A/N:
"Aaaaaamazing! (Also, shout out to " froggy-covered center" as a phrase.)" - Heh heh… I'm glad you liked that as much as I did.
Also if you thought this chapter would put you out of your misery... I'm not even sorry. I wish I was, but I'm not.
Booth wondered, as he pulled up in front of the lab to pick Bones up, if he was a victim of Murphy's Law. This was the universe's revenge on him for committing such heinous acts last night. Twelve hours later a body turned up and Bones had asked him to pick her up to ride to the crime scene together as if nothing was amiss. As he waited for her to come out, he wondered if maybe this would be a good thing; he could get a feel for what she was thinking after last night. Things had been tense when he left, to say the least. They needed to rip the bandaid off and straighten things out.
"Hi." she said, sounding breathless as she climbed into his passenger seat and gave him a tentative half smile.
"Hi" he replied back, swallowing hard as he pulled out of the parking lot. He could hear her asking him questions about the case, but he couldn't really pay attention. All he could think about was that breathless greeting and how it had sounded so much like that way she'd breathed his name against his throat every time he'd brushed his thumb over her clit. He'd done it repeatedly, not just because he knew she was enjoying it, but because the sound of his name falling from her mouth like that had nearly done him in, and he had to keep hearing it.
He slammed his fist against the steering wheel when they hit the second red light in a row. He wasn't ppissed off about the lights, he knew that; he was angry that he couldn't stop thinking about–
"You're upset." she murmured, but her softly spoken words in that confused tone sounded like cymbals vibrating off his ear drums.
He cleared his throat and exhaled, trying to form the right words. She wasn't like other people; this turmoil wasn't something she was accustomed to. "Yeah. Yes, Bones, I am upset." he told her, trying to keep his voice level. "I'm angry, ok? I'm, uh, I'm fucking furious." he told her firmly, glancing toward her just in time to see her crestfallen expression. "Not at you, Bones. Okay? I'm… I'm angry at myself."
She hesitated for a moment, as if she wasn't sure what to say. "Because of last night?" she asked tentatively, clearly trying to get a feel of the situation. Maybe that was why she'd asked him to pick her up.
"Yes, I mean, c'mon Bones… Yes because of last night." he told her, willing her to be a normal person for thirty seconds to understand what the hell was going on in his head. "What happened… what we did…" he started, knowing they needed to take accountability for their actions. It hadn't happened to them. They had done it. "It was bad, okay? It was… awful." he explained.
From the corner of his eye and the half glances he was able to spare without risking their lives in the afternoon traffic, he could see her tilting her head to the side, looking at him with wide guileless eyes. "That's because you left before I could–"
"Nooo." he stopped her. "Not– fuck– not like that. That was— that part felt good, you know, while it was happening. It was awful because we cheated." he explained to her, finally saying the words out loud. They tasted like ash in his mouth. Admitting he was cheater out loud felt like the first time he'd slipped up and said 'fuck' in front of Grams as a teenager, or when he finally admitted to himself that his gambling was a problem. It felt dirty and wrong and disrespectful to have those words associated with him.
She was shaking her head vehemently, her eyes wide. "No! We didn't cheat! We didn't even have–"
"Yes, we did." he cut her off, the anxiety rising in his chest. He could tell she was trying to rationalize it, probably for his benefit more than her own, and it made his self-hatred bloom. "We did." he reiterated firmly. "I cheated on Hannah last night. Sexually… and emotionally." he told her, trying to admit to himself as well that it wasn't just sex that happened.
"We cheated, okay. I have never cheated on a woman I've been in a relationship with. Ever. Not before last night, and you know what, you cheated too. If you think Hacker isn't going to be hurt by this… if you care about your relationship with him at all, you should feel a little bit of remorse about what we did." he pointed out, feeling like she really needed to understand the gravity of it. "What we did– it counted ok?"
