Echoes True and False
By: Lesera128 & dharmamonkey
Rated: M
Disclaimer: Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―
A/N: So, here it is. The final part to this epic (and longest part of the nine-story cycle, by the way) is now here. Thus, without further adieu...well, thanks to those who read and reviewed the previous parts...and to those who haven't, please please please consider de-lurking and dropping us a note (even if it's brief) to let us know what you've thought. Now, on with the scintillating finale―
Unf Alert: Yup, for the last part it still applies. We mean, come on, people, this is a dharmasera work after all. So, consider yourself forewarned.
Part V: Beginning Again
Booth felt his breath catch in his throat as he turned his head so that his greedy lips could seek out hers. As their mouths met, he pressed his face tightly against hers as his tongue raced out from between his lips and aggressively demanded entrance. His tongue pressed forward, attempting to force his way between the partially-closed softness of her thin pink lips. Brennan brooked no significant resistance before she opened her mouth wide, and her own tongue reached for his as they danced in a slick tangle of twists and twirls as they kissed in a way that made it seemed that they'd never shared a kiss before—whether as Brennan and Angelus, Brennan and Angel, or even Brennan and Booth. It was almost as if it was a first kiss that marked a moment of change and a point of no return for the two.
Lifting her back up off the table, she pressed herself against him. She felt a frisson of electric excitement flash through her as she rubbed her breasts against his muscular chest while they kissed. After several moments, the two continued to grasp and grope against one another, kissing as if their very lives depended upon it. When Booth's hands went to her hips, and he stroked the creamy skin that covered the silky flesh over the gentle swell of her curves, he felt a strong and persistent heaviness in his balls that reminded him that, as much as he wanted to draw this out as much for his own benefit as for hers, practical concerns had already determined how much longer he could last—which a very tiny part of his still-rational brain knew to be very short considering the fact that he wasn't even inside her yet.
Almost as if she was reading his mind, Brennan relaxed her arms' hold on his neck and let one of her hands fall away from him. Quite sneakily, as Booth wasn't quite certain what had happened before she'd managed to do it, Brennan managed to weave her hand between their already flushed and sweaty bodies. Her long and slender fingers followed the curve of his waist until it could dip lower, and she reached for him. Grabbing him in her hand, she wrapped her fingers around his glistening and swollen tip so that she could guide it to her wet hole. With a small groan, as she relished the long-missed sensation, Brennan let her hand fall away when she'd lined him up at her entrance.
Bringing her other hand up to cup his jaw, she said, "It...has...to...be...you." Swallowing, she licked her lips as she said, "Your choice. You, Booth. I want you, but you have to be the one to push us forward. Free choice, free will. You...and you alone."
Booth stared into her eyes for a long moment, some echo in his mind recognizing the hum in her eyes that was cloaked beneath the electric blue color her irises had taken on since she'd pulled him towards her on the table. His tongue lolled at the corner of his mouth as he swallowed, then gave her an answer with a sharp thrust of his hips as he drew back and then surged forward, not stopping until he was buried to the hilt inside her.
Brennan moaned as she felt him plunge into her, the throaty purr escaping her throat as her back collapsed on the table and she let her arms fall to her sides in extension so they rested off the edge of the table. Her sweaty brow furrowed as she licked her parched lips and then swallowed again, arching her back up against Booth's body. She took advantage of her slight shift in position to twist their joined bodies just a couple of inches so that he slid even further than either one of them thought possible as his balls suddenly smacked against her ass.
"Booth—" she whispered. "Oh, God, Booottthhh."
"Oh my God, Bones," he gasped as he rolled his hips back and stroked into her, trying to keep his eyes open as much as possible but finding himself so overwhelmed by the sensation of finally being inside of her—again, and yet for the first time—that he couldn't help but squeeze them tightly shut each time he bottomed out inside of her. He leaned heavily into his arms as he tried to keep his weight off his injured leg and his bony knees, which offered little protection from the hard stone surface of her table.
Booth arched his back and looked down at where they were joined, watching himself for a few moments as he ground into her before a long, soft moan escaped Brennan's mouth and drew his attention back to her face. He drove up and into her, firmly and slowly as he tried to savor the sensation of her tight, wet warmth opening up for him and enveloping him, and he gazed into her eyes, which seemed to him like two pools of shimmering water, bright and blue, and he imagined himself diving into them with each plunging stroke.
"Oh, God, Booooth," she groaned again as she jerked her hips up to meet each of his strokes, her hands sliding around the back of his narrow hips and palming the sides of his ass. "So good," she whispered as her fingers spread, fanlike, over the round, muscular flesh of his ass, her fingertips pressing into his skin as he quickened his pace and began thrusting harder into her. "So damn good...missed it...missed you. So good."
"Mine," he grunted as something about the peaking of her ecstatic moans set off a long-suppressed sense of possessiveness on his part. He couldn't help but feel as if he wanted to mark her, to claim her, and make her his, and his rhythm became more punctuated, his strokes sharper as he drove faster and deeper into her. Brennan's neck craned back as she sighed at feeling him possess her this way, exposing the long plane of her ivory neck. A memory flickered before Booth's eyes of seeing her neck exposed to him and the way he had sunk his teeth into it, but the memory faded as quickly as it appeared, and Booth brought his focus back to the present, his mouth gaping open as he grunted quietly with each driving stroke.
"Yesssss," she hissed. "Yours...always yours, Booth." Her eyes flashed brightly as a pale blue light pulsed and crackled in the space between them, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end as the energy began to prick at his skin. "Just yours."
Hearing her words and feeling the blue glow flickering between them emboldened him, causing him to surge even more powerfully into her. "Mine," he growled again as he sent himself as deeply into her as he could, his jaw tensing as he felt her body tighten around him. "Always," he murmured, jerking up into her and holding himself there as he heard his partner's long sigh herald her imminent release. "Always mine."
"Ohhhh," she moaned, her fingers pressing into his ass as she pulled him into her. "Oh, my God...oh, my God...oh my God...ohhh...ohhhhh...ohhhhhhh, fuck!" The azure glow flashed brightly and her skin broke out in goose pimples as the energy tingled in the air around them. She squeezed his ass again as her body tensed around him one last time, holding him against her as she broke, her muscles quivering around him as her teeth clenched, her lips curled back, her eyes fluttered shut and she cried out his name. "Boooooth!"
Feeling her shatter around him and the flash of blue slowly dimmed as her trembling release faded, Booth knew he wouldn't last much longer. As soon as her hands released their grip on his ass and fell away, he took a deep breath and drew his hips back, looking down at the place where they were joined and staring, transfixed, as he watched his glistening flesh stroke into her and his dark, nearly black curls meet her warm auburn ones. He tucked his chin against his chest and growled as he jerked deeply into her one, twice, and a third time before the cool blue light flashed brightly again and he himself broke.
