Sorry guys, but this updating every day is totally over thanks to school and exams. If you want, you can always secretly set my high school on fire during the night? ;) Not that that's something I've ever, EVER wished would happen, of course.
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CHAPTER 9
And then the doors opened with a clink.
It was the ground floor, not the garage.
"So it's finally happened!"
A grinning Charlie was standing outside, and the stupid, ridiculous, unfair, untrue comment felt like a blow to the stomach.
"No it hasn't. Shut up, Charlie. I swear, if you sprout any more of this bullshit in my office again I'll fire you and then find you and punch you in the face until I feel better." Booth let me go and walked past his assistant with a look of hatred, so intense, Charlie ran inside the elevator.
"I'm sorry." The frightened man whispered as he passed me. Then he was gone, and so was my momentary peace.
"Booth… I think we should just leave separately. I'm sorry." I was too tired not to beg him to hug me again, or simply break down and cry like a child. I almost said that I couldn't stand it if he looked at me for another second, but that was breaking our promise.
He seemed torn between yelling 'No!' and doing as I said. A sigh escaped my lips, and this apparently decided him.
"Bones, come." He roughly grabbed my hand and crossed the lobby full of light and people and things happening.
As we stepped outside, the fresh morning air let me think a little more clearly, but then he snaked an arm around my waist and pushed me to his body again.
"Stop it, Booth." I feebly shoved at him, and he didn't budge.
"You need this. I don't know what's happened and you don't have to tell me, Bones, I understand that… but you need comfort and… familiar things, and I can be your familiar thing while we wait for that idiot to get to his office and the elevator to get back to us… and besides, I sort of need comfort too, even though when you add my need and your need the result isn't more need but a big red sign saying 'STOP', but I will ignore it for a few moments because your need is more important. And I will pretend the big red sign says 'TEN SECONDS LEFT' instead, so I can hold you for another ten seconds. Just… ten more seconds of this, please. For both of us yet not we, for each individual instead of the whole. You and me, not us."
It was one of the longest speeches he'd ever said to me. Not the longest or the most eloquent, but it rang with something unsaid which made me shiver, and him crush me closer.
"No, Booth." My tone was colder than I'd meant. Probably because, to avoid emotion fuelling my voice, I'd left it blank and clear. Unfeeling.
So he let me go, and I'd never forget the expression on his face.
"It doesn't work like that. Ten seconds is too much." I explained, willing him to understand. "Five, four, three… even one is too much. I'm sorry, but I have to get to the lab and you shouldn't come. I'll call you and tell you my findings."
He looked at me like I'd just stabbed him. He didn't even say anything, just stared, hurt and breathless and worried.
"We decided, okay? We chose this, and in order for this to happen you need to give me space and back off a little, or it's not going to happen at all… and then… where would we be, Booth? What would happen if this didn't happen!"
For the first time he didn't understand what I was saying. He didn't understand that I was asking because I wanted him to tell me. He didn't see that I actually wanted to know what would happen, because what would happen?
"Okay. I'm sorry."
His voice was flat and blank, and when he wordlessly took my hand and walked me down the steps and around a corner where no one would see us, I didn't say anything. When he stepped toward me and grabbed my hair and pulled it as he crushed his lips into mine, I let him. When he put his arms lower and pulled me up in the air so my feet didn't touch the ground, I let him. When our desperate bodies, craving contact and touch and arms and hands and God he was everywhere I wanted him, became more excited than we could afford, I forgot how to think. One of my legs wound around him and I felt his reaction to this move against my thighs. It lasted exactly ten seconds.
It was his turn to pull away.
"Bones, I'm s-"
"Don't. Just go. Please, go!"
He gave me a last, swift kiss and left me stunned. I waited a few moments before following him back to the J. Edgar Hoover building, trying to remember how to breathe and think at the same time.
