Chapter 17: Swathes of Skin
Wow having two stories simultaneously deceives me into thinking I'm a regular updater. Reviews again; admittedly a filler chapter, but I figured you'd rather have a taste before the meal than overstuff at a buffet.
Booth was irked. Again. There was someone in their room. Again. And this someone happened to look like a very real life Yoda, complete with wizened stature, frazzled white hair and bat ears. The tiny woman hummed under her breath as Brennan stoically stared as the ceiling.
"This is ridiculous," she hissed at Booth.
"It's not my fault," he hissed back. Their night together had been agony; neither had slept a wink as Booth rushed to and from the ice machine piling ice around his partner's body and slathering her down with so much lidocane, he was starting to loathe the smell. The morning had dawned bright and early with complimentary room service along with little miss 80 year old shaman who had murmured and hummed her answers and basically flattened Brennan onto the bed before piling copious amounts of leaves from an aloe vera plant to rest on her abdomen. Brennan was gritting her teeth in anger before she gasped in both outraged irritation and the feel of a copious amount of glop plopped on her stomach. She looked down as was immediately nauseated. If she hadn't known better, it looked as if a horse had vomited on her. (Rationally speaking, she knew that horses were unable to regurgitate which resulted in colic.)
"What is that?" choked out Booth in disgust, effectively asking Brennan's query. The tiny ancient woman hummed before rubbing the glop around lugubriously with the aloe vera plant leaves. Brennan's eyes slid shut at the wondrous feeling.
"Is a mixture. Very powerful. Banish burn."
"Made of what?" asked Booth, still skeptical.
"Of yogurt, baking soda, face moisturizer, brown sugar, oatmeal, milk and…green tea. With tannin." Brennan's eyes popped open. The old woman's leaf rubbing became more frenzied and Brennan bit her tongue at the discomfort that the tiny flakes of oatmeal and sugar were grinding into her skin. The yogurt and milk combination was starting to fizzle discomfortingly from the baking soda. Brennan huffed a quick breath of pain as the woman began grinding even more forcibly, rushing the rushes about with a frenzied control.
"Hey," said Booth suddenly, staring at Brennan's over bright eyes and taut muscles standing out of her neck, "What are you doing? You're hurting her!"
"Skin is dead," muttered the woman. "Must be gone."
"What? That's crazy. Stop! Stop. That's my partner you're maiming."
"She's right Booth," gasped Brennan, a few tears spilling over her temples running the direction of gravity. "Burned skin is just-" she stopped, panting as she winced, feeling blister after blister split open and the mixture working its way into the open sores. "Skin that's just…dead…ouch…ow…It needs to be…cleared," she gasped.
"What, like dead trees?" snorted Booth sourly. Brennan nodded frantically before she was unable to speak because the tiny woman was now abandoning the leaves in favor for her hands. Brennan couldn't help begin to cry while Booth's heart ripped itself in two at her agony. Brennan was tough. Tougher than half the guys in headquarters, and that was saying something. He gasped in horror as he watched giant swatches of mutilated skin fall from her body.
"Stop!" he said, attempting to shove female Yoda over, but only got a kick in the groin for his troubles as Brennan twitched beneath the hands involuntarily. Booth groaned and doubled over, his eyes never quite leaving the bed. But Brennan's involuntary reactions were slowing and the globule of mixture was dissipating both into her dehydrated skin and in the evaporating baking soda.
"Water," she gasped at Booth and quickly obeying, he snatched up the silver thermos that used to be full of ice which had melted during breakfast.
"NO." The woman barked a command that had Booth frozen, using such a tone that he was forcibly reminded of his military commanders. "Water bad. Very bad. Hurt skin. Skin raw. Watch." Snatching back up the leaves, she quickly unearthed a gigantic hibachi knife that had Booth's throat drying in scared apprehension before she expertly sliced the leaves she had used to spread the mixture. The aloe leaves were flayed and had left traces in Brennan's shallow but weeping wounds. Begging for relief, she sobbed a happy, hitched breath as the disgusting greenish clear goop sopped from the plant stem onto her stomach. Booth was shocked that the leaves could hold so much, watching as the medicine woman poured gram after gram of the moisture out of the plant. Brennan quieted into an almost drowsy apathy as the woman then gently scraped the rest of the wounds clean with her own fingernails and applied more aloe. When she had scraped Brennan's stomach finally clear, Booth gaped.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Brennan's drowsiness immediately fell away and she craned to sit up to stare at what Booth was gawping at.
"Your stomach," he said in awe, "it's so much better." The blisters were not only gone but all remnants of their skin removed. The peeling of her skin and the disgusting burgundy had both been diminished into a more normal reddish burn that even Booth could receive under the sun. It looked as if the old woman had removed hours from her burn, and days of recovery.