"Bren—!"
He then grunted loudly as he shuddered and came, flooding her as he pressed himself into her one last time, holding himself there until the last warm pulses of his release faded.
"Oh, God," he rasped as he opened his eyes and found her looking up at him with heavy-lidded eyes and a lazy smile.
Booth stood arched over her, leaning into his hands with much of his weight as his warm eyes fluttered lazily in the wake of his release. His heart was pounding in his ears he couldn't hear the sound of his own heaving breaths, but he could feel himself sucking in air as if he'd just surfaced from a fifty-foot freedive. He blinked a couple of times to clear away the blur, and saw Brennan laying beneath him, her own chest rising and falling with heavy breaths as she stared up at him with bright if heavy-lidded eyes.
Another bolt of lightning fractured the sky outside, and only seconds later the room—which had been silent in the minutes after their love, filled only with the sound of their breathing as they coasted down from their respective highs—was suddenly filled with the rumble of thunder as another bolt of lightning cracked nearby, booming loudly and rattling the window panes. Booth glanced over at the old school clock on the dining room wall, its sepia-toned face briefly illuminated as he narrowed his eyes and read the time. It was 4:47, and as the sound of the thunder faded, he could hear the clock's faint ticking emerge as the second hand swept its face, tugging Booth from his daze as he brought his warm-eyed gaze to met hers.
He felt a tingle, a surge of energy roll up his spine, as he felt again the sensation he'd felt a hundred times before: déjà vu. This time, as he heard the faint murmur in his ears warble louder and louder until it became a solid hum, he felt something else. He knew he'd been here before—between her silky, ivory thighs, buried balls-deep in her, his body relaxing and softening as he rode out that last unraveling threads of his release—but there was something different this time. This time, he'd made love to her as a man, a living, breathing mortal man, doing so—not out of desperation the way he had when he had after arriving at her D.C. apartment after returning from spending a year in hell with the rest of L.A., and not with an anguished heart the last few times he did in the last hours before the memory spell took effect—knowing that he was finally free to love her the way he'd wanted to for so long. He shivered at the thought that this was the first of countless times he would be able to make love to her, to show her at last what she meant to him.
The first...
Booth's breath hitched in his throat as his mind wrapped itself around the idea that he—he, Seeley Joseph Booth—had just made love to her—her, Dr. Temperance Brennan...his friend and partner—for the first time.
Oh God, he thought. Fuck...what did we just do?
"Bones?" he asked, glancing down to where they were still joined, unable―or unwilling―in that moment to move. "I...oh, God, what the hell...I, uhhh...I mean...I don't know what just...what did we...I mean...oh, God...I can't believe that I just...that we...oh, shit..."
Brennan stared at him for a long moment, and as she looked into his eyes, she couldn't bring herself to look away. After a minute, she saw a series of emotions cross his face: confusion, fear, anxiety, and panic, and somewhere, deep down, amid it all, an abiding connection—love—that lightened his lust-darkened eyes to the warm, rich color of milk chocolate. She cracked her back with a small grimace as she used her forearms to push herself up so that only a few inches separated her face from his. Lifting a hand, she saw his eyes dart to the side as they watched her arm move. He winced as she lifted it, almost in fear of what she was about to do. She shook her head slightly, almost as if she wanted to both reassure and chastise him for his response in the same moment. Bringing the back of her hand to his cheek, she caressed it using a rhythmic motion, moving back and forth several times as she used short strokes to establish some type of pattern. After a minute, she leaned in closer to him and tilted her head, so there could be no doubt what she wanted from him. She pressed her lips to his for a minute, a soft, tender kiss which she let speak in response for her.
For a few seconds, Booth felt her lips quiver against his and he didn't move or open his mouth as the blood roared in his ears, his mind still reeling from the realization that he had just made love to her, wildly and feverishly, on the top of her dining room table. But after a few moments, the roaring in his ears seemed to die down to a simmer, and his nostrils filled with the faint scent of her ginger shampoo as he slowly parted his lips and accepted her kiss. Their mouths moved together, slowly at first, barely grasping at one another before he deepened the kiss, clutching at her mouth with his lips as his tongue sought hers out. After a minute, he pulled away, a little breathless but more resolute than he had been just moments before.
"Better?" she asked, when they pulled apart once again.
"Yeah," he replied, his voice hoarse as he gazed into her eyes. "I don't...I can't believe I...we did it...I mean, like that. I mean..." He paused with a soft, awkward laugh. "I mean, I've wanted to...well, for a long time, but I can't believe..." Booth's eyes fell to the table over which he was still leaning. "That's not what I'd, you know, had in mind, ummm...for our first time."
She was quiet for a minute as she considered the revelation―and confirmation that as she's long suspected, her partner had spent time fantasizing about her and thinking about her in a sexual way―and then nodded at him. "Help me down?" she asked. "I don't know about you, but if I don't move now, my back is going to be more wrecked than yours is on a bad day."
"Oh," Booth said, pushing himself off the table and taking a step back, wincing slightly as he felt himself slip out of her. He extended his hand to her. "Come on," he said. "You okay?"
"I will be," she answered. "As soon as I can get out of these damn boots, and...I think―" She stopped, narrowed her eyes and then gave him a small smile. "Come on." She gestured with her head towards the kitchen.
He helped her down and watched her stand and struggle a bit to get her bearings. He arched an eyebrow as he thought about what she'd just said moments earlier. "Wrecked?" he asked. "I don't think I've ever heard you use that word."
"Well," she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. "I'm not completely incapable of using colloquialisms, despite what I might've led you to believe otherwise, Booth." She paused and after a moment added, "Though doing so made it easier to keep you―and just about everyone else I encountered in my life―at arm's length and away from my secrets after all those years."
"What?" he asked, arching an eyebrow in confusion. "Really?"
Standing up on her feet, she wobbled for a minute as she felt the tell-tale pin-pricks in her lower extremities signal that circulation was returning the blood flow to her legs. After a minute, she cracked her back once more before she began to walk towards the kitchen. If it seemed at all odd to her that she was walking into her kitchen, not bothering to flip on the light since the power was still off, and pulling open the refrigerator while wearing nothing but a pair of high-heeled boots, she didn't show it. She leaned into the refrigerator and began to rummage around, never checking to see if Booth had followed her, confident that even if he hadn't moved yet he was still watching her.
