When the evening shadows and the stars appear.
And there is no one there to dry your tears.
I could hold you for a million years.
To make you feel my love.
April showers bring May flowers. A simple children's rhyme probably created to help them remember which month came first. She wasn't an expert on where such phrases originated, but she did know that this year that simple phrase had proved to be very true. It had rained a lot in April; so much that a lot almost felt like an understatement. But the weather had let up now that it was May, and the flowers that she had planted were blossoming with abundance. The yard was full of color, and spring, and life.
It reflected how things were going in her own life. Things finally felt normal again. Dr. Ross was proving to be a brilliant botanist and his minor in entomology was certainly helping with what Dr. Wessland lacked. Annah had even become friendlier, leading Brennan to wonder if all she needed was some warm weather. The glaring absence of her friends was still there, would probably always be there, but things were better now, easier.
And things with Booth were finally at a place where they were happy and at peace. If someone had told her that they'd be this way a year ago, she would have laughed in their face. A year ago, she'd lost him forever and hated him with every fiber of her being. Oh how quickly things could change…
Brennan stood in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner, while Booth put Katie down for bed. She was busy scrubbing down the counter when she heard his footsteps enter the room. Suddenly, he was right behind her, arms on either side of her gripping the counter, pinning her in between him and said counter.
"You know Bones, I've always had this fantasy," he whispered into her ear.
"About me?" she asked softly.
"Yes. Jared was right on Christmas. I just have these moments where I dream about taking you up against a wall and screwing your brains out…metaphorically speaking of course."
Brennan drew in a shaky breath as she felt him harden against her ass. This was certainly a stage of their relationship she had never foreseen them getting to. They'd been acting like horny teenagers lately, and she didn't care one bit.
"You know I've always had this fantasy about you too."
"And what's that?" he asked, kissing her neck.
"You pinning me against a wall and just…devouring…"
She trailed off unable to focus, let alone finish, what she had been saying since Booth's hand was now snaking around her waist and heading south. His hand inched past the waistbands of both her pants and underwear until it was fully cupping her core. His other hand still gripped the counter.
"Booth," she breathed.
"You know I really think we should do something about how turned on we both are right now; maybe live out a fantasy or two while we're at it."
He let his fingers drag across her entrance. He flicked his index finger back and forth a couple of times, finally letting go of the counter to steady her as he felt her knees buckling. Brennan sunk back against him, lacing her arms behind his neck. Booth started peppering kisses down her jaw line and neck, eliciting a moan from her mouth. He used his other hand to unbutton and undo the zipper on her jeans, giving him a better angle. And just as suddenly as he had started, he stopped. He stepped away from her, waiting for her to come to him.
"Damnit, Booth, I was so close!" Brennan panted.
She spun around to find him undressing in the middle of kitchen.
"I know," he teased. "That's why I had to stop."
He pulled off the rest of his clothes, standing completely naked in front of her.
"Seriously you want do this here?" she asked.
"Why not? The kid's asleep upstairs, we both have this fantasy…I never let you finish."
"That is a very wicked grin you have on your face right now," Brennan mumbled, beginning to undress herself as well.
Booth just smirked as he watched her unhook her bra. She stepped over their pile of disheveled clothes and into his embrace. They exchanged lazy, slow kisses before he spun her around and pinned her back to the wall. He went back to kissing her, but this time they were more devouring, and frenzied. The handful of M&Ms she'd had after dinner suddenly became very apparent as his tongue worked on her mouth. His hands were tangled in her hair as one of her legs came up to wrap around his waist. Booth pulled away from her mouth and nipped at her ear, while hoisting her off of the ground so she could wrap her other leg around him as well.
He pushed into her then, smirking at the moan he immediately drew from her. Her arms came to wrap around him, in a sense enveloping his whole body with her own. It was a sharp contrast from the sweet love making they had been doing of late. This time it was primal, hunger fused with desire as he held her to him while taking her breath away.
Brennan's head fell back against the wall, giving Booth a vast amount of open skin to lick, kiss, and suck. His hands gripped her ass, pushing himself in deeper. His name escaped her lips on a moan, her tell that she was about to come. With one final stroke, she did, biting into his shoulder and taking him over the edge with her. Slowly, Brennan untangled herself from him and slouched back against the wall. Booth stood in front of her with his hands splayed out on either side of her head. Their eyes locked.
"Now there's one more thing that I can cross off of my to-do list," he told her on a breathy laugh.
Brennan shook her head, bringing a hand up to cup his jaw. "I wouldn't check that off any list. I think we'll need to do that again."
Booth bent down to recapture her lips in his. Her left hand came up to join her right on his face, as he tenderly kissed her already swollen lips. She eventually pulled away with a smile on her face.
