Into the Wild
Rating: M all the way baby…
Disclaimer: Oh whatever.
A/N: I imagine pretty much everyone here has heard of or watched Lost. So I won't bother explaining about it. Some of you might not have heard of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. I studied this book for English Literature and in the story, a group of boys are stranded on a desert island because of a plane crash. Golding theorised in his book that if there are no figures of authority to implement rules then anarchy will ensue. Sure enough, it did in his book. Anyone who has read or watched The Beach will understand this point, too.
Generally, this has no bearing on the story, but I do mention the book so I thought it would be good to explain what it meant.
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"This is it?" Brennan asked, hands on her hips, staring into the semi-darkened expanse of trees. "This isn't a forest," she shouldered her rucksack, turning to Booth who was shaking his head, despairingly.
"Good luck, buddy," Agent Turner said, chuckling to himself. "Sounds like your anthropologist has it all worked out." Booth glowered, tucking his knife into his belt. "Does she even have any training? Where did you pick her up?" Turner laughed now and his partner, a small woman with short black hair joined in.
"Hey!" Booth said. "A little bit of respect, huh? Dr Brennan will be fine out here. I can guarantee it." Brennan joined his side, slipping her hand into her jacket and removing a slip of paper. The task information.
"We're going to do better than that," she said. "We're going to win. See you at the finish line, buster." Booth cringed, taking her elbow and steering her towards the winding path into the trees.
"Now you see, Bones, remember that conversation we had about me doing all the talking? Hmm? Yea well, that still applies." Brennan's fingers clenched around the paper, her eyes glazed with annoyance. "'Cause now, when we lose? I'll never live it down." Brennan lifted her eyes to the fir trees that towered above her head.
"I don't plan on losing, though. I really think we will win." Booth turned his head, eyes wide.
"Really? Did you solve the puzzle?" Brennan shrugged.
"No. But I still think we'll win. C'mon, Booth, look at the opposition. I can imagine them sitting around their camp fires tonight knocking their heads together." Booth increased his pace, meandering through the trees.
"I know I feel like knocking my head against something. Y'know, Bones? They're still behind us and every time you speak, you make us another enemy. Be quiet, huh?" Brennan smiled to herself, clamping her lips shut. If she continued to irritate Booth, he'd have her gagged and bound by lunch time. While some people might have liked the idea, she had no intentions of playing bondage games in the woods.
After thirty minutes, the other teams had moved off in different directions, following the routes drawn out on their maps. Booth had been studiously reading theirs, theorising that, if they maintained a steady pace, they could be at base one by four thirty. Brennan frowned.
"Isn't that a little early?" She asked, squinting at the trees. The forest had grown steadily thicker, mocking her earlier statement. She didn't imagine they were anywhere near a clearing. Or a river.
"Not if we walk fast." The simplicity of his answer made her smile. Booth wasn't into semantics, it seemed. There was no explanation. No plan, or method or system. All she needed to do, apparently, was maintain a brisk pace. Which was exactly what she had been doing anyway, because Booth had very long legs and wide strides. "Owens and Patterson are in excellent physical shape. If we lag, they'll gain ground."
"How do you know they're not already ahead?" Brennan asked, stepping over a fallen log, twigs crunching beneath their feet.
"They went the wrong way about twenty minutes back," Booth explained, then threw her a wicked grin. "Worked a case with Owens about two years back. Excellent runner, good strength but a terrible sense of direction." Brennan gaped, stunned at his cunning. She couldn't resist the giggle that bubbled in her chest.
He glanced down at their compass, then gestured off to the right. "Patterson will realise, eventually. Hopefully not any time soon." Booth breathed in, his eyes falling closed. "Don't you just love the wilderness, Bones? No pollution. No cars." Brennan shrugged.
"Mostly the wilderness just unnerves me, actually," she admitted, sidestepping a dip in the terrain. "Too unpredictable. One minute you're plodding on nicely and the next minute you've fallen down a fifteen foot ditch unto a row of deadly spikes." Booth glanced at her sideways, a smirk pulling at his lips.
"Been playing Tomb Raider in your office, Bones?" He asked. Brennan shrugged.
"I don't know what that means. Is it an adventure game?" They stepped over a little watery brook that was perhaps a foot wide. Booth shrugged.
"Mostly it's just this smoking British babe with long, long legs, tiny, tiny hot pants and very big breasts. Plus she carries a bazooka and can do back flips. She's very agile." Brennan rolled her eyes, unsurprised at Booth's testosterone overload. He was highly sexed, she'd always suspected it. What with Tessa and the afternoon sex fests.