Booth still stood in front of the table staring at his partner, transfixed, as she stood in front of her French door refrigerator, naked as the day she was born except for knee-high red boots. His eyes skimmed over the round curve of her apple-shaped ass and down the length of her long legs, then up again to the small of her back and across her shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again, doubting if anything he could say in that moment would sound anything but absolutely idiotic.
After a minute, she pulled out a couple of bottles of water, a glass bottle of lemonade, and she nudged the refrigerator shut before she quickly opened the freezer door, hissed as the she felt the burst of cold air hit her naked chest, even as she reached inside and hastily pulled out a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter cup singles. Nodding at herself, she turned back to the counter, and retrieved the bottled water and lemonade that she had set there. As she walked by, Booth, she tossed the two bottles of water at him, and gave him a crooked smirk as she said, "Here." She then proceeded to walk past him and towards the direction of her bedroom, barely breaking her stride as she went.
Booth caught the bottles reflexively, holding one in each hand as he watched her saunter by with the same sexy half-grin he'd seen her smile before, the same half-grin that had driven him half-crazy on the night he had almost taken her home with him during their first case. He shook away the memory and, flipping one of the bottles in the air, followed her into the bedroom.
"Bones?" he called after her, his brows knitting as he felt a strangeness at uttering her name. He felt odd, unsure whether any of the names he'd ever called her by in the century and a half he'd apparently known her actually embraced the entirety of the woman who'd just walked by him. She was still Bones, and yet she was still Bren, but in the wake of everything that had just happened to him—to them—and everything he now remembered that had happened to them before, neither name really seemed to encompass all of her anymore. He felt his heart swell in his chest at the notion that he could now love her—all of her—fully and openly.
"In here," she called to him. "Follow the smell of the chocolate. It won't lead you wrong."
"Heh," he chuckled, cocking his head to the side at hearing her words. "Ah, right. 'Lead me not unto temptation.' Wait, except, uhh, well―" He paused for a minute and then realized he was already going to be in the confessional with Father Michael for a good long while the next time he went for what he'd just done with her and to her. "Yeah, I guess I'm a bit late on that one," he mumbled to himself. "I've been tempted and I'm pretty damn happy to have finally given into temptations, so fuck that."
"Booth?" Brennan called out in a muffled voice from the bedroom. "Will you quit mumbling and get in here or do I have to come and tackle you out there in the kitchen for round two?"
Round two? Fuck yes, Booth said silently to himself. No less insatiable than she always was. Man, I love her...and thank God, he thought, shaking his head with a grin as he glanced towards the bedroom. "Coming, dear," he laughed as he walked in the direction to which Brennan had disappeared.
By the time he entered the bedroom, Brennan had managed to kick off one boot and was working on getting the second one free. She'd propped herself up on the edge of the bed, her stash of chocolate and lemonade sitting next to her. The room was still dark, even as the storm outside continued to rage. She gave her remaining boot one last grunt as she yanked it free with a very pleased feeling before she tossed it on the floor next to the bed.
Booth looked around the dark bedroom, and he remembered then being in another bedroom, or bedrooms, in other places, with her, in each case, with the heavy shades drawn tight around the windows to block out the light. He blinked away the memories and turned to look at her, an awkward grin on his face.
She stared at him for a minute and then said, "You've never been in this room before. I mean...well, of course you've been here before, but not like that. I mean...we didn't...before, you know? We never...here. We didn't."
He narrowed his eyes and looked down at his bare feet, then up again at her. "It was always dark," he said vaguely. "I mean, you always kept your bedroom dark, didn't you? I mean, for me, right?"
"Partially," she nodded. "But, partially not...I just hate the goddamn sun. You know I'm not a morning person. Never have been, never will be."
"Huh," he grunted. "Yeah, I know that about you. Were you ever a morning person, or did hanging out all those years with a creature of the night get you out of the habit of rising up and at 'em early?"
"My father once told me I was born exactly at the stroke of midnight," Brennan shrugged. "I don't think I ever changed."
Booth nodded and glanced out the window, momentarily distracted by the thought of her father, Max Keenan, and how his relationship with him was clearly more complex than he had just realized just a few hours before. They had shared the physical affections of one woman—the vampire Helen—and each loved another—Brennan—in his own way, one as a protective father and the other as a lover. The fact that Max, a convicted felon and all-around scofflaw, was warming a cell in federal lockup awaiting trial for the murder of the Deputy Director of the FBI was merely the icing on the cake.
"This is very confusing," Booth said, glancing around the bedroom and then back again at his partner. "Not what we did, I mean." He paused, reaching up to scratch his head. "But, just, it's really confusing. I've got...it's like race-walking through a museum I've been in a half-dozen times before, so all the paintings are familiar, but I was always too lazy to take the audio tour or follow the path in the booklet, so it's all out of order and none of it makes any sense. I don't know what any of it means, Bones. It's just...so fucked up, really. Just...confusing."
Although it was still dark, the room awash in shadow but for the occasional flash of lightning that cracked through her blinds, Brennan could see him hesitating as he leaned against the frame of the bedroom door. She reached into the bag next to her and grabbed one of the Reese's Cups. Holding it in her hand she asked, "Can you see?"
"What?" he coughed. "Oh, yeah. Come on, Bones. I was in the Rangers. We spent half our time out there in the woods doing night ops."
Taking aim, she lobbed the piece of chocolate at him. She watched with a satisfied grin on her face as he caught it in his hand. "Good," she said. "Then, first one's free. You want any more, you're gonna have to come and get them. In bed."
Booth's eyebrows flew up as he unwrapped the familiar orange and brown paper, revealed his treat, and then opened his mouth and took a big bite out of the Reese's Cup. The taste of the chocolate and peanut butter caused another memory to flicker before his eyes, of being in bed with another woman, a much younger one, blond and very slender. 'Why did you never tell me about chocolate and peanut butter?' He felt his jaw tense, a black feeling of guilt swirling in his gut as he thought about the time he'd wasted pining for the young Slayer when the better woman—the only woman who he'd ever really loved and who had truly loved him—waited for him to come to his senses. So much wasted time, he thought miserably, finally closing his eyes and shaking his head. Never again, he vowed. Never. He pressed the memory away, shoving it back deep into the recesses of his mind as he ate the rest of the Reese's Cup in a single bite.
He licked a bit of peanut butter off the back of his teeth and looked over at her. "You into the food in bed thing, Bones?" he asked her. "Or the food and sex thing?"