It had definitely counted to him. Nothing that had felt that good could be discounted, that was for damn sure. He hadn't even gotten off, and he felt like it definitely, 1000% counted. "It was cheating." he spoke with what he hoped was finality in his tone, though he felt like he was talking around a golf ball in his throat.
He was waiting for her response, knowing she was probably formulating some anthropological explanation against monogamy– probably something that rationalized what they did as a completely natural act among some tribes nobody but she has ever heard of. "Andrew and I broke up." she finally blurted out, and he had not been expecting that at all.
He spared her a quick glance, his forehead creasing with question and his traitorous brain smirking with glee. "What? Because of last night?" he asked, but she shook her head.
"Several days ago, actually. The night of our double date." she told him, and he wondered why she hadn't bothered to mention it.
"What, uh, what happened? Are you ok?" he asked, trying to be a good friend even though it gave him such satisfaction to know that he wouldn't have to socialize with Hacker anymore in an attempt to salvage his friendship with Bones. There would be no baby Hacker's calling him Uncle Booth.
She nodded thoughtfully, shrugging her shoulders. "Yes, I feel fine about ending the relationship. We had made several attempts, and despite my best instruction, he was unsuccessful at bringing me to orgasm. Though I very much enjoyed his company in a platonic way, I believe something was lacking, and we were simply incompatible sexually. He was very inexperienced, and as you know, I've always been uninhibited in my sexuality." she rambled off, but all he could hear was further confirmation to that conversation he'd interrupted that Hacker was a dud who couldn't make Bones come. Hah, despite her best instruction. Booth hadn't needed any instruction.
He'd remind himself to internally gloat about it later. Right now, he felt like he should be saying something, anything really. "I'm, uh, I'm sorry it didn't work out." he lied. Great, now he was a cheater and liar.
"Don't be." she told him frankly. "I didn't have the highest of expectations for Andrew, though, higher than what I experienced, clearly." she added sardonically. "I'm far more proficient at pleasuring myself than he was going to be. You were also quite proficient." she muttered, and he whipped his head toward her, just in time to see a little smirk creep across her face.
"Bones… don't… fuck." He exhaled heavily. "Bones, we can't ever do that again, okay. We can never talk about it… we can't – don't even think about it, okay?" he stumbled trying to get his brain and his mouth to cooperate.
"I can't make that promise." she told him simply. "I believe I will think about it frequently. I don't feel it is in my control not to." she added thoughtfully, and he knew she wasn't trying to be difficult. She was simply being honest, and if he was honest with himself, he'd agree with her statement. He had thought about it on a loop over the last twelve hours. "Are you going to tell Hannah?" she asked, drawing him out of his thoughts again.
"I, uh, I don't know yet." he admitted. "I know that I love her…" he glanced over and saw the hurt written on her face, though she tried to hide it. "And I don't want to hurt her. I don't want to hurt either of you, but I don't like the idea of keeping secrets from her." he continued, plowing through his answer. She deserved to know if he was going to say something. It would out her too.
Bones nodded, turning her head toward the window and watching as they drove through Columbia Heights. "Perhaps, you should visit your priest and ask him to grant you a wish for salvation or something." she told him, and she was speaking so softly and seriously, he almost didn't register what she'd said.
"You mean confession?" he asked, and she nodded, turning back to face him again. "Bones… confession is not– God is not a genie." he told her firmly, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice. For someone who studied religions and cultures, she really took a lot of ignorant pot-shots at his. He wondered if she did it on purpose to push his buttons, and made a mental note to ask her when they weren't in the heat of a blazing fire.
He wondered, as they pulled up to the crime scene, if she'd done that intentionally to change the subject, to give him something else to be irritated about and take his mind off of their … incident. It had worked, whether she'd done it intentionally or not because for the rest of the ride he was consumed with wondering what she thought prayer and confession really were. She could use a little catechism. They both could today.
Brennan crouched next to the decomposing corpse, carefully beginning her examination. "Shot through the heart." she said without glancing up.
