her silences while she considered something. But he knew her by heart. And she was pondering something she didn't quite know how to say. Something about him.
"Spill it, Bones."
You are not going to like this!
"Why didn't you answer the phone?"
"Because, Bones, you were asking too many questions."
"I only asked one."
Booth looked at his free hand. The flesh and skin and bones lost heat and color and softness. They became hard and cold and metal right before his very eyes. He flexed his fingers, not quite sure if he was resisting the feeling or capturing it.
"That was one too many." Welcoming the tin it is, then.
"You're angry..."
"Not at you, Bones." Was that relief in her sigh? "Never at you."
"Then at yourself?" And she was going there. His finger hitched to press the END button. "Please don't hang up again, Booth."
He could do this. He could sit through this conversation. As long as the tin kept on spreading, as long as he stopped hearing his heart beating, as long as he was the tin man, he could sit through it with his poker self. He had done it before.
Doesn't it worry you that you're not exactly dreaming the tin, that you're awake?
"Booth?"
He should probably worry. But it was just so practical, not to have a heart that can be broken.
"Booth, are you there?"
No. He wasn't really there. Which was, all things considered, a good thing.
"Yeah, Bones. I'm here. I won't hang up. You'll just keep calling if I do."
"You called me too."
"Yeah."
"Tell me about what happened, Booth."
"Bones... there is nothing to tell."
Yeah, right. Keep your distance. Keep the tin coming!
.
.
Ryan Leone's face was the one he saw the best. Pink and bright and hopeful. Did he have a girl friend? Had he ever fallen in love and felt beloved flesh next to his in his sleep? Leone had been so young. Like Teddy Parker. And his finger still felt the trigger and his shoulder still felt the weight of the weapon he had raised once more. He had not murdered. He had killed. He knew the difference. Only, was there really a difference? Wasn't the end result that other kids would not get to see their mothers?
.
.
"Tell me about the boy, Booth." Leone's face smiled and there was blood in his mouth. Blood he could have saved if he had been paying attention.
"Ryan Leone."
"Yeah. Tell me about Leone."
"He was drawing, Bones. He was drawing the sky."
"And he won't get to finish it."
"No, he won't."
"But that's not what makes you angry."
"No."
"You're angry at yourself."
"No. Why would you say that? It's a war. I'm angry at the war."
"No, you're not. You're angry at yourself." Bones! He turned to morphine again.
"Stop it, Bones."
"You're angry that you didn't save him."
"Bones!"
"You're angry at yourself. And you're thinking of Teddy Parker and all the other boys you didn't save."
"No!"
"You can't save everybody, Booth!"
"I'm not trying to."
"You always are. You are always trying to save everybody."
"Stop it, Bones. It doesn't suit you. You're not a shrink or a therapist. You don't even believe that psycho babble bullshit."
"It's time you save yourself, Booth."
"You're no good at this, Bones, drop it. Don't embarrass yourself" Cruel. He had been cruel. He hated cruel.
He just needed her to stop.
"Bones..." He hoped she'd hang up because he had promised not to and he did not break promises.
"What about the morphine?"
His finger hitched again to press the END button.
"With your addictive personality, should you be taking morphine, Booth?" Her voice sounded cold. Clinical. She always did that when things got too close to home. When people hurt her feelings.
"I'm sorry, Bones" Sorry I hurt you again.
"I don't care for excuses, Booth. I asked about the morphine."
It made him angry. It was his business. The morphine, his ghosts, his tin. It was his business, not hers. It made him angry, that invasion of his space.
It's not like you're hurting anyone. Consenting adults and all that...
"I've been shot, Bones. I think I deserve a pain killer" He knew she was talking to his rage. He wasn't that far gone he didn't see it. But it was like breathing after choking.
The anger was fresh air. And feeling after the numbness.
"A month ago, Booth. You were shot a month ago. 30 days." 30 days? "You don't need it anymore."
"I do. It fucking hurts!" 30 days?
"But not your body..."
"And how would you know? Where you there? Were you, Bones?" Why don't you bleed when I hurt you?
"Yes." Her voice was so small he had to strain to hear it. "I was with you every step of the way."
"Don't bullshit me, Bones. I was here. Alone."
"You were never alone."
"Don't talk like you love me, Bones."
Scream a bit louder, you two-bit pathetic ass-wipe.
"I do." Her voice was soft calm certainty. And it just angered him further.