Brennan paused as she drew her legs up to her chin and she rolled back into a sitting position on the bed. "We were never much for food in bed during sex," she explained. "Too messy. And too...well, let's just say we were more creative than that, I like to think, without needing too many props. But, suffice to say, it's sort of a habit for me to store up some calories after we fell into bed. And, as I recall, you liked it well enough the last time...well, like I said, before...I'm not certain how much you remember, but we were never together here...not at this place. You were only at my apartment...the one I had before I got the loft, that one time, and you got the munchies after sex then. Call me crazy, but I thought some sugar might be a good thing right about now if for no other reason than the type of night we've both had―in more ways than one."
Booth squinted in the dim light and walked over to the bed, climbing up with one knee and hesitating for a moment as he noted the twinkle of laughter in her eyes, then, shaking off the flicker of doubt that still poked at him, climbed all the way onto the bed and stalked over to take his place next to her.
"It's weird," he said as he sidled up next to her, reaching his arm over into the bag of candy and grabbing a handful of the cold chocolate cups before sitting up with his back to the headboard. Unwrapping one of them, he rolled the orange paper wrapper into a tiny ball and tossed it to the floor before bringing the candy to his mouth. "What?" he said with his mouth half full. "I'll pick up later."
Brennan bit back a snicker and reached for the bottle of lemonade. Popping the metal cap off with a twist of her hand, she lifted the glass rim to her lips and said with a chuckle before she drank, "Nothing."
"Mmmm," he murmured, unwrapping another candy and gobbling it quickly before turning his head to the side to look at her. "Lemonade and chocolate?" he asked, scrunching his nose at the idea. "The whole tart and sweet chocolate thing? Hmmm. You probably like those orange chocolates, don't you?"
"No," she said with a shake of her head. "Not really. And, I don't really think of it as cross contaminating tastes since one is consumed as a liquid and one must be chewed since it's a solid. It's not so bad, you know."
Booth reached over and twisted the lid off his bottle of water, then took a long drink. "It just seems kind of weird," he said. "Although, that's probably a bit rich for me to say at the moment, huh? With all the weird shit that's happened to me tonight, it's probably the perfect combo, right?" He groaned, then took another healthy swig of water, crinkling the half-empty plastic bottle in his hand just to hear the sound before he reached for the cap and screwed it back in place.
She again reacted very quickly. She twisted her body, having lowered the glass jar from her lips and set it on the nightstand in one fluid movement before she rolled towards him. Tilting her head, she was a bit more than slightly firm when she pressed her mouth to his. Twisting her tongue as she used it to seek a breach in the defenses of his closed lips, she was forceful in demanding entrance. After a moment, she felt his resistance melt as his lips opened slightly, and she pressed her advantage. Pressing her body against his, she tried to leverage a better position, but was unable to do so from her awkward angle. A small growl of protest escaped her mouth and reverberated against his lips as she kissed him. The sound was followed by a slight grunt on Booth's part as he moved to better accommodate her awkward position.
Booth let his water bottle roll off the side of the bed as he tossed the remaining chocolate cup in the direction of the nightstand and he turned towards Brennan to deepen their kiss. His hands freed, he brought his hands to cup the sides of her face as he felt her tongue twirl against his. A low moan sounded from his chest as he let one of his hands drop to her hip and silently encouraged her to straddle him.
"See?" she mouthed against his ear when they pulled apart for air. "That tastes pretty good, doesn't it?"
"Nnnnngth," was his only reply as he leaned in again for another kiss. His lips grasped at hers as he demanded another kiss, letting this one linger between them as he stroked the side of her face with his thumb, pulling away slightly to slow her down before closing the gap again. A mumble fell from his lips in the moment before they covered hers. "Bones, I..."
She murmured into his kiss, letting herself fall into the experience of his embrace the way she hadn't allowed herself to do all night. After a minute, she pulled away, ignoring the small sound of protest from him as he held her lower lip between his for a second before breaking off the kiss entirely, his breaths falling hard as he relished the feeling of her weight on his hips.
She looked down at him, her mouth agape as she tried to the swirl of feelings roiling in her belly into an articulable string of words. "You remember," she whispered, as he pressed towards her. "I know you do. You can't kiss me like that and not expect me to believe you don't remember everything."
Booth pulled away and stared at her, panting for breath. "I...look, it's...I-I," he stammered. "It's hard to explain. I remember a lot of things, but..." His voice trailed off for a moment. "It's like having a huge library of books, thousands and thousands of them, you know, all of which you've read, but they're all out of order. So finding the one you want is...damn near impossible."
Trying to be mindful of where her bullet had grazed his leg earlier, she pressed her knees against his hip bones as she situated herself on top of him. "You're overthinking this, Booth," she breathed. "You're overthinking this too damn much."
"I'm overthinking this?" he laughed. "That has to be the first time you've ever accused me of overthinking anything." He bit his lip as he felt her settle in against his tightening groin.
"Well, recently, yeah," Brennan nodded. "Probably." She stopped and twisted her pelvis, grinding against him as she punctuated her words. "I know you know you what this feels like. That you remember it and trust it and want it. That you want me. That you want this. That you want us."
"God, yes," he sighed, wincing a little as he felt her press her weight against his hardening flesh. "Yes, I remember. I remember..." He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to summon a measure of focus, however fleeting. "I remember taking you, a lot of different ways. In different places. In...different times, I guess. I remember the way you'd call out my name." A tiny growl sounded in his throat as he savored a particular memory of her arching her head back, exposing the long line of graceful neck as she sighed his name at the moment of ecstasy. "My different names. But...there was always one thing that was the same, every time, no matter where or how or when or how long or how many times we did it."
"I'm not talking about the number of times or how we fucked," she grunted, with a sharp shake of her head. "It may've started out like...like that, in the beginning. But...that's...that's not what it is anymore. It's not. Tell me...tell me you know what I'm talking about. Tell me that you remember."
Booth lay there, still as glass despite the way she moved slightly against him. "I remember," he said, his voice low and quiet as he blinked slowly. "I remember, at...at some point..." He hesitated, glancing up as he mentally thumbed through the memories. "I remember realizing, one night really, that this thing between us wasn't just...realizing that you were a part of me. I knew that, obviously, but..." He sighed and shrugged against the bed. "I realized that it was more than just you being a part of me, but also...that I'd lost a part of myself in you. That you and I were no longer two people. I..." He swallowed, remembering being in another apartment, in this same city as he looked out on an all too familiar skyline, with her, as the afternoon sun blazed through her window and warmed their skin. "I remember...that I loved you. I loved you, didn't I?"
She stared at him for a long minute, her eyes lightening to a staticky blue as she said, her voice low, "I can't answer that for certain. I-I...I like to think that you did. But, I can't answer that question for sure." She paused, reached for his hands, lifting one so that she could firmly press her small palms against his and then intertwined her fingers with his. She squeezed them for emphasis and asked, "But, you know...you can answer that question, I think. I can't, but you can. So, you...you have to tell me. That feeling, Booth? I think you can still feel it now because I still do. I think it's still there. Isn't it?"