"And you're to blame." Hodgins mumbled, and Brennan looked up at him, glaring incredulously. How was she to blame? She hadn't killed this person. "Uh… it's a song, Dr. B. Sorry." Hodgins added after noticing her stare.
"You give love a bad name, bad name." Cam mumbled under her breath in a sing-song tone. "Damnit, Hodgins. That's going to be in my head the rest of the day."
"Can we please stop talking, or singing, about love's bad name and focus on the deceased person in front of us?" Brennan demanded, casting her eyes back down to the corpse. Why did a song lyric that she didn't even know make her feel so guilty about last night? It didn't feel wrong. It had felt very very good at the moment, but perhaps the way they went about it had given their love a bad name, whatever love they still had anyway, hers for him and his for Hannah she thought bitterly.
"This was definitely a scorned lover." Angela said as she snapped some photos of the scene. Brennan tried to focus on her examination of the body and tune out the conjecture as Booth asked Angela why she thought that. "C'mon. Shot through the heart? You know who does that? Angry wives who have just found out their husbands have cheated on them."
"Good to know." Hodgins chuckled, as the conversation continued, but Brennan had stopped listening entirely, glancing up at where Booth was standing across from her.
His hand had frozen, holding his pen above his ever-present notepad, but not writing anything at all. He must have felt her staring at him because his eyes rose slowly to meet hers.
"Definitely the way I'd do it if I found out my guy was screwing the secretary." Cam agreed. "Nothing like a torrid affair to bring out your darker tendencies." she added, and Hodgins laughed.
"It's a good thing you're not a man-whore, Jack. Brennan and Cam would definitely help me cover it up." Angela warned with a laugh.
Brennan could see Booth's discomfort in the subtle way he was holding his body. Anyone else would probably not notice the change in his stance, but she knew him, she knew he was struggling with the weight of his guilt.
She'd tried to change the subject in the car, to make him angry with her instead of himself, but it seemed they couldn't get away from what they'd done. She'd give anything to wipe that pained look from his eyes. Ideally, she'd like to kiss him until he forgot it was wrong to kiss her back. They hadn't been thinking about guilt or consequences last night, she hadn't been anyway. She knew it was a foolish thought, but she wished they could be frozen in that moment forever, with their foreheads pressed together, staring into each other's eyes like nothing else in the world existed. Hannah definitely hadn't existed at that moment.
"Snipers." she blurted out as the thought came to her head. "Snipers also go for the heart. Snipers are… heart people." She looked to Booth for confirmation, and he nodded, clearly uncomfortable with being the resident knowledge base on that particular topic. She knew this already, and felt even worse for bringing it up so bluntly.
"Really?" Angela asked, her curiosity piqued. "I'd always assumed they went straight for the head."
"Uh, yea, snipers go for the most likely critical hit. We, uh, they only get one shot most times.
Chest is a bigger target area and has lots of critical organs." he muttered, his face flush.
As the afternoon progressed, members of the team had completed what they could on site and gradually made their way back to the lab. "How much more do you ladies have to do?" Booth asked, approaching where she and Cam were still meticulously collecting evidence and documenting everything they could about the body in its current position.
"I think I'm done. Only this half of the body is decomposed to the bone. Dr. Saroyan?" Brennan commented, glancing up at Cam for her own report. She nodded in agreement, and told the remaining techs to prepare the body for transport back to the Jeffersonian.
"Cam, Bones can catch a ride back with you, right?" He asked, and both Brennan and Cam looked up at him in surprise. "I, uh, Hannah texted me to meet her for a late lunch. She doesn't have a long break between conferences." he explained, scrubbing his hand awkwardly on the back of his neck.
"Of course. Dr. Brennan can ride with me." Cam replied, glancing back and forth between Brennan and Booth. Did she suspect something other than Booth's excuse? Was it obvious that something had happened between them? Perhaps, they could make use of their previous disagreement as an excuse, though she was quite certain that Booth was lying about lunch, and if she could tell, it was probable that Cam could too.
"Great! I'll put her stuff in your trunk. See you guys later." he told them as he headed toward his SUV.
