throw open your windows

ff: Negative Silhouettes, 5/5 (Bones)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:54:06 GMT

Original blah de blah in Part One.

Brennan didn’t regret telling Angela about her sexual attraction to Booth, but still, she felt… something. She would catch Angela watching her, or maybe she would look up and Angela would be smiling and for some reason it felt like betrayal.

Which didn’t make sense because Angela was, after all, her best friend.

Besides which, Angela had been hounding Brennan from the first moment Booth had shown up at the Jeffersonian, years ago. And although Brennan never openly acknowledged her agreement about Booth being ‘hot,’ Angela obviously knew that Brennan was attracted to Booth.

So Brennan hadn’t shared any new information. Nothing had changed.

But when Booth ran up the steps to the platform that morning in two quick strides she felt Angela look at her and she turned away, back to the misshapen skull on her table and swallowed the deep breath she wanted to take.

“Bones, can we talk in your office?”

She looked up from the table and Angela was standing across from her. She could feel Booth vibrating with energy from behind her. Angela was smirking when she leaned forward and whispered, “I’ve got some spare mistletoe if you want to…”

Her heart jumped heavily and she wondered, for a moment, if Angela knew about the kiss from last Christmas. But Brennan would know if Angela knew, so she simply glared back and stripped off her gloves. She walked purposefully past Booth, down the stairs, and around the corner. She heard him follow.

“Hey, what’s up?” Booth matched her stride, “You find anything?”

“Nothing indicating cause of death,” she said automatically, pushing into her office and waiting for him to enter. “What did you need to speak to me about?”

She crossed her arms.

He grinned, “It’s nothing important, really, it’s just…” he put his hand on the back of his neck, “Parker really wants you to help pick out a tree, with us. On Friday night.”

Brennan blinked, “Oh,” she said, caught off guard.

“I mean,” Booth chuckled, “It’s fine if you, you know, if you can’t or, uh, if you don’t want to or something, but Parker wanted me to ask.”

She shook her head back and forth, “I’m not doing anything on Friday.”

He smiled and she thought about last Christmas, again, and about kissing him. She thought about how Caroline Julian had unwittingly given her an excuse to try an experiment she’d been wondering about for a long time.

She hadn’t foreseen the outcome that kissing Booth once would only make her anxious to kiss him again. She pushed away the thought, and tried very hard not to look at his mouth.

“So you’re in?” he stepped over to her and his smile was growing; his exuberance coaxed a smile from her in return.

“Yes.” They stared at each other, still smiling.

There was a swift knock and Cam poked her head around the door, “Booth, Dr. Brennan, I think you’re going to want to come look at this.”

Booth smiled and Brennan leaned forward. She was a moth, or not, but it felt like something and she couldn’t be sure what. His eyes crinkled and his face was familiar. She smiled, too, but everything was different.

Or maybe it was just his smile. “Are you laughing at my joke?” she asked, feeling happy and something like relief. It was his smile.

“Course not Bones, I’m laughing at you.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” she said, and it felt like flirting. She was being serious but instead of frowning at him, she kept smiling. And she was leaning further across the granite countertop and it was new but it was like every other night they’d spent together, too. She couldn’t process that.

He shook his head at her and dropped the crust of pizza he was holding.

“You wanna watch a movie or something?” he asked, pushing up from his seat and gathering the dirty plates and empty bottles.

She checked her watch, standing too and following him into his kitchen.

“It’s getting late,” she said, hesitantly. It was after midnight.

She watched his back, the tension and stretch of his shoulders and she swallowed. His hair was getting longer and he put the dishes away with a clatter. She looked up.

“So,” he asked, drawing out the vowel sound and leaning toward her, hands in his pockets, “What do you think?”

The apartment smelled like oregano and cheese and the slightly sweet hint of marinara sauce. She thought about the air temperature outside, the wind, and the cool silence of her apartment waiting for her.

“I get to choose the movie,” she told him.

“Not a chance.” He paused, grinning, “Do you even know any movies?” and she knew he was goading her so she rolled her eyes.

His movie collection was not very extensive, but there was a list, somewhere, probably in Booth’s head, of movies that Brennan had to see. ‘Classics,’ he’d told her, shaking his head in dismay, at least a year ago, if not longer.

So he pulled out Raging Bull, and she wrinkled her nose “Too violent,” and she smoothed her hands across a throw pillow, resting it on her lap. About ten movies later, Booth threw his hands in the air, dropped onto the couch and turned the TV on to a sports station.

“Hey, I was having fun!” she argued, lifting the throw pillow by its corner and half-heartedly thumping him with it.

He was laying across the cushions, and he rested his cheek against her bicep. His face was warm and so was the room. “I don’t know, Bones,” he yawned. “You pick one. I don’t think you’re gonna find a movie without blood in it, except for Star Wars, but I’m sure a movie like that would just break too many of your science rules,” he wiggled his fingers in the air, “for you to want to watch it.”

She frowned. “They’re not my rules. And I remember enjoying the imagination of the films when I was younger. You know that science fiction acts as a useful tool in story telling by which--”

Booth popped up, “You’ve seen Star Wars?”

Brennan shrugged, “Much of my popular culture intake was highly influenced by my father and brother.”

Booth stared at her, nodding. Brennan wondered when it became normal to find reasons not to leave. Something shifted from drinks after work, to staying longer at the bar, to going to someone’s apartment after the bar, to, apparently, watching a movie when really, everything was pointing her to go home.

But she didn’t.

Booth pushed open the door to her office and stepped inside, “Let’s go,” he said, and though his face was serious his eyes were bright.

“What?” she asked, puzzled, and stood. “What’s going on? Is there a case?”

“Nope,” he shrugged, “no case.”

She frowned. “It’s a Wednesday morning.”

“Yes,” he nodded, and began to pull her belongings from the coat rack by her door.

“Booth,” she walked over to him and crossed her arms, “Are you feeling all right?”

He grinned at her, “I’m feeling great, Bones. Did you know it snowed this morning?”

She watched him as if he were deranged.

He reached forward and wrapped her scarf around her neck and then pulled her hat on her head, down over her ears, covering her eyes in the process. “Where are we going?” she asked the darkness.

“We,” his hands were suddenly against her neck, freeing her hair from beneath the scarf, and she felt startled by his closeness, her breath catching in her throat, and she flushed even as the small hairs on her neck stood on end, “we are going to do something, something fun, and something seasonal.” His voice was low and light, like he was telling her a secret.

“Booth,” she chuckled, and then he folded up the hat so she could see. “Are you going to take me ice-skating again?” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Nope,” he tossed her coat at her, “And it’s a surprise, all right, so stop it with the questions.”

“But it’s a Wednesday—“

“Ah,” he stepped into her space and his fingers took the edges of her jacket, pulling her close to him, “no questions. And I promise,” his voice dropped and her blood chugged from her heart to the tips of her fingers and she felt her ears burn, and her cheeks blush, “I’ll have you back at a decent time. It’s called playing hooky, Bones.” He winked at her and grinned, and finished buttoning up her coat.

Her insides felt jumpy and loose. The world spun open in front of them and she felt care-free and it was only with Booth, because of him, and she smiled, slightly, unwilling to admit that she would be happy to avoid her paperwork for an hour.

He weaved his fingers between hers and held their joint hands up between them, “Ready?” he asked, and her grin pulled wider. She nodded, and then followed after him, barely stifling laughter as they hurried from the lab, to the front exit instead of the parking garage, and out to the street where the air was crisp and sharp in her nose.

“What are we doing?” she asked him finally, after too much silence and a feeling like suspense pounding behind her ribs.

“C’mon, Bones,” he pulled her along, “It snowed okay? And we have to make full use of it before it gets all dirty and gross, you know, because its city snow.”

He stopped and she stopped alongside him, her nose tingling from the cold. “Ready?” he asked again and she felt carbonated, shaken, and unsteady, and before she could respond he had tugged her to the ground.

“Booth!” she was almost angry, or would have been if it weren’t for the surprise of his actions, and instead of yelling at him (for pulling her into the snow alongside a walkway behind the Jeffersonian), she started laughing.

“Okay,” he explained, as if this were totally normal, and sprawled out spread eagle alongside her.

“Booth, it’s freezing,” she started to sit up but he threw his arm across her middle to stop her, so she slumped back, curious to see what he was going to do.

“Alright, Bones, spread your arms out like this.” She glanced over at him.

It really was cold.

“Now,” he looked over at her, angling his head, “now I want you to slide your arms up and down and slide your legs apart and together,” he did a slow demonstration, “apart and together,” he said again.

Brennan felt something like affection, a warm prickle at the base of her spine that curled and swelled and turned into a smile, “Are you teaching me how to make a snow angel?”

Booth grinned, but tried to hold it back, and started snow-angel-ing at a more regularly-paced interval. Brennan copied his movements. After all, she was already lying in the snow.

When he turned away to stare up at the sky, she did too. It was all air above them, grayness and clouds, and the few black skeletal branches poking in at the edges of her vision from the empty trees standing yards away.

She let her arms and legs slide through the snow, and felt her body imprinting on the ground and the fluffy white powder piling up along the edges of her movements.

The back of her head was cold, despite her hat, and so were the tips of her fingers and her nose. She flipped one hand over and glanced down. Booth’s head was about level with her shoulders, and he had his eyes closed. Perfect. She made an upward motion, and then another downward motion, and with just the right amount of subtlety, she pushed a pile of snow on top of his head, leaning, and pressed it into his scalp with her palm.

Booth’s body stilled, and Brennan felt her heart start to pound. She sat up a little, nervous laughter humming against the back of her throat, and started to push backwards along her behind.

She was smiling, and felt a rush of something like adrenalin, and then Booth opened his eyes and sat up and shook the snow off his head. He adjusted his gloves, pulling them down a little, and said, calmly, “You know what this means, don’t you?”

She could hardly suppress her amusement, but tried to remain quiet even as she hurriedly pushed herself into a standing position, her body thrumming with nervous energy, when suddenly and too quickly Booth turned and launched himself at her.

She squealed, involuntarily, and then there was snow down the back of her neck and against her cheeks and he was lying half next to her and half underneath her and she was cold but her insides were heated and jittery. “Booth,” was all she could think to say through her laughter, and he was staring at her and smiling stupidly, but so was she.

::::

VII.

“And the peanut butter,” he said, licking the edge of his thumb and then picking up the two crackers smothered in peanut butter and slowing arcing them toward one another, “is the glue,” he attached the two crackers slowly, letting some peanut butter ooze out along the edge, “that holds the two crackers,” he looked up into her eyes, with a wide smile, “together.”

Brennan rested her chin in her hand and leaned slightly more forward over Booth’s small counter top. She wrinkled her forehead and pressed her lips together in confusion.

“Booth,” she tried, shaking her head slowly side to side, “Booth, I don’t think I get it.”

“C’mon Bones, I just, you know,” he mimicked putting the crackers together with his hands, clapping his palms together for emphasis.

She stared at him harder. He grinned back at her, playfully, like he was trying to convince her of something.

“Well, I understand that the peanut butter is holding the crackers together, but—“

“See!” his grin turned genuine, “See, that’s what I’m talking about.” He took a large bite of the cracker sandwich and crumbs spilled down his shirt.

“No, Booth, what I mean is: I understand that the peanut butter is literally holding together two crackers, but I’m afraid I just don’t understand the analogy you are trying to make.”

Booth sat down, heavily, across from her and roughly swept his fingers over the crown of his head, back and forth.

“Everything’s held together by something, right Bones?” he stared at her, carefully, and she felt her face grow warm.

The old taste of beer was sour on her tongue and she wanted another or a glass of water, some other taste to drown out the familiar stagnation there. Something new.

She sighed, “Sure. Though I’m still not certain what you’re talking about.”

He looked out the window and nodded, his lips in a thin line, “Right.”

Except, she did know what he was talking about. Or, she thought she did. And it all had to do with the way he’d been looking at her, his touch, his eyes, and it was the Saturday before Christmas and they got together for no reason other than they wanted to. And they were partners, of course, and friends.

But she wasn’t sure what it all meant. Just standing near him was enough to make her feel aware of her body and things like his touch and his presence had more of an effect on her, on her respiration and heart rate, and it was strange, really. She wouldn’t call it sexual.

They were partners, but not in a sexual sense. He was someone she trusted and there was more to him and to them than sex.

He was smirking at her, slightly, “What are you thinkin’ about over there?”

She shook her head, startled from her thoughts, “Oh,” she said, caught off guard, and then, because she was used to saying whatever was on her mind, “us.”

His eyebrows lifted, “Us?”

She nodded, felt her blood thicken and warm. He continued to look at her, to wait for her explanation, and her skin prickled.

“We hated each other, once,” she said, and he smiled slightly, and took a sip of his beer. “You’re,” she chewed silently on her tongue for a moment, not sure of how to string her words together, of what to say, of what would be too much or not enough and it was always one or the other. “I think you might know me better than anyone else,” she said, looking down at the table. She pressed her fingertip into some crumbs, let them stick into her skin. She exhaled.

“Even Angela?” he was joking, making it light-hearted, and she was prepared to move past the moment, yet another chance for… something. But then his hand covered hers and the blunt tips of his fingers pressed into her skin and bone until she looked at him, “Bones,” he said and everything stopped.

“Bones you are, well, you are the person who knows me best.”

His admission came easily, gently, but it felt like a surprise.

She nodded and kept her face clear, her respirations even, but the air was missing from the room.

She smiled, slowly, and let her chin lower again to rest in the palm of her hand. Her skin felt sensitive, even to her own touch, and everything was so clear.

“Should we exchange gifts now?” she asked slowly, and watched the reflection of Booth’s twinkling Christmas lights dance against the kitchen appliances.

He narrowed his eyes at her, slightly, and she wondered what he was thinking, what he was thinking that she was thinking really, and wasn’t that always the game? But then he stood, and tilted his head toward the other room and she followed.

They stood by the mantle, next to the tree and he reached for a flat box wrapped in shiny green paper.

She watched him carefully, letting him hand her the gift. But just before he placed it in her hands, he pulled it back slightly and smiled.

“What?” She turned her head, raised her shoulder, raised an eyebrow, quirked her lips, felt curiosity pinch and pull at her fingertips.

He released a slow breath, his lips rumbling, “Nothing, Bones, it’s just,” he tapped his fingers along the top of the box, “remember that first Christmas?”

She looked up at him, and tilted her head to the other side, a slight smirk angling her lips, “You mean when you were high the entire time?”

Booth rolled his eyes, “No, I mean when you were all, ‘gifts are meaningless and society forces us to blah blah blah’” he trailed off as she stared at him, and her eyebrows lifted. He had stopped speaking but was trying to convey something, it seemed, with the force of his gaze.

“That is a very poorly rendered impersonation of me, Booth.”

He smiled even as he continued to stare at her. The only lights in his living room came from the tree in front of them, and they twinkled and blinked, shifting the shadows across his jaw.

He chuckled then, and extended the box toward her, “You first.”

Brennan felt something like excitement tiptoe up her spine. She plucked delicately at the taped edges and shook her head even as she split the wrapping with a finger nail and the whole sheet came off, creased and geometric, and larger than expected. “Did you pay for someone to wrap your gift?” she looked up momentarily, her hand resting on the lid of the stiff cardboard box.

He had his hands behind his back and she let the paper drift to the floor. “I’m a man of many talents, Bones.”

“It’s a waste of money.”

He rolled his eyes, “Angela did it for me.”

She let her gaze drop, and she gently pulled the top from the bottom, and used a finger to unfold the tissue paper.

A glossy image greeted her, clearly digitally enhanced (also probably by Angela), and it was beautiful.

In her office they were standing in a line, candid. Angela was laughing, eyes squeezed shut and open-mouthed, her hand on Cam’s shoulder whose eyes were wide as she pointed across the image. Her finger was directed at Hodgins, who stood just inside the doorway to Brennan’s office, half of his body covered in a dark gray soot, and his bright blue eyes wide, his palms up as if to claim innocence. In the middle, she was using Booth’s shoulder for leverage, one finger fitting her foot into the heel of her shoes, and she was laughing and he was looking at her. She traced the image with the tip of her finger. Warmth flooded her chest and, she felt quite silly, her eyes began to sting.

“This was Cam’s birthday,” she looked up at him, “in November.” He nodded, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Bones,” he started, but she shook her head, pulling the framed picture from the box and setting the box down on the arm of the chair behind her.

“Who took it?” she asked, not looking up at him but rather reading the quote that spanned the matting beneath the picture. “The Individual is not Alone in the Group.”

“Parker, uh, you know, Angela gave him that disposable camera when I was in the hospital and he’s been on this photography kick ever since.”

She glanced over the top of the frame, and he was watching her, almost nervously.

She dropped her gaze back down and drew a line beneath the quotation with her fingertip, edging her teeth along her bottom lip, “This is Claude Levi-Strauss.” She glanced back up at him, and her throat was tight, making her voice husky. “I love it, Booth.”

His shoulders seemed to loosen, and the lines around his mouth curved up into a grin. She could feel the tears begin to sheen over her eyes, and make the lights on the Christmas tree streak and twist as she blinked, rapidly.

He stepped into her space and she let her hand fall to her side, her fingertips white against the edges of the frame.

“Hey,” he stepped even closer, and her breath hitched as his palm slid against her cheek. She turned into his hand, his warmth.

“Don’t cry, Bones,” he smiled but his eyes were serious, and a stray tear wobbled from the ledge of her eyelid, streaking hotly down her cheek. She sniffed.

“I think,” her voice cracked, “I’m sorry,” she shook her head, and met his eyes. His fingers were tangled in her hair, curving along the back of her skull. She exhaled, “I think my emotions are closer to the surface,” she swallowed hard, and tried to ignore the erratic beating of her heart, the matching rush of her blood, how close he was standing, “during the holidays.”

He nodded, slowly. “It wasn’t supposed to make you cry,” He said slowly, “it’s a gift.” She snorted, tears still wet against her lashes, but her feeling of contentment in this moment outweighed the memories of her past. A small smile started, and he nodded his head up and down, “There ya go,” and he smiled too and then she felt too much and wrapped her arms around his neck.

He stood perfectly still for a moment, and she felt her heart hammering against her ribcage, against his chest. One of her hands clutched at the fabric of his tee shirt, along the top of his shoulder, “Thank you, Booth.”

And she turned her head, just enough, exhaling a shaky breath and pressing a short kiss to the skin near his ear.

His hands came up to her waist, sliding along her sides and tracing over her ribs. She let her temple rest against his, the air warm around them, until he cleared his throat.

Everything between them was something, now, it seemed, and they could never just stand in a room anymore.

He stepped back and wiggled his eyebrows at her, “Don’t I get a present?”

She smiled indulgently and rolled her eyes. She placed the frame back in its box and walked over to where her bag was slumped in the corner of his couch. She pulled out a long, flat box (unwrapped) with a simple red bow stuck to the top.

He followed her over to the couch and sat down heavily. She handed him the gift, and perched on the edge of the cushion, her knees bumping against his.

“Thanks, Bones,” he smiled at her

She rolled her eyes, “You haven’t even opened it yet.”

He shrugged, “I’m sure I’ll love it.” His words were casual but he looked at her, as if he would love anything she gave him, and she thought she might understand that and it scared her.

She felt her cheeks flush hotly, and she ducked her head, hair swinging in front of her face.

He set the box on his lap and rubbed his palms together, a mischievous grin lighting up his features.

The box top was lifted and tossed unceremoniously aside. He smirked, laughing slightly at the green and red striped socks resting on top. “Nice,” he grinned up at her, and lifted them in the air.

She smiled back, “That’s not it.” Suddenly she felt trapped in her own skin, itchy and nervous and she pressed her fingers against the top of her legs and swallowed against the dryness of her mouth.

He looked back down and at the bottom of the box was a small pile of brightly colored paper, cut into various shapes. He lifted up a red triangle with a white cotton ball on the top, and raised his eyebrows.

She flushed, “I’m not the most talented in terms of artistic ability,” she tried to explain, her words pushing together, “But I wanted to make ornaments, for your tree.” She shook her head, and now felt extremely foolish, “I thought you might appreciate the gesture given your love of tradition and—“

“Bones,” Booth cut her off, two fingers landing against her lips and she stopped mid-sentence and mid-breath, “I love it.”

She kept her gaze down, along the sparse hairs on his wrist, to the bend in his elbow. She chanced looking up at him and he had set aside the box, and shifted closer to her on the couch.

“You know,” he began, his fingers slowly lifting from her mouth, “You think that we’re very different, but we’re not.”

She watched him, feeling suddenly like she was breathing very loudly. His index finger hovered for a moment in the air in front of her, before moving to the side of her head where it landed on top of her ear. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, as he traced the shell of her ear and goose-bumps tingled along her skin.

His finger continued its slow path down around her ear, against the drop of her earlobe, and along her jaw, stopping at her chin where he held his finger and coaxed her to keep her eyes on his.

“Family is the most important thing in the world, you know, wherever it comes from.” She kept her gaze locked on his, and even though his voice was low-pitched and his words were even and slow, she felt her stomach drop and her blood surge. “You think so, too, you just don’t want to admit how much you’ve come to rely on personal attachments.”

She swallowed, “Anthropologically, humans are social creatures who would find survival difficult without—“

“That’s not what I meant, Bones.” His words were soft, but serious.

She found herself without argument. She swallowed. The uneven beating of her heart was suddenly compounded by everything Booth was saying and not saying to her. The room was too silent, all of a sudden. Everything was too silent and too slow but she felt like her body was moving too fast.

“Booth,” she tried, feeling unprepared for what she thought might happen. She dropped her gaze.

Her eyelids slid closed, and she thought, just a moment, to regain my footing, but then his mouth pressed against hers.

She inhaled, sharply, through her nose, and went completely still. The finger against her chin was gone, and reappeared as a warm, palm-shaped heat on her knee.