"Explain to me what makes you so different from everybody else," Brennan said softly.
"What do you mean?"
"Sex is just so must better with you."
He smiled. "Remember what I told you a couple of years ago when we had that horse play case? That when you love someone, it's just different. It adds that extra little something that draws the line between crappy sex and whatever that just was that we just did. Face it, Bones, you're just so madly in love with me. You've never felt this way before."
"You're right; I haven't."
Booth kissed her nose. "Neither have I, not this strongly."
"Do you think we're going to last?"
"Why wouldn't we?"
"We fight… a lot."
"We haven't really fought in a while. And besides, fighting is healthy."
"Now you sound like Sweets."
"No, but Bones, I'm serious. It's better that we don't keep things inside or keep secrets anymore. And I already told you last month that I can predict the future and can see us living here together when we're old and grey."
"You can't really predict the future, Booth."
"Well maybe not, but I do know this: you and I were meant to be."
Booth was enjoying a rather pleasant dream about the woman sleeping next to him when the sound of crying pulled him out of his sleep. Katie.
"It's your turn," he mumbled, gently pushing Brennan.
"No way. I got up last time," she muttered back.
"But I know I got up with her last night. She's at the point where she only wakes up once, if she does at all."
Brennan squinted at the clock. "I was up with her an hour ago. Your turn."
She pulled the covers up to her chin and rolled so her back was facing him. Booth groaned and shuffled into Katie's room to see what was bothering her.
"Hey, sweet girl, what's wrong?" Booth cooed, picking her up out of her crib.
Katie continued to cry in his arms. Booth put a hand to her forehand.
"You're burning up. Here, let's find that ear thermometer to take your temperature. Bones! Come here!"
He found the thermometer on one of the shelves of her changing table and coaxed her into letting him put it in her ear. Brennan shuffled into the room right as it beeped.
"What is it?" she yawned.
"She has a temperature of 102," Booth told her, handing her the thermometer so she could see.
"Oh no," Brennan started, suddenly more awake. "What do we do?"
"Don't ask me, you're the one with the doctorate!"
"Not in medicine! You have a son; you've done this before."
"The doctor's office was open when he got sick. It wasn't during the middle of the night. Should we take her to the ER?"
"No, it's not that serious. It's not like she's bleeding out of her skull. What did the doctor tell you to do with Parker? Do you remember?"
"I bet it seems pretty serious to her!"
"Booth, think!"
"Okay, okay. He gave us this purple liquid stuff and told us to put a humidifier in his room and umm…"
"Purple liquid stuff? Really?"
"It was a long time ago, okay?"
"Okay, maybe if we just take her to a 24 hour pharmacy, they'll know what to give her."
"But, Bones, do pharmacists actually know what to prescribe people? I thought they were just like, I don't know, chemists."
"No, no I dated one once. He was very good with symptoms and associating the right medication with them."
"Do I even want to know?"
"…not really."
"Okay then, moving on. You go put her in her car seat while I find a shirt."
"Well, I can, but I have to change too."
"Oh you look fine," Booth told her brushing past her out of Katie's room.
"I'm not wearing a bra."
"Who's gonna notice?"
"I will. It will only take me a minute. Not a whole lot can be done to help our daughter in the mean time."
Booth paused, pulling a shirt out of his dresser. "You just called her our daughter."
"She is though. Honestly, that's all you got out of that?"
"Right, sorry," he apologized, pulling the shirt over his head. "Here, I can hold her while you change."
An hour later, they'd finally located a pharmacist who could help them, and returned home with some 'red liquid stuff' (Katie had said no to the grape). The pharmacist had guessed that she had just contracted the bug that had been going around, and the medicine she had given them should help Katie to sleep through the night. She highly recommended that Katie should see her pediatrician in the morning, however.
Brennan stood over her crib now, watching her sleep. The medicine, as hard as it was to get Katie to drink it, had done the trick. With a small sigh of relief, she turned off Katie's light and returned to her bedroom.
"I think I'm going to take work off tomorrow," she told Booth, getting back under the covers.
"You? You never do such things! Who will ever solve murders without you?" he asked, mockingly.
"Arastoo is completely capable of doing the job without me. If he has any questions, I'll have my phone. Besides, Katie needs me and I have to take her to the doctor and –"
"I'll take tomorrow off too."
"You will?"
"Much like you, I have all of this vacation time I never use. If the squints get a big break in the case, they can call us. Until then, I'm going to be here, taking care of my family…and getting caught up on my sleep."
"You're a good man, Booth. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise."
It turned out that the pharmacist had been right. Katie had caught the local bug, probably from daycare. After a long day of struggling to keep her comfortable, Booth and Brennan had finally gotten her to sleep again. It was 8:00 now and the couple was practically passed out on the couch.
