I'm sorry for the delay in updating these Sins, but it was really hard to work a prideful side of these too. Who would have thought, huh?
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Superbia & Humilitas
She was not a woman to keep count on time, but now that she found herself under the intense light of the sun in a hot summer morning, her eyes traveled along the long pointers of the small clock in her wrist as her hands worked thoroughly the half decomposed body that lay in the ground in front of her.
Knees buried deep in mud, experienced gloved hands that examined the bones she knew too well, she waited for it to happen.
Moments later, her eyes drifted to the clock once more noticing that five minutes had barely passed since last time and with a heavy sigh she returned to her task.
And then it happened.
She could hear the unhurried steps of a male coming in her direction, and then two suited legs halted their pace just in front of her kneeled body.
Her eyes traveled the length of the legs and stopped when in contact with a prideful red belt buckle with the inscription 'cocky'.
She immediately rolled her eyes in annoyance and with a deep sight returned to her task.
"What do we have here?" He asked unceremoniously, his hands around his waist, projecting the infamous belt buckle furthermore in her field of vision.
"Good morning Agent Booth. I'm fine, thank you for asking. How are you this morning?" She said coldly, never averting her eyes from the victim.
He automatically laughed at her tone. Only she, this doctor in front of him could ruin the greatest morning mood he had woken up in a long time, with simple arrogance and irony.
"Geez, moody in the morning, Bones?"
"Late in the morning, Booth?" She asked with sarcasm in her voice, and then her eyes locked with his, finding in his face the most overconfident smile she had ever seen in him. One smile that made her head spin in annoyance and her body curl in exasperation. – "I had to ride here with another agent! Where was my partner?"
He grinned again, half conscious of the effect his smile always had in her, as much as she tried to deny it. Folding his arms in front of his massive chest he wasn't the one to give in to her authority that easy.
"Well… I had some business to do." He responded nonchalantly.
"Business…" She only bothered to repeat, while lifting her weight in her own legs and extracting the gloves.
Her eyes, once more, turned to him only to see the same smile adorning his features. She feared that if she stared longer than needed his irritating charm smile would have disastrous consequences in her.
Throwing a cold glare in his direction she marched ahead of him with sure paces leaving a very speechless agent behind.
A small smile formed in her lips after having a slight glimpse of his dumb folded expression at seeing her walking away proudly with nothing else to say.
"Hey, don't you have anything to say to me?" He asked running after her.
"In fact I do. Bring the remains to the Jeffersonian, I'll handle it there." She threw back over her shoulder.
He kept running after her, a faint line of sweat running down his temples, but that smile, it never left his lips for as much as he was annoyed at her behavior right now.
"Not that, Bones!"
"Oh, right." She stopped in her tracks, turning to him so he could see the irritation that ran in her eyes this morning.
Although her heart beat a little faster when she was torturing him like this, just to see the same annoyance that made his pride crash and burn, her mind was determined to stay fair to the feelings of being forgotten and traded by some unknown business. – "I'll tell you once we get in the lab, if you behave nicely."
And despite herself, a small smile formed in the corners of her lips.
"That's my girl." He finally said loudly enough for her to hear, throwing his chip coin in the air and catching it with one swift move.
With that she was gone, rolling her eyes once again.
"Such a prideful, arrogant, maddening, irritating man!" She muttered under her breath reaching the car faster than him, waiting at the side for him.
When he arrived she noticed that his smile was no longer one that show his white teeth, but one sincere turn of his lips that matched the glint in his eyes.
'And so wonderful when he smiles…' Only a whisper in her mind.
An idea crossed her mind and it was in that time that she tried her own version of a charm smile. She flashed him, from the other side of the black SUV, a wide and bright smile that surely could melt the softest of hearts, and she hoped deep inside that it also could soften his overconfidence and have her way inside his heart.
"Will you let me drive?" She asked the nicest way she knew, looking directly into his eyes, pleading for him, biting nervously in her lower lip, waiting for his answer.
He looked at her with a furrowed brow. How could he say no the woman in front of him? When the sun shone in her eyes so brightly, turning them into a clean sky blue, her cheeks flushed, and in her mouth the everlasting question. How could he say no?
