Sobering thoughts

The hesitation at the door may be but a second, but it's enough as he considers turning around and heading back to his hermit's quarters. But a promise is a promise and he braves opening the door and stepping inside.

His eyes adjusts easily enough to the dim light provided by lights winking out from the ceiling and the colored lights of the neon signs near the bar, but his nose almost revolts at the smell. The stale beer is pervasive, but it's coupled with something that smells as if it died in here. He's been in some of the diviest of dives, but this one bests them all.

Past the bar where under the lights the bartender looks like an extra in a zombie film, past several tables where more zombies crane their necks to watch a small screen TV perched in an eagle's nest above the bar, past a man crumpled over a table, he finds the person he came to find.

He'd sit, but he doesn't know what he'd pick up in doing so.

"I'm here. What's going on?"

His brother looks up. "I'm not drinking, Seeley." He wraps his hand around a glass that's streaked and greasy. The hand's shaking until it clutches the glass. "Just club soda. That's all."

It could be club soda or vodka, he's not sure, but he's seen the look before in other men. "How many days?"

Jared tries a grin, but it's grim. "Three days. Thirty-six solid hours. Not one drink." He's staring at his hands, staring at the glass in hand. "Padme said I didn't have it. Couldn't manage a day without a drink and I've got three." He's fixated on the clear liquid. "Old man couldn't do it. No. Man wasn't sober a single damn day when we were growing up."

His brother's hanging on by a hair to his sobriety and maybe his sanity. "C'mon, Jared. Let me take you out of here and we'll go someplace else. Find a meeting. Keep the streak alive."

It's a false hope, which Jared practically destroys in a single word. "No. No. I don't do meetings. All that holding hands and vomiting feelings." He's trying to make a joke, but it's falling flat. "What would I do in there? Sing 'Kumbaya' with the drunks while we toast marshmallows instead of toasting with 25-year-old Scotch? No."

"You can't stay here."

He's hit with rheumy eyes that betray something of the boy Jared once was and the man he's become. "I can't stay here, I can't go to my place because Padme doesn't want me there. I can't go to your place because Tempe's kicked your sorry ass out."

He stops and bends toward his brother, his words sharp as knives. "What?"

The stare's good at bringing suspects to their knees but it holds no such magic over Jared.

"I stopped by the house to talk to you." Jared's steadying himself with two hands on the table as he stands. "Don't worry, Tempe didn't hang out the dirty sheets. But she'd be a lousy at poker." He straightens. "I figured it out, really. Cam just confirmed."

There's a tremor quaking through Jared's body. "I got a buddy I can maybe crash with."

"You're coming with me."

He makes the mistake of grabbing at Jared's arm and losing it as he shakes him off, but he's not losing the man. "Do you have a plan? Or are you going to stay here?"

"No plans." Jared's voice is gravelly. "No job, no wife, no place to go. No plans except to make it to four days."

He's seen that stubborn streak before, seen that granite edge in his brother that refuses to crack even as the tremors quake through his body.

His voice softens. "You're going to stay with me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Jared gives him a look. "A secret fort where no one but us can go."

It's an old dream from when they were kids and they had a father who used alcohol to fuel the rages and a mother who couldn't protect them. There's something innocent about it, something hopeful.

His voice softens. "Where we choose who comes in and who stays out."

"And you'll keep away the monsters." Jared gives him a sharp nod. "I'm not going to be able to get there on my own, Seeley." He looks down at his hands that still grip the chair. "Three days feel like three hundred." Their eyes meet.

He returns the nod. "That's what brothers are for, Jared."

This time when he takes Jared's arm to steady him, he doesn't resist. And he doesn't crack. But he does have one last request as they leave the walking dead of the bar for the fresh night air.

"I got dibs on the bed, Seeley."

oOo

Recovery is about ceding control to regain control on your life. After giving him some kind of anthropological lesson, Bones would probably call it a paradox, but he calls it a struggle as he wrestles with that need to control the uncontrollable. Oh, he believes that he's got too much to lose to actually give in, but the look from Jared makes him wonder if the crooked gene that the Booth men have can really be straightened out.