"Yes," he rasped. "It's still there. I...I feel it, Bones. I..." He remembered sitting in a chair―no, several chairs, in several places, gazing into the same bright, flickering blue eyes―soaking in the feel of being with her and feeling himself made whole again in her presence, just by being with her, after he'd felt himself crushed or shattered by the things he'd experienced. "I feel it," he admitted. "I've felt it for a long time, I think."
Her blue eyes softened as she looked at him and said in a low voice, "You know I love you," she said. "I've told you that already. And, after everything that's happened, I desperately, desperately want to believe that somehow we've managed to come through things so that we're finally here in the same place and at the same time and want the same things."
Brennan pressed her lips together in a firm line as she tried to hold her emotions together. She felt the warmth of his smooth olive skin against hers and swallowed as she remembered the first time she felt his warm, human skin beneath her fingertips, his heart beating in his chest after near two hundred fifty years of laying silent in his chest. The memory of their last night together sent a wave of intense emotion that she'd spent more than three years burying shuddering through her.
"But," she continued solemnly, "if that's not...if I can't have that―if I can't have that with you, you can't...you can't say it, Booth. Because...this, I can't come back from this again. Three and a half years ago, I came the closest I've ever come to wanting to say fuck it and finally put myself out of my misery in five centuries. I can't go through losing you again. I'm not strong enough. I did it once, and I still don't know how I did it then. So, I know...I know I can't go through you...us having to leave one another again. So...if you can't...if you can't find someway to forgive me so that we can...well, if we can't, then...don't. Just please...don't say it. Don't say it unless it's for keeps this time."
"Bren," he whispered, his brow furrowing as the syllable left his lips. He felt his throat tighten as her words echoed in his mind. "Before tonight...before it...before it all came back to me...I knew there was something about you...about us...something I couldn't quite put my finger on, but the minute I saw you, I knew...it was like...something lit off inside of me, when I saw you in your lecture that morning, but I didn't know what it was. I felt this pull, though."
He smiled and raised his eyebrows as he looked up at her, his forehead creasing as he spoke with a tangible brightness in his voice.
"I mean, people talk about magnetism and attraction, but the way you made me feel, Bones, that day, and every day after that as I got to know you...again, I guess, though I didn't know it at the time...it was like..." He shook his head, frustrated at his inability to articulate himself. "It was like I felt us getting woven together somehow, drawn together...but I didn't understand it. I didn't know anything but that I felt something very powerful, and I knew that you and I were destined for each other. Fated, you know. But...I felt us draw closer and closer together in that week we worked together on the Gemma Arrington case, and I felt myself falling for you, and then...I...I didn't understand what was happening but I kissed you and...it was liked we'd kissed a thousand times before, though I was sure...I mean, I'd never kissed you before, but..."
She swallowed heavily once and then blinked a few times. "I-I...I'm sorry," she said.
"Why are you sorry?" he asked. "I don't understand."
"Because I don't know whether you're trying to figure out a comforting way to let me down in what's supposed to be as less a traumatic way as possible as you're rejecting me or if you're rambling because you're afraid to say what I want you to tell me because that means we're finally at the same place at the same time," she said fitfully, shaking her head again. "And...well, I-I...I don't know. I'm sorry."
"No, no, no, Bones—listen," he said, reaching up as he untwined one of his hands from hers and gently cupped her jaw in the wide palm of his hand. "What...what I'm trying to say in my totally clumsy and idiotic way...is...I'm trying to tell you that, even before tonight, even before I got nailed by this massive water cannon of memories...that I've loved you for a long, long time, Bones. I mean, after we met again...God, this is confusing...but, you know, even as we were working that first case, I felt like we were kind of...threads in a single tapestry, you know. And when we finally started, you know, being partners, and...I...I-I...it's not just tonight...I love you, Bren. I...I've loved you for a long time now, and I guess what...well, what tonight showed me is that...I'm not crazy, but that...that the way I feel about you, now, today―tonight―is the way I've felt about you for a long, long time...even longer, much longer, really, than I was even aware of before tonight."
He stroked his thumb over the edge of her cheek and tilted his head slightly as he looked deep into her eyes.
"I love you, Bones. I love you."
She gasped a bit, not in surprise, but in obvious relief at his words. Still, a nervous look of uncertainty crossed her brow as she mouthed, "Are you certain?"
He moved his hand away from her jaw and threaded his fingers through her soft, silky hair. "Yeah," he whispered. "As sure as I am of anything, Bones, which granted what's just happened tonight isn't a whole hell of a lot, but yeah. I do. I love you. You're the only constant in my life, and...you're everything to me. You've been that for a long time. Even before tonight. I love you. I've never been more certain of anything."
"You're...ummm...you're sure that you understand what you're saying?" she asked again, her voice hoarse as she stuttered. "Because...I can't...I won't share you. It's...you're...mine. I can't have you...not like we did before. It has to be all or nothing, Booth. Me...just me. Us. Here. I can't...the comings and goings. It has to be...it can't be like it was before. Do you understand?"
"Yes," he said firmly. "You're the only one I want, Bones. The only thing I want. You're it. You're the only one. You're part of me. And, I think, I'm part of you. We're one person, you and me. I...what it was before? It's done. Over. I don't want to go back...to that. I want to be with you, Bones. To be...just you and me, Bones. Just us. I'm yours. Just yours. Yours alone."
"No tricks?" she whispered, her eyes shining. "Really?"
Booth's eyebrows raised as an awkward laugh escaped his lips. "No tricks, Bones," he said. "As God is my witness, I love you."
In that moment, Brennan stared at him for what seemed like a long time. She drew one more breath, letting their joined hands fall to his chest. And, as the heel of her right hand came to rest on his chest, she looked down in surprise, almost as if a part of her brain was suddenly processing the significance of the fact that his skin was warm and she could feel the faint beating of his heart under her hand. She then took another deep breath, and as she exhaled, an unexpected thing started to happen. She began to cry.
Booth leaned forward and, freeing his fingers from the tangle of her hair, brought his hand to brace against the back of her head as he pulled her towards him in an embrace. "Shhhhhh," he whispered. "Shhhh...it's okay, Bones. I'm here, okay? I'm yours, and I'm not goin' anywhere. Shhhhh." He stroked his fingertips gently against the back of her head as he felt her shudder slightly against his shoulder. "I'm here, Bones."