His mouth were gentle, and he pulled her lower lip between his own. She felt a hum rise from her throat and then her fingers were curling against his shirt, her lips opening beneath his and her heart pounded at the soft velvet feel of his tongue against hers.

When, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

She kept her eyes closed, noting the coolness of the air on her face when Booth wasn’t there. Kissing her. She swallowed and blinked her eyes open.

She realized how tightly her fingers had clutched into his shirt, and she let go. The indentations in the cotton remained.

He was staring at her, his lips pink. His eyes seemed wide and uncertain.

“Bones,” his voice was rough, “I’m sorry, I should’ve said something, first. I should’ve, you know, warned you, that I’ve been wanting to do that.” His throat worked up and down, “For a really long time.”

His eyes fell to her lips and she didn’t know what to say. She felt like everything they could say would be redundant at this point.

“I find you sexually attractive as well,” she said, unsteadily, and her gaze dropped to his mouth and back up to his eyes, and suddenly Booth wasn’t nervous anymore. His thumb stroked a lazy circle on top of her knee and he leaned in, close, closer than usual even, and this time, she felt a delicious shiver, with a purpose.

“Bones,” his voice was a quiet rumble, “Don’t ruin the moment with all your scientific mumbo-jumbo, okay?”

She felt herself smiling, leaning further into him, challenging him. The tips of their noses brushed and her tongue darted out to lick her lips.

She thought, this was going to happen quickly, once it started happening.

He leaned forward to close the distance.

As usual, she wasn’t wrong.

::::

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

ff: Negative Silhouettes, 4/5 (Bones)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:51:28 GMT

Original notes and disclaimer in Part One.

::::

VI.

Brennan was sitting in her arm chair, her knees tucked up against the armrest and thick socks pulled up to her ankles. On her lap rested a file full of papers that needed to be signed and she was slowly reading through them and marking her initials at the bottom. A tall glass of wine was on the side table and an old jazz record was on low, filtering across the apartment.

She felt relaxed.

Her cell phone rang and she pulled it from her pocket, resting her pen against the tip of her nose as she answered, “Brennan.”

“Hey there, Bones, it’s me.”

“Booth,” she smiled, and twirled the pen in her fingers, shifting her voice suddenly as she frowned, “Is there a case?”

“Nope,” she could hear him grinning on the other end of the line “nothing, nada, and zip-o.”

She tapped the end of the pen against the papers, “What’s up?”

They hadn’t worked a case together in almost two weeks. Brennan’s work in limbo had been more than adequate to keep her busy but she had been feeling restless.

“You hungry? I had to stay late for this budget meeting and I was supposed to get pizza with Parker but it fell through and, anyway, I’m starving.”

She pulled her lower lip in between her teeth, “I ate already,” she said, feeling bad. It was the truth, but when she and Booth had meals together it wasn’t just about eating. She wondered what she should have said.

“Oh,” his voice changed, “Okay, then, uh, nevermind.”

“I wouldn’t mind company, Booth,” she added in a rush.

There was a pause, and she realized she was holding her breath. He chuckled, sort of, “Good, because I’m outside your door.”

She rolled her eyes and hung up on him, uncurling herself from the seat and padding across her apartment. He pounded on her door a couple times, “Hey, you’re not gonna ignore me, are you? Bones?” he was asking, when she pulled the door open. “Oh,” he grinned at her, “hi.”

She stepped back and let him come inside, “Hi,” she said around a smile, “you brought pizza and beer?”

“I told you I was hungry,” he followed her into the kitchen and set the food on the counter.

She opened a cupboard and stood up on her toes, reaching for a plate for him. Behind her she heard the snap and hiss of him opening a beer.

“You want one?” he asked, and she turned, handing him a plate. He took it from her and raised the opened bottle in her direction.

“I have wine,” she said, and leaned back against the counter, the marble top cool beneath her hands. She watched him from across the kitchen and he watched her back, as he took a long pull of his beer.

Music drifted in from the other room.

“I thought,” he shook his head and put his beer down, “this is gonna sound really stupid, but uh, I remember your fridge being different.”

She blinked at him and looked over her shoulder at the gleaming stainless steel appliance. “It’s new,” she said, turning back to him and walking over to stand next to him, their shoulders touching. “It was installed over the summer, while I was away.”

“Oh,” he said, and she looked up at him, at his profile and it was just the two of them, like always. It was beer and pizza and Booth’s familiar olive green jacket and his easy smile.

“You,” she swallowed, and changed her mind, “Sometimes I think it’s easy for me,” she looked back over at her refrigerator, “to… forget.”

There was a long pause.

“Is that supposed to be a joke, Bones?” he turned to look down at her, half-smirking, and she knew he was teasing.

She turned her hip into the counter and faced him and he followed suit, leaning down so his elbow rested there and they were nearly eye to eye.

She felt, she didn’t know, shy or something. But that was crazy because it was Booth and her kitchen and pizza. Still, her gaze fell down, away from his, and she let her smallest finger trace the groove between the tiles on her counter.

“It’s easy for me to think that everything is just… back to normal.”

Booth picked at the label on his beer bottle and said nothing. The song skipped over from one track to the next, and in the short silence she could hear the even chime of her kitchen clock passing seconds.

“Well,” he began, and looked up at her, “I guess, I feel fine. You know, maybe not the same but… good.” He chose his words carefully even as he watched her, and he shifted closer, into her space. “My memory isn’t,” he shook his head, “it isn’t perfect, but I’m not confused anymore.” He stared at her and started to lean forward, “You believe me, right Bones?”

She nodded, her mouth parting slightly, “Of course I believe you, Booth. I always do.”

Brennan pulled the door to the interrogation room closed behind her just as Booth strode forward from the adjacent viewing room. “Bones,” he smiled slightly, “you got her to sign it.”

Brennan nodded, breathing carefully through her nose. She hadn’t realized how emotionally affecting it would be to appeal to the woman to confess. Booth put his hand on her shoulder and slid it across to the back of her neck, loosely curving his palm around her spinal column. They walked down the hallway, passing the officers who would go into the room and escort Mrs. Dunleery from the FBI.

Brennan knew she had no reason to feel upset. The woman had killed her boyfriend.

But, part of Brennan could help point out; she had done it to save her daughter. These sorts of cases were emotionally difficult. The worst, Booth would have agreed, if she trusted herself to speak.

“You okay?”

She exhaled heavily, nodding once, and he was quiet. They got onto the elevator and Booth let go of her. She missed the warmth of his hand.

They stepped off the elevator, still quiet, and headed down the hall.

“What you said, the other day,” Booth stopped her forward motion with a hand to her forearm. His fingers curled just below her elbow and tugged her back in front of him. “Did you mean that?”

His face was inches from hers, in that way he had of standing too close. It was an old habit of his, meant to intimidate. Usually.

She stared back at him, practically nose to nose. “You’re going to have to be more specific, Booth.” She could feel her pulse speed up in such close proximity. She swallowed.

“When you were talking to Parker. You said, you know,” he looked down the hall and then leaned in closer, his cheek brushing past hers and his evening stubble scraping lightly along her temple, “you said that you learned a lot about people. From me.”

She shivered. He let go of her and pulled back, just enough to look her in the eye, and she nodded, pressing her lips together. “Booth, I’ve learned a lot about how to deal with people, yes. I meant what I said. And you are very good with people,” Booth grinned, and stood a little taller, preening.

“But the truth is, you really,” she looked down at her hands and she wasn’t sure how to say it, how to explain what he’d done for her because sometimes she couldn’t even remember who she used to be, “you really showed me more of myself.” She closed her eyes and then looked back up at him.

He was watching her, carefully. “Bones,” he said, gently. She felt the emotion in her throat and swallowed hard against it.

“Booth,” she let out on a sigh, “I think you showed me more than how to relate to people, I think,” she looked away again, “I think I had convinced myself for so long that emotions were troublesome, and that I didn’t need to connect to people in that way, that I forgot I could.”

He stared at her and she stared back and his lips turned up just enough at the edges to make his eyes crinkle. “You did really good in there, Bones.”

She nodded slightly, her lips in a tight line. He hooked his arm across her shoulders and tugged her around, walking the rest of the way to his office.

She wanted to laugh, or something. Or, she wanted to, oh she didn’t even know, but everything was pleasantly blurry around the edges and she sank deeper into Angela’s sofa.

“Ange?” she called, letting her eyes drift close. Her lids felt everything and everything felt heavy and sleep seemed like a really, really, really good idea.

“What?” Angela called; she had kicked her heels off earlier, and changed into her pajamas as soon as they got inside.

Brennan opened her eyes at the sound of Angela padding into the living room from the kitchen, holding two large glasses of water. Her hair was still twisted and shiny in its curls and her make-up clumped along her eyelashes. “Brennan?”

“Hmm?” Brennan responded, rolling her head in the general direction of Angela’s voice.

Angela started chuckling, “Here’s some water.” She put a glass on the side table, “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep here?” They had walked back to Angela’s from the Jeffersonian, after the party in Egyptology ended.

Brennan hummed again, closing her eyes and then slowly blinking them open. The room felt sideways and she knew she was good and drunk. She smiled, “I should go home,” she said, watching Angela pull the pins from her hair as she sat down on the floor, cross-legged.

Angela snorted, “You should’ve gone home with Booth.”

Brennan laughed out loud at that, and sat up more fully. She picked up the water glass and took a long, slow swallow. It was cold, and she wiped the stray droplets from her lips. “He left early,” she offered in response, and Angela raised her eyebrows and smirked.

“Oh, really?”

(Booth had tapped her arm, “Hey,” he whispered, leaning over her shoulder, “Bones,” and she turned around from the bar to find him leaning there, his bowtie undone and hanging around his neck. She glanced at it.

“I’m going,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder and smiled, “I just wanted to say bye.”

“You’re leaving?” she felt deflated. “But it’s early,” she frowned at him.

Sweets stepped up to the bar between them and flagged down the bartender, “Early, Dr. Brennan? Not for an old man like this,” Sweets grinned and turned his back to the bar. He rested his elbows along the edge , “Huh, Agent Booth?” Sweets grinned and tapped Booth’s chest with the back of his hand, jokingly.

He was clearly intoxicated.

Booth glanced down at Sweets’ hand, and up at Brennan. She smiled into the rim of her wine glass at his serious facial expression.

When he turned his stony gaze on Sweets, the smile fell from Sweets’ face. “Sorry,” he said, just as the bartender put a glass of amber liquid on top of the bar.

Sweets and Booth both looked down at it.

“Scotch?” Booth asked, and Sweets nodded. “That’s only for us…old men,” Booth winked at him and picked up the glass, dropping its contents down his throat.

“Right,” Sweets said, and cleared his throat, “I’m gonna go find Daisy.”

“You do that,” Booth tilted his head toward the crowd and clapped Sweets on the back as he walked away.

Brennan was biting her lip. She leaned forward, feeling a warm buzz herself, “I think he’s drunk!” she stage whispered. Booth chuckled warmly and stepped into the space Sweets’ had left.

“Ya think?”

“That’s what I just—oh,” Brennan pulled gently on one end of his bow tie, “You’re being sarcastic.” She nodded, her lips pressing into a knowing smile.

He turned his face to her and he smelled nice and maybe it was stupid but it felt like if Booth left then the whole party would be over.

“I’m gonna go,” he said, quietly, and his eyes were on her lips.

Her tongue was suddenly dry. “It’s only eleven,” she said and his eyes flicked back up to hers and she felt warm.

His eyes crinkled, “I have Parker this weekend,” and he tapped his watch without looking at it, “Gotta pick him up early.”

The way he said it made it sound almost like he planned the words in his head, and she wondered if he were leaving for some other reason. He was looking at her, again, like she was new or his or some way, and he’d been doing it more often but it was always just before he stopped himself.

“Right,” she nodded, “Of course.”

They stood a moment longer, breathing in the air between them.

“You did great tonight, Bones.”

She felt her cheeks flush, felt her limbs go liquid from the combination of champagne and Booth’s praise.

“Thank you.”

They were leaning into each other again, and he was so close to her and she felt shaky and perfectly still. He looked out at the dance floor and shrugged, straightening his shoulders. “Have fun,” he glanced back to her, “Go dance or something.”

She nodded. She waited, tensed. He’d been finding reasons to touch her, more, or maybe it was the exact same amount but the quality was different.

And then he leaned forward and hesitated, just for a second, by her cheek. He lifted his hand to her neck and pushed her hair back with a single finger, trailing it across her bare shoulder. She shivered.

He pressed a soft kiss to her jaw.

“Night, Bones,” he pulled away and it was a smile, a little wave, and he was gone.)

Angela stared at Brennan until she responded, “What?” Brennan asked, putting down her glass of water and blinking back the memory.

“Seriously, Brennan? At this point I think you should know what I’m going to say,” Angela had dropped her chin and was staring at her with disbelief.

Brennan let her hands fall into her lap and cocked her head, frowning. Her dress rustled.

Angela sighed, shaking her head, and she moved into a kneeling position, putting her hands on Brennan’s knees and leaning forward, “Sweetie,” her breath still smelled slightly sweet from the cranberry vodkas she’d been drinking, “You should’ve gone home with Booth.” Her eyes were large and bright.

Brennan snorted back a chuckle, “Ange—“

“I’m being serious,” Angela scolded, through a wide smile, and swatted Brennan’s leg.

She watched Angela unfold herself and drop onto the couch alongside her. Brennan watched her, thinking about what Angela had said to her the day before, and she pushed her tongue against the back of her teeth. Everything felt languid and slow.

“Where is this coming from?” she asked eventually.

Angela sighed, “Oh, I don’t know, only the last five years.”

Brennan didn’t respond, just continued watching her and finally Angela heaved a sigh.

“Okay, remember yesterday? I asked you why sex wasn’t a potential with Booth?” Angela sat up and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, her smile turning wolfish, “You couldn’t come up with an answer.” Angela poked Brennan in the ribs and nodded her head up and down, as if she had just proved a point.

Brennan rolled her eyes. It was perfectly ridiculous. Her head felt heavy and a smile pulled at her lips. “I don’t know, it’s probably because,” she blew out a breath through loose lips, “I want to sleep with him?” She chanced a look in Angela’s direction.

“Oh my God.” Angela’s eyes were rounded and her mouth had fallen open. “Oh my God,” she repeated, and leaned forward, grabbing Brennan’s wrist and smiling hugely, “Brennan, did you just admit—“

Angela’s voice began to increase in pitch and Brennan winced, laughing in spite of herself, “Angela, relax. It’s not, it isn’t, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh my God,” Angela repeated again, in a completely different voice, “not a big deal?” Angela leaned back and let her arms wing out, “This is a huge—“

Brennan was chuckling, “Booth is, anthropologically, a very attractive mate.”

Angela’s jaw dropped, “Anthropologically?” she repeated, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead.

“He has a well-formed physique, he stays fit, he shows compassion,” Brennan ticked off the evidence on her fingers. “I mean, he’s proven to be a very good father and a very loyal friend.”

She looked up at Angela who was smiling, shaking her head back and forth.

“Don’t you get it, Brennan?”

Brennan frowned, and Angela leaned forward, “Booth,” she sighed, “Booth is probably your best friend. He knows a lot about you, and you trust him. Completely.”

Brennan felt her insides tighten, as if waiting for an impact, but she nodded anyway because Angela’s words were true.

“If you…” Angela shook her head, “maybe you think you don’t know what love is, or maybe you’re so scared of the idea of it, or of losing it that you’re just being stubborn on purpose. Maybe you don’t even realize you’re in denial, but, what you have? Right now? That’s love.”

Brennan looked at her fingers spread out against the black fabric of her dress. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

Brennan watched as Booth’s finger made lines in the condensation on his beer bottle and he blew out a breath, blew out a smile, and she felt her skin warm.

“I never forgot you, Bones.”

She blinked at him. “You had amnesia, Booth, it’s… fine. The brain is a sensitive organ and you—“

“Bones,” he reached across the table. He rested his palm against the outside of her arm, and it was a pleasantly warm pressure in contrast to the damp coolness of his fingertips on the pulse point in her wrist. She felt her hair follicles tighten, the blonde hairs on her arm standing on end. “I never forgot you.”

She dropped her gaze and tried to form her thoughts. His thumb stroked against the back of her hand and she looked back up. “Booth you didn’t know—“

He interrupted her again, his chest pushing against the edge of the table top with slow urgency as he leaned into her space. And she leaned forward, too. She always did.

“Bones,” his breath brushed across her cheek, “I forgot things, okay? Pieces. I forget where I was and when I was. But,” he shook his head and his lips pulled back slightly as he began to smile. “If anything? You were the only thing that stayed the same.”

She felt his eyes against hers, felt them; her cheeks flushed as heat prickled along her spine and her stomach did a slow turn.

She felt off-balance even though she hadn’t had a single beer yet.

Even though they were just there, where they always were, in the Diner, with the familiar smell of grease and the unromantic gleam of the fluorescent light overhead.

Brennan bent forward, her hair swinging past her face, and her arm awkwardly tucked across her body. She was laughing, hard, maybe feeling light-headed from the wine, or just light in the moment and his palm grasped her hand, tight.

“No,” she continued laughing, leaning forward, “You’re lying, Booth.”

“Would ya let me finish, at least,” he said, tugging her back upright with the hand he was holding. She settled her back against the couch cushions and sniffed, a smile still cutting into her cheeks.

“Okay,” he said carefully, and smoothed his free hand across the back of hers, “This is a real trick, Bones, so sit very still.”

She snorted, slightly, and started laughing again. He threw her hand into her lap and put his hands in the air, “Okay, fine, I give up. If you don’t want me to read your mind, then I won’t do it.”

“You’re lying!” she exclaimed, eyes wide and a smile to match. “You can’t read my mind by staring at my finger tips,” she waved her hand in front of his face and he reached for it and caught it again, “No,” she gasped, “Booth,” and he was laughing too, pulling her arm around to the front of his body and trapping her open palm in front of his chest.

She was yanked against his back, the couch cushions sliding forward in a slow avalanche and she started laughing again, against the smooth curve of his back. He was warm and his t-shirt was soft beneath her cheek. “I’m not going to believe you,” she told him firmly, her voice muffled.

He turned his head just enough to be looking over his shoulder, “Just let me finish the trick at least,” he said, again, and she nodded into him, pressing her forehead next to his spine and wiggling the fingers of the hand he had commandeered.

“Okay,” he said, slowly, and she closed her eyes. “Now, think of a letter from the alphabet: A, or B, or C,”

“That’s not reading my mind, Booth, that’s playing the odds,”

“Hey,” he scolded, “think of a letter.”

“Fine.”

He paused and she breathed slowly. In the past it always felt like starting and stopping, like looking at something but never touching it. She wasn’t sure if it was a metaphorical wall that had broken down between them, but things somehow felt more distant and more close than ever before.

“You got it?” he double-checked and she nodded against his back, sitting up and resting her chin on his shoulder as she peeked in front of him to watch. He took her index finger in his and gently pressed down on her finger-pad with his thumbs, flattening out the whorls of her fingerprint. He stared intently.

He was quiet for a long moment as he stared and she felt caught up, like maybe he could perform magic.

The room was suddenly noiseless and she realized how closely they were sitting. Her arm was tucked between his ribs and his bicep, his skin heating hers. With her chin on his shoulder she felt inundated by his familiar scent and she wanted to inhale, deeply, and close her eyes.

“A.” he said, and turned to look at her. They were too close and the silence became a dull hum, the rush of blood. She felt cross-eyed trying to look at him and her mouth opened slightly.

“Yes,” she said, softly, because she had been thinking ‘A,’ and how did he always do that?

He smiled, slow, and she felt her ribcage expand against his back as she breathed. His hand let go of hers and hers dropped, landing on top of his thigh. Turning her hand over, she pushed off of his leg and leaned back, putting some space between them.

She swallowed, feeling something like happiness ballooning in her stomach and the same press of confusion, of what’s happening, what will happen, and not yet, scrambling in her head.

They had never been like this. And sometimes, the way Booth looked at her now, she almost felt like he was flirting with her. Like he was pushing the line, even though he was the one who told her about the line in the first place.

Another case had ended, but not well. Booth was supposed to meet them at Founding Fathers after he dropped off some paperwork, but he never showed. She found him well after midnight sitting in the diner, alone. A beer sat mostly untouched in front of him and he was staring at his linked fingers on the grimy countertop.

“Booth,” she greeted him quietly. The diner was quiet. Even her footsteps felt too loud.

He nodded without looking up.

“Bones,” his voice was low, raspy. He’d been fighting a cold. “What’re you doing here?”

She plopped onto the stool next to him and tested its rotation, turning just a bit in either direction. She blinked a few times, pulling off her mittens, unwinding the scarf from around her neck, and unbuttoning her coat. A waitress passed by and Brennan smiled.

She ordered two whiskeys straight up.

Booth spun his stool slowly in her direction, leaving one arm resting on the counter and his hand supporting the side of his head. He wore an impressed grin and simply raised his eyebrows at her.

After another long moment of silence he said, “Whiskey, Bones?” and gave a long, low whistle. “What’s the occasion?”

She bit her lip.

“Booth, you’re the one who taught me that sometimes this job…” she searched her head, wanting to convey the right meaning, “sucks,” he cracked a tight smile, “and your best friend can be a stiff shot of liquor.”

“No one’s best friend should be a stiff shot of liquor,” he said to the countertop and Brennan felt like she’d suddenly missed a step climbing stairs.

His eyes pressed closed and he shook his head, “Sorry,” he said and cleared his throat and looked at her, “Thanks.” He smiled slightly, just a crinkle of his eyes, but she knew he meant it.

The whiskey was set down in front of them.

“Well,” he handed her one shot and took the other by its rim, “what are we cheers-ing to tonight?”