"Padme just doesn't understand."

He imagines the hair of the dog that bit him sitting far too close to his brother's hand even though it's at least 20 feet away behind a bar with a bartender who looks like he spends his paycheck on masking his identity in new ink. Jared stops eating only as long as it takes him to file a new complaint about his life.

Without Bones or Christine, he's making his way through a meat-lover's menu of take out restaurants and tonight is no exception as he's staring down a slab of ribs from Ed's BBQ Emporium. But the iced tea isn't anymore and Jared's problems as chewy as the meat.

"Look, if I could get ahead, get some money to pay off. . . ." He listens to Jared's ramblings, to a history not unlike those he's been hearing in meetings. ". . . I'll get back on my feet and I'll show her I'll be there for her. She's everything. My everything."

He says the words in exasperation before he has a chance to think.

"Then you wouldn't have made her think she was second best to the bottle, Jared." He's exasperated by his brother, a combination of what ifs and if onlys peppering his conversation for the past couple of days. "Is she really was your everything, if she really were, then you sure as hell wouldn't be drinking."

Substitute cards for bottle, gambling for drinking, and he'd have nailed his own situation.

"Clean hands calling the kettle black," Jared jabs back, the metaphor tripping over the ribs he's eating. "You tell me my wife deserves better?"

Suddenly he doesn't have much of an appetite and he puts down the rib and tries to wash down the words with the watery tea.

Jared's licking at his fingers. "You need to get your own house in order, Seeley."

He says nothing, because there isn't much he hasn't said to his brother over the past three days and he'd just be repeating himself if he tried. Or opening himself up for more criticism.

"You marry someone because you love them and you want to give them a better life than they had before you." Jared's turned philosophical as he's turned away from drinking. "You got to prove to them every day that you're the best man. You're the guy who deserves them."

Jared's words fill him up and he pushes himself from the table. "Let me take care of the check and then I've got a meeting."

His brother's still finishing his meal, but he's not finished with his commentary. "How many of these meetings do you have to go to before you're no longer a gambler?" He's wiping his hands on his napkin. "I mean, you go to a meeting each night and you come back from your house after seeing your kid and you'd think Tempe would see that you're working at this and let you move back home."

"Ever think that maybe I don't think I'm ready?"

But Jared's not playing. He leans in. "Look, it's really not my place, but I get the impression that you'd have to run to the moon and back to please that woman, but she's too hard to please. She sees herself as perfect, so she expects you to be."

He grabs the check and pulls out his wallet and tries to make a show of how the words don't bother him, but something's niggling at the edge of his consciousness, something he can't quite name.

"Thing is," Jared says as he stands and stretches, "our wives deserve much better than they got."

oOo

She's falling asleep on his lap, her head lolling against his chest and he reads the last couple of lines softly, secretly dreading losing her to the night. When the story ends he closes the book and relishes holding her near. She's warm and light and somehow fits perfectly to him.

"You should put her in her bed, Booth."

He murmurs his agreement even as his back protests the movement and his heart wants more time with her.

And Bones.

But it's the rough deal he's made with both of them: he reads to Christine every night and then leaves his home for a different house, one he's built with his lies and arrogance and pays for by the week.

Yet he seems to be paying the bill daily.

Christine slips easily into her bed and he lingers on the kiss to her forehead. "'Night my little one."

She doesn't hear him, but he believes that the angels will guard her tonight, the angels and her mother. He's missing his daughter the moment he walks into the hall and he turns for a moment to capture one last memory before leaving.

"Would you like some tea?"

Most evenings spent like these have been awkward as they both learn to live this new kind of life. Bones says little, sadness tingeing the edges of her anger. But tonight she's offering something and he wonders if she's softening in her resolve.

"Tea?" He relaxes into a smile. "Uh, sure."

It's the herbal stuff she's been drinking and he's sure it's no better than the swill at the FBI or the dredge from the next meeting he's going to, but he accepts it and stands near the island in the kitchen sipping it.

