Author's Note: Happy New Year! Thanks to all of you wonderful readers who have returned for chapter two.
~Q~
~ The Match Under the Mistletoe ~
~Q~
Brennan
15 December 2006
What a difference ten days can make.
Temperance Brennan felt an aching sensation holding her cheeks aloft, muscles straining at the force of a forged smile being held too long. All around the Diner, glitzy tinsel streams of red and green slithered under and over photos on the wall in a Christmas-conscripted crenelated 'Greek Key' design. Little snowmen peppering every table, god-awful Christmas carols being sung by Bing Crosby, twinkling fairy lights circling the windows. And a blinking Christmas tree sagging in the back corner (complete with dented 'gifts' that were empty).
Empty. Hollow.
A question drew her attention away from the false promises under the tree, briefly.
"When are you going back to Minnesota?"
Angela was asking Zack about his Christmas plans, and the newly minted Doctor Addy answered with his usual deadpan demeanor. "My flight is scheduled for departure on the 23rd, as is my usual custom."
"I bet your mom will be so proud of you." She squeezed him into yet another involuntary hug, Angela's own pride possibly rivaling that of any blood relative he could produce. At his side, Jack Hodgins nudged him again, just forcefully enough to sway Zack off his balance and the impish laugh that came out of Jack revealed it was meant as brotherly hazing. A big brother, teasing the younger sibling.
Brennan turned away, gazing once again at the hollow, empty Christmas presents left under that Christmas tree year after year. No family to open them. No family at all. The hollow emptiness of those boxes reached deep inside her own thoracic cavity, shoving warmth and contentment aside as the cold and empty settled in. Like snow on the inside, she felt cold to the point of burning.
The nerves can't tell the difference, it just hurts.
As the short celebration over Zack's successful dissertation defense lost momentum, the friends prepared for departure in clumps of two or three. Angela tugged on Jack Hodgins, and they two were tailed by Zack (still wearing the wool hat Hodgins had stuffed onto his head, and rather too proudly). A moment later Camille Saroyan leaned in to whisper something in Seeley Booth's ear, prompting him to break into a dusky grin. He started to get up, but then halted at the sight of his partner, who occupied herself with gamely gathering up her bag and settling Zack's lunch bill.
Keeping up appearances was an onerous task. She hitched her lips up higher, pasting the smile in place for a little while longer.
"Where are you headed, Bones?"
"Back to the lab."
"We could give you a lift…."
"Why? It's a short walk." Hazarding a glance at him as last, Brennen found his disconcerting attention turned her way, as if he was acting upon a suspicion that she intended to go back alone specifically with intent to 'wallow.' I will not wallow, she told herself defiantly. If he thinks that's what I'm planning to do….
"It's Friday," Cam chimed in, her amusement evident enough that Brennan knew Cam's dimple would be visible even without having to confirm the fact visually.
Brennan stuffed her wallet back into her bag, trading it for keys and as the skull swung loosely at the end of her keychain, she recalled handing these keys over to her brother merely two days before. Directly behind her sternum, actual pain jammed outwards so sharply that she drew an answering sharp breath, almost a gasp. Booth was stepping towards her so Brennan quickly shook her head as if the movement itself might ward him off.
"It is Friday, and yet I fail to see how that fact bears any relevance." Grabbing the handbag and tossing it over one shoulder, Brennan turned for the Diner's exit. "I'll see you on Monday, Booth. Good night, Doctor Saroyan."
With no further attention directed backward she pushed through the door, turned the corner and halted (involuntarily) just outside the plate glass window, where Booth only an hour ago had assured her, 'there's more than one kind of family.' Drawing another stilted breath, she chanced a glance inside after all, spotting Cam's hand slipping into Booth's much larger one.
Out came all the bottled-up air, pushed out by another press of pain.
She made it back inside the lab less than fifteen minutes later and, as she passed beneath the first sprigs of mistletoe lying in wait, Brennan briefly considered tearing every single one of them down. Rather than doing that, she settled for removing the one hanging above her own office doorway, deriving a measure of satisfaction from crushing the dried plant in her left hand. The berries were hard, the leaves crackling into jagged pieces that pierced her palm. It had dried out considerably since being pinned up ten days prior.
Upon reaching her desk, she slammed the skull-capped keys onto the surface, slid open a top drawer and disposed of the two things she would no longer be needing. The book extolling the virtues of North Carolina flew into her trash can with a loud 'chuck!' and the crushed mistletoe was flung down a half second later.
Rooting through the drawer one last time Brennan extracted a paper and flipped it, seeking the number that would ensure she would not remain here to 'wallow.' Yanking out her phone, she dialed and waited…. "Hello, Doctor Vasilas? This is Doctor Temperance Brennan. … Yes, it's good to hear from you, too. … Well, that's why I'm calling. Due to an unforeseen change of circumstances, I find that I am available to join your team after all. I can depart as early as the 22nd…."