She stared at the amber liquid in front of her and inhaled slowly, letting her breath out through her lips. She turned toward him and said, “To you.”

His eyes flicked up to her face. She continued, simply “You catch the bad guys, Booth.”

He gave a harsh chuckle, “Not such a fitting toast for tonight, Bones.”

She put her hand on his wrist and he looked at her, “Booth,” she spoke intently, “you’re a good agent because you care. And, even if it’s not tonight…” she sat up straight and raised her shot glass between them, “you catch the bad guys.”

A small smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, and after a moment he sat up straight too, tapping the edge of his shot glass to hers. “Thanks, Bones,” he said sincerely. They tilted their heads back and swallowed the alcohol.

Bones clutched the coffee cup in her hands, enjoying the heat that bled through the fabric of her gloves. It was cold outside, very cold. The wind whipped past the trees and down the empty mall, lancing icily into her forehead and through her coat.

Booth was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.

Brennan took a slow slip and the coffee melted down her throat, scorching a line to her belly. “You had your last check-up this morning?” she asked, shuffling her boots against the asphalt.

He leaned back against the bench and tucked his chin into the collar of his coat. He seemed serious.

“Yeah, I did.”

“And your scans were normal?” Brennan suddenly felt a slow twist of panic, and her heart started to beat heavily inside her chest: Was this why Booth wanted to meet her for a coffee? “There was no news, was there?” Her voice rose, higher than usual, with her alarm.

His lips pressed together, “Clean as a whistle,” he said, and tapped the side of his head with a bare finger.

She wrinkled her nose, her shoulders relaxing, “You should really be wearing gloves.”

He rolled his eyes at her and leaned in slightly, “How many times do I have to tell you Bones, I’ve been in tougher shakes than a windy day in DC. I’ll be fine.”

She chuffed a short laugh and took another sip of coffee.

“It feels weird, you know?” he blew out a breath and shook his head back and forth, “I feel fine. I mean, my memory is… great. It’s like, eventually everything fell back into place in my head and I didn’t even know it was happening.”

She nodded, staring at him, really trying to listen.

“I don’t know, Bones,” he threw her a grin, “maybe I’m just being crazy.”

“What is it?” she could feel her eyebrows pinch together.

He looked up, “It’s just,” he leaned closer, “It’s like I’m waiting for the ball to drop. Like, maybe everything’s really not okay, but I just don’t know it.”

She stared into his eyes for a long moment, finally tilting her head to the side.

“Trust me, Booth, everything is okay.”

He continued leaning into her, as if by virtually unnoticeable forces of inertia, before he pulled back and nodded. He took a long sip from his paper cup.

She twisted her coffee in her hands and worried her lip between her teeth. “If you feel like everything has fallen back into place, then you should know that, too.”’

Her words were caught up by the gusts of wind and Booth was quiet for a long moment. She wondered if he would tell her what was really on his mind. It was easy for him, to hold back, because she wasn’t good at guessing.

He breathed in, deep and slow. “We never really, uh, we never really talked about it. You know, when I was recovering, what it was like for me.” He exhaled and the white fog of his breath twisted away, disappearing.

Booth’s words were a preface, not an accusation, but Brennan felt the slow burn of shame across her cheeks. She felt guilty for leaving to go to Guatemala. She wasn’t sure it was a bad choice, or the wrong choice; she just wasn’t sure it was the right choice, either.

“Well,” Booth clarified, “I guess I should say I never talked about it. With anyone. I mean, Sweets tried to, of course,” they shared a grin, “but I just… I wanted to get better, I didn’t want to talk about it.” He cleared his throat again and flicked at the plastic flap in the lid of his cup and it jack-hammered back and forth against his finger.

“The thing is, before all this, I just trusted my head. I mean, how do you know you know something?” He turned to look at her and he leaned forward until she could feel the warmth of his breath skating across her cheek. “You just do. But after the surgery, all of sudden I couldn’t trust myself anymore. And, even if my memory is back to normal and my scans are clear,” he looked off past her face and she examined his mouth, his chapped lips and the invisible darkness of his facial hair beneath his skin. “I’m not sure if I can trust myself again. Yet.”

Brennan felt the same push and pull she always felt with Booth when he confided in her; she wanted to say the right thing, but was worried to say anything at all. She settled on the truth.

“I trust you, Booth.”

He let his gaze come back to her, and he smiled, just barely quirking his mouth. Her eyes fluttered, and the winds whipped through again. She shivered.

“Geez, Bones,” he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, “You’re freezing out here and you just let me go on and on like that?” They stood together and she let herself enjoy the warmth of being tucked against his side, the heavy weight of his arm, and the way he ducked his head toward hers.

She hadn’t noticed the cold, when he was speaking. Maybe because when they were alone it was easy enough to let the rest of the world fade into background noise. Or maybe because Booth so rarely told her things, what he was feeling, that she was drawn toward hearing it, toward his voice, toward knowing.

She would forget, sometimes, or mistake, that even though he was good with people he wasn’t an open book.

And there was so much left to say. The things she thought she saw in him, when he looked at her but didn’t speak, or when he stared too long, or still when he would touch her, more gently, a little lower, than before.

And she thought, maybe, there were things she needed to tell him, too. She just wasn’t sure what it all was yet.

Part Two Part Three Part Five

ff: Negative Silhouettes, 3/5 (Bones)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:44:21 GMT

Original author's notes etc from Part One.

Brennan stared at the Doctor’s name tag and tried to ignore the feeling of Booth staring at her from his bed. She wished she’d shut the door all the way.

Sighing, she purposely pitched her voice lower. “So you’re saying we should try to sort through his memories?”

“Yes,” the doctor nodded, his forefinger pushing against his chin, “Yes, because right now his brain is trying to figure out which memories are real and which are from his subconscious confusion. If someone can help him sort through what he remembers it will help stabilize his perception of reality and, likely, help jar loose other real memories.”

Brennan blinked at the doctor. His theory sounded plausible, although things like memory and reality-confusion were tricky to work with, the mind being as powerful as it was. Brennan nodded slowly. “Okay,” she crossed her arms and glanced back at Booth, who turned his head away quickly, pretending to watch the news on TV.

The doctor smiled, “Either way, it won’t hurt,” he clapped a hand against Brennan’s shoulder and said he’d been in to check on Booth’s progress tomorrow morning.

Brennan nodded absently.

“He wants us to what?”

Brennan sighed, “He wants us to go over your memories.”

“My memories?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that a little…”

“What, Booth?”

“Personal?” Booth finished his thought, raising his eyebrows.

Brennan sighed again. She felt annoyed. He was the same, she kept telling herself. Except for when he called her Bren or put his hand on her hip, too low, to greet her by his bed. She pushed her fingers against her forehead and felt a headache begin its thrumming behind her eyes.

“I’m not saying you have to do this, Booth, I’m just trying to help.” She swallowed and paused for a moment, “And obviously you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to,” She added quietly, not meeting his eyes. It felt unfair, like her best friend was suddenly hiding secrets and she didn’t like it.

“I don’t understand, how am I supposed to…?”

“Just,” she bit her lip and leaned forward, resting her elbows by his side and placing her chin on top of her hands, “Just tell me something you remember but aren’t sure if it’s real.”

He blinked at her, and a slow smile kinked the corner of his mouth. “Well, actually, now that you mention it.”

“What?”

He grinned slowly, and put his hand to the back of his neck, “I have to be honest, there’s one thing I keep remembering but there’s no way it can be real.”

“What is it?” Brennan’s curiosity was peaked, and she examined his face as he spoke.

He looked at her suddenly, and seriously, “Don’t laugh,” he ordered, and she somberly nodded, “Okay,” he dropped his gaze back to his hands and her eyes followed, watching him flex his fingers against the blankets, “I dreamt that you and I, well… we joined the circus.” He paused for reaction. “As a knife-throwing act.”

“Oh,” Brennan nodded, sitting back in her chair and smiling slightly at the memory, “Yes. We did. That is real.”

“That’s real?” He looked at her like she was playing a trick on him.

“Buck and Wanda,” she said, pointing first at him and then at herself, “We were undercover.”

“Undercover?”

“Yes.” Brennan’s face was blank, matter-of-fact. This was an easy one, it was true.

“Buck and Wanda? Come on, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Booth pushed himself up in bed more and scratched absently at the bandages by his temple.

Brennan’s lips curved into a thoughtful semi-circle, the corners of her mouth pointing down, “We were undercover,” she repeated, not sure how much more of an explanation was warranted.

“There was only one bed!” he said, pointing a finger at her, as if to say a-ha, and she stared at the offending digit.

She shrugged and pushed a piece of hair behind her ear, “Nothing happened.”

Booth deflated a bit at that comment and rested back against his pillows, “Wow,” he shook his head and stared thoughtfully forward, his brow lined in confusion.

That was how it started.

“I gave you a toy pig.”

“Yes.”

“Jasper.”

“Yes.”

“Why would I….”

“To make me feel better. I – I shot someone and you were cheering me up.”

It was harmless at first. But then it seemed like the more memories Booth uncovered the angrier he was getting. And although he was remembering things, and although he knew the truth, Brennan started to feel like Booth was trying to prove her wrong. It was like he was trying to prove they had actually been married.

“We went to a dance club with Angela!”

“We found dead bodies in the wall.”

“But you got high on meth!”

“It was an accident.”

“We eat at Founding Fathers once a week and you always get the vegetarian parmegian.”

“We get dinner to celebrate closing a case.”

“We visited Angela in the desert,”

“Because her boyfriend was missing.”

“We buried a dog,” he said.

“After a case,” she countered.

“We dressed up for Halloween, Wonder Woman and Clark Kent,”

“You were a squint, and we missed the costume party saving a girl’s life.”

He glared at her, “We kissed.”

Brennan shook her head and crossed her arms, “That was part of your dream.”

He stared at her, hard, and for a long time. She felt her cheeks darken and Booth had never stared at her like this.

“No,” he said, slowly, “No in my dream we,” he swallowed and turned away, “doesn’t matter.”

Brennan felt a flush rise up from her belly and her heart was thumping, fast, slugging blood through her veins and she could feel the heat of it, everywhere.

“Oh,” she said, and then after a moment she realized her mistake. “We did kiss.”

He turned back to her.

“It was a bet,” she continued.

He raised his eyebrows.

“So I could see my father in prison, for Christmas.” Booth’s face went blank.

“Right,” he said, and he turned away, “I remember now.”

She had thought the emotional roller coaster of dealing with a brain tumor would end once Booth had safely woken up. But she was wrong. The last three days had been difficult. She hadn’t been sleeping.

That evening she said goodbye and left, but found herself staring at a bottle of water in the hospital cafeteria. So, she wandered back to Booth’s room to sit in the chair next to his bed and watch the steady rise and fall of his chest.

She thought about how they’d fought nearly all afternoon. How he was the same, his face and his mannerisms, and his laughter, but, it wasn’t really him at all.

She dropped her forehead to his bed and breathed in the stiff detergent smell of the sheets. She felt tears burning at the back of her eyes. She hadn’t cried yet, and she wasn’t planning on it.

“Hey,” Booth’s voice was rough with sleep, and unexpectedly organic in the silent hospital room. Everything was the low hum and beep of electronics, until he spoke. She tried to mask the tears at the corner of her eyes with a quick knuckle, but she knew he knew better.

He always did.

She felt the warmth of his palm close over the back of her hand. She didn’t want to meet his eyes; she knew what they would look like. But it seemed wrong somehow. Shouldn’t she be the one comforting him?

She’d just, she’d been so confused. She didn’t know how to respond to him, to his confusion. And it felt unfair because she knew she needed to be steady for him, stable. A constant. She had gotten angry anyway. He had told her it was because she felt helpless. She hated psychology.

She also was not helpless. But she couldn’t shake the feeling, or the hollow ache like a gaping hole in the middle of her chest.

“What’re you doing here?” his voice was a low rumble and the tips of his fingers pressed against the back of her hand. His fingers were warm and familiar.

Like the marks he would talk about leaving on people and she wondered if someone dusted her, would they find his fingerprints everywhere?

She couldn’t look at him. He’d done too much already. Around him she’d become a different person. He’d unlatched something inside of her and now she could never know what to expect of herself anymore. She needed her control. She would not look at him; she could not.

His fingertips touched the side of her face and something loosened in her chest.

Her eyes slipped shut for a moment, opening to reveal his concerned face peering into her own. His brow was pulled together over the deep brown centers of his eyes.

She really didn’t believe in psychology, but she had to admit to performing a certain amount of character judgment on her own. Judging people was one’s best chance of survival, and though empirically faulty, it was an instinct difficult to ignore. So she’d come to understand the shades of meaning in Booth’s eyes. That didn’t seem to matter, now. How could she know who Booth was if he didn’t?

A hot teardrop spilled over her eyelid and slid down her cheek like an arrow. Sliding her hand from beneath his, she brushed it away.

She sniffed, loudly, and looked at him, directly in the face; ignored the tear track down the side of her cheek and blinked rapidly.

He swallowed and she thought about getting him some ice chips but he should be sleeping and she should be leaving anyway.

“What’s wrong?”

Normally, this was the part where she would tell him what was bothering her. Or, maybe, she wouldn’t. But he would know anyway. She’d come to rely on that, on him.

When she didn’t respond right away, he started to sit up in bed, “Why are you crying?”

She looked off to the side, her tears gone. “I’m not,” she swallowed and took a deep breath, “I’m not very good with this.” She turned to look back at him and he was watching her carefully, his eyes awake and staring at her. “With emotions, I mean. I…”

As she tried to gather her thoughts, to explain herself without explaining herself (because she felt like a stranger to him, because she didn’t even understand what was going on) he interrupted, reaching for her again. “I’m fine,” he said, testing out a smile, “See?”

Her hands were folded together on his bedspread, the chair pulled as close as it could be. He let his palm drop onto her forearm. “Bren,” he squeezed her arm, trailed his hand gently over her wrist to her hand where he curled his fingers around her palm, “It’s—“

Brennan pushed back the chair and stood. Her insides felt like they were burning. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it might be shame. That didn’t make sense. Nothing much did.

“It’s late, Booth, and I should, I’m going to go. Home.”

He sat, frozen, looking back at her.

“My home,” she clarified, and wondered if that was the bluntness Sweets had told her to be ‘more careful about, around Agent Booth, while he’s recovering.’

For a long, still moment there wasn’t anything she could do. Booth had just woken up, and that was when his confusion was always worst. They stared at each other until she turned around, abruptly, and left.

In the hospital hallway she listened to the echo of her footfalls. She wondered if Booth realized which Brennan she was.

It was a Saturday. It was Angela’s idea, to surprise him.

(“He loves the diner, Brennan, we should try to bring a piece of it to the hospital for him.”

“I’ve brought him pie, Ange,” Brennan said, trying not to be defensive. Her arms crossed beneath her chest of their own volition.

Angela was very persuasive.)

The whole gang was loitering in the hallway, and there was a jovial quality to the bunch. The scent of syrup and waffles and bacon wafted around the group from the brown paper bag that Sweets was holding. A pastry box looped with red and white string hung from Cam’s fingers. Hodgins was sitting with Wendell and clapping him on the back saying something about the waitress from the night before. Angela had her hands on Brennan’s shoulders.

“You look nervous, Sweetie, is everything okay? Booth’s recovery is going fine, right? I mean, you’d tell me, if something was wrong.” The last part was less of a question and more of a demand.

Brennan nodded, carefully, “Yes, Ange, of course, Booth’s fine.”

But she did feel nervous. Everything was coming together and falling apart at the same time.

The nurse left Booth’s room and smiled at the group, gesturing slightly that they could enter. She’d checked his vitals for the morning. Everyone shuffled in.

Brennan followed, listening to the sounds of people greeting Booth and his low laughter.

When she entered, Wendell moved aside and Booth saw her, “Babe,” his grin brightened, “there you are. Come over here.”

Brennan saw, from the corner of her eye, Angela turn to Cam, but didn’t hear what she said. She frowned, hard, at Booth. I’m not your wife, she thought as she glared at him, not your wife, not your wife, not your wife.

She didn’t want to act out of order so she stepped toward the bed, “Angela thought you might like it if we brought you breakfast from the Diner.”

He was sitting up in bed, fully, and he was smiling warmly at her, his eyes on her even though there were five other people in the room. He reached forward and caught her hand with his, tugging her toward him and before she realized what was happening, he was pressing a kiss to her mouth.

There was the slight dampness of his inner lip against hers and then a quiet pop when he pulled back and she realized the entire room was silent.

Brennan knew, of course, that Sweets understood what was happening. Everyone else, however, thought that Booth had suffered minimal memory lost and some vague confusion. They didn’t know about the dream.

Shit, Brennan thought. Booth pulled back a millimeter further and she was still leaning forward, hovering near his face. He smelled like himself in the morning, sort of spicy with a hint of shaving cream. His eyes were twinkling at her. Her hand had landed by his hip, for balance, and she could feel the dig of his ilium against her ulna.

She didn’t move.

She didn’t know what to do.

The lights in the lab outside of her office were on. That was what made the Jeffersonian feel like home: inside, nothing ever changed.

It was because of the faint fluorescent glow from down the hall that Brennan was uncertain of the exact time. Her eyes felt dry and itchy in their sockets, and she tapped the space bar a few times, waiting for the digital crackling noise and for her screen to turn on.

The small clock on the monitor read 4:17am, which Brennan had not realized and only made her feel even more exhausted. She had startled awake a half an hour ago, her head pressed into Booth’s side where she’d fallen asleep, at an awkward angle, in the chair by his bed. She gingerly rolled her neck, now. It felt stiff.

Booth’s initial confusion, from the procedure, the anesthesia, the coma, the after-effects of his painkillers, and his dream had been wearing off, gradually. The mornings were the worst, but still he knew his age, his name, his profession, the president, his son, his son’s age (“Bones, he’s nine, he’s my kid, I know, okay?”).

Brennan ignored the persistently uncomfortable thought that he just kept forgetting her and tried to be happy that for the past six days he had been more aware, more responsive, and his memory had been relatively stable.

Except, then—

Brennan sighed. Everything had been fne. And then Booth kissed her in front of everyone and what was she supposed to do with that? Maybe it would just be better if she were gone.

For whatever reason, she seemed to be the source of all his confusion.

Brennan shook her head and focused on finding the email address of a colleague of hers she knew was on a dig site in Guatemala. He and Brennan had been academic rivals since her days as a PhD student, and their academic rivalry had developed into mutual professional respect. He had contacted her months before about the dig beginning in July and Brennan had declined (several times).

Now, though, it seemed like just the place she wanted to be.

Booth’s recovery was going well. His doctors had assured her several times that he was responding as expected.

It was just that, sometimes, he would look at her and it was the way he looked at her. She didn’t know what to do, or say. Or if she should do or say something at all.

Booth would know, of course, if their roles were reversed.

Brennan sighed and began rapidly typing her email.

Her drafted email sat on her hard drive, not yet sent. She had tossed and turned for a few hours of fitful sleep before going back to the hospital, early.

She knew her partnership with Booth had influenced her very much in the last few years; and, she also knew, though she had difficulty articulating why, that being near him could calm her nerves.

It was why she sometimes found herself at his apartment late at night, when something was on her mind.

It was also why she showed up to his bedside a little after eight in the morning, her hair unwashed and her face pale.

She opened the door to his room carefully, so as not to disturb him. She knew he needed his rest. She was surprised to find him awake, sitting up in bed, a bland-looking half-eaten meal pushed off to one side. He was gazing out the window.

Only after the door snicked shut behind her did he turn and offer a smile.

“Hey,” he greeted her warmly, as if pleased by her unexpected appearance.

The familiarity in his eyes should have made her smile, and the welcome sight of his expressive face was usually enough to relax the tension in her shoulders. Now, she felt worse, more tense, more confused. Was he happy to see his wife, or her?

“Good morning, Booth.”

“Ya know, Bones, the nurses tell me you spent a pretty late night here last night. You shoulda gone home, gotten some sleep.”

She smiled.

Then, she pulled a chair alongside his bed and sat down, placing her hand on his forearm. She stared at her fingers against his skin and felt the warmth radiating from him.

“I am thinking of going to Guatemala.” She looked up at him.

“Guatemala.” His face was blank.

“Yes.”

“Today?” He raised his eyebrows, but still withheld a reaction.

She looked up, “No.” She let go of his arm and placed her hands in her lap. She picked at a loose thread hanging from her shirt. “Perhaps this weekend or early next week. I need to… get everything in order.”

Booth was quiet for a moment, looking out the window again. “How long?” He turned back to her. His eyes seemed distant.

“I am planning to go for at least four weeks.”

Booth’s face contorted in surprise, “Four weeks?”

“Yes.” She sounded hesitant.

He paused for a long moment and she kept her eyes on his arm, and all she could think about were the layers of dermis, the muscle, and his bones.

“Seems like a long trip to make, on such short notice.”

She lifted her hand and let her fingertips drop to his bedspread where she picked at the fabric. “I want to make sure you’re okay. Before I make my decision.”

Booth sighed, and stared at her hand on his bed. “Bones, I told you, I’m fine.”

“Yes, but Booth, on Saturday—“

“Yeah, I know, okay? I know. I just, I messed up, and I’m sorry.”

Brennan looked at him, her eyebrows drawing together in concern. They stared at each other for a long moment. “It’s fine, Booth. It’s… not a problem. Everyone knew you had been disoriented. I… I probably should have told them why you were confused.”

He nodded and smiled slightly, but not in a way suggesting happiness. The corner of his mouth turned up and he stared at his hands, where they rested on his lap.

“Bones,” he started. He did not continue. He sighed. “Look. It’s just that, I just wish that no one knew about it.”

She felt her brow pull together in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

He shook his head, “You’ve told me over and over again how you don’t believe in marriage, and it’s an ancient ritual, and it’s silly and unnecessary and all of that stuff, and here I am having some wacky dream about you and I being married.”

