The Mixed Tape Chapter 3: Mr Brightside, a bones fanfic

AN: The moment I posed the question, I knew what your answer would be and well... I'm a little anxious.

I'm a smut lover. I'm very sexually open. But I always dread writing smut/sexual content for some reason.

Now, I've been told in the past I write "classy smut" - grapefruit, one reader called it, as opposed to lemon. Generally, I agree. This is... well, you'll see. Jealousy does interesting things to people. Let's see what it does to Booth this time. This story's rated M for a reason.

Tag To: The Con Man In The Meth Lab; reference to The Pain In The Heart

Disclaimer: I do not own Bones or The Killers' impossibly catchy tune, "Mr. Brightside". Dialogue is used for context; no infringement is intended.

Mr. Brightside (The Killers)

"I'm coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all..."

He shouldn't care.

He keeps telling himself this as he pours another scotch and drains the glass. He tells himself again as he glances at his phone. He wants to call him and ask him what the hell he did to his partner. He knows damn well what he did – or at least tried to do. He can feel the damage done, the earth opening up between him and the one person he thought would always, always take his side.

But she doesn't have his side, not entirely. Oh no, not now. And he wants to call her, as the rage comes to a rolling boil in his veins. He wants to ask her what he did. Ask if she liked it.

Another drink. Another angry shot pounded back. He's going to pay for this tomorrow. Ha. Happy fucking birthday, Booth. Happy. Fucking. Birthday.

But he shouldn't care. He wouldn't care if it was Cam. Cam is his friend, too. So why does the thought of his brother's hands on his partner make him want to break his brother's legs and throw him in a ditch? Why does the thought of her seeking Jared's touch make him want to claim her mouth as his, damn it?

It's insane. Irrational. He's been over this for years and he's grateful for their close friendship.

It was only a kiss. One kiss on a rainy night.

"It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss..."

Sleep it off. That's what he's going to do. He's projecting his misery over being single again on his birthday onto his brother and partner. That's all this is. Sweets would love it. He'd write a whole shrinky article on it for some shrinky journal and feel like a superstar. Booth could shove a nice gold star straight up his –

Temper, temper.

He strips out of his jeans and shirt and crawls into a t-shirt and sweats before crawling into bed. Birthday blues. Everybody got them. Cam's usually involved a crash diet and hating her entire family for a week. With a heavy sigh, Booth closed his eyes and burrowed his head into the pillow.

"Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest
Now, he takes off her dress
Now, letting me go..."

They were kissing.

His eyes flew open angrily. This isn't fair to himself, let alone her. She's a grown woman with biological urges and she can do whatever she wants about them. He's not her boyfriend, not her lover and certainly not her keeper.

"Sleep. I just need to sleep."

His eyes flutter close and again, they are kissing, only this time, he's the goddamn rubbernecker at a five-car pile-up and he cannot look away. Jared's hands slide down to her lower back and her slender body melds to his and it is a full-out tonsil hockey tournament in Booth's throbbing skull. He turns over in frustration, willing himself to think of other things. Hockey. Parker. The goddamn messy body they're investigating.

Jared's still got his hands on his partner and he's still kissing her and Booth is ready to kill.

"Fuck off!" he mumbles, opening his eyes and giving his head a shake.

It doesn't work. The scene changes when he closes his eyes, only it's far, far worse: his scheming womanizer brother's got his hands on her ass and when he squeezes, Bones is laughing. She's happy and oh God, her hand is sliding lower and Booth is about to lose his mind.

"And I just can't look - it's killing me
And taking control
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Turning through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay..."

This is hell and he has no reason to care! He throws off the sheets, feeling overheated, and watches the little red numbers on the alarm clock flip to one in the morning. He needs sleep, desperately. He's going to be useless in the morning and it's all because Cam told him that they had a "late night". Did they have a "good morning"? Were they having another "late night" right now?

"What the hell does she see in you?" he shouts, frustrated and buzzed enough to talk to people in his head. "What?"