But she should have known nothing would work out as planned.
~Q~
22 December 2006.
Snow.
She hated it.
Really.
It was cold, for one thing. And wet. And blinding white. There was also wind whipping against her cheeks and pelting her with icy little darts that stung and tears streaking out of the corners of her eyes, freezing against the creases caused by so much squinting.
Squint.
Temperance Brennan heard the word in his voice, which brought out a rather heavy sensation of strangulation. Could such an unpleasant stew of self-pitying emotions actually suffocate a person? She thought, yes.
It just might.
Miserably, she blew out a disgusted breath and watched steam explode from her mouth, curl upwards to dissipate into ragged wisps and then it was gone. How apropos, because happiness comes and goes in much the same manner.
(This self-pitying thing, she was getting rather good at it.)
Trudging ten steps further away from Angela's Christmas party, where Christmas carols were spilling out a slightly opened doorway and becoming increasingly muted as she got further away, she braved another glance forward into the whistling wind. It cut through her, through her coat, her jeans, her cute little heeled boots which would have been fine on a plane to North Carolina.
That damn lump was back, thickening her throat.
It was hard to breathe.
Brennan looked up into an unforgiving, blank white sky that held no sympathy at all even as it had denied her a last minute flight to somewhere south of Christmas. No flights out, no thanks to this blizzard, but somehow Angela's Christmas party managed to go on.
Bitterly, she laughed.
What do you have against me, she pouted. And it was beyond foolish to anthropomorphize the sky but really, could you blame her? It just seemed as if the universe or at least that particular lenticular cloud formation swirling over her head must have it out for her, for why else would it have ensured her one last chance to get the hell away … would be blown out by a blizzard.
The useless transference of one round trip from North Carolina to San Salvador (departing today at 1730 hours) was still crumpled up in her pocket, and she was out the three hundred dollars for the effort. It was the only place she could think of to go, the worst place in so many ways, with so many bad memories but there would also be plantains and pupusas con laroca and warm tropical heat.
No snow.
No ankle-deep snowdrifts to slog through.
No missing persons numbering two. Not for her, at any rate, because she would go ankle deep into the mud in search of someone else's missing father and brother. Not her own.
Snuffling, feeling the icy burn of a dripping nose turn to freezing, she halted at the edge of the Jeffersonian's rose garden. It was buried: just bare, thorny twigs cut down low and white covering all the paths and flower beds. Benches humped under lumps of snow.
So quiet it felt like cotton stuffed into her ears, but also a growing pierce of pain from the cruel wind that somehow failed to make noise. Even the wind could not conquer the cold which stole away all sounds (or at least her ability to perceive them).
Her toes, jammed as they were into the pointy box of high-heeled boots, had long since gone silent which probably meant frost bite was imminent (not that she particularly cared). She kept walking, daring the danger with her toes so far gone and all sensation lost. One more careless step and her heel shot forward, splitting her legs as she flailed and failed to catch her balance.
Down she went, the cold snow caking her back and buttocks and one thigh once she managed to pull herself upright enough to look. Disgusted, Brennan began brushing it away.
"Bones, what are you doing alone out here?"
Where had he even come from? She looked up to see her partner picking his way carefully across the frozen path, evidently following her unsteady footprints through the snow. If harboring resentment towards the sky and snow was unreasonable, so was the anger that flared his way. It might not be his fault that she wasn't getting anything she'd wanted this Christmas but it certainly was his fault for coming out here.
"Avoiding people," she snarled.
And music and mistletoe and eggnog, and Secret Santas, and how much I was looking…
…forward…
Not backward, for once.
But she'd been hurled backwards all the same. It was just like that year, every detail of her previous disappointment recreated and repeated in the last days before Christmas, even if slightly out of order. Dropping her eyes, she bit cold lips and just wondered if it would ever stop hurting.
God, she HATED Christmas.
Tears, fat and hot, slid out of her eyes against her will.
I hate it, I hate it.
She was behaving with shocking immaturity and didn't care to correct herself. Sixteen years later it was like being sixteen all over again. Drawing her knees up she pressed her eyes against the coarse denim and felt shudders rocking her shoulders. Her knees were getting hot-wet-cold now and the shudders just kept rolling and only seemed to get worse when he dropped down beside her.
A hand came around her, tightening and clamping her against his side and her token resistance amounted to a stiffness that lasted all of ten seconds before she finally let herself melt against his warm side. She just cried then, admitted to herself that it was, in fact, crying that she was indulging in at the moment and he probably knew full well.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Gratefully, she noted his sensibility in not telling her it was 'going be okay;' because they both knew it would not be. Instead, he just said it again. "I'm so sorry."
Because he was.
"If I could take away what happened you know that I would, Bones."