“Booth—“

“No, hear me out. I just, I wanted to forget about the whole thing because I didn’t want to listen to Sweets psychoanalyzing it or watch you getting freaked out by it, or, or, or, hell, I don’t know, see Angela smirking at me in that way she has.”

“Booth,” Brennan smiled slightly at his distress over, of all things, Angela’s smile, “Booth, we don’t control our dreams. It’s perfectly natural for your mind to concoct a story about the people in your life.”

Booth nodded, scrubbing a hand down his jaw and across his face. His features were set and he seemed sad, somehow.

She pressed her lips together and he turned to her, his voice was low, curious. “Why?”

She blinked, “What?”

“Why… Guatemala?” He just looked at her.

She dropped her gaze to the stitching of her jeans, the seams holding them together, and she could feel his eyes on the top of her head. “I think, maybe, I am not being conducive to a… speedy recovery,” she looked up, “for you.”

He watched her, his eyes squinting slightly in dismay, “Bones, that’s, that doesn’t make any sense.”

She sighed, “You’re confused, but your confusion seems greatest around me. Maybe if I leave, that will give you the time and the space to adjust.”

She was expecting him to say something, about running away, or maybe some pithy sentence about what being a friend means, something, some wisdom, those things he was always saying, those things that made everything sound so easy.

This time he said nothing. And if she couldn’t turn to Booth for the answers, now, she wasn’t sure what to do.

His face stayed expressionless.

“I’m, I should go. I have to get ready for work. I’ll see you later, this afternoon? And when I decide on my departure date I’ll let you know.”

He looked away, “Okay, then,” he said, “I’ll see ya later.”

She walked out of his room and felt awful but, at the same time, like a huge burden had been lifted. She thought she should feel guiltier for running away, but it wasn’t the leaving him that scared her.

She just didn’t like the way his voice turned down, and she knew, that to part of him, it was his wife turning her back when she walked out of the room.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Angela glanced at Brennan, again, but Brennan just kept her gaze focused out the window. “Yes, Ange, I’m sure.”

“Because you don’t have to go to Guatemala.”

“I know that. It was my decision.”

Angela’s fingers tapped out a short rhythm against the steering wheel.

“I mean, you don’t even have to cancel your trip. You could just delay it. At least until Booth gets out of the hospital.”

Brennan blinked a few times and let out a long sigh. She sat up straight and looked out the front windshield at the car in front of them. They continued zooming down the highway to Reagan National. Less than a twenty minute drive from her apartment, without traffic.

“Booth’s fine. He’s fine and he’s going to keep getting better and,” she shook her head and looked at her lap, “he doesn’t need me there to get better.”

Angela was quiet.

“I don’t know, Bren, I would actually think the opposite.”

The sky was dark and heavy with clouds. Brennan hoped her flight got out before the inevitable mid-afternoon thunderstorm. The air-conditioner in the car began to raise the hairs on her arms.

It was hard to explain what she was feeling, exactly. She wasn’t sure. Booth had changed, but he hadn’t. He was different, but he wasn’t. He remembered, but he didn’t.

Brennan hated uncertainties.

She bit her lower lip. Suddenly, she was upset. “He didn’t know who I was, Ange. Why would he need me? He needs someone he remembers. I mean, at least Cam,” Brennan shook her head, swallowing hard, “at least Cam is the same person to him, that she’s always been, and she can provide him some stability.”

Angela was smiling, the kind she tried to hold back, but Brennan caught the edges of it and glared at her. “He doesn’t need Cam, Brennan,” and the amusement shown in her voice, “and he certainly didn’t forget you. I mean, for God-sake, what’s it going to take for the two of you to pull it together?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Brennan said quietly, through clenched teeth.

She knew exactly what Angela meant, and she knew where Angela was going with this line of conversation, and she didn’t want to talk about it before getting on an airplane.

Or ever, for that matter.

“He dreamt you were his wife!” Angela smacked the heel of her hand against the steering wheel. “His. Wife. Brennan. Do you understand how much meaning that holds for him?”

“Yes.” Brennan continued glaring ahead. A fat rain drop landed on the windshield with a splat.

“He basically admitted, in his subconscious, that he wants to be with you forever and have babies.”

“Can we not talk about this?”

“No, Brennan, we absolutely can talk about this. Because you are trapped in a car with me and the man who you—“

“Angela,”

“—care most about in the world almost just died and he dreamed about loving you and, come on Brennan how much more obvious does it get?”

Brennan let her head fall back against the head rest. She blew out another sigh and tried to relax her shoulders. The blinker clicked on and blinkered for a few seconds in the silence of the car as Angela pulled off onto the airport’s exit.

“There’s no such thing as happy endings, Ange.”

Angela rolled her eyes.

“Just promise me I can be in the wedding?”

::::

Part Two
Part Four
Part Five

ff: Negative Silhouettes, 2/5 (Bones)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:40:42 GMT

Original header found in Part One

::::

IV.

He felt himself slowly drifting away from the seemingly concrete reality of his dream into a sudden awareness of his body.

He felt the stiff cotton sheets against his fingertips and a dull thrum of pain in his skull. The air around him was cooler and as the last of his dream began to swirl and shift away from him, he registered the sound of someone typing and then tried to open his eyes. His eyelids clung together at first, making the whole eye-opening process unnecessarily hard. Then, he tried to swallow.

His lips were chapped, his throat dry, and his eyelashes still stuck together slightly, at first just letting in sharp bits of light.

After a few attempts at blinking he caught the whiteness of the ceiling overhead and a human shaped blob off to the side. That seemed like more than enough activity for one day. He let his eyes drift closed again.

However, as tired as he felt, his exhaustion wasn’t enough to surpass the basic discomfort his body was feeling. So, he blinked a few more times, and then groaned. Although that was more instinct than purpose.

Objects began to sharpen in his vision and when he opened his eyes again it was to the crisp blue concern of his wife’s gaze.

“Booth?” she asked him, her eyebrows drawing together, pinched.

He stared for a moment because, well, his name was Booth, but – the way she said it – it just didn’t sound like Bren. The drugs seemed to have loosened his tongue and before he could control his response he muttered, “Who are you?”

He watched as her eyes widened slightly with concern. Her mouth tightened then, just barely, and her nostrils flared. Her fingers were long and cool and they pressed into his wrist. She let go of a long breath, “I,” she shook her head slightly and looked down.

He was sleepy. He wanted to curl her hair around his finger and tell her to relax, not to worry, he was sure everything was fine. But then, Bren normally didn’t get this upset about things. And he couldn’t really remember what the last thing was that he could remember. If that even made sense. And what was he even doing in a hospital?

She looked back up at him and her eyes were wet. “It’s me, Booth,” she told him, her voice clear, “It’s Bones.”

As soon as she said that, Booth felt the bottom drop out of his world. The word bones seemed to unlock a hidden closet over-filled with another life.

He felt a tightening in his chest that was something like being nervous, and being happy, and being scared all at once. But the emotions clumped together in him and the drugs from his IV pushed through his veins and all he felt was confusion.

“Bones?” he asked, trying out the name on his tongue. She nodded, looking almost earnest, and he remembered his job and being partners and a lab and their friends and he remembered a pig called jasper and the diner and Sweets and Angela and Vegas and her father and he remembered moments and her face and the places but he just couldn’t make sense of anything.

And most of all, he was tired. “My head is killin’ me.” She smiled then, as if his words were confirmation of something she’d been hoping for. And he wasn’t really sure what was going on but her eyes were so blue and she smelled familiar. Her fingers let go of his wrist and reached for his hand.

“I’ll go get the doctor,” she blinked at him. She was looking at him hard, though, like maybe she was still searching for something, but he couldn’t hold his eyes open any more. He let them drift closed. He knew she’d look out for him, whoever she was. She always did.

::::

The first day Booth woke up was a relief because he woke up. The extent of his disorientation wasn’t that obvious. It wasn’t until the next morning when we just want to warn you Dr. Brennan and how it felt to be told Booth thought she was his wife.

“He kept asking for you, by your name,” Dr. Neeson explained slowly, “but he was adamant that you are his wife.” There was a long pause. Brennan didn’t know how to react. “You’re, I’m sorry maybe I’m confused, but, you’re not his wife, are you?”

Brennan’s mind had slowed down, trying to understand what the Doctor was saying, but her head snapped up at his question.

“What? No. No. Agent Booth and I, no.” She swallowed with some difficulty and felt her cheeks heating. “We are not married.”

She hesitated again and almost added, “And we never have been,” but the thought that she might need to emphasize the point was too ridiculous to entertain. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered, and walked past the doctor, hand reaching for door handle leading to Booth’s room.

She wasn’t sure how she felt that in some alternate reality of his, he thought of her as his wife.

He knew she didn’t believe in marriage.

“Booth?”

Brennan poked her head around the door frame. He blinked sleepily at her from his bed and grinned. His smile was slow and relaxed and his eyes were drooping. He looked doped up on drugs, which he was.

“Hey, Bren, c’mere, let me--“ he stopped talking and frowned at her, probably because at the name ‘Bren’ she had frowned at him. And she wasn’t quite sure how he was going to end that sentence. “Everything okay?” he finished, slowly.

“Booth,” she swallowed and walked toward his bed, “how are you feeling?” She sat down at his bedside and leaned forward. She wanted to gauge the situation.

She felt unsettled and unsure and out of place and out of her element. She didn’t like this, this not knowing and all that really mattered was that he was awake. Didn’t it?

Booth blinked at her, “Babe, I’m kind of in the hospital after brain surgery and, what, I don’t even get a kiss hello?”

He grinned at her, nice and slow. His eyes crinkling to match and he stared, his pupils dilating seemingly at will, and she thought about Agent Perotta and twinkling and felt her throat constrict.

She stared at him for a long while, until the smile slowly shrank from his face and she was left with Booth’s familiar eyes looking at her like a lost puppy. She straightened her spine and lifted her chin and stared at him. She spoke firmly.

“The doctors have told me that you think I’m your wife.” She watched him watch her. “This is… difficult for me to say, but it’s not uncommon for people to be… confused when they wake up from prolonged unconsciousness.” She paused for a long moment. “I am Doctor Temperance Brennan.”

“I know who you are.” He responded quickly, eyebrows lowering. She was aware of her increasing heart rate and the steady thumping she could feel beneath her ribs.

“I’m a forensic anthropologist,” she continued with her explanation.

“You’re acting like I’m crazy.” His eyes darkened.

“You are an FBI agent.”

“Bren, stop it.” He started to get angry.

“We’re work partners.”

“Dammit, Bones, I know that,” he told her, angrier. And then he realized what he said. His eyes closed and his hand reached for his temple. “Jesus,” he said, and he sounded small. “What the hell is going on? You’re my wife.”

“Booth?”

She’d never seen him like this. He was always so steady. He was Booth. And suddenly she was the one who felt like the world beneath her feet was twisting and dipping.

“Bones,” he said, and opened his eyes to look at her. “You’re Bones. You, I mean, we work together, and you, you’re a scientist.”

“Yes.” She responded uncertainly. She knew his words were facts but he said them like questions, like he was verifying information, except this was his life too and why couldn’t he remember?

There was a long silence. He stared at his blankets, his lap. She stared at him. She wondered what he was thinking, what he remembered. “Do you—“ she licked her lips, and he gave her his attention, “Do you remember that?”

He shook his head and then leaned it gently back into the pillows. “It’s like I remember,” he squinted into the distance, “I remember you and me and we were married and—“ he stopped there, suddenly, and looked at her. “I also remember different things that, well, they don’t really make sense, together. There’s you and there’s me and there’s other people we know, but I’m not sure what’s right and what… isn’t.” He trailed off with a frustrated sigh.

She nodded. “Confusion is a common side effect of any surgery involving the brain.”

He stared at her. She wondered if she was being helpful, at all.

Brennan was feeling upbeat. She juggled a coffee in one hand, her laptop bag, a duffle of things Booth requested from his apartment yesterday afternoon (when he started to come around to reality), and daisies.

(The daisies were Angela’s idea. “But they’re my favorite flowers, Angela.” It didn’t matter.)

Brennan stopped just inside the threshold, behind Sweets, as Booth, looking frustrating, stared down Sweets even from his hospital bed.

“Seriously, Sweets, it’s no big deal.”

“No big deal?” Sweets scoffed, “I can’t believe this,” he said, “I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me sooner. This is a huge deal, Agent Booth.” Sweets swung his arms out to emphasize, apparently, how ‘huge’ of a ‘deal’ ‘it’ was.

“Hi, Booth,” Brennan said, stepping around the foot of the bed and unloading her things from her arms onto a chair. “Sweets,” she nodded at him.

“Oh,” Sweets dropped his arms quickly, “Dr. Brennan, Hi, I uh, I didn’t realize that was you coming in.”

“What’s a huge deal?” she asked, turning around and crossing her arms. She raised her eyebrows as the two men stared at each other.

Booth ignored her, “When was I supposed to tell you, huh? I just woke up from a coma. Yesterday.”

Brennan frowned. “Is everything okay?”

Booth continued to glower at Sweets. “Yeah, Bones,” he said, emphasizing her name as he finally turned to look at her. His facial features softened slightly, “everything’s fine.” He sounded weary. “Sweets here is just pissed at me for not telling him about the whole, uh, dream thing.”

Brennan turned her body a few degrees, angling herself at Sweets, “I don’t understand, what does this have to do with you?”

Sweets stared at her blankly. “Are you serious?”

Brennan glanced down at Booth and then back to Sweets. Of course she was serious, she was always serious.

“Dr. Brennan,” Sweets let out a long breath, “Agent Booth has undergone a very sensitive medical procedure with significant consequences for his mental health,”

“Hey,” Booth scowled, sitting up further in bed, “my mental health is just fine, thank you very much.”

Both Brennan and Sweets ignored him.

“And the FBI has assigned me to oversee his psychiatric evaluation during his recovery. This includes dealing with his inability to distinguish between reality,” Sweets moved his hands across the air in front of him as if he were playing a piano, “and his dream.”

“You know what Sweets, could you not, you know, could you not say it like that?”

Brennan now turned her full attention on Booth, “He knows?”

“Of course I know, I’m—“

“You know what, Sweets? Just, give us a minute.” Booth raised his eyebrows and grinned, gently, as if to say ‘Look, buddy, I’ll take care of it.’

Brennan wondered if Booth realized he had a charm smile reserved for specifically male interactions. He probably wouldn’t appreciate such an observation.

Sweets rolled his eyes and left the room, swinging the door shut behind him. “Why does Sweets know?” Brennan’s voice was a tight whisper, though unnecessary now that they were the only two in the room.

Booth let out a sigh. “Bren,” he started and then stopped. He swallowed and stared straight ahead, suddenly awkward. “Sorry. Uh, Bones,” Brennan averted her eyes as Booth talked to his hands. She watched his index finger loop a loose thread around and around, tightening until the fingertip began to darken with trapped blood. “Sweets, uh, he’s right. I mean, the FBI assigned him to me, now, for my recovery,” Booth said the word as if it were preposterous, but she looked up and his face was too serious. “And my doctor--”

“Dr. Neeson,” she supplied, turning her eyes back to his hands.

“Yeah, uh, he released my records to Sweets and so Sweets knows about the, uh, the dream.”

“Oh.” Brennan didn’t have anything else to say. She slowly lowered herself into the chair next to Booth’s bed.

“Yeah.”

She blinked several times.

“He says it’s totally normal.”

Brennan nodded.

“He says that you, uh, you were here. A lot. While I was, you know,”

“Unconscious.”

“Yeah.”

She looked back up at him. The room felt too quiet. The air felt too heavy. She shivered slightly in the air-conditioning. He began to unwind the thread.

“He says that he told you to talk to me and that, maybe, you did.” He sounded almost hopeful. Or maybe it was uncertainty lifting his voice. She couldn’t be sure.

He was staring at her then and it was still Booth but it wasn’t and she wasn’t sure who to be for him. She realized he was waiting for an answer.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I talked to you, while you were in the coma.”

He licked his lips, eyes still hot on hers. His head was bandaged and she wanted to unwrap the gauze from his head and she knew it was silly but she felt that if she could just get him out of the hospital then everything would be normal again.

“What did you, uh, what did you talk about?”

She looked at the stubble against his jaw, where his earlobe connected to his head and the smoothed out lines hiding in the skin on his forehead. She watched him blink and saw his lashes, briefly, against his cheek, and then the deep brown of his eyes staring back at her.

The thread snapped.

She felt nervous but couldn’t explain why. Her blood was steaming through her veins and racing through her body, to her heart, and it was a sense of restlessness and heaviness all at once. Everything was a contradiction, and she couldn’t find logic in anything.

He continued talking when she didn’t respond right away.

“Sweets thinks, maybe, if you were talking to me that my mind, I don’t know, absorbed what you were saying and turned it into my dream.” He swallowed and broke their eye contact, eyes falling to the thread he twined around and around his fingers. “But, you know,” he tried to chuckle, it wasn’t genuine, “dreams never make sense, so, you know, who knows, right?”

Brennan was nodding up and down and up and down and she was half-listening to him and half-listening to the pump of blood past her ears. She was going to tell him about the story.

When she wrote it, she never thought she would have to.

They had talked about having a baby and then he almost died and it was just last Thursday that they were eating lunch at the diner and Booth tried to make her eat a pickle and smeared mustard across her nose.

It all seemed very long ago.

She cleared her throat. “I was reading to you, out-loud.”

He waited for her to continue. She watched him looping the solitary string, around and around, and how its edges frayed. “It was,” she swallowed, and looked down when she felt the blood rush to her cheeks, “It was something I was writing.”

She understood Booth’s face, or she had gotten used to it, because she found herself able to catalogue his expressions with greater ease than most other people’s, even Angela’s.

Usually the confusing part was attaching the facial expression to the emotional cause. That’s where she fumbled.

She watched him, but he didn’t react. “Booth?” she interrupted herself. Her hand went to his on the hospital bed and he looked up at her. He didn’t say anything. He was so, something, and she couldn’t place it. Unsure?

“Yeah, Bones, I’m listening.”

“I’m sorry, Booth, I – that must have been insensitive of me. Do you remember my—“

Then he smiled. “I remember your Dad. I arrested him, didn’t I?”

“Are you asking?” Bones felt puzzled.

“No, it’s,” he sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, “it was a rhetorical question, Bones.”

And everything felt so not them. Maybe she was being too careful. Or maybe she was being just careful enough, but she was never careful and it was still too much. Whatever her place in all this, Booth wasn’t telling her things. She knew that.

The next day she showed up at the hospital, early. She wished she could bring him to the diner. She wanted to see him more like himself. But, that was selfish. And he was doing better. He was.

The doctor showed her the scans.

Inside Booth’s room, Angela was standing up from the visitor’s chair. Brennan hesitated in the open doorway. The two of them hadn’t noticed her yet and they were laughing about something and she watched Booth’s face and how his eyes crinkled. She felt relieved, but that didn’t make any sense to her.

“Bones! Hey!” Booth called, noticing her in her momentary lapse. She shook off her thoughts.

Angela leaned forward and kissed Booth on the cheek, “We’ll break you out of here soon enough, Booth. Enjoy your jello.”

He smiled, “Bye, Ange.”

Angela put her hand on Brennan’s arm as she passed, “I’ll see you at work later?” Brennan nodded and Angela kissed her quickly on the cheek, too, and breezed out, sweet-smelling air shifting behind her.

When Brennan turned around Booth’s face was still. She didn’t know what to do about that, but then again, he didn’t seem to either.

“Hi,” she tried, and sat down next to his bed.

“Hey.” There was a long silence. “Look,” he wouldn’t meet her eyes, “I know you’re busy and stuff and if it’s too much trouble for you to be spending all this time at the hospital—“

“It’s no trouble, Booth.”

“I just, I don’t want you putting off other, more important things.” Suddenly he was staring at her. She felt like this was one of those times when Booth was saying something to her without saying something to her, and she wished very much then that Angela hadn’t left yet.

“This is an important thing, Booth.” She spoke in a low voice, slightly puzzled, “But if you would rather I didn’t--”

Booth chuckled then, like normal, and again she felt relief; she felt her shoulders relax and when did she become so tense, anyway?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he was grinning at her, and she thought, okay, I got that one right, “Come around as much as you like.”

And it wasn’t exactly easy, this, whatever it was. They stared at each other. She couldn’t help wonder how much of him was Booth and how much of it was him playing a part?

Parker swung his legs back and forth off the edge of the bed and gestured enthusiastically. In the middle of his story he stopped and whipped his head around to look at Bones, “Have you ever been hit by a car, Bones?” Booth nudged Parker in the ribs and Parker giggled, “I mean, Dr. Bones?”

“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly, drawing out the sibilance at the end of the word. “I have.”

“Really?” Parker and Booth commented at the same time, both sets of eyes growing big, and she could see the resemblance between the two of them.

She turned away from Parker’s question to look at Booth, and before she could stop herself, “You know that, Booth.” Her words were almost sharp. Maybe the frustration was showing.

She watched the happy expression drop from his face and then her stomach dropped, too. Parker didn’t catch the exchange.

They stared at each other a long moment while Parker continued eating his ice cream cone. When he swallowed he asked, “Did you break anything? Did you break your leg? A boy at my school broke his leg and he had to use a wheel chair for a whole month.”

Brennan dropped her gaze from Booth’s and turned back to Parker, letting his enthusiasm defuse the moment. She swallowed, and slowly a grin tugged at her mouth as he talked.

After Parker left, Brennan felt herself still smiling. He was a happy boy and he had the same infectious good humor as his father. They were sitting in silence for a moment, the cartoons still dancing across the television screen, “Parker seems to be handling this well,” she started cautiously.

Booth nodded, he pulled his upper lip into his mouth and tucked his chin to his chest.