"But she's computer generated, right?" Booth nodded. "Isn't that a little disturbing? Fantasising over what is essentially a drawing?" Brennan asked, ignoring the squawk of birds high above their heads. She'd grown accustomed to the sounds of animals and nature. If she stopped to think about it, the noises of the environment were quite deafening.
"What does it matter? A hot woman is still a hot woman, regardless of whether she's a computer animated or not. Besides, there's something very appealing about a woman who can leap across two hundred feet deep chasms without a thought." Brennan frowned, shaking her head.
"Yeah and I'll bet she has a waist that is totally not in proportion to her breasts, and she looks just like Barbie." Booth nodded, his eyes wide.
"That's the best part, Bones. She's Barbie, only with brown hair and brains." Brennan ducked under a cluster of trees, stepping into a small clearing. Above their heads, she caught a glimmer of blue sky.
"You do realise she's not real?" Brennan didn't want to admit it, but Booth's blatant afternoon fantasy of his brunette Barbie was beginning to irritate her. How could he be so insensitive, anyway? Did he fail to understand that women did not like to hear about females more attractive than themselves? Not that it mattered, anyway.
"So? There's no harm in a fantasy, Bones. You don't fantasise about someone who isn't real every now and again?" She contemplated this, and realised that she didn't.
"No." Her thoughts had taken quite a dangerous direction – as had their conversation. She heard his question before he even voiced it.
"Then who-"
"No one, Booth. Fantasies have no redeeming value. Reality is much better." She wondered if he knew she was lying through her gritted teeth. Of course she had fantasies, normally in the middle of the night. She hadn't really considered it before, because she had no power over her dreams. But there had been numerous occasions of late when she'd woken up, drenched in sweat with a certain name on the tip of her tongue.
"Booth…" she sighed.
"Hmm?" He turned his head, and she blushed.
"No… nothing. You know, this whole setting, it makes me feel like I'm stranded and no one is ever going to find me again." Booth chuckled.
"Well, when we see a column of black smoke and a polar bear turns up out of nowhere, then we'll worry," he said. Brennan smiled.
"You know, for once, I know what you're talking about." Booth couldn't help the look of surprise that flitted across his features. "The TV show, right? About the plane crash? Yeh… how unrealistic is that?" Brennan fidgeted with her rucksack, wondering why she'd been tricked into carrying the tent, with all its numerous poles.
Booth shook his head. "What's so unrealistic?" Brennan rolled her eyes.
"Well, I'm not into psychology-"
"Yeh you've mentioned that. Only about a hundred times every single day," Booth interjected. Brennan threw him a glare.
"Anyway… with so many people living there, and no one to apply rules or laws, the human instinct to survive would have provoked the animalistic instincts. The alpha males in the show would battle for dominance-"
"They do! Jack and Sawyer hate each other," Booth reminded her.
"Only because they want to get into the criminal girl's pants," Brennan said. "In real life, taking an animal, which is essentially what we are, out of our natural habitat with no time to adapt with say, evolution, we would never adjust to such surroundings or be able to survive. Basically we'd go insane and the show would really be a programme about murder – not about spooky goings on. Besides which, no one could survive a plane crash like that." Booth gave a low whistle.
"What a way to take the sexiness out of it. Now I'll never be able to watch Kate in her bra and panties showering under the waterfall without thinking I should be more preoccupied with how unlikely it is she'd even be alive or why Sawyer isn't out dropping boulders on people's head." He sighed. "Thanks, Bones!" She smiled, knowing that she'd battled intellectually and won. There was no greater feeling.
"You've read Lord of the Flies, then?" She asked.
"Hmm?"
"The boulder." Booth half nodded, half shrugged.
"Yeah… I vaguely remember reading it." Brennan paused, pressing her back against the tree, inhaling a deep breath.
"And? What did you think of it?" Booth stopped now too, crouching. He shook his rucksack off his shoulders and unzipped the bag.
"I remember feeling very sorry for the boys," he said, rummaging inside.
"I know. Imagine being torn away from your family and having to endure such terror all alone," Brennan acknowledged, frowning when Booth shook his head, pulling an aluminium wrapped parcel from inside his bag.
"No, Bones, imagine being all alone on an island without a chick in sight," he winked. "Cheese sandwich?"
She rolled her eyes and snatched it from his hand.
Okay… I promise, there will be naked Booth. Really. I just didn't want to jump into a totally unrealistic sex scene. Fancy more? Twenty questions are not far away, either.