Chapter 30: Climax
Bones crept through the silent house, feeling her way carefully in the dark. The toes of her bare feet curled against the cold hardwood floor, but there was no help for it; she hadn't wanted to rummage around for her slippers for fear of waking Booth. She wrapped her robe more tightly about her, collected the laptop from the breakfast bar, and moved into the living area where she settled herself on the couch, the throw blanket over her lap against the early morning chill.
She chided herself for sacrificing sleep for a tale, especially considering that, not only the denouement of Booth's tale, but all the incidents leading up to it were very well known to her. But, that was generally the way of stories: the fan of detective novels is certain the crime will be solved in the end, the lover of romance trusts the heroine and her hero will find true happiness, and the reader of lurid graphic novels expects good to triumph over evil every time. It is not the destination in itself that grips and then compels the imagination, but the intricate, twisting pathway to it.
Bones found her place along the pathway, and continued her journey.
A Tale of Twin Booths, cont'd
It took nearly the full forty days for Fate to prove the poet Robert Burns was right: the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry. By Easter, Vic and Tim were far too concerned with matters of literal life and death to worry about the symbolic. Sniper-turned-vigilante Jacob Brodsky was on a killing spree, and the Booths' determination to bring him to justice had put them both, and everyone they cared about, in the shooter's crosshairs.
In the end, it was the most inoffensive young man in the world, Vincent Nigel-Murray, who bore the cost of the Brodsky manhunt. The bullet that neatly severed his aorta had been meant to take out Vic, the sniper's sworn enemy, but in an irony of tragic proportions, it pierced the gentle heart of a socially-awkward British squintern who would have flinched at hurting a fly. Only that morning, Vincent had been giddy as a child, playing with his replica T-Rex bones and engaging in human versus dinosaur arm-wrestling with Hodgins. That innocent happiness made the horrendous loss all the more devastating, insupportable, surreal. So much sweetness and promise gone, snatched away in a second… It defied belief.
Vic lay in his bed that night, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Beyond the closed door to his room, the springs of his couch creaked at regular intervals: Brennan tossing and turning, likely hearing endlessly repeated, as he did, the loud crack of the skylight shattering, and the patter of the glass shards landing all around them like hail. With Brodsky still at large and unappeased, Vic had insisted that Tim escort Jay back to the condo and keep watch over her there, while Brennan was to come home with him. Out of consideration for him, knowing he needed to be at his best in the morning to face Brodsky, Brennan had chosen to leave him the bed and sack out in the living room, but she need not have sacrificed herself. Sleep was having nothing to do with him.
He was so very angry: angry at that self-righteous bastard Brodsky, who thought he had the right to mete out summary justice, angry at his so-called merciful God, who could allow an unsuspecting by-stander to die, angry at himself, for not having prevented it. What had possessed him to hand the phone to Nigel-Murray, the very phone that Brodsky had left for him at the graveyard? He ought to have realized the danger it represented. And why, in the name of all that was holy, hadn't he shot Brodsky dead when he'd had the chance? Why hadn't he hunted the man down like the rabid dog he was? If he had brought himself to take that life, Nigel-Murray would still be spouting his non-stop trivia and looking forward to presenting his analysis of the bio-mechanics of T-Rex' stubby forearms.
Suddenly, his bedroom door swung inward. He reached for his gun, but it was only Brennan, her palms raised in surrender. "What's the matter?" he asked, although he knew the answer. "Can't sleep?" He sat up, and swung himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
She dropped down beside him, face drawn, dark circles under her eyes. "I'm just… so…" She groped for the right word. "… angry!"
"I know. Me, too."
She didn't appear to have heard him. "He was my favorite intern! Everybody knew that! And, I did nothing! He died begging me not to make him leave. And, I couldn't! I failed him. What's the use of being a genius and the leading forensic anthropologist in the world when you're helpless to save the people you care about?"
"Don't beat yourself up, Brennan: you're not to blame. I'm the one. You said it yourself: I have his blood on my hands."