“Booth?” she prompted.

“What?” he looked up at her. “Yeah, right, yeah, he is. I think,” Booth smiled slightly and let his gaze focus somewhere over her shoulder, “I think he’s just happy that his old man’s okay.”

She wondered if Booth felt guilty about the memory lapse. His mind was muddled, and often times he needed reminding of who he was and who Bones was and who Sweets was and so on and so forth; psychologist or bartender, writer or squint; waitress or facial reconstruction tech; partner or wife.

He remembered plenty, with coaxing, he just sometimes had trouble placing his memories. And sometimes he also had trouble recollecting them. Sweets had suggested she offer up stories as a means to reacclimating Booth to his life.

“Do you want me to tell you how I got hit by a car?” she leaned forward, her voice hesitant. “It was when we had just started working together,” she began slowly, waiting for a reaction. He interrupted her.

“Sorry, Bones, you shouldn’t have to – you shouldn’t have to tell me things I’m supposed to know.”

Brennan felt her forehead lower. “It’s supposed to help.”

He let his head fall back into his pillows. “It’s just – I’m worried about what is real and what isn’t real and I’m worried about what I remember and don’t remember and I’m worried that you’re gonna tell me something I should already know and I’m gonna feel like a jerk for not knowing and I’m even more worried you’re gonna tell me something brand new and I’m gonna think I’m supposed to know it and every time you tell me anything all I’m gonna be able to think about is who are you and what do I know and I won’t even be able to listen to you anymore because by that point I’ll have blown my own brains out.”

He let out a frustrated breath and pushed the heel of his hand against his forehead.

Brennan didn’t have any solutions for him. A long moment passed and Brennan heard only the evenly spaced beeping that measured Booth’s heart. “You’ll get better, Booth.” Her voice was low and sure.

But still, she wondered.

(Months later, in the car, Brennan told him when she lost her virginity. She had never told him that before. He looked over at her, eyes shining with amusement like a kid in a candy store, and she felt herself relax a little, that at some point he had gone from not knowing that he didn’t know to just reacting. And wasn’t it so nice to just talk to each other again?)

Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

ff: Negative Silhouettes, 1/5 (Bones)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:27:42 GMT

(I really need to update my icons, hmm?)

Title: Negative Silhouettes, Throwing Shadows
Characters: Booth/Brennan; Angela makes a few appearances; very short cameos by others
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~22,00 words (!)
Spoilers: Everything up to 5.05 “A Night at the Bones Museum,” mostly from late season 4 and season 5.
Summary: How Temperance Brennan fell in love with Seeley Booth; a step-by-step evolution.
Disclaimer: Not mine. The characters are the creations of Kathy Reichs, Hart Hanson, and Fox, brought to life by the wonderful Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz. I’m just taking them out for a spin.

Author’s Notes: Let’s take the stance that Booth is the one who knows (4.21 “Mayhem on the Cross”) -- I’m trying to work through this from Brennan’s angle; her being in denial, her not realizing her feelings, and how after the coma they finally figure it all out. Mainly this is an excuse to whittle the show down to its molten core of UST and write a story about all the last two minutes of the episodes. Inspired by the beautiful song “Dance me to the End of Love,” written by Leonard Cohen and sung, in my head, by Madeleine Peyroux.

Author’s Notes (2): There’s a strong chance this wasn’t edited… enough? So any glaring errors, or anything that seems… ridiculous, let me know. Constructive criticism is always appreciated!

Author's Notes (3): I don't know what's going on but 2 hours of trying to post something is my limit, apologies for the messed up formatting issues.

::::

BOOTH: Evolution is a long, long process. It takes hundreds of years.

BRENNAN: Thousands.

--3x07 The Boy in the Time Capsule

“Show me slowly what I only know the limits of.”

--Dance Me to the End of Love, Leonard Cohen

::::

I. Prologue

Before college, before independence, before her academic excellence garnered her respect and success, Temperance Brennan lived with people instead of family and read books instead of going out with friends.

She remembered moving into college. She remembered choosing her classes and reading the descriptions for the introductory courses in anthropology and psychology and sociology and it all seemed so ridiculous now but then, then she remembered thinking maybe, just maybe, I should study people.

So, she did.

The lights inside the library were always brightly lit, throughout. Brennan’s left foot was falling asleep from being tucked beneath her leg, and she kept a running chant of the Spanish words for the tarsals going under her breath. Languages were very useful for anthropology and if she ever wanted to be part of a serious dig in South America, she knew fluency would be a great asset.

The lights reflected off the crisp white pages of her text books where they were strewn in front of her. She had exams, her last set as an under graduate, and she was looking forward to beginning her graduate program in the fall.

Los huesos cuneiformes, astrágalo, calcáneo, escafoides, cuboides, a breath.

She tapped her pencil against the encyclopedia page, her eraser bouncing just above the right clavicle in the picture.

A throat cleared as a shadow fell over her table.

“Temperance Brennan?”

She glanced up, and an unfamiliar young man was standing over her. His name was Scott Benson. Everyone called him Benson. (It became annoying, the two of them together, BensonandBrennan). He wanted to say hello to her because he was the other recipient of the summer fellowship with Professor Stires at Northwestern.

He had been looking for her, he said, and everyone told him to go to the theological library. He smiled.

“It’s quieter here,” she told him. He had a strong mandible and symmetrical zygomatic bones. She smiled back.

She remembered that summer being unbearably hot, and though the air conditioning in the lab worked (it had to, to keep the room the proper temperature for storing bones of various age and decomposition rates), the air conditioning in the office did not. Brennan had expected to have more hands-on experience in the lab, but she spent much of that summer sweating over paperwork.

She remembered the dull routine, the constant humidity, and the first time she slept with Benson (the first time she slept with anyone) and the way he had walked his fingertips up her spine and recited sacral, lumbar, thoracic, cervical.

It felt like romance.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend before,” she told him, as they carefully packaged the bones of a twelve-year old Guatemalan boy to be put back in storage. Her gloved fingers wrapped around the narrow tibia, the bone brittle and delicate. He had been malnourished.

Benson looked up at her, as he finished closing the lid on the skull box. “You’ve never wanted one.” He said this matter-of-factly. She hated when he did that.

“No,” she said, uncertain. She distinctly remembered wanting boyfriends in high school. She had been younger then, more alone and more vulnerable. That was before.

She had fallen in love with science quickly, but it wasn’t until she was old enough to appreciate the difference between the precision of science and the imprecision of emotion that she began to realize the difficulty of social interaction.

Much of the reason Brennan avoided messy human relationships was because of all the emotions.

Granted, this line of thought only seemed to reinforce the rumor that she was a horrible, frigid bitch; what she meant was that, unlike all else in her life, emotions were confusing. They were not logical. They were not rational. They couldn’t be correlated to determine cause or effect. And worst of all, Brennan found that not understanding others’ emotions was only slightly frustrating in comparison to being clueless about her own.

She knew that emotions resulted from simple brain chemistry. The more she learned in college the more determined she became to reduce the influence of her emotions on her actions. So, whenever her emotions strayed from a reasonable reaction to events she would simply ignore them.

At the end of the summer, they were in the midst of a fight in the middle of Brennan’s apartment. A fan was oscillating from on top of a book shelf, pushing around the humid air.

She spoke in a stern voice, not yelling at him. Not bothering to be that angry. “You are wrong.” She emphasized carefully.

He threw his hands in the air and she flinched, involuntarily. “I’m wrong?” he raised his voice, not noticing, “I’m wrong? For someone so logical,” he spit at her and she felt certain he was not giving her a compliment, “you really are full of contradictions.”

And then he stormed out. The door slammed shut loudly. Brennan didn’t know who to call.

She waited until her roommate came home. “I think we broke up,” she said. She remained calm.

Her roommate didn’t quite believe her. “You don’t seem upset,” she prodded, as she stood in the kitchen heating up noodles from yesterday’s take-out. Brennan nodded slowly, eyes on the TV. The fan was still on and it hummed in the background.

“No,” she said.

But later, later, she was lying in her bed and it felt so much bigger. She thought about how tomorrow was Saturday and she would have no one to go to lunch with and she felt her eyes prickle and she couldn’t explain why and then her eyes filled and her throat was aching from the effort it took to ignore her stupid emotions and she cried. She cried for hours.

In the morning she splashed cold water on her face. She stared into the mirror. Very sternly, using only her eyes, she decided that that would never happen again.

::::

II.

Brennan rolled her head on her neck. Her back felt stiff. That had been the quickest murder investigation she’d ever taken part of.

“You okay?” Booth asked, walking around his desk and dropping into his chair. He leaned back and Brennan continued to sit stiffly in the visitor’s seat, digging her fingers into the soft tissue of her neck.

“Yes,” she sighed, staring at the clock.

“Look, Bones, I’m sorry.” He blew out a long breath and tapped his pen against his blotter, once, twice, three times. He shook his head, “No,” he tossed the pen onto his desk with a clatter and stood, palms down, “You know what? I’m not sorry, I’m pissed--”

She was taken aback by his burst of anger. His eyes were dark and she wasn’t sure why he cared so much. “Booth--”

“No, Bones, don’t roll your eyes and ‘Booth’ me, okay? This is why you can’t show up at a crime scene unannounced!”

“I didn’t know the murderer would still be there!” She leaned forward quickly, her emotions heating and her anger getting the best of her. She winced at the stiffness in her neck.

Booth’s facial expression immediately softened. He hung his head between his shoulders for a long moment. Brennan eased back into the seat, her hand on top of the aching muscle in her right shoulder.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing his suit coat from the back of his chair.

“What?”

“First, we’re going to a doctor—“

“Booth, it’s soft tissue damage, there’s no damage to my spine or my neck—“

“No offense, Bones, but your nickname isn’t Soft Tissue for a reason. I’ll trust a real doctor.”

She stood to follow him and then stopped, frowning at his retreating figure, “I am a real doctor.”

“Sure, whatever you say. First, we’re going to the hospital,” he stopped walking to wait for her and paused until she caught up to him, “and then, we’re going to grab a beer.”

“Why?” she looked at him, confused.

They stood there a moment, looking at each other. Brennan thought it was weird that the first time they’d worked together she’d sincerely wanted to cause him physical harm – almost no one had the ability to make her feel so angry.

Booth grinned and turned, dropping a warm hand on her sore shoulder for a brief moment, turning her to guide her down the hallway.

Somewhere along the way, between the investigation that morning and Brennan being hit by a car when the murderer tried to escape; between the paramedics and the interrogation room; between the lab and the paperwork, the building had cleared out and night time had fallen.

Somewhere along the way, between unadulterated loathing and this new shaky friendship, Brennan found that Booth was there to do a job and she respected that. She respected him.

Booth shook his head, “You’ve got a lot to learn, Bones, about being someone’s partner.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Sometimes you go out and celebrate with a beer. And sometimes, if someone almost dies,” he looked at her pointedly, “you go out and celebrate, you know, the whole… not-being-dead.”

“It’s a minor case of whiplash, Booth, I didn’t almost die,” she huffed, “and I meant, why are we going to the hospital? I told you—“

“And I told you you’re not a real doctor!”

“But the paramedics at the scene examined me before we left!”

They stopped in front of the elevator and Booth reached forward to push a button. She admired the strong line of his shoulders and wished, not for the first time (though she would never admit it to Angela), that she and Booth could have, or really, could have had a sexual relationship. She had seen much evidence already that indicated he would be an extremely
satisfying sexual partner.

She sighed heavily. It seemed like a missed opportunity. Now that they were assigned together she knew, quite quickly, that to approach Booth about a sexual relationship would somehow be off-limits. It was the way he said the word partners.

He leaned over, bumping her shoulder gently with his own. “You gotta look out for yourself, Bones.”

His tone was light but when he glanced at her she could see that he was being sincere.

She felt heat against her skin, from the inside, and it was almost uncomfortable. She wasn’t good with live people. She was actually quite bad with live people, mainly because she spent much of her life trying to avoid dealing them.

He continued to stare at her, unabashed, and she wondered for the second time why he bothered to care.

She thought, maybe, it was the way he did things that had angered her, at first. But now she felt a flush beneath her skin and thought, maybe, it was the way he did things that were proving to make him such a good partner.

Booth thought the floor might have been moving. He couldn’t really be sure. His doorbell buzzed again as he paused, a palm against the wall to steady himself when his vision suddenly nose-dived into black. The edges of his sight returned, fuzzily, and after a moment he took a few more cautious steps toward the door.

The pressure in his skull made everything seem like he was looking out from the wrong end of telescope.

He pulled the door open to reveal Bones on the other side, holding a large brown bag against her torso. One of his eyes was mostly squinted shut, because of the brightness of the hallway.

“Why are you wincing?” Bones asked, frowning at him.

He blinked a few times and swayed on his feet.

“Bones?” he asked, intelligently. Although it sounded more like ‘bodes.’

Her eyes widened at him. “Just how sick are you, Booth? You look terrible.”

She walked past him into his entryway and he stood there for a moment staring at the empty hall. “Gee, Bones, don’t sugarcoat it for me or anything. What’s that like, kicking a sick guy while he’s down?”

He shuffled past her slowly and leaned against the counter, making a pathetic attempt to breathe through his nostrils.

“I was debating whether or not to bring you food. I’m glad I did.” She stopped pulling containers out of the brown bag to look carefully at him. He straightened up from his slouched position at the counter as she gazed at him, and he felt suddenly like a skeleton on the table.

“What?” he asked, self-consciously patting down his hair, which, he knew, was sticking up all over the place. He hadn’t mustered the strength to get out of bed for most of the day.

She walked around the counter and her gaze continued to sharpen. She walked right into his space, oblivious, and he imagined she must smell nice, not that he could appreciate it. Damn cold.

“Your glands are swollen. Do you still have a fever?”

“No,” he said stubbornly. He hadn’t taken his temperature since she all but jammed a thermometer down his throat two days ago, after she threatened to stick it somewhere else when he wouldn’t cooperate. He winced again.

“When was the last time you checked your temperature?” she crossed her arms over her chest.

He blinked slowly and really wanted to sit down. Or lay down. Or just, yeah, close his eyes. His eyes slid shut.

“Booth,” Brennan prodded him, her cool fingers landing on his cheeks, “You’re extremely warm to the touch.” Her voice was soft and her breath tickled his cheeks.

Her hands migrated up to his forehead, and he let out a little sigh. “Yeah, I don’t, uh, feel so good, Bones.” He swayed toward her slightly.

Later, Booth woke up on his couch. A blanket was tangled by his feet and someone was humming softly. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding and he felt sticky and sweaty and gross. He sat up slowly and blinked in the dim light of the lamp.

The humming stopped.

“Booth?” Brennan looked up from the file folder in her lap.

“Bones,” he responded. He was confused. He didn’t remember falling asleep. He wondered how long she’d been there.

“How do you feel?” Her eyebrows crinkled together with concern and she put her work on the table, leaning forward in the arm chair.

“Uh, yeah,” he blinked and shifted a bit, sitting up, “I think I’m feeling better.”

She nodded and crossed her arms over her chest, “You know, I wasn’t going to show up with food unannounced but Angela said you’d tell me not to come over if I called and that if you told me not to come over, I’d believe you.”

Booth rubbed some sleep from his eyes, “Uh, yeah, I’m not sure I follow what you said there Bones but Angela’s usually right,” he paused, turning to look at her, “You know you’re always welcome here.” He paused again before adding as an afterthought, “We’re partners.”

He wasn’t sure if he was saying that for her benefit or his own.

She nodded. “I know.”

The dim light cast them in its small glow and threw shadows across Brennan’s face. Booth swallowed. She seemed hesitant, or, nervous, or something. Like she had more to say. He wanted to get out of his clothes and take a shower and go back to sleep. He watched her look at her hands. She was careful. He was surprised by how young she seemed then, outside of the lab.

She kept her eyes to the floor. “Booth, I know I can be bad at these things, at reading people but… I think,” She struggled with her words, not with saying them but with finding them. This he could tell about her right away. Sometimes it seemed like she didn’t even know herself.

He watched her fingers twist together. She looked up at him then and spoke all at once, “You need to take better care of yourself.”

“It’s just the flu, Bones.” He wondered if that’s what she meant. Sometimes she really was bad at this stuff.

She nodded. He watched her, watching him. She was staring hard and he tried not to think about her eyes or the way her hair curled against her jaw or how she smelled. He tried not to think about any of that because they were partners and they worked together and, sure, she was beautiful, but it wasn’t worth the hassle.

What was she waiting for anyway? Her lips parted, like she wanted to say more, but instead her tongue darted out to wet them and his eyes dropped to follow the motion. The soft dampness of her lower lip gleamed for a moment before he pulled his gaze away.

“Well, I should go home,” she stood up and her voice was louder, sharper, more Brennan. “I left the sweet and sour soup you like in the fridge. I just thought, well, I asked Sid what you’d want and that’s what he gave me. And some dumplings.”

He felt a smile pull at his cheeks. “Thanks, Bones, really.” She bought him soup. “That’s, that’s great. Amazing.”

She nodded and he caught the edge of her smile before she bent forward to gather her things. “You can call me if you need anything.” She paused, slinging her bag over her shoulder. He stood up gingerly, still unsteady on his feet. He felt light-headed and knew he should eat.

“Yeah,” he said to her, “Yeah but I’ll be fine. I’ll be back to new on Monday.” He tried to grin, “A million bucks,” but it didn’t feel all that convincing.

She glared at him. “Booth, don’t you dare come back to work if you’re still sick.”

He raised his eyebrows at her and chuckled lightly, he couldn’t help it. “Alright, Bones, geez.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, “Just don’t call my mother, okay?”

She frowned. “Why would I do that?”

::::

III.

Brennan always worked five days a week. Sometimes six. And sometimes, when she was on a dig, or an investigation was really long, she worked even more.

She had been waiting for Booth to wake up for only four days. Only four days, she said to herself, but that didn’t make it any easier. And since when did four days feel so long?

She was human, too. She never forgot that, though other people sometimes seemed to. And she started thinking about things while she watched him from her careful distance in the visitor’s chair.

She wasn’t sure how to react, yet. She didn’t want to do anything but wait.

::::

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

preface

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:59:55 GMT

Consider the following author's notes to what I'll be posting (ideally) this week.

So in a fashion totally unlike myself, I actually started writing what I wanted to be a step-by-step (or, you know, as step-by-step as could be) evolution of how BB have changed (and changed each other) and why it would make sense for them to get together, now.

And then Bones has to go and keep having these RIDICULOUS* episodes and I keep either wanting to change something or wanting to add more.

And so it's spiraled out of control...

I guess to me Season 5 has been about Booth's story, or his side of things, or whatever. AND I CERTAINLY DON'T HATE IT. It's as if the show has set out to prove how and why Booth loves Brennan and why it will be okay for him to act on it now/soon/in the near future... where in the past it was always acknowledged that they had feelings and sexual tension (moreso than for other TV shows) but not nearly as close to what they've been doing recently (LIKE FLAT OUT REPEATING THE WORDS LOVE, BOOTH, AND BRENNAN, UNTIL MY HEART WANTED TO EXPLODE AND I ACTUALLY HAD TO PAUSE THE SHOW LIKE, IM NOT SURE, EVERY 14 SECONDS???)

So, to frame myself, I figured Booth was the one who always knew. And it was really enlightening to me when he finally, and heart-breakingly, tells Gordon Gordon that he "knows" Brennan is not in love with him. As if that's why he's never done anything, or been willing to risk it, and all the things he's said in the past, all the "you will" and the "it happens eventually," were all him just hoping even as he secretly stewed in, to him, his unrequited love. GAH.

But I feel weird because my story is mainly told from Brennan's POV and that almost strikes me as off just because of the angle they're taking with the show right now. (Not that it's going to stop me, obviously.) Plus I have this 16000 + word thing waiting to be posted and ... let's be honest... I've never posted anything that long? Oh, wait, I've never even finished anything that long (hi, Doctor Who fic, still sitting on my hard drive like an abandoned puppy....)

I really feel like it must be finished before Thursday, or else. You know?

*BETTER THAN ANYONE COULD HAVE HOPED FOR/IMAGINED

ff: bones (x2)

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:20:43 GMT

Yeah, really though, I wasn't lying. I guess lately I've been on kind of a writing jazz. And a reading of bones-fic jazz. And, of course, watching bones, which in its own way might as well be like reading fic. Soooooo it's all eating my brain from the inside-out, in a really fuzzy and pleasant way.

Title: Following Each Other (We Can Learn the Steps Along the Way)
Characters: Booth/Brennan
Rating: G
Length: 1,550 words
Spoilers: 5.05 A Night at the Bones Museum, barely.
Summary: A short missing scene that leads up to the very last scene of the episode (by implication; not really spoilery at all. [I mean, unless you really, really, really care about mostly irrelevant details of the case?])
Disclaimer: I didn't create them, I just like using them.

She let Booth’s fingers slide into hers and her stomach fizzed like the glass of champagne she just finished. She ignored it.

“Booth,” she muttered, an uncharacteristic giggle tingeing her voice, “where are we going?” Her whisper echoed off the empty hallway as she hurried along after him in her high heels, a little unsteady. Their fingers were linked and his palm was dry and warm against hers. He was taking short quick steps and she tottered along behind him, stifling confused laughter. “Booth!” she whispered, but clapped a hand over her mouth when her voice echoed again. He threw her a look over his shoulder, his face a mix of amusement and mischief that Brennan was beginning to recognize.