"I-I...I need..." she sobbed against him. "I-I..." Her words trailed off as she pulled away from him and fell back on instinct as she reached for his lips.
"Bones," he whispered against her lips.
"If...if you...if you really...mean it," she breathed. "Show me."
Booth's mouth fell open, but not for the purpose of speaking, but rather to take a sharp breath as he let the hand that had been cupping the back of her head drop to her shoulder. He nodded at her as he rolled slightly to the side and gently pushed her off and away from him. She rolled off of him and laid back against her pillows as he turned around and took his place between her loosely-parted legs. His warm brown eyes narrowed and darkened as a crooked smile curved the edges of his lips, and he leaned into his hands as he bent down to kiss her. She murmured against his kiss and it all went quickly after that as he drew his hips back and came up into her with a swift, smooth stroke. Brennan craned her head back and exposed the full length of her neck to his hungry lips as he drove into her, again and again, each time driving into her harder and faster than the time before. Her lips parted in a long groan as she shattered beneath him just seconds before he, too, broke apart, their bodies bathed in a crackling blue light when he slumped over her as he moaned her name and the last pulses of his release faded into her.
At some point, he rolled away from her. But, as always, like a magnet drawn to steel, she followed him. She had to be careful of how she pressed her body against his side, as she didn't want to jostle his hurt leg. However, twisting a bit so that her head was resting on his shoulder, and his arm came across her back and rested just above the swell of her ass, she yawned a bit.
They lay there for a minute in silence before Brennan reached over and grasped his hand, squeezing it slightly before she turned it over and drew her thumb over the Chinese characters tattooed on the inside of his wrist.
"When did you get this?" she asked vaguely, her voice quiet as she stroked her thumb over the dark, crisp characters.
Booth turned and smiled, kissing her forehead as he sighed at the feel of her fingers, caressing his tattoo. "I got 'em right after I finished Ranger School," he explained. "Went out with a couple of buddies from my Ranger course to celebrate, and we got completely hammered, right? And there was this tattoo parlor right next to the bar we'd been drinking at, and so we all went in. The other two guys got Ranger tabs tattooed on their biceps, but..." He shrugged slightly even as he lay there, cradling her head against his chest. "I saw this book of Chinese words, and was flipping through it while the other guys were getting theirs done, and—"
"Living to die," Brennan said. "Shan shu."
Booth arched his eyebrow with surprise. "Yeah," he said with a faint laugh. "How did you know that? I mean, that...how do you know that's what these characters mean?"
She threaded her fingers in his and chuckled. "Booth," she said, "I know the words for 'life,' 'death,' 'skull' and 'bone' in dozens of languages. I've done fieldwork in China. I'd recognized the characters the minute I saw them, the morning we first met at American University, when you extended your hand to shake mine." A smile broke across her face. "I've spent the last century and half learning every inch of your body, Booth. Touching every inch of your skin. Memorizing every muscle and sinew. The vein that runs over the edge of your bicep...here." She touched him there, tracing her finger along the line of his harm and up to his shoulder. "The scars here I love so much," she said, pressing her lips to the rough, pockmarked skin along the edge of his jaw near his ear. "Your wonderful Adam's apple." She drew his finger over it as he swallowed and the protrusion of cartilage bobbed beneath her touch. A soft laugh escaped her lips and she added, "Kissing and licking and sucking every morsel of you." Booth groaned quietly at her words and she squeezed his hand. "So, yes," she admitted. "The moment I saw you—more or less physically the same you you always were, in shape and form, except that you were fully human—I immediately took note of your tattoos."
He brushed his lips across the faint creases in her forehead. "At the time," he said with a certain wistfulness in his low voice, "I wasn't really sure why I picked out that particular tattoo design. I mean, I was a Ranger, you know, and a sniper, and so in a sense, that was my job—living to die, right? So it was kind of appropriate, in a grim kind of way. And part of it, I guess, was that I didn't want to get the same tat as the other guys did, being the free-thinking rogue rebel that I am."
He waggled his eyebrows and laughed at the memory of both the hazy, drunken night he got tattooed and the day he leaned over the balcony at the theater with Brennan during the Gemma Arrington case and talked about his individuality.
"Then again," he said, "maybe part of it was that if those guys had the balls to get one tattoo each, well then I was enough of a bad-ass motherfucker that I was gonna get two, one on the inside of each wrist."
"You're incorrigible," Brennan said. "You really, really are."
Shrugging slightly, he snickered. "Probably," he said. "But I don't know how this all works, or worked, but you gotta admit, it's a pretty friggin' weird coinkydink, huh?"
"When it comes to you, Booth," she said thoughtfully. "I'm not sure I believe in coincidences."
"Mmmm," he murmured, bringing his other hand up and brushing an errant lock of her sweat-damp hair off of her forehead before laying a feather-light kiss there. "After tonight, baby," he whispered. "Me neither."
They were quiet for another minute, before she asked in a quiet voice, "Booth?"
"Hmmm?"
"I've missed this," she said, the honesty in her voice making her sincere vulnerability even more apparent. "I've missed you, and I've missed this. Very, very much."
"Mmmm," he murmured as he turned his head and kissed her sweat-damp forehead. "I have, too," he said. "Hmm...well...actually, it's very odd. I feel like I've missed this, and have been waiting for years have this because I've never had it. It's..." He shrugged a little and laughed. "It's all very confusing. But I love this. And I have missed it. And, well, I hope to have it again. As often as I can." He turned to her and grinned.
"It's always been yours," she said. "Always." She stopped, rubbing her top lip over her extended bottom one as she chewed on it for a minute before she asked hesitantly, "Promise me something?"
"Anything," he replied quickly. "Anything, Bones."
"In the morning...if we fall asleep...promise me you'll still be here," she said. "No...no leaving. Not ever again."
Booth pressed his lips together and nodded. "Never again," he said. "I'll be here, okay? I'm not goin' anywhere. No leaving, Bones. Not you, not me. We're in this for keeps, mmm?" He paused, then laughed softly.
He lay there for a few moments, stroking her soft auburn hair mindlessly before turning his head once more towards her. "Hey, Bren?"
"Yes?"
"In the morning," he said. "I want you to come with me to go see Father Keyes at Holy Trinity. I wanna say my vows to you."
She sat up slightly, her hand still not moving from where it had rested on his chest as they talked. She leveled a firm stare at him and asked, "Are you...certain?"