"For you," chirruped the woman, forcing at least 20 bags of green tea into his hands. "Make with honey and milk. No water. Then let cool. Refridge. Pour on burns. Will turn brown soon."
"How?" asked Brennan in interest, Booth shot her a glare, hoping this woman would just leave now.
"Tannin," beamed the ancient crone, "tannin good. Make tan." Booth's brow furrowed. This sounded like a joke but had to swallow any response as she took out a broom to sweep up the copious scraps of skin littering the bedroom floor. She made a grunting noise for the sheets too and Booth lifted his partner off the bed. Brennan didn't cry out, only winced a bit and Booth looked down at her face in shock.
"You are better," he grinned. Brennan smiled back.
"Oh I suppose," she shrugged but her face fell as the little woman made a gabbling exit. "But I can't work the case now. I can hardly move."
"You can't even walk," scoffed Booth.
"I think I could probably sit up," sighed Brennan, all of a sudden the sleepless night catching up to her. Booth set her down on the freshly made bed.
"Why don't I turn on a movie for you okay? I have to go work…unfortunately. Or you could sleep."
"Bathroom?" giggled Brennan weakly. "I think I can walk." Unwillingly, Booth levered her upright to her feet but kept his arm wrapped tightly to her body, supporting her first steps. She pushed him away. "I can handle this one alone."
"You sure?" he said seriously, and she saw sincerity shining on his face. "I wouldn't mind."
"I know," she said softly. "I know." She sighed and felt the weight of their relationship hit her. It was both heavy but heavy in a way a blanket was in winter; a good burden, a safe one that sheltered and freed her simultaneously.
"You going to sleep?" asked Booth as she shut the door and he turned to get dressed again as Greg Wiley, bumbling tourist.
"I'm pretty awake," she admitted in a call echoing out of the bathroom through the door. "But I could go for a huge glass of water and…" she nibbled her lip and he heard the toilet flush, "I'm starving." Helping her walk back to the bed which drained her, he tucked her body in within reach of the overflowing ice bucket he had sprinted to get to surprise her while she was occupied. She smiled gratefully when he handed her the phone cradle and a menu for room service.
"Starving is a good sign," he encouraged with a grin. He drew a serious face, gesturing grandly towards the menu. "It's on me darling," he said in a false, gravelly voice. Her nose wrinkled.
"It's on the Bureau." Booth scowled.
"Don't ruin my dream." Brennan shrugged delicately, reclining.
"Bring me one of your button up shirts?" Her request was casual, but he laughed anyways and complied, bringing her the tackiest he could find.
"Booth," she groaned.
"Bones," he scowled. "Put it on."
"Help?" she pursed her lips in distaste for weakness.
"Sure thing slim."
"Slim?" He gently unhooked her bra before guiding her arms through it.
"From old western movies Bones, you know. Slim. The new kid."
"You think I'm a kid?"
"No of course not." He was gently buttoning buttons as if she were an infant.
"So you don't think I'm slim."
"Not like that."
"So I'm fat."
"What?"
"You said I wasn't slim." He knew she was bating him. Self esteem had never been a problem for her and he could hear it bubbling in her voice.
"I could call you whale," he suggested.
"I'm starving," she pouted.
"So what do you want?"
"You," the word was both a whispered confession and a sultry laugh learned from Angela.
"What, you're going to eat me?"
"If I'm a whale does that make you Jonah?"
"What?" He stopped his quick flipping through the hotel television channels in shock.
"I assume as a Catholic you'd understand that Biblical ref-"
"I get it. I just didn't realize that you-"
"Read? I'm very literate. I write best sellers."
They both laughed as Booth finally settled on a channel.
"Remember this one Bones?"
"I think I've seen this," she squinted at the screen as a young man begged a ride from a disquieted, odd-looking young woman.
"You have." His voice was oddly distorted with laughter as he suddenly stood, grabbing his necessities for espionage under guise of tacky tourist.
"What is it?"
"The first Bourne movie." She blushed slightly.
"Oh. Well I'll try to stay awake this time." Booth nodded and kissed her gently goodbye on the cheek. He heard the mute button get pressed before her weakened fingers grasped the lapels of his horrible shirt. Hungrily she kissed him on the mouth, their usually cold delicious kisses turned to fire through her burning lips.
"What was that for?" he whispered, his breath coming fast, heart beating hard, and something else hard as well.
"For all those times we missed," she breathed.
"To all vacations," he recalled with a smile, and mimicked toasting her with a cupped hand.
He kissed her again and then was gone, not quite concealing the imprint of a gun in the small of his back.
Brennan bit down into a sweet pineapple from the gift basket and bit into a sinking worry as well, settling to watch a spy movie while her mind dwelled on her own spy.