He can't run from it. He can't hide. Not even staying up all night will save him now, because he can see it playing out in his mind like a goddamn movie. Jared's smug little face is asking her to go home with him and she's going to do it, going to get in his little brother's car and become another notch in his goddamn bedpost. His brother is family and he loves him, but he will never, ever be good enough for Temperance Brennan. He's not fit to lick her goddamn shoes.

"Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cause I'm Mr Brightside..."

A shower. He needs to cool down and rinse the layer of angry sweat that's already dampening his shirt. With a furious growl, he strips naked and pitches the clothes across the room. His mind is racing away now, having a merry time torturing him with this image interspersed with that kiss from years ago, that rejection that left him breathless but saved him, in a way. Saved him from himself.

"I'm coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss..."

It was only a kiss! But her kiss is infectious and there's no cure, it seems. It lays dormant, this infection, and flares when another man dares believe he is enough for the only woman who's ever stood up to him, truly stood up and faced him. And as he cranks on the shower, he is struck with an image of her standing there, so small yet so daunting with the hurt flashing in her eyes – the grief of weeks having taken a toll on their very foundation. He steps into the tub and here it is, clear as that day, his body naked and damp before her.

"Would you like a towel?" she asks, subtly casting a glance at his cock.

Booth closes his eyes beneath the spray and in his fevered mind, he changes fate.

"I want you naked," he tells her in his head, and she is stunned.

"Booth, I..I..."

He's going to show her what she's missed out on from the moment she blamed the Cuervo and bailed. Other-Booth caresses her cheek lightly, smiling as she leans into his touch. She is so incredibly soft, so delicate for a woman of such strength. He wants to be her undoing.

Other-Booth is kissing her now, not Jared, and her body shudders as his hands hurriedly release her pants to the tiled floor. He presses against her, pulling her hips against him and he is already so hard, already aching for her.

"Bones," he moans into her mouth.

Her arms work to tug free of her jacket as her lips press against his bare chest, trailing kisses from one clavicle to the next – the correct terminology locked in his memory because she has commented before on how exemplary his structure is, including the clavicle. He is proud that she finds him to be a fine specimen, because he understands now as she slides her hand below his waits and grips him with her fist with a satisfied sigh that it is Squint for fuckable and hot.

Other-Booth is now tearing at her clothing, her blouse destroyed and discarded before he pulls her into the tub. The popped buttons scatter like pennies and he thinks of a wishing well, of dreams coming true. And this – this image of his partner gasping as he cups her stunning breasts through flimsy white lace – is a dream he's held tight within and denied. But no more.

She is his.

"'Cause I just can't look - it's killing me
And taking control
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Turning through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay..."

In reality, Booth is underneath the hot spray with his eyes shut and his cock in his hand, stroking firmly as his mind unfurls a new ending for their story.

In the beautiful fantasy in his head, their mouths tangle in a mess of need and relief while his hand pops open the closure of her bra, releasing her ample tits from their lacy prison. There is so much being said in the teasing tongues and the way she bites his lower lip and draws it between her own, sucking hard. I almost lost you. I need you. Don't leave me.

How could he leave her, when he needs her just as much?

She strokes him languidly, running her fist along his length and twisting at the top, her fingers lightly skirting the ridge before plunging down and ghosting her fingers over his sac. His mouth finds her neck and claims it with a vicious suction as he slides his right palm down her taut stomach and between her pale thighs. A keening cry rips through the bathroom as he slides a finger along her folds. He is amazed at the heat of her but it isn't enough. He wants all of her.

"Rip it," she tells him and this alternate him is happy to oblige, discarding the panties over his shoulder.

She gasps as he slides two fingers deep inside of her and he almost blows his load because she is wetter than any woman he's ever had, and the vice grip on his fingers makes him wonder how it would feel to thrust inside of her. Her grip on his shaft tightens and she pumps him faster, drawing a guttural moan from his throat.

"Do you know how long I've wanted to do this? Do you?" Other-Booth demands.

"We only kissed – " she protests.

"Nothing is 'only' with you. Nothing."