"Yep," he said, snaking his arm around her waist and pulling her more tightly against him. "After all that we've been through, Bren, I'm not lettin' you go. Never again. This is it. And I'm gonna see to it that we're never apart again." He hugged her more tightly against his chest and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. "You've done plenty of unilateral things, you know—tonight, and before—and, it all turned out alright in the end, even if it made for a pretty miserable go for us in the meantime. So look, I understand why you did what you did, and I forgive you for it, okay, but we aren't doing that again. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna do whatever I have to do to make certain we are never separated again even if that means I'm gonna be the one to be unilateral for once, Bones." He turned his head and grinned at her. "You said you wanted this to be for keeps," he said. "So, I'm gonna show you I'm a man of my word, and I want you to make an honest man out of me. We're gonna make this thing formal, once and for all...I'm never, ever letting you go, Bren."
Surprise clearly writ all over her face, Brennan finally managed to ask, "Booth, are you certain?"
He nodded simply. "It'll take some doing, but―wait," he cut himself off. He then gave her a small, sheepish smile as he said, "You know what I'm talking about, right? That we're not talkin' about holy orders or anything, yeah?"
Brennan gave him a strange look and then said, "Why on earth would you ever take holy orders? We've...uhhh...we've talked about this before, you know. It wasn't a good fit then, and I can sure as hell say it's an even worse fit now."
"Nope," he said. "You're right. I'd make a crappy monk. But I'm gonna make a great husband, and you're gonna make a terrific wife, and we're going to have an awesome, awesome family."
Booth felt Brennan's muscles tense as he held her against his chest, his arm draped over the curve of her hip. He stroked his hand over the round of her hip, smiling faintly as his palm dragged slightly over her skin which was still tacky with her sweat from their lovemaking.
"Bren," he said quietly after a minute. "You're not..." He paused, his own heart racing as he felt a certain vague dread at the thought of her refusing him. "I mean, I thought you wanted...that we'd decided after tonight that we'd be together, finally, right? I mean...us, in the same time, same place...for keeps, right? That's...we still want that, don't we, Bones?"
Brennan was quiet for a minute and then said, "Of course, we still want that, Booth. I still want that...it's just that―" Her voice trailed off as it cracked slightly as she spoke. "It's just that, well...I never thought that I would ever really get married. I mean, I've been alive for almost five hundred years, and never once has someone loved me enough long enough to want to be with me and to stay with me and to make a family and—"
"And―" he prodded her gently. "This isn't your way of trying to tell me that you're not the marrying kind, after all of this...is it?"
"No," she replied firmly. "That's not what I'm saying. It's just that, but for my parents' marriage, I have never really had a chance to see a couple successfully engage in such a type of relationship over a sustained period of time. I just...I-I don't know what I'm doing here. I have no frame of reference, no bearing on what I'll be doing. And, well―" Her voice trailed off again before she sighed and then looked him directly in the eyes and continued, "I don't want to hurt you again if I make another mistake because I don't know what I'm doing. After all the pain you've suffered because of me, it's the last thing I want to do, but I'm...well, I'm scared, Booth."
Booth stared at Brennan for a long minute. The look was a mixture of hope, fear, and several other emotions that Brennan knew she recognized even if she couldn't name them in the tumultuous nature of the moment. Finally, he said, "Look, Bones. I know you're scared. Hell, so am I. But that's no reason why we should let us hold ourselves back anymore. So if you being afraid is the only thing that is keeping you from saying yes to being my wife, then fuck it. We can get over anything, baby. You just gotta trust me. But," he chewed his lip a minute before he said, his voice a tad glum, "If you don't want to marry me because of some other reason...because you don't love me or you don't, well, want to be with me―"
A look of comprehension dawned on Brennan's face as she suddenly realized what Booth was trying to say to her. At last, she cut him off sharply―probably more sharply than she'd initially intended―but knowing she needed to get his attention, she felt no regrets as she spoke. "Booth," Brennan said sharply. "Will you hush, just for a moment?"
Booth's brow furrowed as he opened his mouth in a surprised o-shape as he got ready to respond. However, with a small smile, she shook her head as she cut him off once more.
"You know, if you'd pipe down for a half a minute, you'd probably get the answer you want," she told him with a small roll of her eyes, particularly when she saw Booth's soft brown eyes light up in happiness. Shaking her head, she half-muttered, "It's good to know that Angelus' big mouth didn't vanish into oblivion when you got your shanshu and your humanity back."
"Sorry," he grumbled sheepishly as he tried to swallow a huge grin. "Go on."
She shook her head slightly as it still lay against his chest, then continued. "It's just...when you live as long as I do, you don't expect to do the things that normal, shorter-lived people do. And I guess I never expected to ever marry, even as a young woman. I never thought I'd ever have to deal with the idea of having a husband...especially after I fell in with you, and with the way things were between us over the years, even as I came to love you, very much, it still seemed like a normal life, where I could live with the man I loved as his wife—that all seemed beyond attainment for so long that―well, although I'm not against the idea, it just seems strange to even consider it now, and I just needed a minute."
Booth narrowed his eyes and turned his head, pressing his lips to her forehead as he gently squeezed her naked hip in his big hand. "So, then, by my count since you've been rambling for over a minute there, is that a yes, Dr. Brennan?" he asked with a snicker. "Because I'm not quite sure, but it sort of sounded like one in a ass-backward sort of way. "
Grinning a happy lop-sidded grin at him she said, "A.) I'm going to smack you very hard in a minute and B.) do I need to break it down into teeny tiny words for you, Booth?"
A wide, toothy grin split his face. "Yeah, Bren," he said. Pausing for a beat, he waggled his brows and asked, "I think you do. So what'll it be, lass?"
Shaking her head with a smirk, she muttered, "It's a yes, smartass. Yes, okay?"
Booth's face lit up again, his warm eyes widening as he smiled from ear to ear at hearing her say it. His heart began to pound in his chest as the reality of it came together in his mind.
"I think I can talk Father Keyes into squeezing us in right after the All Saint's mass, in the rectory," he said, the words coming quickly as if he was afraid she'd change her mind. "It won't be a nuptial mass or even the sacrament. But he can still marry us civilly if I can call in a favor for the license. We can grab breakfast on the way back."
Brennan considered his offer and then said, "We're going to have to turn off all our cells. Unplug the landlines. Computers, too."
"Bren," he said. "The last damn thing I wanna hear after I hear you say 'I do' is a friggin' cell phone. You can take that to the bank."
"We'll get a case," she said. "We always get a case."
"Nuh-uh," Booth said. "We're calling in tomorrow. Let some other flunkie at the Bureau handle things for a couple of days. The squints can keep 'em in line."
"If we call in, they'll ask why," Brennan said. "Someone will know something's up. And then Angela's gonna be pounding on my door, and unless I put a repulsing spell on it to keep people away, I'm telling you, the only way this is going to work is if we shut off everything."