He turned back around, continuing to tug her down the empty hall by her outstretched arm. His shoulders were outlined in the black tuxedo jacket he wore. She couldn’t help but notice this. Technically, from the back, Booth looked almost exactly the same in a tux as he did in his regular suits. But when he first walked into her office earlier that night, to escort her over to Egyptology, she had realized with an unexpected flush that Booth was an honest-to-goodness FBI agent. Of course she knew this, she was his partner after all. But there was something about the tuxedo that reinforced the point in a way that was glamorous, or perhaps ostentatious. And since Booth was generally opposed to glamour, seeing him in his full tux reminded her of James Bond. Her brother always watched those movies when they were growing up. Her parents didn’t like them, which made sense now, and she remembered pretending to be secret agents upstairs, after their parents put them to bed. Shaking off the memory, she caught the last of Booth’s response.

“… wouldya just for once in your life be quiet and trust me.” He stopped moving and turned toward her as he said this last part but Brennan was not expecting that and so she stumbled into him. Her face was suddenly very close to his and in her heels they were eye to eye and chest to chest and his hand slipped from her own to brace her. It landed on her hip, fingers curving around the bone and pressing into her lower back. His fingertips were tensed, and half of them had landed just at the place where her lower back flared into the curve of her bottom.

She inhaled sharply and then the air was weighted with silence. They breathed. She blinked. He blinked back.

“Uh,” he said. His voice was low. His pupils were heavily dilated and she blamed the low-lighting.

“What were you going to show me?” She asked him without breaking eye contact, and he was quiet, just looking at her, before he abruptly stepped back.

They had stopped in front of a non-descript door. One of the many storage rooms located in the maze of hallways away from the museum exhibits and labs and offices.

He was looking at the floor and his hand went to the back of his neck which he rubbed, nervously. She knew this about him. Unsure if being able to read someone was being able to guess correctly about their mannerisms or simply remember them from constant exposure and repetition. She wondered what Sweets would say.

“Well, it’s just, I guess I figured if they were throwing a party in your honor,” he began, slowly.

“Stop saying it like that, Booth.”

“Saying it like what? It’s the truth!” Brennan rolled her eyes, but Booth continued, “Anyway, since they are throwing a party in your honor, I thought I’d do a little snooping and see what they were planning on giving you.”

“Booth,” Brennan scolded him, crossing her arms. “Being a guest of honor does not imply the giving of gifts. And, furthermore, if they were meaning to surprise me with something then—“

“They want you to have the box.” He interrupted her earnestly.

“What?”

“The box, you know, with the writing on it.” He waggled his fingers in the air to demonstrate something, but she did not understand.

She raised her eyebrows, “Booth, while sometimes your use of the vernacular serves our communication in this instance I’m really not sure what you are—“

Booth opened the door that was behind him and flipped the light on.

Brennan stopped, “Oh,” she said when she saw the small hexagonal box that the ruby had been stored in, inside Prince Anok’s chest. The box was in a clear glass cube, in the middle of the table. The low lighting reflected off of the fading hieroglyphs that decorated its exterior. There was a placard next to it announcing it as a gift for DR. TEMPERANCE BRENNAN.

She walked slowly past Booth, who was smiling smugly, and into the room. Her mouth had fallen open slightly and her heart began to thump heavily beneath her ribcage. An increased heart rate was a perfectly normal reaction to feel upon receiving an item with intrinsic historical value; she was certain she was reacting to the surprise of the gift.

“Look, Bones,” Booth’s voice was close to her ear and she realized he was standing just behind her. “I know that, you know, I shouldn’t be stealing this moment from the Egyptian government. If they really want to gift you a priceless artifact then I should just let ‘em, right?” She breathed deeply attempting to slow her pulse, “But the thing is,” he dropped his voice to a warm rumble and leaned closer. She could feel the imperceptible shift in the air, and then his breath against her earlobe and along her jaw, “the thing is, I can’t get you a gift like this, but I uh, I wish I could. And I just wanted to see what your face would look like, you know?”

Brennan’s lips pressed closed and she turned to face him. She did not trust her voice to be clear as her throat felt constricted. Her blood seemed to warm in her limbs at his words and the soft smile in his eyes as he stared back at her. She felt… pleased. Booth had a way of making her feel special. He was very good at recognizing her importance to him and showing her with carefully thought out gestures. She let her hand rest lightly on the fabric of his lapels, her fingernail idly scratching up and down. She recalled pigs and smurfs and guy hugs and his hand on her shoulder or curled around the back of her neck. She swallowed, waiting to speak until she could honestly convey her feelings. “Thank you, Booth.”

She meant it.

Then, she leaned forward, hovering next to his face and enjoying the way the air seemed to jump between them. For all her science and empiricism and talk of the chemistry of chemistry, Brennan rarely tried to quantify passion, choosing rather to enjoy the rush of physical pleasure. Pausing next to Booth she again felt her heart quicken and thump and her skin grow warm. She placed a careful kiss to his cheek. When she pulled back she’d had an idea. She grinned brightly, “Now I’ve got something to show you.”

Imitating his own actions from earlier, Brennan slipped her hand into his and tugged him from the room. Booth flipped the light switch and pulled the door shut as he chuckled at her enthusiasm.

She hurried down the hall, feeling the silly grin on her face, and listening as Booth clomped along behind her stubbornly. “Whoa, whoa, whoa , Bones, you’re not gonna tell me where we’re going?”

“You didn’t tell me,” she countered, letting go of his dead weight to open the heavy door to the stairs and then clacking loudly down the first few steps. He bounded down ahead of her and did a short turn on the platform, leaning his hip against the railing and watching her descend the rest of the way.

“Yeah, but mine was intended to be a surprise. You just thought this up a second ago.”

She walked past him and continued down the next set of stairs, her shoes still echoing loudly in the stairwell. “You are being quite hypocritical, Booth.”

He frowned and then rushed after her, putting his hand by her elbow as she took the last few steps. “Do you even know what’s down here?”

She merely smiled and widened her eyes. “Of course I do. And you’ll find out soon enough. Don’t be so impatient.”

He sighed and stuck his hands into his pockets, following behind her as she exited the stairwell into a different type of hallway – it was carpeted, plush, and clearly part of the museum that was for show. Still, the whole place was dimly lit, and he almost bumped into her as she stopped to press a code into a keypad next to a large entryway, “Lights,” she explained, “can’t be too harsh for the surfaces of the findings in the exhibit or else the rate of deterioration—“

“Yeah, Bones, I get it, no flash photography,” he said, and she could feel him vibrating with energy as he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, waiting for her to finish.

-fin-

ff: bones

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:19:00 GMT

I ... don't know. This might get out of control. But to start? Here is a teensy-weensy, teeny-tiny ficlet. Barely that.

Title: Woman's Intuition
Characters: Angela, Brennan; implied B/B
Rating: G
Lengtht: ~500
Spoilers: 4.15 The Princess and the Pear
Summary: Post-ep, Angela talks to Brennan the next day.
Disclaimer: No infringement intended, just taking Kathy Reichs and HH's kids out for a spin.

Oh, my God. Oh my God. This was it, Angela realized. This was the moment that her brain was finally going to explode. She noticed, then, that her mouth was hanging open. Not in a rude, obvious, I can’t control my face kind of way, but in a way that was unnatural for her mouth to be. It was the shock. Because, oh my God, “What did you just say?” Angela asked, her palm landing over her heart and then she started smiling like an idiot because, well, she totally felt like one.

Brennan looked up at her from where she was leaning over her desk, flipping through files in search of something specific. “What?” she asked, pausing long enough to level Angela with her typically inquisitive stare.

Angela shook her head, still smiling. “Sorry, Bren, it’s just—you’re gonna to have to run that by me one more time. You were at Booth’s last night and Agent Perotta came by, and, what?”

Brennan stood, straightening the hem of her blazer and nodding carefully twice. “Oh, yes, I was merely saying that I wanted to give the two of them privacy as it was obvious that Agent Perotta is interested in Booth as more than just a coworker.”

Angela blinked a few times, and felt her smile growing wider. She shifted her weight to her other hip and crossed her arms as Brennan leaned forward and pulled out a folder from the stack in front of her. “So, what you’re saying is, you think it’s easy to tell when one person is romantically interested in another?”

Brennan flipped open the file and began scanning its contents, “I’m not sure how you define romantic interest. However, sexual attraction between people is fairly easily quantifiable given specific physical markers as well as observations of simple body language. And given Agent Booth’s tendency toward alpha male behavior coupled with his broad shoulders and natural confidence, I admit most women would be attracted to him. Because Agent Perotta is also naturally attractive given the ratio of her hips and shoulders as well as—“

“Wait a minute,”

Brennan stopped rattling off the science between the suspected attraction between Perotta and Booth long enough to look up at Angela with a puzzled expression, “What? I thought you wanted to know how I knew that they were attracted to one another?”

“Sweetie,” Angela felt the world shift happily back into order, “Booth’s not attracted to Perotta.”

She shrugged, “Agent Perotta possesses specific characteristics of a desirable mate proven to arouse males, which Booth cannot choose to ignore.”

Angela sighed, turning and making her way to the door to let Brennan get back to work. “Brennan, Booth is not attracted to Perotta.” She let her eyebrows lift ever so slightly as she emphasized the other woman’s name, but Brennan just blinked at her and frowned. Angela let the door swing shut behind her, Brennan’s confused expression following her down the hallway.

-fin-

second story

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:49:03 GMT

The other story I wrote is actually preseries, but only by minutes.

Title: Partners
Characters: Booth, Brennan, and a bit of Angela for good measure
Rating: G
Length: 1,400
Spoilers: Pilot
Summary: Remember when Booth had Bones arrested at the airport? Me too.
Disclaimer: Characters borrowed, gently used, and returned unharmed to Fox, Kathy Reichs, and Hart Hanson.

He wasn’t used to this. He wasn’t used to someone like her. He, well, he always had pull where women were concerned. That wasn’t even his arrogant side talking, not that he had a particularly arrogant side. He knew people, and he definitely knew women.

Sure, she was a scientist, and, yes, she was used to being in control and wouldn’t allow other people to manipulate her, much less when they had a professional relationship.

But still. He was good with women.

Manipulation was too strong of a word anyway, because he definitely was not that guy. Work was work for him not a place to socialize or take advantage. But everyone knows, male female whatever, that a little bit of charm is always appreciated. His mother always said that you could catch more flies with honey than vinegar. He blew out a frustrated breathe and tried to ignore the square plastic press of the phone in his pocket. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be working with her again.

It vibrated just as the light turned green.

“Booth,” he answered.

“Booth! Great, where are you I need you to come get me.”

He blinked. Now she was telling him what to do? He worked for the FBI for crying out loud. “You need me to come get you,” he repeated slowly, trying to impress upon her the delicate social balance that existed between squints and agents. She didn’t get it.

“Yes, where are you? You need to hurry.”

“Why do I need to get you? Just tell me whatever the thing is and I’ll take care of it.”

“No, absolutely not. This requires a scientist’s eye Booth, and no offense, but it’s not like you can tell the difference between—“

“Yeah whatever, I’ll be right there.” He snaps his phone shut with a little more aggression than required, muttering under his breath.

He had barely touched his foot to the break pedal when the passenger door swung open and Bones clambered inside.

“Okay, Bones, so tell me, what’s the rush?”

“I know who the killer is.”

Booth slammed on the breaks, stopping short just a few yards from where he’d parked to pick her up. “You… know who the killer is.”

“Yes. What are you doing,” she gestured with her hands, “we need to go, we’ve got to catch him before… why are you looking at me like that?”

“Bones, I told you, tell me when you have information like that and I will take care of it.”

“But Booth, if I figure it out I should get to come along, it’s the logical progression of—“

“blah blah blah, I don’t care. You’re not a trained agent I can’t just take you out into the field because you threw some big words at me.”

“Well, I gave you a pass on our first case because—“

“Gave me a pass?”

“—I figured you would need to adjust to me, you were used to being in control, and that once you recognized my value to the process of an investigation you would let me take an equal partnership in—“

“Equal partnership?”

“You can repeat everything that I say to you but it’s not going to enhance the conversation or solve the problem.”

“What problem?”

“That I know who the killer is and you’re causing a traffic jam in the museum parking lot.”

Booth sighed deeply, “Look, give me the information,” he put the car in drive, “and I will go out with a team of trained FBI agents, and then you will hear all about the outcome from me personally after it goes down.”

Brennan blinked, “You’re not going to let me come?”

He bit back a grin and shook his head, surprised that she was this tenacious, but then he met her eyes and the piercing glare she was throwing at him wiped the humor off of his face. He tried for sincerity.

“Look, Bones—“

“Don’t call me that.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, “Look, we can haggle about your role with the FBI some other time, but like you said, there’s a killer out there so could you just, you know, get me the information I need? Now?”

Despite the odd nature of one Temperance Brennan, Booth had to admit to himself that after just a short while he had a soft spot for her. She was emotionally tough, she was smart as a whip, and she didn’t take crap from anybody. Part of the problem was that all of those traits directly interfered with his involvement in the Jeffersonian, and as much as he would like to beg off and leave the over-eager scientist to nag someone else, he also recognized that she was good. He’d take good over just about anything.

It had been almost two weeks since their last case, which was why he felt a kind of excitement bubbling up through him when he founds a file on his desk that morning, a fresh case just waiting to be solved. That, or the whole partnership aspect of working with her, as he’d yet to have a permanent duty partner. It was kind of nice. He saw how it could benefit the job. He pulled his suit jacket on, scooped up the file, and whistled to himself as he left his office.

He crossed over the shiny tiled floor to the raised platform where Brennan so often occupied her time, raised the file folder in a salutary gesture toward some of her lab rat friends off to the side. He jogged up the steps only to find empty metal tables and no one in sight. He hesitated.

Booth headed for her office but was intercepted by her friend, he couldn’t remember her name, who smiled widely at him. They’d met once before, and she’d kept throwing weird looks at him. He was good enough at reading people to recognize that she wasn’t a socially awkward person trying to hit on him as much as she was an amused third party trying to make a point to someone else about him. He hadn’t figured out the specifics of that yet. But he brightened up considerably when he realized, bingo, she’d be the type of lady who’d appreciate a little charm.

He put on his best smile, “Hi there,” he began, but she interrupted him almost immediately.

“Agent Booth, wow, it’s so nice to see you around here again. I’m assuming you’re looking for Dr. Brennan?”

He nodded.

“She didn’t tell you that she was going on vacation?”

“Vacation? Bones?” he grinned “Nice try. Where is she?”

The woman—Angela!—grinned at him, “Well, between me and you it’s not exactly lying on the beach with a martini in hand, but its her idea of a vacation anyway. She went to Guatemala last week, and she won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

There was a pregnant pause. It was probably his cue to leave, but he couldn’t help it, so he pressed further.

“She uh, didn’t mention that to me. Wonder why that is,” he smiled his sweetest smile.

Angela smiled back slightly, “She told us we weren’t going to be working with the FBI anymore, think that might have something to do with it?”

“Sonuvabitch,” he said, mostly to himself, “she’s flying in tomorrow?”

Angela nodded.

“What’s her flight number?”

“Uh, I don’t know off the top of my head but I have it written down. Are you going to pick her up at the airport?”

He paused, clearing his throat, making a game plan in his head. Like taking candy from a baby.

“No, no I can’t. Could you get me that information though, and uh, tell me more about what she was doing in Guatemala?”

“Oh you know Brennan, goes off to an excavation site and can’t help but bring back some woman’s hip bone from the year 3000 BC.”

Booth nodded, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Two can play this game, he thought, deciding to get a meeting with his boss about giving in to some of Brennan’s demands. He’d just have to make a little demonstration to show her how things were going to be run. Thank God he worked for the FBI.

The next afternoon he pulled into a parking space in front of the arrivals gate, sliding his sunglasses off his face and opening his phone before it stopped ringing.

“Got her right here, Booth,” the voice said to him over the phone.

“Perfect.”

x.

It's that time of year again. Hiatus time. I'm thinking of getting a tv series for myself for a little holiday cheer. That should last a whole weekend *g*

The other story I wrote is actually preseries, but only by minutes.

Title: Partners
Characters: Booth, Brennan, and a bit of Angela for good measure
Rating: G
Length: 1,400
Spoilers: Pilot
Summary: Remember when Booth had Bones arrested at the airport? Me too.
Disclaimer: My first bones fic? Wahooo. Characters borrowed, gently used, and returned unharmed to Fox, Kathy Reichs, and Hart Hanson.

Sure, she was a scientist, and, yes, she was used to being in control and wouldn’t allow other people to manipulate her, much less when they had a professional relationship.

But still. He was good with women.

It vibrated just as the light turned green.

“Booth,” he answered.

“Booth! Great, where are you I need you to come get me.”

“Yes, where are you? You need to hurry.”

“Why do I need to get you? Just tell me whatever the thing is and I’ll take care of it.”

“No, absolutely not. This requires a scientist’s eye Booth, and no offense, but it’s not like you can tell the difference between—“

“Yeah whatever, I’ll be right there.” He snaps his phone shut with a little more aggression than required, muttering under his breath.

He had barely touched his foot to the break pedal when the passenger door swung open and Bones clambered inside.

“Okay, Bones, so tell me, what’s the rush?”

“I know who the killer is.”

Booth slammed on the breaks, stopping short just a few yards from where he’d parked to pick her up. “You… know who the killer is.”

“Yes. What are you doing,” she gestured with her hands, “we need to go, we’ve got to catch him before… why are you looking at me like that?”

“Bones, I told you, tell me when you have information like that and I will take care of it.”

“But Booth, if I figure it out I should get to come along, it’s the logical progression of—“

“blah blah blah, I don’t care. You’re not a trained agent I can’t just take you out into the field because you threw some big words at me.”

“Well, I gave you a pass on our first case because—“

“Gave me a pass?”

“Equal partnership?”

“You can repeat everything that I say to you but it’s not going to enhance the conversation or solve the problem.”

“What problem?”

“That I know who the killer is and you’re causing a traffic jam in the museum parking lot.”

Brennan blinked, “You’re not going to let me come?”

“Look, Bones—“

“Don’t call me that.”

He put on his best smile, “Hi there,” he began, but she interrupted him almost immediately.

“Agent Booth, wow, it’s so nice to see you around here again. I’m assuming you’re looking for Dr. Brennan?”

He nodded.

“She didn’t tell you that she was going on vacation?”

“Vacation? Bones?” he grinned “Nice try. Where is she?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

There was a pregnant pause. It was probably his cue to leave, but he couldn’t help it, so he pressed further.

“She uh, didn’t mention that to me. Wonder why that is,” he smiled his sweetest smile.

Angela smiled back slightly, “She told us we weren’t going to be working with the FBI anymore, think that might have something to do with it?”

“Sonuvabitch,” he said, mostly to himself, “she’s flying in tomorrow?”

Angela nodded.

“What’s her flight number?”

“Uh, I don’t know off the top of my head but I have it written down. Are you going to pick her up at the airport?”

He paused, clearing his throat, making a game plan in his head. Like taking candy from a baby.

“No, no I can’t. Could you get me that information though, and uh, tell me more about what she was doing in Guatemala?”

“Oh you know Brennan, goes off to an excavation site and can’t help but bring back some woman’s hip bone from the year 3000 BC.”

The next afternoon he pulled into a parking space in front of the arrivals gate, sliding his sunglasses off his face and opening his phone before it stopped ringing.

“Got her right here, Booth,” the voice said to him over the phone.

“Perfect.”

x.

It's that time of year again. Hiatus time. I'm thinking of getting a tv series for myself for a little holiday cheer. That should last a whole weekend *g*

first time for everything

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:46:49 GMT

Well I've been watching Bones for quite a while now and I probably don't take it as seriously as my other shows. Mostly it's for the eye-candy. And the writing/plot-lines that mirror mediocre fanfic. That being said, episode 4.08 "The Con Man in the Meth Lab" had one of my all time favorite tv moments to date. And I don't mean something fluffy and fuzzy, I mean seriously related to character development. Yum!

Anyway, I wrote two stories. Neither one is related to that episode.

Title: Secrets, Secrets
Characters: Booth, Brennan (and Zach makes a brief cameo)
Rating: G
Length: <1,000
Spoilers: None, definitely takes place pre season 4
Summary: Fluffiness.
Disclaimer: My first bones fic? Wahooo. Characters borrowed, gently used, and returned unharmed to Fox, Kathy Reichs, and Hart Hanson.

Booth is standing in her office as she comes down the hallway, luggage hanging over her shoulder. He’s fiddling with something on her desk.

She drops her shoulder bag to the ground with a thump as soon as she’s inside the threshold, causing Booth to jump. He begins to turn and face her, but as soon as he realizes who it is, he links his hands behind his back. She looks at him with confusion written across her face.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, not meanly but curiously “do you always hang out at the Jeffersonian when I’m away?”

Booth ignores her, “You’re back early.”

She blinks, “Yes—“

Zach walks into the room, eyes down reading the open file folder in his hand, “Agent Booth it seems—“

“Zach, Hi,” Brennan turns to greet her former assistant, and when Zach looks up Booth is making the universal symbol for either cut it out or off with his head while her back is turned. It takes Zach a minute to understand Booth’s gesture, but then his eyes widen and he shuts the folder in his hands, holding it against his chest.

“Dr. Brennan, yes, Angela said you’d be coming back today. Did you find anything particularly strange in Thailand?”

Brennan smiles, “I did in fact, that’s why I came back early,” she glances at Booth, “I’ll show you in a minute, could you let me talk with Agent Booth?”

Zach nods, “I’ll be with Hodgins,” and heads out the door, letting it shut slowly behind him.

Brennan turns to face Booth, who is standing with his hands behind his back again.

“What are you hiding from me?” she asks with a slight smile on her face. Her eyes sparkle. She takes a few steps toward him crossing her arms, her whole demeanor reads ‘I’m-on-to-you.’

Booth swallows, laughs shortly, and shrugs, “What are you talking about?”

“You’re hiding your hands from me?”

“No I’m not Bones, geez, get a little action with the FBI and suddenly you can read people?” he gestures vaguely with his left hand.

She blinks, unconvinced, “Show me your right hand.”

“What?”