"Maybe we should just go to bed," Booth suggested with a yawn.
"It's only 8," Brennan protested. "We can find something to do."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Perhaps we could watch another one of those home movies."
"Bones, are you sure? Last time…"
"I think that's part of why I want to watch one," she answered with a shrug.
"Are you in the mood for a good cry or something?"
"You don't understand. I need to be okay. For Katie, for you, but most of all for myself. And the only way that I can tell if I finally am would be to see them again. So let's find one."
Booth leaned over and kissed her on the top of her head. "Okay, I'll go pick a random one out."
He pushed himself off of the couch and returned minutes later with a DVD in hand.
"None of them are labeled. So I have no clue what this is."
"It'll be a nice surprise then."
He nodded, putting it in the DVD player and returning to Brennan on the couch. The DVD whirred to life revealing the squint team assembled in Brennan's office. A single strand of garland was strung around the ceiling.
"Was this Christmas?" Booth asked.
Brennan nodded.
"Jack, why is it necessary that you film this?" Angela asked, exasperated.
"It's your first pregnant Christmas. It needs to be documented."
"I'm barely even showing yet."
"Well, by next Christmas we'll have an actual baby so…"
"Fine, whatever," she said, rolling her eyes.
Booth chuckled to himself. "I had no idea Hodgins enjoyed filming so much."
Brennan smiled. "Oh yeah. It was his secret hobby."
"I guess we should start exchanging gifts then," Cam suggested. "Wait, where's Booth?"
"He's not coming," Brennan answered quietly. "He's with Hannah."
"But he has to be here," Sweets protested. "This is our tradition. And I drew his name."
"Well he's not going to be here. Here Angela, he drew your name," Brennan told her, handing her a small box.
"You can't be serious? He's blowing us off so what, he can get laid?" Angela asked.
"Angie –" Hodgins started.
"It's his life. He can do whatever the hell he wants," Brennan said.
"Sweetie –"
"I tried okay? I told him how I felt and he still picked her. Now please, can we just –"
"What do you mean he still picked her?" Angela demanded. "What did you tell him?"
"Can we talk about this later?" Brennan asked, eyeing the camera.
"Brennan, he's supposed to be in love with you."
"He never said that," she answered, shaking her head. "Please can we just exchange gifts, do whatever, and not talk about this?"
Booth grabbed the remote and hit pause.
"What are you doing?" Brennan asked.
"I can't watch this anymore," he confessed. "I don't need to be reminded of how badly I hurt you and how blind I was to all of it."
"It's okay, I'm over it," she told him, reaching for the remote.
"You're over it?" he asked, holding it away from her.
She sighed. "Yes. I have what I want now, you. And what happened, yes it was heart crushing and I've been holding a grudge about it for quite a while, but I'm not mad anymore. And seeing Angela and Hodgins no longer overwhelms me with sadness. I'm happy, Booth. I'm finally happy."
"Really? You are?"
"Yes! You know when we found out that Katie was sick, I panicked. But I think for the first time, instead of asking myself what Angela and Hodgins would do, I asked myself what to do. She is my daughter, our daughter. We are going to raise her to be such a great person. And while I still miss my friends, I can't let it run my life anymore. We have so much more to look forward to, to keep dwelling on the past. I get that now. And while you may think that this random home movie selection was a bad choice, I think it was a great one. Because that woman, that version of me…she's gone. I finally feel like myself again. I haven't felt this way in years."
"You got all of that out of this video?" Booth asked with a laugh.
"No, of course not. It was just…it was good okay? Don't you feel it? Don't you feel like you can finally breathe again?"
"I've been able to breathe ever since you agreed to take me back."
"So what, I'm your main priority in life?"
"I just hate fighting with you. Not to say that this whole ordeal we've been put through was easy to get over. I mean I miss them like crazy and having Katie as my daughter is a huge change. But when we're okay, I feel okay. Cause it means that I don't have to go through all of this alone. That's what I've been trying to get you to see. You're not alone, Bones. You were never alone."
Brennan smiled and leaned over to kiss him.
"Thank you for being there," she mumbled against his lips.
"I'll always be here."
"So what do we do know? We've barely wasted an hour."
"Sleep?" Booth asked hopefully.
"How about some ice cream? Or some beer?"
"We could always have them together. You know like a root beer float without the float."
"That sounds disgusting."
"Don't knock it until you've tried it."
"Have you tried it?"
"Well no. But like you were saying earlier, this is our new start, our new life. Might as well just dive on in to the unknown together."
"When I said that, I meant on a much larger scale than a new drink concoction."
"Ah, come on, Bones. Where's that sense of adventure of yours?"
"Okay fine. But you're taking the first bite."
AN: Awww I forgot how precious this chapter was. Send me your love! :)