"Total media blackout," he agreed. "We send two emails, one to the AD for me and one to Cam for you, and then we're done. We're doing what we gotta do to get to where we need to go which is, in case you're wondering, some quality alone time for us. So if you need to work some magic to keep prying eyes or snooping snoots away, as long as you don't make a habit of it, I say you do what you gotta do."
He bit back a smile at the thought that he—a former magic-hating vampire—had just given his witch-scientist partner, and soon-to-be wife, blanket permission to use magic.
"That's right," he said with a hint of smugness. "Because tomorrow, you and me are gettin' married, and then we're comin' back here, and we're not coming up for friggin' air until the clock strikes midnight on the day after All Soul's."
"I want that in writing," she said. "Signed and notarized," she added with a straight face. "And, I want something better for breakfast than diner take out―because we can't take the chance someone will see us―and I don't want one of those loaded up caloric monstrosities that you love from McDonalds or Burger King. That doesn't count as breakfast."
Booth snapped his fingers. "I can't promise it won't be loaded with calories," he grinned, "but there's a great taqueria that opened up that serves the best damn breakfast tacos and burritos, including ones without meat, this side of the Red River. It's the real deal, Bren. You can wire money to Mexico from the restaurant. If that ain't authentic, I don't know what is. And nobody from the Bureau, and nobody from the Jeffersonian will ever find us there."
She looked at him for another minute, smiled, and then said, "Done."
"You're stuck with me whether you like it or not," he told her. "You'll see."
"That's okay with me," she told him. "Just so long as you know that I may not always like you," she said truthfully. "But, I'll always love you. Because I always have, and I always will."
Booth closed one eye and looked at her. "I'll try to be likable," he quipped. "But...you know I've always loved you, and, until the day I draw my last breath, I'll love you. Forever, baby."
For the first time in some while, she lifted her head and gave him a strange look as she arched an eyebrow at him in what seemed, to him, to be clear annoyance.
"What?" he snorted, licking his lips teasingly as his eyes flickered with laughter.
"I don't like that one," she said simply.
Booth shot her a puzzled look for a few seconds then took a breath and smirked. "Oh," he said. "You want me to pick a different term of endearment off the menu, huh?"
She narrowed her eyes at him and then repeated, "I don't like that one."
"Hmmmm," he said. "Sweetheart?"
"Better," she said. "If you feel you must...I suppose."
Booth held the tip of his tongue between his lips for a moment as he looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "I was gonna go with darling, but I'm thinking that's a no-go, too," he chuckled when he saw, as he expected, a flash of blue brighten her already pale eyes.
"Do not call me 'Bones'," she'd snapped at him as the young Asian FBI tech approached them.
He couldn't help but smirk at how he'd kept calling her Bones despite her protests. A year later, he'd finally been forced to play his federal trump card and have Homeland Security pull her aside after clearing customs at Dulles on her way back from Guatemala.
He walked into the room and felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up the second his eyes met hers.
"What are you doing here?" she asked him, her voice tense with something more than annoyance.
"FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, Major Crime Investigation, D.C.," he said to the Homeland Security officer. "Bones identifies bodies for us."
"Don't call me Bones," she said. "And I do more than identify."
It was only by way of some kind of major miracle, Booth remembered, that he'd managed to keep her in the Tahoe and talking to him long enough to coax her back into working with him. He nibbled the inside of his lip and bit back at smile at the sudden realization as to the real reason she'd bolted at the end of the Gemma Arrington case and had shut him out, ignoring every call, text and email he'd sent her way over the next year. It wasn't that she didn't like him, he now understood. It was that she loved him, and she didn't think she was ready to work by his side each day, in close proximity to him, at that point given how strong her attachment and feelings for him were..
Booth wondered if the real reason she'd protested the nickname he'd given her was that, somewhere deep down, it wasn't what she really wanted to hear him call her. Rolling the thought over in his head a few times, after a minute, satisfied that he was right, he shot her another sly grin and said, "How about...well...hmmm...possibly..." He hesitated before he continued. "Lass?" His brown eyes flickered with barely-suppressed laughter. "Mmmm?"
"If it's important to you," she said, as she tried to keep her face devoid of emotion.
"You're such a little liar," he whispered into her soft, gently tangled hair. "You love it when I call you 'lass,' don't you? You always have."
"I never said that," she said, her voice wavering a bit as she answered.
"You don't need to," he snickered. "I've known for a hundred fifty years that you like it when I call you lass." He grinned. "You're just a little outta practice. But we'll take care of that, huh?"
She turned her head and stared up at him for a minute, then asked, "What'd you have in mind?"
Booth brought his hand up and stroked his chin. "Hmmm," he said teasingly. "I don't know. Maybe a nap, then...hmmm...maybe we can bake an apple pie...and...wait―did you have something else in mind, lass?"
"No," she said quickly. "If you want to help me in the kitchen later, since you are gonna have to help me disinfect the table anyway, I'm sure I could manage to conjure up some type of confection for your sweet tooth. A pie...if you like. Or, maybe a tart, if you'd prefer it."
"Pie," he blurted out. "As much as I used to like a tart from time to time in my younger days, I think I've refined my tastes over the years. So, I'll go with the pie. A nice apple pie can be tart enough if done right. But..." He rolled onto his side. "Right now, I have another confection in mind, mmm?"
Her eyes widened a bit as she took his meaning. "Seriously?"
Booth arched an eyebrow. "Hmmm...lemme think about it." After a half-beat of silence, he said, "Yep, definitely." And with that, he rolled her over onto her back with a room-filling laugh.
~The End~
A/N2- And, there you have it ladies and gents. ::pause:: Egad! But that was a long one. So, now that #7 of the nine-part cycle is in the can, we have #8 well on the horizon. Angel(us) is now Booth...and knows it...and plans to lock Bren down. All seems well for our beloved dynamic duo...right? Well, we are proud to report #8 of the cycle "A Would-be Reunion" is already written in it's entirety. #Dharmasera just needs to edit it, so it should be posting soon. By way of preview, the story is firmly rooted in Bones Season 4 (albeit AU chronology to fit our world). There will be less flashbacks (for better or worse although we won't say that we won't sneak one or two short ones in their on you all) and more character interactions. Wondering who will be back? Why, yes...I think that not only are Angela, Max, and Spike (to name a few) in the on-deck circle, but a few more Angel-verse and Bones-verse characters will be making an appearance or two. Sound interesting? Then, please, as ever, let us know...not only what you think of future plans, but also what you thought of how we've finally merged the two worlds. Once again, we can't express how much we appreciate everyone's support in this epic storyline. Thanks for reading and see you in the funny papers!