Brennan grins, “You never did tell me why you were here,” she reaches forward to grab his arm but he leans back and turns slightly and she doesn’t catch hold of him. He grins.

She glares at him, “Booth.”

Sighing heavily, Booth brings his right arm forward. His shirt sleeve is rolled up to the elbow and a thick white cast encases his hand and wrist.

“You broke your wrist?” she asks with disbelief, eyebrows raising in surprise.

He groans, “Yes, okay? I broke my wrist.”

“And you thought you could hide it from me?”

“I was going to get the cast removed tomorrow.”

“Save face at the risk of letting your wrist heal improperly,” she shakes her head in disapproval, “let me see it.”

His eyebrows pull together and he brings his injured arm against his chest. “No.”

“Booth, don’t be childish. Let me look at it.”

“I’m wearing a cast Bones, and as much as I respect your talents, even I know you can’t see through plaster.”

She reaches over her desk, fingers sifting through the contents of a large makeshift pencil jar.

“What are you doing?” Booth asks her, letting his curiosity get the best of him.

She keeps looking for something, “Zach was getting your x-rays?”

“Yeah,” he responds distractedly, “seriously Bones, what are you doing?”

She stands with a grin, one hand behind her back, “let me see your arm.”

He looks skeptical, “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

“Hand,” she demands.

He sticks out his arm for her. She holds the back of his hand, examines the plaster closely, then pulls out the sharpie from behind her back and signs her name on the inside of his cast.

She caps the marker and stands back.

“What, that’s it?” he asks, unimpressed.

“I read bones, Booth, I don’t heal them.”

x.

Not only have I never written BonesFic, but I've never had a post that was considered too long. Strange.

Ranting and Ficcing in One Delightfully Short Post

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:47:30 GMT

In recent months for no particularly good reason my mojo, she has vanished. Begad! I don't know what to do. Except for the part where I have two multi-chapter fics just sleeping on my hard drive. And all I've been able to write is fiction (re: not based on existing canons). I don't mean that as a pat on the back: it's not coherent, or more than a page, or interesting etc etc. And I've done a lot of writing in my free time, less a hobby and more a compulsion, but this is annoying. Because I'm in a place where I can't direct my own ... thoughts? creativity? something?

I am being really teenagery at this moment. And I think, near future, I am going to allot some hours and just make myself write. And then something will happen. So I am planning on actually posting (eeeep) fic for Doctor Who. Which, hello, Christmas Special is forthcoming and

David Tennant is (most likely? definitely?) not staying on after this season, or he is staying on in part, or whatever the hell is going on. And RTD is technically out of the picture. But honestly, with Tennant, Moffat could have him yipping like a rabid animal and speaking total gibberish - which is not far from canon - and he'd totally pull it off. I am excited!

But for real, I am going to do this. I am pumping myself up. And once I get caught up on Prison Break (marathon on my laptop this weekend!) I am planning to have knobs twisting and gears cranking and cranks shifting and shifts changing and changes happening, know what I mean? In my brain.

Meanwhile, for the time being, a little peace offering to myself:

Characters: Michael/Sara
Rating: G
Genre: AU
Length: Teeny Tiny
Disclaimer: ~~I am secretly a writer for the show, which explains all the wild sex that is happening.~~ Not Mine.

The alarm jangled at 6:00 am, a time when the sky outside was still dark as pitch and the biting chill of the wintry air seeped right through the walls of her apartment. Bedrooms should be round rooms, spacious palaces set in the center of homes. With no outside walls. She pressed her cheek deeper into the warm cotton of her pillow and scooched her body more securely beneath the heavy robe of blankets that were piled on top of her bed.

Four hours later, Sara was barely halfway through her shift at the clinic. Her lips were chapped, her knuckles were dry and cracked, her fingertips raw, her head heavy, her eyes sore, her feet aching. An older hispanic women said something to her angrily in Spanish, or to be fair, one of the hundreds of other languages Sara did not speak, and then thrust a sobbing toddler into her arms. The child turned its face up to Sara and the unexpected sight of glistening pink subcutaneous tissue, obviously from a burn, made her stomach heave.

"Gloria," she called, starting down the hallway, palm flat against her stomach and the other arm anchoring the child to her. "Gloria, we need a bed right away --"

Gloria was the mother of five and the type of women who seemed to have a sixth sense about things. She took the young girl from Sara without a word, as if she could read the nausea in Sara's face or eyes. Sara only just made it to the employee's lounge where she retched suddenly and with uncomfortable vigor into the stainless steel sink. As her insides compressed and lack of oxygen gave her a panicky, suffocating sensation, she mused on the word lounge. A rather misleading term for the empty concrete space that had a few dilapidated metal lockers, a sink, a mini fridge, and two broken microwaves.

Final, her body relaxed, and she gasped deeply. Her hands were shaking as she wet a paper towel and pressed the cool material against her forehead, cheeks, and neck. When she turned, Gloria was standing in the doorway, a clipboard held against her torso and an amused smirk pulling at her mouth. "Go home," she told Sara.

Sara began to shake her head. Clearing her throat, "I'm fine, really, I just must've had something bad for dinner."

"Uh huh, bad for dinner. Okay. Go home."

"Gloria."

"I said go home."

"It's swamped today, what am I supposed to tell Terry?" Her angry boss who only came around to stomp loudly and complain about laziness.

Gloria clicked her tongue in reproach, "I'll handle him. You go home."

Sara sagged against the sink as Gloria walked away, her pink crocs squeaking against the tile floor.

When she got home, she was surprised to find him sitting at the kitchen table. She expected him to be at work, or at least for files to be strewn across the table full of geometric figures and confusing acronyms.

"Michael?" she said hesitantly, pushing the door shut behind her. She walked the rest of the way into the kitchen and he looked up at her, straight-faced, but with something lurking beneath the surface.

"The Doctor called--"

"Oh God," Sara dropped into a chair, "He said you should be fine for a six month check-up?I would have thought--"

"No, no," Michael chuckled warmly, and rested his hand carefully on top of her wringing hands, "No, not that doctor." His voice was a low rumble, and the vibrations from it alone seemed to loosen the tense chords of her neck and shoulders.

She stilled and looked up slowly, until she met his eyes. "And?"

Later, she would think that it was strange that it was Gloria, three months earlier, who had patted her belly and winked.

ff: Nothing Left To Take

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:04:40 GMT

Updates, yo. I am within sight of finishing this! And since nothing can compete with the actual show (by which I mean WM and SWC), I should be done before season four starts.

Title: Nothing Left To Take (5/?)
Characters: Sara, LJ, Susan B. Anthony
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1,130 words
Spoilers: 3.03 "Call Waiting" and 3.04 "Good Fences"
Summary: AU. What really happened to Sara and LJ?
Disclaimer: Everything herein based on creations by Paul Scheuring, FOX etc
A/N: Feedback is welcome, particularly because this is unbeta’d. And I may have started writing this chapter in the past tense while the others were in the present (which, I don’t know why I did that in the first place).

part one
part two
part three
part four

Three days had passed. Three improbably long days filled with lots of hand gestures and an overwhelming sense of regret for traveling to India after college instead of Bogota or Columbia or Venezuela, or any other of the seemingly numberless places where she could have picked up a little Spanish.

“No,” she shook her head vigorously as the wrinkled brown man in front of her held up a dirty looking chicken. Its feathers were matted with mud on one side, which did not prevent the creature from squawking and flapping its wings as if to say ‘not today, I’m not ready to be eaten.’ Sara had never felt more sympathetic toward poultry.

She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead and tried again. She did, after all, need to eat something. Pointing at the piles of sweet-smelling apples and the small pyramids of bananas, she then pointed to her mouth and rubbed her stomach. Her insides gurgled beneath her fingertips.

“Apple?” she tried. “Cuanto cuesta?” How much does it cost, the one thing she had remembered from the travel booklet she’d browsed at a rather run-down tourist shop near the center of town.

He held up a medium sized apple with shiny green skin and smiled, gesturing for the money she had in her hand. He plucked two crumpled looking bills from her, undoubtedly overcharging her, and then tossed her the apple. She sighed with relief and crammed the loose coins and other bills she had back into the pocket of her jeans.

Her teeth sunk into the flesh of the fruit and its bitter sweetness flooded her mouth. She rested against the rough stucco of a small house in an alleyway off the side of the street market, trying to plan her next move. More money, definitely. Though acquiring what money she had in the first place had taken almost two full days of begging, and even then it was impossible to make anything alongside the presence of young, starving children selling handicrafts down the boulevards.

Turning back along the bumpy road, Sara worked her way among the carts pulled by donkeys and the raggedy children pushing against her and speaking loudly in Spanish. She had avoided the American Embassy mainly because she figured Susan B. Anthony would be there waiting inside the front door. And because she didn’t know what had happened to Michael or Lincoln but hoped they were still in Panama. It wasn’t the hope that prompted her to stay; it was some sort of paralysis born of fear or panic that made her unable to leave.

She tugged at the itchy woolen shirt she wore, something she’d bartered off a poor young girl in exchange for the cotton shirt she’d been wearing. Up ahead, in the space between a tomato vendor and two elderly women in colorful shawls, a familiar face suddenly appeared. Her heart hesitated and then seemed to slam with even more force against her rib cage in order to make up for the lost seconds.

Fernando?

-x-

LJ had graduated to a tiny room with a tiny metal bed frame and a tiny mattress that had seen better days. There were no windows and the bare closet-sized space smelled of must and disuse. He wasn’t tied up anymore, but the raw marks on his wrists and ankles had not finished healing.

Sometimes if he couldn’t sleep he would rub his finger across the tender pink tissue of the open wounds, just to feel the sting.

But it wasn’t night time and it didn’t matter if he could sleep or not. So, he sat. He sat on the floor where he’d been sitting all day and the day before and the day before that and he closed his eyes and pictured his Dad smiling. That was before prison. Before a lot of things.

Two knocks on the door signaled the entrance of Susan, visiting him at her usual time in the middle of the day to bring him lunch and a newspaper and take his picture. Except this time, when the door swung open, Susan walked inside wearing all black and glaring. Her arms were folded and no food was in sight. LJ’s stomach growled.

She didn’t bother waiting for him to talk; he hadn’t spoken aloud in over a week. “LJ,” she cleared her throat and shut the door behind her, “LJ, I think it’s time we had a little chat.”

He stared at the floor.

He watched her from the knees down, watched her walk toward him, felt her fingers tighten around his upper arms like iron bands and didn’t bother fighting as she lifted him up and pushed him back onto the bed. He bounced a little and the old metal frame groaned.

“You need to pay attention.”

He met her eyes.

“Good. Now, how do you feel about dying.”

LJ felt the tell-tale signs of panic start as she said that to him. His palms became damp. He blinked several times. No need to respond. Don’t say anything.

Susan cleared her throat and continued, “Since you’re the only bargaining chip we have left, you might get the wrong idea that I wouldn’t do anything to you.”

LJ noticed the small object she held in her hand.

“You’re young, LJ. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you – that is, if Lincoln and Michael can get you out of this mess.”

He swallowed. His eyes followed the movement of the hand holding the knife.

“Now, I am going to do something that you might consider a favor,” she switched open the blade and, grabbing the back of his head, she pushed it against the corner of his left eyeball, “but I don’t want you to do that, LJ. Because I don’t do people favors.”

LJ swallowed again. His eyes were open too wide and he felt tears rise to the surface. He blinked. The sharp edge of the knife felt strange against his lashes.

Then, as suddenly as she’d grabbed him, she let go. “So, I am going to give you this phone,” she pulled her cell phone off her hip and waved it back and forth, “when your father calls. You are going to answer his questions while I listen,” she tapped the blue tooth remote in her ear. “If there is anything I don’t want you to say I will shake my head ‘no,’ do you understand?”

LJ nodded, his fingers twitching against the top of the mattress. He felt light-headed.

“Very good. And if you do anything wrong? Well, I’m sure you’d look just fine with an eye patch.”

LJ swallowed again, his mouth suddenly dry, “Can I have my lunch after?”

Susan glared at him and in her hand the phone began to vibrate.

TBC…

i has fic?

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:15:35 GMT

well, no. not entirely. i mean, pretty much however you look at it, that's a no. but i will. and by "will" what i mean is that i may try my hands in a brand-new fandom. with one of the longest stories i've ever written. WHICH IS TERRIFYING. any doctor who fans lurking around these rather dusty quarters? let me wipe off the coffee table and fluff the pillows for you. please, sit down. and when i start posting a new multi-chapter fic starring some old favorites and what is probably a rather sad plot given that my knowledge of the show rests firmly with new who and nothing classic, well, please don't run screaming. i will ply you with warm hot coco and other treats.

i promise.

meanwhile...

i can't wait for prison break's season four and now feel wracked with guilt for letting my half-assed attempt at story telling simply fall to pieces. i actually have more written than posted but am a-feared to keep going until i complete it one hundred percent. so... that is my goal! before the show starts! i am back! and better than ever(?)!

hope the summer is going well and no one is having any sweaty sleeping problems or sunburn problems or malaria.

ff: Definition of Domestication

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:22:07 GMT

I never post twice in one day. Except for when I have to finish a chapter of one thing and post it because I said I wouldn't post anything else until I posted that first. *g*

Title: Definition of Domestication
Rating: PG
Fandom: The West Wing
Characters: Josh/Donna (established)
Length: 600 words
Summary: A post-series snippet of life.

Boxes upon boxes in a multiplicity of shapes and sizes fill up the wall in front of Josh. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the unexpected array of choices displayed before him. When she’d asked him over lunch he hadn't given it much thought. Once he realized the actual requirements of the task he may have grimaced, but only internally. It was just a box, of course he could handle it.’

Well, maybe he’d underestimated.

There were many options he didn’t even know about. Ignoring the fact that there were boxes of blue and green and pink, each of the brands had their own sub-categories: colors, sizes, multiple choices, fancy names.

He had no idea what he was doing. His sister had never gotten to this stage of womanhood so he’d never had the opportunity to get used to the stuff. Plus, he’d never even lived with a woman. And with the women he had dated, well, sometimes it got to the point where they’d leave these things in his bathroom, but he always ignored them. He’d certainly never purchased them for someone before.

Running a frustrated hand through his hair, he pulled his cell phone off of his hip and turned to head down another aisle. He refused to stare down a wall of feminine products while asking what kind he should buy, he needed to protect his masculinity somewhat.

He wrinkled his nose at the foot cream and kept walking, waiting for Donna to answer her phone.

He slowed down in the toothpaste aisle: it was empty and also gender neutral. He relaxed a bit. The phone clicked in his ear, “Hello?” Donna sounded distracted. He could hear noise coming from the other end of the line.

“Donna? It’s me.”

“Oh Josh, just – No, Annabeth, the other, yes, good – hold on a sec,” she spoke half to him and half to whomever else was in the room.

He paused, scanning the toothpaste options, and waited until he heard a door shut and silence and then Donna’s voice more clearly on the line, “Sorry,” she sighed against his ear, “it’s a bit hectic over here still.”

“I can tell,” he smiled slightly, toying with a funky looking bottle. Definitely not a tube of toothpaste in the traditional sense, more like a jar. Strange.

“So what’s up?”

“Oh, uh,” he hesitates, unsure of how to ask his question, unsure in fact of what his question actually is.

“Did you get—“

“I’m here now.”

“And?”

“Well,”

“Did you remember what I told you?”

“Yes.”

“Josh.”

“What?”

“Don’t lie to me,” she smiles, he hears it through the phone.

He nods at an old woman who passes him, and he begins to walk out of the aisle. He tucks his chin to his chest and slowly approaches the wall of doom.

“I’m not lying, I just… wasn’t really listening in the first place.”

“Josh!”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t think it would be so hard but they have like flavors over here, Donna.”

She chuckles into the phone, “I’m going to ignore that for the moment and reiterate: find the box that say tampax,”

“Okay,”

“Now find one that says ‘multipack’”

“Um… no, I don’t… oh, okay, got it,” Josh grabs the box and tucks it under his arm.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not, you know. I’ve got it.”

“Okay, thanks, I’ve really got to go we’re running late for the taping and Mrs. Santos isn’t even ready yet so—“

“Gotcha. I’ll see you at home tonight?”

Noise fills the background on her end of the line as she responds. They hang up at the same time.

ff: nothing left to take (update)

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:01:34 GMT

And it only took me three weeks.

Title: Nothing Left To Take (4/?)

Characters: Sara, Susan B. Anthony

Rating: PG-13 - swearing

Length: 1,755 words

Spoilers: 3.03 "Call Waiting" and 3.04 "Good Fences" ...but nothing specific in this chapter

Summary: AU. What really happened to Sara (and LJ)?

Disclaimer: Everything herein based on creations by Paul Scheuring, Fox etc

part one
part two
part three

At first, she tries to think.

She spends agonizingly long minutes staring at the blank wall across from her, forcing the throb of pain in her wrists and ribs and head and jaw to converge on her brain, to help her focus. But coming up with an escape plan is not as hard as actually being able to perform one. For the first time, maybe ever, she can imagine what Michael must have felt like back in Fox River. And, except for envying him his brother, prearrangements, and knowledge of building schematics, she understands how trapped he must have felt.

Thoughts like that haven’t been helping, either. She can’t seem to prevent her mind from circling back to other things, outside of this room. Like Michael’s face, or the fear in LJ’s eyes. She swallows thickly, shaking her head to loosen these thoughts, and presses closed her eyelids.

If she could just focus, maybe she could figure out a way to open the goddamn door. She smacks her head back against the wall. Standing suddenly, she pushes forward, pacing the length of the small room. She begins tracing the walls with her fingers, searching every corner, nudging each tile on the floor with her toes to see if anything is loose, if there is anything, anything at all, that she could possibly use to open the door. But, nothing. Again. This is the fifth or so ambush she’s placed on the room in however many hours she’s been stuck.

For all those hours, rage has been building. Frustration and anger and doubt and fear swirling and boiling in her blood, tightening her veins and making her shake inside her own body. She charges against the door, and it contracts slightly, taking her weight and force for a moment before throwing it back at her equally.

Sprawled on her ass she glares at it. God damn fucking Newton to hell. Fuck him, fuck this stupid, fucking room, and fuck that stupid, fucking door, it’s stupid, fucking wood, and those stupid, fucking hinges—

Hysterical laughter vibrates in the back of her throat, rolling over her tongue and pushing against her mouth. She blinks back tears, and can’t help smiling somewhat idiotically up at that shelf and those syringes. She already smashed each and every vial against the table some time ago, and she picks carefully through the shattered glass and slippery liquid that scattered on the floor to take a handful of plastic and hurry to remember any and every spy movie she’s ever seen. Michael’s the logical one, probably, but she has the street smarts. Standing up on her tip toes, she balances one palm against the wall and, tearing open the packaging with her mouth, begins the tedious process of unscrewing the hinges connecting the door to the wall.

The syringe slips and slides against the top of the screw, not the right size exactly but the best she can manage. An invisible clock counts down in her head, to what, she can’t be sure. But the constant prickle of urgency sits uneasily on her spine and something in her knows that she has to get out of this room before anyone comes back to find her.

Once the screw shows enough at the top, she begins to untwist it with her fingers. She hurriedly slides the table closer to the door, standing on it t get leverage and soon enough the plink of metal on the cold floor leaves her one-third of the way done.

She steps back off the table and winces as a piece of accidental glass sticks unexpectedly to the bottom of her foot. She reaches down to remove it, and when she looks back up, her eyes catch on an unhappy face staring at her through the small glass window.

Her eyes widen. She stumbles backward, falling, clutching the screw into her palm, and scurrying back to her feet.

The door slams open and the man, a large brawny creature with no feeling in his eyes, kicks the table aside and glares at her.

“What are you doing,” he demands.

She shrugs, “A girl gets bored locked up in an empty room for so many hours.”

If possible, his eyes darken further, but he doesn’t react. After a moment, he lifts a roll of duck tape in his hand and says, “You have to come with me.”

Without waiting for her response he starts forward, reaching for one shoulder. She wonders if she’s really so un-intimidating that he doesn’t take any precautions at all before attempting to subdue her.

She stabs him in the eye with the screw.

His fierce shriek of pain is muffled somewhat by the slam of the door behind her as she races barefoot down the hall. There are other hallways shooting off of the one she tears down, as well as a number of unidentified doors. But some innate sense of direction tells her to stay straight, to just keep going, and she’ll get to an outside wall or an exit or something. The sound of footsteps pounding behind her feeds her determination.

When the hall ends she cuts right, finding the entrance to a stairwell and taking it. She hears shouting as people are alerted to her disturbance, but she doesn’t take the time to look behind her before the door slams heavily and her feet echo a terrified pounding down the concrete steps.

She has no idea if she is above or below ground; if she should have gone up instead of down; if she will be able to figure out which floor is the ground floor, but then there are windows, one on each landing, and she looks out and sees a bustling city and she wants to cry or high five someone or something because how fucking dumb could her captors be.

Her celebration is momentarily short-lived as she reaches the door to the first floor and it crashes open in front of her, revealing two armed men. But their timing is improbably unlucky as a gunshot from someone chasing her above pierces the first man’s neck. The choked gurgle of his surprised yell stuns the action for a split-second--just enough time for Sara to push his still standing body against the man behind him, knocking him over with the now-dead guard’s weight. She reaches for his gun simultaneously, holding his wrist so that he can’t aim at her.

Her heart races, blood thrumming in her ears and everything moving too quickly like a somersault underwater and not knowing which way is up. So she goes with it, with her arms and her legs, pretending like she is thinking it all through. She is not.

She doesn’t get control of the gun, but manages to knock it aside where it clatters down the hallway and slides to a stop. She races after it, capturing the cool metal and continuing in a sprint down the hall. Voices holler on all sides, loud clamoring as men rush through the door behind her, but she is already gone.