"No!" He found that it was easy for a man like him, so sure of himself, that no woman with three PhD's would intimidate him. After all, he was a tough agent, a military man.
Her mouth opened astonished and her eyes widened. How dare he say no to her?
By this time she was already overly frustrated with his smiles and arrogant ways of casting her off.
"It's only fair, since you left me here, waiting for you, for more than one hour. Now, give me the keys!" The lovely shade of sun burn in her face was currently being aggravated by the fury running in her veins.
"Not going to happen, Bones… This is my car, I drive it." He waved the keys in front of her with small metal noises.
"Alright then, next time we come in my car." And in her lips was a victorious smile, all for him to see. She finally entered the car and sat in the passenger side once more.
"Oh no." He laughed loudly while entering the car. – "There's no way I'm getting in your car." He said turning in the engine and driving the car out of the nowhere, back into the civilization.
"And why is that?" Her blue eyes burned angry holes in his face, which was currently more interested in the traffic around.
"Because it's too small for me."
She laughed whole heartily, her hand reaching up to clean the humorous tears that formed in the corners of her eyes.
"Oh I get it… my sports car is too small to accommodate your monumental ego!"
"No, not really, it's just too cramped for me there." – He said sincerely. – "Plus, now that you mention my ego, I think that you, Mrs.-I-have-three-PhD's-so-I'm-smarter-than-anyone, have a big enough ego to fill your tiny sports car, so there wouldn't be any room for my own."
"I may have my ego, but at least I'm not filled with idiotic and childish pride in myself like you are, or should I say "cockiness"?" She laughed again, shaking her head. – "I mean, even the word is idiotic!"
"Are you telling me that my pride is big?" He took that moment to fully look to her, she was flushed from laughing too hard at him, and that did not amuse him.
"No, Agent Booth. I'm telling you that your pride is big enough to blind you and not let you see what you really are!"
"Oh really? Then please, Dr. Brennan, do tell me how I really am!" He said furiously, gripping the steering wheel more forcefully.
"You are an egotistical selfish man that only cares for his inner self-confidence, that just because you have an anatomical structure that distinguishes you from the typical male, you can just barge in and do as you please, like a typical alpha male…or should I say, a typical Neanderthal …" After her tirade, she was left there, confined on her side of the car looking at him, trying to regain a steady breathing.
"Hey, hold your horses, Bones!" He had already parked the car on the side of the road, hurt enough from her words and with a wounded pride.
"Hold my horses? Do you realize that I don't know what that means? Or have you forgotten even that?" She said to him, desperately to get out of the car and as far as she could from the enormous ego that filled her partner with pop culture references and not so funny daily jokes.
"Enough of that!" He said leaning towards her, facing her irritated features with the left pieces of his pride. - "I know you're right in what you say, that I, sometimes, am blinded with my pride when I'm with you, but you know what? If I didn't act like that, you would just push me around with your intelligence, and that makes you just like me. I may have a great amount of self-confidence, but I'm not only prideful….I also have pride!"
"I don't understand." And in her eyes there was a flash of confusion.
"I have pride in you." He offered sincerely to her, a simple smile in his eyes.
"What? Me? Why?"
One of his hands reached for her face, bringing her closed to him, his fingers entwining with her auburn curls and playing softly with them.
"Three years ago, you barely acknowledge me; today you're my best friend. In the beginning you barely opened your heart and dealing with other person's emotions was too much for your own heart, today you give yourself willingly to the ones who love you, to me, to your friends, to your family. You've come a long way, I'm really proud of you, Temperance."
She was astonished. And even before the words sank in her soul she already knew they were true.
"Thank you for that." She barely whispered.
A new smile was in his lips, not one of pride now, but one of sincere adoration.
As soon as she saw it, she knew she had lost all the remaining ties with her sanity, and reaching forward her lips crushed easily into his in a passionate battle that was bound to burn brightly, forevermore, in the furnace of their prides.
Anyone with ideas for Greed? I would love to hear some of those.
Reviews don't take much time to write and always make a writer happy.