Title: The Rendezvous in the Reverie
Rating: M (some swearing, casual alcohol consumption, gambling, and sexual situations)
Summary: Coma!verse Bren and Booth are a happily married couple expecting their first child…However did they end up here?
Spoilers: Definitely for Season 4 finale, I'll be trying to weave in other bits and pieces including bits from the 100th, "The woman in the sand", and many, many others.
Disclaimer: Bones is not mine, the coma!verse is not mine. I have a tendency to steal names from other fictional worlds – I don't have a claim on those either.
AN: Thanks to the lovely LondonLi for beta-ing; and Chelmazing for gamma-ing – I take responsibility for all remaining errors.
-X-
Chapter the Second
In which Booth is a love sick puppy
He's waiting in the lobby by 9:45, giddy at the thought of seeing her again. The three others sharing his room had given him shit last night ("You gay or something?") for not sealing the deal. But Bren's special. She deserves more than a quickie in whatever privacy they can find when they're both sharing a hotel room with three others.
She enters the lobby, glancing around - trying to spot him without being obvious. Booth gets her attention as he approaches her; he notices that even in Capri's, a t-shirt, and sandals she looks damn good.
He's content to spend the day simply strolling at her side, but doesn't expect to enjoy walking the boardwalk. Based on experience with past girlfriends (he can't call her his girlfriend yet, can he?) he expects to trail behind her as she purchases tacky souvenirs for everybody she knows, and braces himself accordingly for a long day.
-X-
Bren surprises him. They spend a lovely morning poking through the little tourist shops, making fun of the snow globes and shot glasses. They wander; she doesn't need to inspect the entirety of the store before exiting. Her mission is not to see as much merchandise in as many stores as possible in this shopping excursion, but to spend the day relaxing with Booth – not buying kitschy, over-priced trinkets. He buys two disposable cameras; she doesn't comment when the same camera is fifty cents cheaper in a later store. She buys a couple of postcards.
-X-
His disposable camera is filling quickly; all his shots are focused on her. She finds it unnerving. Angela would probably say having a man's complete attention on her was the natural order of things, but this is not the case in Temperance's experience…
She refocuses: that's history and Booth is in the here and now. She brings her attention back to tourist shops and the hot, sweetheart of a man shadowing her, but a niggle of uncertainty, whispering, 'this is too good to be true,' remains.
-X-
They break for lunch when they pass an absolutely delectable aroma wafting from a food stand. They eat at a slightly sticky outdoor table. She buys, and he doesn't put up a fuss. They both ended last night with a large stack of chips – he senses that displays of wealth would not impress her normally, and will especially not impress her when 'wealth' started out as $35. As he finishes his second burger, she pulls a pen out of her purse, and writes a few sentences on each postcard she's purchased before addressing them.
"Am I mentioned on any of those?" he asks, indicating the postcards.
"No." At his slightly wounded expression she explains further. "These two are for Haley and Emma – my nieces. This one is for my parents, and this one is going on the giant wall of postcards in my old school, so no. Don't worry, when I write Mama I'll be sure to mention the army man I met in Atlantic City."
"You write home?"
"They don't like long distance phone calls that last longer than two minutes, and they don't have internet," she explains looking faintly embarrassed.
"When I'm overseas I write to Pops, my granddad, once a week," he tells her. That clears the defensive look from her face, and they spend a happy half hour swapping tales about their families, sitting at a sun-bleached plastic picnic table that probably hasn't been cleaned since June.
-X-
The vendor urges them along; Booth wisely doesn't make fun of her when, after wiping her greasy fingers clean, she pulls sunscreen out of her purse and lathers up, carefully covering her face, neck, ears, and arms. (Michael always commented sarcastically on her fair skin) She misses a spot, and he smoothes the little smudge of whiteness into her temple, making her breath catch. She retaliates by caressing the back of his neck, wiping the excess sunscreen off her left hand. He'll have the outline of her handprint there, though neither knows that yet.
-X-
On his insistence, they approach a street artist who charges him fifteen dollars for a quick sketch of the two of them. The sketch makes them both look a little more love-sick than they're comfortable with, and the drawing is quickly rolled and stored in her bag.
They linger by the street musicians, both enjoying the talent displayed. He is surprised at her appreciation of the musicians – she always throws something into their open cases. "I wanted to be a musician when I was small, but it never happened," is her explanation. He knows the feeling. A lot of things never happened for him because of money or because he was shuffled from his Mom's to Pop's and back again, and he briefly mentions this as they walk.
The intimate, introspective moment is broken when he spots an arcade and eagerly drags her into it. They both enjoy it. They spend two hours there, burning through quarters as they competitively try and beat each other at a racing game and air hockey. He finds Joust, a two player game that requires cooperation, tucked into a corner. They have fun trying to work together. Occasionally one will unseat the other, which of course requires retribution, but after a couple of dollars they've learned that forgiving the accidents is necessary if they want to advance. There's probably a larger life metaphor in there, but he's enjoying the day too much to search for it now.
-X-
As the day wears on, he touches her more: an arm around her shoulders, a hand at her lower back, a nudge from his shoulder. At the arcade, they play with their sides pressed together. They leave the arcade with their elbows linked.
