What I Wish I Could've Said

By: Lesera128

Rated: T

Disclaimer: ::stares:: ::blinks:: ::stares again:: Yeah. I still don't own anything…but, you knew that from the stares, right?

Summary: Hindsight is always 20/20. Everyone has a single moment that they wish they could have said something better than what they actually did. A completely random series of what-if vignettes.

Ch 37: That Time Brennan Called Booth Stodgy

It was only a couple of hours after sunrise, and already it was beginning to get hot.

While the dry heat of the New Mexican desert was something that Booth had experienced before, it still surprised him every time that he came that far west. He knew it was going to be a very long and very hot and very bright day, and so he also knew that it would be a benefit for them if they could cover as much ground as possible while the heat and light were still bearable. Plus, he still expected to be see and crash headfirst into a very thick wall (the reinforced brick kind) at some point given what the combined facts of a lack of sleep and jet lag would do to him. So, Booth knew the clock was ticking in a number of different ways, and that cumulative result was that his normal reservoir of patience with Brennan's illogical behavior was starting with wear fairly thin.

I mean, okay, he thought as he guided the black SUV he'd rented at Albuquerque International Sunport, the major airport serving New Mexico, towards the location of Alex Joseph's trailer. I get that Angela's her friend. But, why, for once can she not see the logic in this and admit that Angela is the prime suspect with plenty of motive, means, and opportunity to whack a guy…a guy, by the way, who's totally okay with shacking up with her for only three weeks during the year. Seriously, what type of guy could do that? If he really cared about her, how could he just turn his feelings off and on for her like a goddamn water spigot? Not that doesn't make any sense. None at all.

After they'd ridden in silence for almost twenty minutes, Brennan sitting next to him and doing nothing but radiating hostility, Booth had had enough. Putting the SUV in park, he turned off the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition. He could see Alex Joseph's trailer in the distance, about forty or fifty yards away from them, but he'd parked so that the SUV was angled and Brennan's side of the car was more sheltered than his own…just in case, since, Booth thought, it was better to be safe than sorry. As he got out of the car, he lightly slammed the door shut, but not hard enough so that it could be construed as an expression of anger or aggression. He used just enough force that his actions would get Brennan's attention. Booth had to keep from smirking when, less than fifty or second seconds after he'd shut the door and had remained on the driver's side, ostensibly stretching his back, Brennan traipsed around towards the other side of the SUV. Her hands on her hips, she glared at Booth for a minute, but said nothing as she pursed her lips into a thin line and hardened her jaw so that he could see how much his lack of faith in Angela had annoyed him.

Sighing, Booth finally said, "Okay, no offense to Angela, but she doesn't even really know this guy. She's only with him what, only three weeks out of the year?"

As soon as he'd spoken, Brennan's posture and body language changed. It was as if she was a fine thoroughbred who'd just heard the start gun and processed the signal that she was allowed to jump out of her box to start the race. She jutted her hip towards him as she shook her head and said, in a voice that made her disdain for him in that moment quite clear, "No offense to you, but you are a stodgy traditionalist when it comes to relationships, buddy."

If there was one thing that Booth knew never to be surprised by when it came to Dr. Temperance Brennan, it was his knowledge of the fact that she had the remarkably consistent ability to be a constant surprise to him. Even forearmed and forewarned with such knowledge, each time she did it, Booth couldn't help but be off kilter for just a second or two while he adjusted to whatever surprise she'd just lobbed at his head. On such occasions, as this moment appeared to be, when she threw not one, but two unexpected curveballs his way, Booth wasn't sure which one to focus on first―the fact that she'd insulted him by saying he was as exciting as watching wet paint dry or the fact that she'd called him 'buddy' in such a flippant way when he doubted she'd ever called anyone her buddy before. Eventually, his brain defaulted into chronological mode and reacted to her initial taunt first.

"Stodgy?" Booth grunted, as he took a step towards her and placed his own hands on his hips. Did she really just say that? Really? I mean, I've been called a lot of things in my day, but 'stodgy'? Seriously? "Stodgy?" he repeated, as tried to think of why she would think of him in that way. "Okay, okay, here's the deal—" he muttered, verbally fumbling as he stalled for time.

Like a shark smelling blood in the water, Brennan seemed to sense that she'd rattled Booth. Taking another step towards him, even as her nostrils flared in clear annoyance, she pressed her advantage as she repeated, "Yes, stodgy."

"I can't believe this," Booth muttered, leveling his gaze at her as he looked at her over the edge of his sunglasses. "Are you really trying to say that you think I'm…what…boring?"

"Boring, yes," she nodded sharply. "Or, if you prefer, dull, stuffy, dreary, monotonous, pedantic, tedious, turgid, unexciting, uninteresting, and generally unimaginative...buddy.".

As Brennan rattled off her string of alternative adjectives that she was using to insult Booth, something in him snapped. Maybe it was the fact that he'd dropped everything he was doing for her and flown more than fifteen hundred miles just because she'd ask for his help. Or, maybe, it was because of the way she kept taunting him by calling him 'buddy' in a way that clearly was meant to make funny of his own common use of the term. Or, most likely, he was just annoyed that she could stand there in front of him, saying things she had first hand knowledge of that proved the contrary, and still she insisted on calling him stodgy (and all it's synonyms) just because she could. The last bit of the very thin strand of patience he had with her snapped as he reached out, grabbed Brennan's arm, and yanked her towards him.

When they were so close that he could feel her warm breath of his cheek, and―a small part of his rational brain observed from where it had been relegated to the sidelines once Booth had let his emotions get the better of him―she hadn't tried to break his arm or inflict any other type of physical harm on him in order to get free, Booth felt a surge of something shoot through him. The flash made his heart race and his head swim, and for a minute he could only look at her unusually clear blue eyes as he choked down several breaths of oxygen. How long they took like that―Booth holding Brennan's body taut against his, their faces mere inches away from one another, chests heaving, and the tension in the air between them crackling with electricity and anticipation―neither one was quite certain. However, when Brennan unintentionally let her tongue dart out of her mouth as it wet her bottom lip, the moment was broken and each found they could act again.

Booth, the first to recover his wits, told her in a very gravelly voice that surprised even him at its level of raspyness, "Now look, I didn't come all this way on about twelve hours notice―through two connections, one of which was a flight from Denver to Albuquerque on what was no better than a tin can with two propellers because you screwed up and no flights actually connect from Denver to Santa Fe like you said, and I had to drive the 63 miles from Albuquerque to Santa Fe before I could even attempt to figure out where in the middle of hell you actually were―just to get insulted. So, knock it off, Bones…especially when we both know that you know plenty of things about me that definitely make it blatantly clear that you're lying if you're saying I'm either boring or dull or stodgy or whatever the hell else you're insinuating. Got it?"

Brennan considered his words, and then said, with just a touch of rebellion in her voice, "Or, what, Booth? If I call you stodgy again, what else are you going to do to me? Kiss me in the rain and then run away again?"

If Brennan had been looking for the one exact thing that would be certain to elicit an instant response from Booth, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she'd found it.

Yanking her even more tightly against him, so that her body was flush with hers, he pressed his lightly stubbled cheek against her ear as he graveled, "No, Bones. I'm gonna do what I should done that night. I'm gonna kiss you, keep you from running away, and then I'm gonna show you just how awesome I can be when I actually do go 'all-federal' on someone's ass…got it, buddy?"

Brennan could only blink at him several times in clear surprise before she answered him with a slow curve of her lips that eventually widened into a sultry smile that lasted for about three seconds flat before Booth crushed her lips with his own.

-TBC-