"Thank you." she murmured quietly without further acknowledging Booth.
Brennan strode quickly and purposefully up the stairs toward the boardroom table in the lounge above the lab. They were meant to begin their team meeting to go over the case findings thus far, and she'd gotten stuck on a phone call with her publisher. She'd ended up hanging up on the woman mid-sentence after repeatedly attempting to interrupt her and tell her she had to go.
"Late for class, Dr. B?" Hodgins joked as she quickly muttered her apologies and dropped her files on the table in front of one of the two remaining seats. "We saved you and Booth seats next to each other." he added, and she looked up, taking in the faces of Cam, Angela, Hodgins, Mr. Nigel-Murray, and Sweets, and only just then noticing Booth hadn't arrived yet.
"Why?" she asked, more abrasive than she'd meant to.
"Uh, because you guys do your paperwork together and share notes." Angela told her, rolling her eyes from her seat on the other side of Booth's empty chair.
When Booth finally arrived and took the seat next to her, she actively ignored him, keeping her notes to herself. He had gone to great lengths to avoid being in a car with her for twenty whole minutes yesterday afternoon, he could use his own crudely rendered notes to brief the team on his findings.
"We have a victim ID." Angela spoke, aiming the tiny remote at the nearby screen. "Nobody is going to miss this guy, and if they do, they're probably a piece of crap anyways." she told them, flicking another image up next to the victim's photo. This one contained his personal identification details. "Meet James McLoughlin."
Cam began speaking next. "He was a suspect in seven murder cases in DC over the last decade, but they could never get anything big enough on him to get a warrant for DNA." she told them. "When we ran his DNA, it matched the DNA found on all seven victims."
"Yea, you guys just helped close all of those cases." Booth told them, and Brennan lifted her coffee cup to her mouth, needing something to distract her from wanting to look at Booth while he spoke. "Hacker's hornier than virgin on prom night for you guys, so congratulations on that front." he added sarcastically, and Brennan choked, sputtering her coffee from her mouth and all over her files.
"Seeley…" Cam muttered, but Brennan was too busy trying to expel the coffee she'd just aspirated from her lungs.
She tried to rationalize that this was the way Booth always spoke about Andrew. It wasn't a secret that Booth disliked his boss and it was also no secret that Andrew liked nothing more than when he got to tell his own bosses that his team had closed another case. Seven cases probably did in fact have him feeling rather amorous. It didn't matter what her brain was telling her about Booth and Andrew's pre-existing personality traits, her stomach fell at his words anyway, and she couldn't help the feeling of betrayal surfacing within her.
They quickly moved on to their own murder suspect: Jacob Broadsky. The mere mention of the name made Booth's face lose all color, and she watched as he shifted uncomfortably, telling them about his old friend and explaining that he certainly had the skills to do this.
"Well, good for old Jake." Angela commented. "He took down a real dirtbag." she added, and this only seemed to further Booth's agitation.
"No, not good for him. There are channels. You shoot when you have to, not because you want to. You don't get to be a vigilante, not with his skillset. There is a responsibility associated with those skills." Booth had told them angrily, setting the tense mood for the remainder of the meeting.
She wanted to follow him when he rose from his seat at the end of the meeting, his mood had changed dramatically at the discovery of the suspect. It was obvious to all of them, and having Sweets there to witness it was probably worse for him. Instead, she took her time, gathering her files and watched as Sweets scurried after Booth. She felt bad letting that happen, but she was also still feeling irritated that he'd dumped her onto Cam the previous day. He could find his own escape from Sweets.
Brennan was so engrossed in the report she was typing up on her computer that she hadn't noticed Angela enter her office until she closed the door and began drawing the blinds. "What–" she started, but Angela raised her hand.
"We need to talk." Angela informed her, striding over to where Brennan was seated and hauling her bodily from her chair. "Let's go." she instructed her, pulling by the hand like an errant child over to the couch. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest and staring expectantly at Brennan.