At about five, she drags him into a clothing store where he sits as she shops. It is the first time that day he wishes they were doing something else, and that cheers him immensely. She buys a cotton dress, chiding herself all the while for the waste, because there won't be other opportunities to wear it. At least she found it on the close-out rack and gets a deal. Less than twenty minutes later she's wearing it out of the store, her Capri's and t-shirt folded in her shopping bag. "Now I'm dressed for dinner," she says as they leave the store.
"Are you hungry?" he asks.
"Not quite yet." He likes this – her assumption that they will go to dinner, no need to act coy or make him prove his interest when it's been obvious since the roulette last night. They amble back the way they came, stopping to read the menus posted outside the restaurants. They discuss the pros and cons as they walk – she dismisses a few as wastefully expensive, and shares that Italian is too cliché when they're right on the ocean and the seafood would be fresh. He whines that the Tapas bar just doesn't provide enough food. They end up in a seafood restaurant when he starts pouting about his hunger, enjoying some truly excellent fish and lobster.
-X-
They linger over their meals, exchanging bites and sharing a dessert, and then end up in a bar where they nurse beers (separate this time) and play pool. He's better, but she's a decent player and competitive; she's not afraid to take advantage of the fact that Booth is very distracted when he watches her bend over the pool table. He shows her a new technique as an excuse to step behind her and mold his body to hers, meaning both are preoccupied with the close contact. He does win, but she makes him work for it. They leave the bar after one game of pool and a beer apiece and walk towards the casino again.
It's been ten minutes of slow walking, an arm around her shoulders and his waist, when she pushes him against a railing and knocks the breath out of him. Then her lips are reaching towards his and the bruise forming in the middle of his back doesn't even register, because he's wanted to kiss her since he grabbed her wrist and asked her birthday. The first kiss bleeds into a second, then a third, and then they both stop counting and just feel. His hands move from her hair to her lower back. Her left stays at the nape of his neck where the smeared outline of her hand from excess sunscreen is visible while her other hand roams. When their lips are raw, she pulls away. They begin walking again, practically melting into each other. They stop twice more on the walk back to make out, each time ending breathless and plastered together.
-X-
In her experience, kisses this passionate lead to truly mind-blowing orgasms. Ideally, she knows her sexual partners well before engaging in intercourse, but she's willing to make a lot of exceptions for Booth. She's figuring out the logistics of getting her roommates to give Booth and her privacy in between the mind-blowing kisses, a little shocked that she's planning on dragging someone she's known for 28 hours away for sex.
He holds the door to the Hotel/Casino lobby open for her, but she's mystified when he leads her through the casino and to the dance floor instead of somewhere with privacy. Her confusion is met with an explanation breathed into her ear, "I'm a gentleman Bren. Enjoy the dancing." She pouts (adorably) that they have differing expectations for tonight's conclusion, but has little choice, and does indeed enjoy dancing with him.
-X-
He's now known her for a day. She's smart (and hot) and doesn't put up with shit, a lot more rational then he is. He's that guy. The one that meets her and knows. Not trying to find privacy, especially with the attraction between them has probably thrown her off balance, intrigued her. He'll do whatever he can to increase the odds of seeing her after his next tour is finished, even if it means forgoing certain things now. When, or even if, they have sex, he wants to have plenty of time to do it properly; enough to wake up together in the morning, enough to make sure it happens the next day, and the next.
-X-
"You have a fascination with my neck," Booth observes, a dozen songs later.
"I like the handprint," she replies before tipping her head back and kissing the underside of his jaw. She does like the handprint – more than is probably wise. It lays claim to Booth; something that she's never done before.
He'll be a little amused and annoyed when he finds the sunburned outline in the bathroom mirror later tonight. Mostly though, he'll like it.
-X-
At the next slow song, as they rock back and forth in a loose embrace, she blurts out, "We're going to the beach tomorrow. It was going to be today, but it'll be warmer tomorrow-"
"What time?" he cuts her off, "And what does your swim suit look like?" he adds with a teasing lecherous grin.
"Nine and you'll have to wait until tomorrow." She has a sudden desire to trade her sensible black with a white stripe one piece for a bikini set. Unfortunately, she didn't think of it when they were walking the boardwalk, and none of the three women on the trip she feels comfortable enough with to borrow a swim suit share her body type.
-X-
They dance until past midnight, taking a few breaks to rest their feet. She spends the songs they sit out perched on his lap. He walks her to the elevator in the lobby and kisses her relatively chastely goodnight when they're both stumbling rather than dancing from a combination of alcohol and exhaustion. "I'll see you tomorrow," he tells her as the elevator doors close.
-X-
"If you need us to vacate the room for an hour or two…"
"He is hot, you better dish the details."
"We haven't had intercourse," she says in a dry, clinical voice.
Her roommates for the extended weekend sputter. Jody recovers the fastest. "Why the hell not? If a man with an ass like that followed me around like a little lost puppy, I wouldn't leave the hotel room."
"I bet his stamina is great, those muscles…" Angela adds. They don't seem to need her in order to speculate, Temperance muses as she gets ready for bed, although Booth's musculature is impressive.
-X-
Word spreads among Booth's army buddies – more accurately two words: 'girls' and 'bikinis.' About half adjust their plans from gambling to hitting the beach. By nine the next morning there is quite a crowd in the lobby.
-X-
AN: I live for reviews. Scientific fact, a small part of my brain shrivels up without feedback. (I call it 'the bit that urges me to churn out stories'). Nope, not holding the story hostage, not at all, nothing to see here officer. I have upcoming RL, so don't expect the next chapter nearly as quickly.