How long would it take him to take the elevator downstairs? Just in case I'd better sit down on these steps and try not to count the times he'd kissed me during the last three days. We weren't doing very well on following our decisions through, were we? Was one night out of control too much to ask? My mind, still drunk from Booth, celebrated the idea. One night and then it would all be over…? But who was I kidding. One night would only make things worse. It would only make me want more nights, and it would make him realise… he'd discover my newfound secret. I'd probably shout it out during climax… and what would he answer? 'I'm sorry'? Booth disliked giving in to his urges, he'd made that spectacularly clear, and yet he gave in too often, making me incapable of thinking straight. The fact that he didn't know I… loved him didn't absolve his actions. Couldn't he control himself, dammit? Couldn't I?
"I sort of need comfort too, even though when you add my need and your need the result isn't more need but a big red sign saying 'STOP'"
A big red sign. It shouldn't be a sign. It should be a wall, because signs are too easy to ignore.
In an effort to rid myself of thoughts, I stood up and left my emotions on the floor. As I walked away I prayed that they didn't follow me, or at least that my work proved a good enough hiding place.
I never noticed that, at the top of the steps, he'd stopped to look at me for ten seconds before walking away.
*
"Bren, please tell me what happened. Why isn't Booth here?"
"I told you we've had problems. I can't work if he's here."
Angela sighed.
"I really wish you'd start acting like I'm you friend and tell me what's bothering you. When you're ready, I'm in my office. I already did Jeanie's facial reconstruction, so I'm relatively free."
As my friend left I couldn't help but whisper: "I thought they wouldn't find me, but they have."
"What? Who's found you?"
"Nothing. Just a silly… never mind."
She didn't look very happy as she strode away, but I decided I could talk to her later, although that would mean figuring out a way to dodge her questions for an hour.
The thought of one night wouldn't leave me alone. One night as a solution to all this built up energy… if it was unleashed for one night, would we be able to move on?
Sure, move on as healthily and professionally as we were doing now, right?
Ridiculous.
But the thought just wouldn't go away.
I bent back to examine Jeanie's remains and finally Booth left my head alone. Jeanie was there, with her smile Angela had drawn so well, and her athletic build I could see even though muscle was gone by now. She'd loved swimming as a teenager but had to stop around her twenties, probably because her university took up too much time. That must mean she took her studies seriously. They had paid off, because she'd been a very good doctor, or so her co-workers had said.
I squinted at the head wound. It was clean by now, yet still made it very difficult to identify the exact wooden object that had struck her. Possibly bat shaped... but smaller? And not a round cirumference, it seemed spherical but irregular, with more force on the left side than the right, although it wasn't a hammer or any similar object...
The only other anomaly we'd found a week ago had been a blood sample on the clothes that didn't belong to her. It was a young girl who Jeannie Whitmore had treated for a broken wrist, Anne something. Which meant dead end, because the young girl had remembered staining the doctor's pants when Booth had called her.
I held up the cranium, thinking.
Did Jeanie hold a clue within her bones? Could she save a life if I figured out how hers had ended?
We would need something else to go on, or the person Margaret Stoker loved would die.
*
Not very far from where I stood, a woman spoke on a payphone, clutching the receiver so tightly her knuckles looked white.
"Please…"
"If you don't get them to believe you, I'll kill her. You know I will."
"Please, give me a few days…"
"They'll find out soon. You must lie until you can't remember who you are. You must feel what you say until you yourself doubt that it isn't true. Be an actress, honey." There was a dark chuckle. "You were pretty good at it when you told me you loved me for sixteen years, weren't you?"
The woman felt a tear trickle down her cheek and she fought not to sob.
"I promise… I'll do whatever you want… when should I do it? How will I know what they find out?"
But the other person had hung up. And anyway, we'd call her in two hours, because as she slammed the phone down I found a clue… one that would change everything.
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Two days. TWO DAYS.
That is all I'm going to say.
No, I'm not going to ask you to review. I'm above all that petty 'author needing to hear assurance of her work' thing…
REALLY.
;)