Somehow that hurt most of all, a crushing wave of grief finally breaking loose when she accepted the fact that her family leaving her (again, at Christmas again) was only part of the reason she was out here crying.
Eventually the rolling shudders and shaking shoulders came to a slow stop. The headache persisted, a throbbing under her frontal bone and the twin nails being driven into her eardrums by the cold having now reached a condition called unbearable.
"Are you feeling better?"
She nodded.
But no.
Not 'better,' just … numb. (And numb hurt less, so in a roundabout way she was better than before.) If she thought about it in those terms then Brennan was 'better' but… Not factually, objectively finding herself in an improved condition she simply nodded because it was an easier thing to accomplish. The nodding.
It was easy to do, to move her cheek up and down as she let him tilt her body his way.
And then, as so often seemed to happen, Booth made it 'better' just by being there. That arm seemed to draw her even more tightly against him and a hand stroked slowly up and down her arm. It made her forget how much her ears and heart were still aching.
She shuddered again, a final bow indicating her tears had left the stage. Then she just stayed there, almost embraced by Booth and knowing this would have to end very soon. (Her jeans were soaked through, and his were, too.) But it felt better so she didn't want to move.
"What are you doing here? Why aren't you with the others?" She muttered this, volume muffled by her face still pressing against her pants.
"Oh believe me, I'd much rather be back inside where it's warm and fun. I plan on getting back to the party as soon as possible."
It didn't explain why he'd come out into the gardens, however, and that was what she'd wanted to know. "So then why are you out here, where it's boring and cold?"
"Because you are."
There was nothing to say, so she said nothing.
"Come on, Bones. I'm freezing."
"I don't want to go back there."
Cautiously, Booth stood himself up and not without several groans and creaks from his aching bones. Without her permission he gathered her up as well, tugging upon her arm until her choices amounted to pulling back (and flopping further down into the snow) or letting him get her on her feet.
So she was standing a moment later, wracked with shivers and misery.
"Why not?"
Why was she avoiding everyone.
"Everyone is matched to someone else, everyone has a Secret Santa." Angela had Jack, Zack had Naomi, Cam had Booth, and they all kissed under the mistletoe. It was merely a series of facts, not an explanation and she wasn't quite sure if stating a fact in this context was not also, indirectly, making a complaint. Ashamed of what she feared her facts implied, Brennan turned her back and crossed her arms against the cold.
"I see."
He probably did. Booth was perceptive in ways she could never hope to be.
Biting her lip again, she allowed her partner to turn her back towards the lab but before he could push her into returning she shook her head. "Envy is an ugly state of mind."
"It's human."
"My flight got canceled, it's too late to book another so I'm stuck here. Alone."
There. She'd said it.
"You're not alone."
Somehow, without her quite realizing it, Booth had got her walking and they were going back the way they'd come. She'd stumbled just now, which was how she'd come to awareness.
"Those boots are dangerous," Booth admonished.
"Angela insisted I wear high heels. She says I need to slow down."
"Why," he laughed.
"So you can keep up with me. It makes no sense but that's what she said."
"Me?" Bemused, he shrugged and slowed his pace to match hers.
See? Angela was wrong, Booth had no trouble staying ahead of her.
"And I am alone, Booth. Cam is driving to New York. Zack leaves for Minnesota tomorrow. Angela has Jack and her dad. You have Parker. I was going to … to see Russ, but now…."
His eyes softened. Under the fading snowy light they melted like caramel and if it weren't so inappropriately cannibalistic she might be tempted to taste how deep that sweetness went. Devouring Booth, the first time she'd wanted a gift for Christmas in all these years but Booth was Cam's Secret Santa. And Cam was his.
Giving Cam to Booth seemed just as poetic and fitting as giving Angela to Hodgins. Having gone to such lengths ensuring the happiness of her friends, Brennan lamented the human failing she found within herself, that she would fall prey to such seething envy after steeling herself against it for so long. It is not rational to want what you can't have.
Taking her chilled-to-bloodless hand in his, Booth tugged.
"Come on."
"Where are you taking me?"
"There's a gift waiting for you inside."
Resisting, pulling back with dangerous intensity, she risked another fall as she tugged her hand loose. "I don't have one, Booth. I'm the one who matched the names and I assure you, I did not match myself to anyone so there's no Secret Santa gift for me."
Stepping closer, so close she felt heat rolling off him as his caramelized eyes captured hers, Booth made an impossible promise. "There is. Trust me. And you know what, Bones? If you don't believe me then come inside and prove me wrong."
~Q~
Note for Spitfire303: So the reason there ended up being angst (even though you didn't want it) was because I went back and checked the air dates to see which episodes fell closest to Christmas in season 2. Judas on the Pole aired on 13 December 2006. I had forgotten that! Basically, Brennan's father and brother abandoned her ten days before Christmas all over again. Ouch.
But Booth came out to get her for a reason and we're going to find out why in the next chapter….