"What? No! You know I meant that literally. No one blames you, least of all me. You did everything you could."
"So, who's to blame, then? God? The universe? The U. S. Army who turned Brodsky into a killer, and left him alone to deal with the guilt?"
Brennan sighed wearily, and sagged against him. "Anger is so much easier than grief."
"Yes," Vic agreed. "Yes, it is."
She turned her haggard face up to his. "Hold me?" she said, in a small voice.
"That's what I'm here for." He wrapped his arm around her, and fell backward onto the bed, clasping her to him. She buried her face against his shoulder, and cried, not noisy, tempestuous tears but a number of racking, near-soundless sobs, and then she was still. He thought, after a time, she'd dozed off, and he closed his eyes as well.
He awoke minutes or hours later to the feel of her hand drawing a lazy circle on his chest, skimming slowly down over his ribs, over the band of his boxer shorts, over his hip. He snatched it up, and drew it quickly back over his waist. "Brennan!" he whispered, in case she was moving in her sleep. "What are you doing?"
She drew her head off his shoulder, and gazed up at him, awake but perplexed. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Yeah, but…" She tried to pull her hand out of his grip. "Stop it!"
"I don't understand the problem. You want me."
He could hardly deny the physical evidence. "Of course I want you! That's not the issue."
She crossed a leg over his, and began to caress his shins with the top of her foot. "We're both of us unattached, consenting adults… Is it that you're still mad?"
"No, I haven't been mad for some time, but that's gonna change mighty quick if you don't cut that out!" He rolled to his side, and tried to put some space between them, but she hooked her leg behind his knee and kept him close.
"Listen to me, Vic: right now, tonight, you and I are alive. This may be all the time we ever have. Nobody's guaranteed a tomorrow, or even another minute. I don't want to have any regrets. This is what I want, Vic, what we both want. Are you really going to turn me away?"
He released her hand, and raised his own to smooth the hair off her face and back over her ear. There she was, the girl he'd fallen in love with, her chin tipped up defiantly, a challenge in her brilliant eyes. After so many years spent waiting for just this moment, he couldn't believe he was actually going to refuse her. "I don't want to have sex with you, Brennan."
She fisted her two hands in the cotton of his t-shirt, and yanked him closer. "That's a lie," she growled.
Vic looked into that fierce visage, and thought about what he'd said. "Right, as usual. I left out an important word. I should have said: I don't want to just have sex with you."
That gave her pause, but not for long. "You want something more, is that it? Well, spell it out for me, then. What's it going to take, Vic? What's the deal?"
And so, all unexpected, the moment was upon him, his own personal Rubicon. It was the last throw of the dice, the gamble of a lifetime. "You want to know what the deal is, Brennan? Well, here it is. Here's what I want: your body — God, yes! — and your whole heart with it. I want tonight and tomorrow, and the next ten, twenty, thirty years. I want full commitment, freely given, or nothing at all. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."
In the low light, he might easily have been wrong, but he could have sworn he saw a hint of a smile playing on her lips. "Those are my only choices?"
"Those are your only choices," he said, hoarsely.
She tugged him so close they were practically nose to nose. There was, now, no mistaking her small, satisfied smile. "Then," she murmured, "I'll take the deal."
Vic was on the point of exclaiming "What? Whoa! Really?," but she closed the distance between them and stopped his mouth with hers. She released his mangled t-shirt, and threaded her arms over his shoulders, round his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair. She kissed him with single-minded fervor, hungrily, open-mouthed, as if she'd devour him if she could. Vic had no time to think, to plan, to bring to bear all his considerable technique. All the sexual fantasies he'd ever woven around this woman were chased from his mind: there was no cherishing her, taking care of her, seeing to her satisfaction, multiple times if possible, before his own. She was having none of that. No, she wanted everything he had, and she wanted it now. She was not gentle with him, and didn't ask for tenderness in turn. She was locking holds, and rolling him over, pinning him down, raking fingers down his back, nipping his ear. She branded him with love bites, marred his skin with scratches, and gripped him so tightly as to bruise, and he did not care. He loved her strength, her passion, her energy; she was a force of nature, demanding, implacable, a creature of fevered flesh, burning up, burning him with her, melting him so they ran together, one substance flowing, blistering hot, steaming, expanding, flame rising, rising higher, reaching incredible heights, until, flash point achieved, they exploded together into blinding smithereens skyrocketing high into the stratosphere and only very gradually arcing and falling like shooting stars back down.