Nice development, don't you think?
"And you expect me to buy that?"
"I'm not selling. I'm giving it for free."
Oh, look at that! Isn't that endearing? The malefic child cackled. You could almost believe it.
The noise inside his head was too much. Bones and that child and the ghosts. It was driving him insane.
For a moment he lost his iron control because he was done with hurting her.
"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" He ordered the voice inside his head. He couldn't be sure, but he could swear he had said it out loud. The silence spoke volumes. "Bones... I... Look..."
"Booth... It's OK. It's not your fault. I was scared then."
"I... Bones, I wasn't talking... I wasn't talking to you."
"Then whom?"
.
.
He didn't know. Not really. But every time he tried to identify the voice his head would spin and hurt and he just wanted to close his eyes and let it take over him, because he was just so tired of trying to stand.
.
.
"Booth. It's OK. I've got you now. Shhh, it's OK."
"I just want it to shut up."
"It will."
.
.
It did. Eventually. But it screamed and shouted, abused and insulted until it did.
.
.
"You're an addict, Booth. And you need to let it go."
"I'm not an addict... But it hurts."
"But I'll hold you until it doesn't."
"How?"
"Just like you held me when I had nightmares."
.
.
He called the doctor. As the man pulled the needle out of his vein, the child threw a tantrum. You're not going to be able to just walk away. Just you wait! And as the cold settled in, it smirked, poisonous. Are we there yet? And as the shaking took over his limbs and made breathing impossible, the laughter just rolled and rolled until it was all he could hear. The doctor touched Booth's hand. Like a ripple of a stone in the water, it pushed the cold and the tin away for the briefest instant.
"Good choice, Pretty Boy. Good choice."
.
.
Bones stayed with him. Her presence on the other end of the line soothed him though the pain that crushed him, through the freezing that spread through his veins, through the flashes of heat that burned and through the shaking that rattled his body.
She told him it was going to be OK and he believed her.
She told him about the lab and the weather. She spoke of her days in Limbo and about how she was waiting for him to go back to working with the FBI because the gun always goes in first.
She told him about her book and read it to him.
She kept talking even when all he could do was clutch the phone because his voice box wouldn't work through the withdrawal.
As she continued talking, he let her words wash over him. Her voice warmed him and her surrogate embrace through the distance stilled the tremors.
Sometime during the longest night and unending day he did his math on how compatible they were, how good they were together. Closing his eyes, he sent up a prayer to anyone willing to listen to stop sending him signals that they were right for each other.
Been there, done that- and fucked it up. He knew every reason they were meant to be. He also knew better than anyone why they shouldn't. Couldn't.
He had damned them to ever be apart.
No matter how much he wanted.
.
.
Brennan put the phone down in the early morning light. It was hard to let go of that life line. But Booth was asleep, beaten by the sheer physical exhaustion of resistance. She had listened to his breathing softening and loosing the gasping quality. She had compassed her own inhales and exhales to that soft sound. She had never been so scared in her whole life. Scared that she didn't know what she was doing. Scared that she was wrong in pushing this. Scared that Booth would not get out of this in one piece. Mostly, scared of how absolutely terrified she was, a fear that fed on itself.
But as Booth had slept on the other side of the line, softly breathing, she had felt at peace with the swelling in her heart, the steady beat inside her chest that seemed to sing to her. Yes, there was a long road ahead. But she wanted to be there. She knew that she could be there. That she would fight any battle necessary to be there. She would slay dragons and ghosts, but she would earn the right to walk beside him. Even if it meant to fight him too.
The night is always darker before dawn.
As exhaustion won that first battle, she fell asleep
And dreamed of flesh.
Do you love me?
Yes. Do you want me to prove it to you?
If you're not too tired.
.
.
Serenely, Booth slept. His ghosts looked from afar. He knew they were there even in his sleep. But for once in longer than he could remember, he did not dream of them. He dreamed of two people breathing softly, not quite asleep, not quite awake, hands linked over naked skin, warm bodies spooning.
Do you love me?
Yes. The woman answered. Do you want me to prove it to you?
Are you going to be there with me tomorrow, when they slice my brain open?
Yes.
That's all the proof I need.
I can still give you further evidence.
Both man and woman laughed then and what had started hours before continued into the light of the most uncertain of days of their lives. It was real.
Booth dreamed of warmth and skin. And smiled.
He dreamed of flesh.