"With what?" Brennan asked, feeling entirely confused and ambushed by this inquisition.
"With you and Booth!" Angela whispered in a harsh tone. "Something is not right." Brennan opened her mouth to insist otherwise, but Angela raised her hand, halting her before she got a single word out. "Brennan, don't even try to deny it. Long heated glances at the crime scene. Awkward tension in the meeting. Not to mention, I offered up the prime rib of men to you, and Jeremy told me that you blew him off." she accused, raising her eyebrows and her voice as she progressed through her rant.
"I'm a vegetarian…" Brennan replied weakly because she simply had nothing else to excuse any of Angela's accusations.
"Brennan! I thought you and Booth had made peace and you were gung ho to move on. What's going on?" she asked, this time the compassionate tone returning to her voice.
"We did." Brennan insisted. "We're fine. I'm– I'm fine…" she added, avoiding Angela's eyes.
"You are most definitely not fine!" her friend told her, and she recoiled a little
"Ange…" Brennan started, feeling like she was already choking on the words she was about to say. Her eyes blurred with unshed tears. "We did something– Booth said it was awful, but when I asked for clarification, he explained the circumstances under which we did it was awful, not the experience itself…"
"Did… what… exactly?" Angela asked very slowly, though Brennan suspected she already had an inkling.
Brennan explained what had happened the night Booth came over with takeout and paperwork, watching Angela's face for any indication of her opinion, but she remained stoic throughout it all. "It started out so innocently, Ange, I swear. I had no intentions of that happening, but I shifted, wanting to confirm that I was understanding his meaning for what it was, and… it felt good." At Angela's smirk, she sighed. "That felt good, yes, but I mean… it felt right. It felt natural to be in his arms, having his hands on my body. It felt like we were exactly where we've always belonged." she elaborated, and Angela continued to sit silently. "Why aren't you saying anything?!" she finally demanded.
Angela inhaled deeply as a smile spread across her face. "Because, I don't wanna scream hallelujah about you having an affair with an involved man!" she admitted, though her face was still taken over by her smile.
"You don't even like Hannah!" Brennan defended, hating the way the word affair lingered in the air. "And it's not an affair… It was just one time. We didn't even engage in intercourse." she defended.
"No, I don't like Hannah, but I love Booth…" at Brennan's confused expression, Angela held up her hand. "Like family, not like– you know what I mean! And you! Brennan this is clearly eating away at you both. What are you going to do about it?" she asked, and Brennan shrugged. "And it is an affair. You said Booth felt like he cheated emotionally and sexually. That is telling. It wasn't just some fly by night, rubbed up against something skanky in a bar and ended up dipping his stick where it didn't belong. This was you and Booth and years worth of pent up sexual chemistry."
"We're not going to do anything. We've agreed not to speak of it again." she told Angela quietly, ignoring her comments on it being an affair as a dull ache throbbed in her chest again "He is with Hannah. He loves Hannah. What happened was a mistake, and he feels very badly about it. So much so, he's avoiding me and making excuses not to ride with me back from crime scenes."
Angela scoffed, shaking her head. "Yea, good luck with that." she snarked, and leaned over, tugging Brennan toward her until her head was leaning on her shoulder. "So I guess you finally got that itch scratched, huh?" she asked with a chuckle, breaking the tension they were both feeling.
"Not quite as much as I would have liked. He stopped me before I could get his pants off." Brennan told her. "That's never happened to me before." she added with a sigh.
After several moments of leaning against Angela's shoulder, Brennan shifted. "What are we doing exactly?" she whispered as Ange tightened the arm she had wrapped around Brennan's back.
"I'm holding you because you need emotional support, and I need to occupy myself while I come down from this high, so I don't go skipping through the lab to tell Hodgins about you and Booth getting your nasty on." she replied quietly, beginning to gently rock them back and forth.
"Ok." Brennan agreed, staying put less for comfort and more for the fact that it was keeping Angela from spreading the news. The hug was nice though.