Her neck blossoms in a deep scarlet where he's assaulted her flesh and it arouses him to think of how visible it will be at the lab. Everyone will know how badly he needs her, how desperately he craves her. His left hand steadies her quivering frame as his slick fingers withdraw and collide with her swollen clit before ramming straight back inside, over and over. His mouth draws her left nipple in, sucking and rolling his tongue over it and he is so close, so goddamn close, but he will not go before her. She will have her pleasure first. She must always come first.

"Oh, Booth! Ohhhhh..."

"Am I a loser?" he asks huskily.

"Fuck, no, no..."

She is tensing, a spring curling upon itself, and her moans and cries fall from her lips as an incoherent string of vowels. He slides a third finger inside and palms her clit until she clenches around his hand with a gasped curse and screams his name. Her breasts heave as he pulls her close and while she's released him in her climax, it doesn't matter. She matters. But his partner has other plans, and while Reality-Booth is sliding to the tub and panting, his callused hand twisting and stroking him to the brink, Other-Booth is also falling to the tub floor with his partner's back pressed against him.

"You're mine, Temperance," Other-Booth growls in her ear.

"I've always been yours," she promises.

Her hands grip his thighs and she lifts her ass into the air. His eager hands grip her hips as she sinks onto his cock with a gasp. He's not going to last and he can't make himself care, because they fit so goddamn perfectly and this, this is why he can't move on. It was never just a kiss, was it? Not with her. She rises and falls, gyrating her hips and he is so close, so ready that when she orders him to come inside her, his vision hazes and he bounces her tight ass up and down until he finally finds release, buried to the hilt in her. She gyrates again and he slides a hand between her thighs and draws wild circles on her clit until she cries out with a jolt, sending an aftershock to his softening dick.

"Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cause I'm Mr Brightside..."

He can still taste the sweetness of her skin as his eyes fly open, his fist and chest sticky with the load he's blown. Booth draws a shaky breath and then another, and she is fading from his mind, fading with a soft smile and a promise of being his.

"Jesus," he sputters.

The water's gone cold during his jealousy-fueled ministrations, which seems absurdly ironic to him. Lathering off the mess he's made, he kills the water and lays there, collecting his thoughts.

Where the hell did that come from? He hasn't fantasized about her since... well, there have been moments here and there, but he's a man and a beautiful woman will always evoke a response. But a serious, full-out fantasy he's jerked it to? It's been a long time.

Does it mean anything? Booth doesn't know. What he does know is that the evil image taunting him has disappeared, the green-eyed monster having been tamed. A pang of guilt strikes him then, because he's just fucked his partner in his mind, and she deserves something better than being a fuck of any kind.

Epiphany sinks in: That's why her being with Jared pisses you off. Because to him, she would have been a fuck. And while Cam is streetwise and can hold her own, Bones is so trusting, so socially naïve at times. She doesn't deserve the manipulation Jared's demonstrated at plenty of bars over the years.

Even in his scotch-soaked dirty dreams, he's trying to rescue her. A hopeless white knight.

He dries off and stumbles back into his bedroom, where he is suddenly too exhausted to dress. Naked, he pulls the sheets over himself and sighs. Tomorrow is going to be awkward as hell now. Today, really, which means...

You just jerked off to your partner on your birthday. Classy.

He shrugs it off and yawns. Being with her, even like this, is better than being alone. But this is the only way he'll ever be with her and he knows it. The line is there to protect her, to protect their partnership. Nothing is worth losing that. Nothing.

It would only ever be that one kiss.

"I never..."

So, two lovely, wonderful requests?

1) I get incredibly anxious when I post anything remotely smutty, and I have never done a jealous claiming-your-partner shower self-pleasuring sequence before. Please review. It's so much healthier than chocolate or Xanax.

2) I am getting older this approaching Friday (yuck). Distractions are welcome. Bonus points for Fisher involvement. Uber kudos for Hodgela. Going down with the B&B ship of course. Killing Daisy never ever grows old. FF doesn't allow links but direct me to goodies!

The Bard In The Bodycount updates Wednesday. I'll be spinning you a little slice of the fragility of life next Sunday. Cheers, lovelies!