When he once again knew who and where he was, Vic was horrified to find himself sprawled bonelessly over Brennan, in all likelihood crushing the breath out of her. He moved to lift his weight off, but she hooked a leg over his thigh, refusing to relinquish him, so he wrapped her in his arms, and rolled over so they were lying side by side. She tucked her head under his chin, and snuggled closer, her hands flat against his upper back. He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head, and closed his eyes, more at peace than he'd been in his entire life.
In the moment before sleep overtook him again, Brennan's shoulders started quaking, and Vic could just make out the small, choking noises she tried to muffle against his chest. He felt, too, the splash of a warm tear on his skin. Dear God, had he been too rough? He tried to draw back, to disentangle himself from her embrace, but she only clung more tightly, her whole torso shaking now, her breath catching in great gulps. "Temperance," he said, in a panic. "Look at me, please! Did I hurt you?"
She only rubbed her forehead "no" against his breastbone and turned her face into his shoulder, still racked with spasms.
"Temperance, you're killing me, here. Tell me what's the matter!"
She quieted for a second, and just when he thought she'd mastered herself, she was off again, gasping and… chortling. She was laughing? He raised his hands to her shoulders, and pried her away from him. She looked up at him sheepishly, her eyes streaming with tears, her lips pressed tightly together in an effort to stifle her hilarity. "I'm sorry," she said, in a voice that wobbled with suppressed laughter. "It's just… play-doh!" she managed before breaking out in a whoop.
"Play-doh?" Vic repeated blankly. Her mind could not have been literally blown, could it? That would be a terrible waste. "Play-doh, the clay kids play with?"
She nodded, her lower lip firmly caught between her teeth to keep the laugher at bay. "I was just thinking how we'd actually done it, you and me: found our missing halves, completed each other. We re-created Plato's original human: four arms, four legs, two faces. And, then I remembered…"
He suddenly understood. "The conversation about soul mates! I pretended to misunderstand you. Talk about delayed reaction! You barely got the joke at the time."
"I know. I'm sorry." She wiped the happy tears away with her fingers. "Once I started, I just couldn't seem to stop."
It was while he waited for her chuckling to die away, that he realized what she'd said. "So… I'm your missing half, your soul mate? Seriously?"
She fixed her frank, open gaze on him. "Seriously."
That look, that word gave him the courage he needed to share a truth that touched his heart so nearly. "Temperance, I want to tell you something, and it might seem like I'm kidding, but, just so you know: I'm not."
Her eyes still locked on his, she nodded. "Tell me."
He laid his palm softly against her jaw, and ran his thumb along her lower lip. "Tonight, what happened here, between you and me? That was… ah… my first time."
Her brows drew down in confusion. "I don't understand. You've had lots of sex partners…"
"Sex partners, yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about. That was my first time… making love."
"Oh!" One elongated syllable that spoke of surprise, wonder and dawning delight. "I am glad! It was for me, too. All these years, I've never felt anything like it: so selfless, so joyous, so free."
"I didn't know where I ended, and you began."
"Yes! Yes, that's it, exactly."
He touched his forehead to hers, and smiled into her eyes. "It's going to take a while getting used to: you and me, together. It seems too good to believe, like a dream come true, but it's not a dream, is it? I really did it. I finally caught you."
She shook her head in gentle remonstrance. "No, Vic, you've got that wrong. You didn't catch me."
"But, you said…"
She placed a finger across his lips. "You numbskull," she said in the most loving way imaginable. "We caught each other."