"Are you gambling again?" she begins without any preamble.

The tea practically makes it's way up his nostrils at the surprise. "No, hell." He wipes at his nose. "I'm not gambling. I've been to all my meetings. I'm working the steps, Bones."

She's not drinking the tea, not doing much of anything but moving away from him. "The bank called. You withdrew $10,000. You spent almost $5,000 before that."

Her arms are crossed across her chest and rest on her swollen belly. "I told you I'm not gambling." Anger hones the edges of his words. "Why the hell would the bank call you?"

She's infinitely logical and infuriating at the same time. "When you lost that money before, I put in safeguards to protect Christine and me and our financial solvency."

"You put in safeguards?" The teacup bangs against the counter. "It's not enough for me to tell you that I'm not gambling? That I'm working very hard to move back home?"

"Why did you need that much money, Booth?"

Her tone, so calm and even, contrasts wildly with his own.

"It's my money, Bones. Or are you invoking some kind of ancient Chinese wish-woo-i-san to claim that it's your right to pry into my bank account?"

"What? That's not a real thing, Booth." He can't knock her from her position. "You said that when we married that our finances are all one big fund. You said, 'One big happy family,' but it's essentially the same. I simply used that as permission to request that the bank inform me of any large withdrawals." Her tone's become brittle. "I'm simply protecting our financial health."

"Well, I bet it."

It's a stupid thing to say, but he says it anyway and he pauses just long enough to see how much it hurts her. She's stunned and almost immediately he feels the guilt generated by years of catechism.

He waits a bit too long to make it right, but he tries.

"I bet it on Jared."

He takes baby steps toward her, hoping to bridge the gap he's made as he explains how he's betting on his brother's sobriety. "I opened up a checking account for him. All the money's there, except whatever Jared's already spent. I paid off some of the things he owed so he could start fresh. He's trying to stay sober, going to meetings. Even got him a security job."

He's talking fast, hoping that it will be enough, but he knows she's processing the information faster than he can provide it. That's abundantly clear when he finishes and she still looks unconvinced.

"I thought you weren't allowed to sponsor someone so early in your own sobriety."

He takes in a deep breath and tries to explain. "I'm not Jared's sponsor. No. He's got an old Navy fish as his sponsor. I'm just. . . I'm just helping." She's eyeing him like he's burned garlic on the stove and he shifts under her gaze. "Bones, he's my brother."

"I thought we agreed that it would be foolish to lend Jared any money."

He's shaking his head. "I don't expect to see any of the money. It's not a loan."

"So you bet on him."

The word crashes around them and he realizes that he's done nothing to allay her concerns.

"Yeah," he finally admits. "I bet on Jared just like you bet on your brother. That loan for the repair shop?" He shrugs, trying to ease the tension. "You bet on your brother to pay back the money without any real hope that he'd be able to. Two daughters, one sick. Medical bills. A new business. You've got to admit that the odds are against ever seeing any of the money you gave him and I have to say, Russ got far more from you than $10,000."

The crossed arms, the guarded look, he knows he's comparing one brother with a track record of the straight and narrow to another who's only recently given up booze and her investment in Russ had been just that, an investment. His money? A wish burned in a candle flame with the hope it would come true.

"You do what you can for family."

It's the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that he can say. It's enough to soften the edges on Bones' face, to ease the rigid body language that has so far been remote and cold. There's a slow nod that accompanies the thaw and he lets out the breath he's been holding.

"Family."

"Yeah, Bones. Family."

She's faster at seeing the opening than he is. "So, what about our family?"

He's not ready to talk about that, not ready to talk about them, but all he can do is look at his feet then look up, trying to ease the uncertainty.

"I know you're doing what you think is best for Jared just as I did what I thought best for Russ. And I'll trust you when you tell me that the money is going to help him."

She pauses, then says something that is almost bittersweet. "I love you, Booth."

He smiles at that, knows he loves her, but that it might not be enough to find his balance. And as they stand there, the smile fades and the tea grows bitter and he knows he's still far away from coming home.