She ducks swiftly into a room, throwing the lock, and, without pausing to breathe, rushes over to the window. She pushes it open, slower than she’d like, and peers down. The outside wall is no more than a few feet above the gravelly alleyway. Again she silently thanks whatever deity or force of goodwill is helping her, and squeezes out the window. She continues running, jagged rocks scraping the tender underside of her feet.

She pauses at the edge of the alley, cutting to the side behind a group of nuns. Perfect disguise, she thinks with a small, private smile, not that she’s about to try and steal someone’s habit. She wishes she spoke Spanish. They don’t seem to question her presence though, even as she presses unnaturally close to their shoulders with her grubby hair and torn clothes. They walk slowly across the square, mixing in with the noise and the light and the color of the crowd. She feels a sudden and fierce love for these chattering old women with their wrinkled, loose skin and gentle eyes.

She brushes back her tattered hair with a shaking hand. The adrenaline is beginning to fade and, like coming down off a high; she needs to sleep for a long time. Or sit, at the very least, for a few minutes. She definitely needs a glass of water.

But that itching against the back of her neck won’t go away, and despite her successful escape, she is too close to that building to feel at ease. She has to get away.

She ducks alongside another building, keeping tight with people, never straying from the crowds, and every few seconds she glances back over her shoulders and all around her, hoping that she has done the right thing and that she hasn’t cost someone else their life.

The shrill ring of a telephone cuts through the heavy silence of the office. Susan doesn’t remove her stare from her boss’s glassy blue eyes. The noise stops momentarily, a silent ringing shaking the air in its wake, before cutting in again. He places his palm flat on his desk and nods to the device, blinking wildly from its plastic cradle on her hip.

She snaps the phone open with irritation in her eyes, “Yes?” she says coldly. Her face is blank, but her stomach churns with anxiety and anger. If something else has gone wrong…

Her brows lift, gracefully, and she stands, walking toward a window and turning her back on the room. On him.

“That is unacceptable,” she keeps her voice controlled despite the slow curtain of fury dropping across her features, “You’ll just have to find her won’t you?”

“No,” she cuts off the person mere seconds later, “No,” she emphasizes carefully, “You will focus on locating her, and once you do, you will call me immediately. She has to learn her actions have repercussions.”

A pause.

“And if you don’t? It will be you who suffers the consequences.”

She snaps the phone shut, silence reigning again. He clears his throat behind her, “If you can’t handle your responsibilities…” he trails off in a stony voice.

She whips her head around, eyes narrowing, “I can handle my responsibilities perfectly,” she tells him, holding back her criticisms of the impossibly stupid and unthinking pricks that have been hired to work for her.

He nods, once, carefully.

“We only have a few days left.”

If possible, Susan's eyes turn stonier, “It’s under control.”

TBC...

fails.

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:02:29 GMT

I am the worst at updating. Granted, I have been terribly busy of late. And my muse, she has abandoned me. But still! Where's the fire? I can tell you where it is not, and that is under my ass. So... someone go grab me some matches. And some charcoal. And lighter fluid. Maybe a coupla dura-logs or whatever the hell they are.

What is this in regards to? Weeeeell, I posted a few chapters of a multi-chaptered fic (Weeks... months ago?) and I swear I intend to finish it. I really do. And I will. I swear. I am not writing anything else until it is completed. But I felt the need to come here and say it, you know, shout it into the plumbless depths of the ev0l web so that I'd sort of have to back it up. With actual product. Plus, if anyone started reading it, I didn't want you to get discouraged the way I do when I start a WIP that trails off into nothingness.

And... that's really all I had to say. Oh! and I haven't watched TV on an actual television set in ages, but I really miss it. A lot. In a strange, creep-o, I fall in love with fictional characters and can't get them out of my head kind of way. You know what I mean.

Hope everyone's new year is off to a splendid beginning! auld lang syne!

ff: All Through the Night

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:09:04 GMT

Remember how I said that other entry for pbhiatus_fic was my first one? Well here is my second! Even though it's technically late. Oh well. This is for the first challenge, Bottom's Up.

Characters: Tipsy!Michael/Sara
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1,135 words
Spoilers: none
Summary: Quasi-Domesticated Fluffy AU, set in the future.
Disclaimer: Not mine, borrowing from Paul Scheuring and Fox.

A pencil is stuck behind her ear. Her hair is in a ponytail, loose pieces falling in front of her eyes. She pushes her hands over her head, again, in frustration. She flips through a stack of identical looking pieces of paper, trying to find a particular invoice from November. Keeping track of a free clinic is much more difficult than working in one, so she has come to find out. The telltale click of a key in the door catches her attention, and she pauses in her rifling. A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

She glances at the clock before bending her eyes back toward her work. The door in the front hall opens and shuts, and she hears the floorboards creak louder as he approaches her office. The door is ajar; her lamp probably the only light on in the whole house.

She slides an overstuffed manila file folder to one side, and pulls a stack of multicolored paper toward her. Her door makes a low whining sound as it slides open.

She looks up, a full-blown smile bubbling up from somewhere deep in her belly. Michael is slumped against the doorjamb, one shoulder resting heavily against the frame for support. The shirt that he’d left for work in, blue and perfectly starched, is now slightly wrinkled, half un-tucked, and unbuttoned further than is usual.

“Did you have fun?” she smiles wryly at him. He is grinning like an idiot.

He swings his suit jacket clumsily up over his shoulder and steps into the room. “Why’re you still up?” he asks her, his voice rumbling softly, his words running together. He sounds like a sleepy child, but she recognizes the warm glint in his eyes. He drops the suit jacket onto the floor, and her eyes follow the dark material through the air before she hears the soft whump of it landing. When she turns her eyes back to his, he’s leaning across her desktop, palms firmly placed, eyes examining her.

She swallows.

“I have a lot of paperwork to finish before the end of the month,” she reminds him, still fighting back a ridiculous smile. It’s very rare that Michael drinks. It’s even rarer that he gets this sloppy. Her heart expands. He’s very adorable.

He leans forward more, his face inches from hers. Her eyes drop to his mouth as he talks, “Don’t you think it’s time to take a break?”

Grinning, she pokes his shoulder and shakes her head, “I really, really, really, really have to finish some more stuff tonight,” he groans, “and you should get some sleep so you’re not a complete wreck tomorrow,” he rolls his eyes, “but I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

She grins wickedly at him.

He walks around the desk and perches on it, just next to her seat. He presses his hand to the side of her face, sliding it over her head, undoing her ponytail, and fingering the edges of her hair.

“I’m not tired,” he tries again. He looks up slowly from where he’d been watching himself play with her hair. His eyelids are heavy, his irises almost completely disappearing behind his pupils. The office is dark; the air is quiet. She hears the clock ticking from down the hallway.

Letting out a low sigh, she can’t help but smile again.

“Lincoln got you liquored up real good, didn’t he?”

Michael’s hand moves up to her jaw, his fingers brushing at the soft hairs on the nape of her neck, and his thumb tracing across her lower lip.

“Sara,” he tries again, his voice low. She smiles softly. She leans forward a bit, and he complies, bending at the waist to meet her. Their lips touch gently, and she stops kissing him without pulling away. He smells faintly of stale beer. Their mouths touch, slightly open, and she speaks against his lips.

“I love you,”

He closes his mouth over her lower lip, biting gently at it and soothing the soft wetness of her inner lip with his tongue.

She pulls back; he brushes his thumb across her cheek.

“Go to bed,” she tells him warmly, sliding her hand down his arm and patting the top of his hand gently where it rests on her desk.

His face is still terribly close to hers, “Now?” he asks, eyebrows lifting and lips pulling into a pout.

“Michael,” she starts to complain, but her words dry up in the back of her throat when he leans forward to nuzzle her neck, leaving a wet kiss on her pulse.

“Sara,” he rumbles, mimicking her tone. She sighs and runs her palm across the top of his prickly scalp.

She closes her eyes, for strength, and knows she’ll regret this tomorrow morning when she’s working on a few hours sleep, but his body is warm and his mouth is so soft. “Just… give me a minute to finish one thing.”

He straightens and gives her a dopey grin, he must be wasted, “Bedroom,” he tells her, jutting his thumb in that direction over his shoulder and waggling his eyebrows at her. She swallows back a chuckle and smiles at him, “Well, shoo then,” she waves him off, “I’ll be there in a sec.”

He walks slowly out of the office, hand pressing into the desk top as he maneuvers out of the room. Ignoring his suit jacket, he turns down the hallway. Letting out a relieved breath, she renews her search for that stupid invoice. Her wristwatch reads after 3, and her eyes are beginning to hurt. Maybe she’ll just get up extra early and look for it then. It’s not looking like she’ll be getting much sleep anyway.

Pushing herself up into a standing position, she pauses to roll her neck from side to side. She flicks the light off and steps carefully down the hall, eyes on the strip of light glowing beneath the bedroom door. Definitely bathroom first, but then… she flushes and her blood flows hotter through her limbs.

She turns left into the bathroom, to brush her teeth and wash up. Humming mildly to herself, she undresses. As she unzips her jeans and shimmies out of them, she realizes she has to set the alarm. “Michael,” she begins, but doesn’t get a response.

“Michael?” she peeks around the doorframe into the bedroom.

She sees Michael stretched out on the bed, face smashed into the pillow, snoring softly. Sighing, she rests her cheek against the cool wood. She shakes her head slightly, smiling, and finishes getting ready for bed. Before sliding under the covers she leaves two aspirin and a bottle of water on the nightstand next to his head. She kisses him gently on the cheek, rolls over, and turns off the lamp.

pb hiatus fic strikes back

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:36:10 GMT

Here is my (first?) submission for the Bottom's Up Challenge!
See more details over at pbhiatus_fic

Look Down You Gods
Characters: Michael/Sara
Rating: PG
Length: 500+ words
Spoilers: none
Summary: Mini-fic. Set in the happy, bird-singing, canon-ignoring future.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Fox, Paul Scheuring, and of course WM and SWC.

The noise of his footsteps is muffled by the running water. She hums absently to herself as she scrubs the dinner plates from last night. A flush creeps up her neck as she remembers why she didn’t get to the dishes last night.

Suddenly Michael’s hands land on her hips and she starts, two forks slipping from her grasp and clattering into a pan soaking in the sink.

“Michael,” she feels a bubble of laughter at the back of her throat.

“Hmmm?” he hums against her pulse point. His nose nuzzles the underside of her jaw.

“Don’t startle me like that,” she tries to say sternly, but her voice turns soft as he flattens his palms against her belly. His lips tug gently at her ear lobe.

“Sorry,” he kisses her quickly on the cheek and spins her around, “but it’s important.”

A grin stretches across her face at the sight of him. He’s been terribly mussed in the past few months, what with all the planning. Everything has to be perfect, he keeps saying, as he stays up through the night tapping his pencil against his head and cutting out pictures from magazines. And now, with his eyes sparkling and his shirt unusually wrinkled, she wants to grab him by his ears and pull him into bed. Instead, she dries her hands on a dishtowel and hops onto the counter.

“Another solution to one of your many imagined problems?”

He steps closer to her, flattening his hands against the countertop on either side of her hips and leaning in.

“Actually, this is one thing you were particularly concerned about,” his voice is slow and lazy, his eyes dizzyingly close to her own, “but if you don’t want me to tell you…”

She’s a sucker. He starts to back away but she grabs his shoulders and tugs him back toward her. She locks her legs around his hips, hooking her ankles together against the back of his legs. He raises his eyebrows at her.

They’re pressed together in the best places, her breasts just barely brushing his chest, and she slides her hands over the firm breadth of his shoulders to clasp the back of his neck. “Well?” she prompts.

He chuckles and the air turns warm around them. With one finger, he brushes a loose piece of hair out of her eyes, then cups her face in his hand and carefully rubs the swell of her cheek with his thumb. He leans forward, and just before his lips reach hers he mutters, “Ginger ale.”

He touches his mouth softly to the corner of hers. She smiles. She turns so that his mouth covers hers completely. He slides his tongue over her lower lip, tugging it between his teeth for a moment before pulling away.

Her eyes open slowly, and he leans forward again, pressing his forehead against hers.

“What did you say?” she asks after a moment. He grins again.

“I said ‘ginger ale,’”

“That’s going to solve my problems how?”

He leans back.

“It’s bad luck to toast with water.”

the icon says it best

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 21:05:04 GMT

i found a prison break ficlet on my hard drive from... last year? it's AU and frivolous but i figured, since the good times have gone, i might as well roll with it.

Untitled
Characters: Michael/Sara
Rating: PG-15 (for intent?)
Length: 699 words
Spoilers: 2.16 "Chicago"
Summary: AU stand-alone. Assumes that the initial plan after "Chicago" succeeded. Just.. a happy moment between our two heroes.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing from the Good Old Boys over at Fox.

She still feels the vibration of the train in her bones. It has been four days, but the length of time has done nothing to ease the constant thrum of her body.

In the last half of a year she had found her way into the mind of another person for the first time, only to find out that he was sculpted from half-truths and manipulation. Only to find out that she was in danger and he wanted to help her. Only to find out that she couldn’t fight something this large on her own. Only to find that his lips were as soft as she remembered.

She unconsciously lets her eyes drift down to the lower half of his face, where she proceeds to stare, well, hungrily at said lips. When they draw into a small smile, she catches herself. She turns to look out at the road without another word. If only he’d take the damned hint.

“Sara?” his fingers are warm on her arm, and she has a fucking pavlovian response to his touch, her knees pressing together in agitation as she stops walking forward.

“Yes?” She turns to face him. The house is unassuming: white siding, blue shutters, middle of the street. “This is the place?” she asks him after a moment.

He nods once, shortly, before sliding his hand down her forearm to her wrist and then linking his fingers in hers. When she meets his gaze his eyes are staring at her with an intensity that makes her blood thicken and warm. Swallowing, she tries to keep her face neutral, and he smiles again. Damnit. Tilting his head towards the house, he starts walking and she follows—their hands still linked together. His fingers play a game against the back of her hand, randomly pressing across her knuckles in a beat that could very well be a song stuck in Michael’s head or an intricate application of pressure point relief intended to melt her inner organs. Either way, she feels her brain malfunctioning from the simple contact, and her mind narrows to the feel of his palm against hers.

It has been three days since they made their way to Chicago; two days since Lincoln was exonerated; and one day since Michael had been let out on bail.

It had been four days since he kissed her.

“Who do you know that lives here?” she asks him while he reaches into his pocket to find the keys.

“Um,” he pulls out a key ring and lets go of her hand to unlock the door, “a friend of mine from a long time ago,” he grins as he pushes the front door open and motions for her to go inside.

The first thing she notices is the staleness of the air. The way the dust seems to shift and fall, dislocated by her body’s presence. The floors are wood and the furniture is dark and heavy. She takes a step forward, hears Michael close the door behind her, and finds her curiosity getting the better of her, “Seriously, who would leave all this furni--

Michael turns her around with his hands on her hips, his mouth finding hers, and pushes her backwards against the nearest wall. He pulls her lower lip between his, lets go, presses an openmouthed kiss against her lips, and slides his tongue against hers. His hands all the while clamped to her sides, as if to hold him back from doing more.

Her arms wind their way around his neck before she pulls away, finally, after a long moment. His eyes trace hers, his mouth damp, his cheeks flushed.

“Sorry,” he tells her, but his voice is rough, his pupils are dilated, his hips are pressing against hers, and he feels anything but sorry.

She feels heat bloom within her chest and push forward against her skin, and she blinks slowly at him. She wants to say something witty and sexy but its too much trouble, so she leans forward until her nose is next to his and their mouths are all but touching, “Don’t be,” she breathes against him, before pressing her mouth to his again.

look at me ma, i'm writing fic

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:24:25 GMT

So. I guess the story of my life is: the busier I am, the more productive I manage to be with things that are of absolutely no importance. Perfect. Anyway, hope some enjoyment is gained from this.

Title: Nothing Left To Take (3/?)
Characters: Michael, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1,208 words
Spoilers: 3.03 "Call Waiting" and 3.04 "Good Fences"
Summary: AU. What really happened to Sara (and LJ)?
Disclaimer: Everything herein based on creations by Paul Scheuring, FOX etc

part one

part two

“Sara’s dead.”

The words seem to slam into his body with physical force, and he feels as if a heavy weight is suddenly resting on his chest, crushing his ribcage. Heat floods his face, and a dangerous mix of fear and anger swirl through his veins. Before he can react, Susan is out of the room, the guard following her.

The door swings shut silently, locked from the outside with a resounding click.

-----

The sound of the phone ringing cuts shrilly through the early morning. Lincoln startles in the narrow bed, one knee knocking into the wall against which he sleeps. He blinks blearily and answers the phone without checking the caller ID: it’s only going to be one person.

“I get that you’re in charge of my life now, but it’s a little early,” his voice is plainly exhausted. He plants his feet on the floor and grabs the digital clock on the small bedside table.

“Good morning, Lincoln,” Susan’s voice is obnoxiously clear, as if she’s been awake for hours, as if she never sleeps. He runs a thumb over the screen of the clock, staring sleepily at the large red numbers. It’s barely six in the morning.

“Why are you calling me?” Lincoln asks suspiciously, suddenly on edge. His mind clears with incredible speed as an ancient instinct flares in the base of his skull. Something has gone terribly wrong.

“You didn’t expect that the stunt you pulled yesterday would go unpunished, did you?”

He swallows, his eyes hardening, but he doesn’t speak.

“Good,” Susan continues, “then at least you have some idea of your place in this relationship.”

“What have you done?”

“I think the question is really what have you done, but it doesn’t matter because the answer is the same. Sara’s dead. You’ll find proof of that in the garage, by the trash.”

Something like guilt washes over Lincoln, an uncomfortable heat that pushes at his skin from inside of his body and leaves his stomach feeling twitchy and unsettled. Sara can’t possibly be dead.

“Michael will never do what you want him to, without Sara,” his voice is rough, unfamiliar, and as the words fall from his tongue he feels strangely detached from the whole exchange.

He can practically feel the mechanical smile that pulls at Susan’s features, “That’s why you won’t say anything to him. Goodbye, Lincoln.”

--------

Sweat trickles into his eyes. His fingers rub absently against the iron bars caging his window. He finds it much harder to orient himself here, in Sona, than anywhere else. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the ridiculousness of the whole situation. Maybe it’s the image of Sara that won’t remove itself from his brain. Or, it might just be the presence of Whistler, who always seems to be standing at his shoulder, waiting.

Michael heaves a sigh, wishing not for the last time he could take a long cold shower.

“What do you want?” he asks, reluctantly, as if he is the older brother and Whistler is the younger sibling he is being forced to entertain.

“Wanted to see how the plans are coming along.”

Michael nods, eyes still squinting toward the Guards’ tower. He turns slowly around and examines Whistler, his eyes, his stance, but he can’t read anything about him. He has no idea who this guy is, and whatever the company wants him for he doesn’t particularly care. He just wants to make a home for his family.

Something tightens in his gut, a mix of guilt and regret. Scrubbing a palm down his face he shakes his head slowly and glances over Whistler’s shoulder into the hallway, checking for anyone within earshot.

“At the risk of sounding completely clichéd, I think we’re going to have to tunnel out of here.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not, actually.”

Whistler stares at Michael in disbelief for a moment, as if so overcome by the irrationality of the idea that he can’t pinpoint which flaw to discuss first. Finally he opens his mouth to speak. “We’re supposed be out of here in three days.”

Michael nods once. Then, before he can respond, the loudspeaker blares to life announcing “Scofield, visitor.”

Michael’s eyes hold Whistler’s for another moment, but rather than continue the conversation he looks away. “We’ll finish this later,” he adds before stepping past Whistler. He walks briskly through the crowds of inmates, making eye contact with no one and avoiding any interaction at all. His mind hums dully. All he can hope for is a new picture of Sara.

As he moves down the long dusty path to the small opening surrounded by chain link fences, Lincoln stands with his back to Michael, hands jammed in his pockets and shoulders hunched.

“Linc,” Michael begins, stepping up to the fence and hooking his fingers through the links as usual, “How are they?” he asks without preamble.

Lincoln’s eyes trace Michael’s curling fingers, unable to reach his gaze. He clears his throat, “Look, Michael,” he starts to speak but Michael interrupts him. He recognizes that tone of voice, and suddenly he doesn’t want Lincoln to say anything at all.

“What’s wrong?” his fingers clench more tightly around the sun-heated metal, “Linc? Did something happen?”

Lincoln swallows audibly, cuts his eyes to the ground, and then meets Michael’s eyes.

“LJ and Sara are fine,” he starts, and even though the words feel heavy and awkward he says them anyway. This might be his only chance at saving LJ and getting them out of this whole mess. “They’re fine,” he sighs, “but, uh, this woman, my contact, Susan, she, uh, got pretty mad at me for going after them.”

Michael’s eyes darken, “How mad?”

Lincoln looks away for a moment and then down at his hands, “Mad enough to send me one of LJ’s fingers.”

He’s lying of course. If he exchanged the word ‘Sara’ for ‘LJ’ and the word ‘head’ for ‘finger’ then he would be a whole lot closer. The image of Sara’s face, her lifeless eyes, the severed tissue of her neck… his throat closes up but he forces himself not to gag.

Michael ducks his head down, forehead against the fence, “Linc, Linc, Linc,” he mutters, disconsolate, “No, oh no, I’m so sorry,” he swallows, “Linc,” he says again, looking up, “they’re okay, really? LJ, he’s, he’s not—“

“He’s hurt, Michael,” Lincoln doesn’t know why he’s being curt, when he’s actually perpetuating such a blatant lie, but somehow the emotion fits, so he goes with it, “He’s hurt but he’ll be okay. He’ll survive this if you focus on getting out of here. If you do that we’ll all be out of this mess a whole lot sooner.”

“How do you know they didn’t do anything else?”

Lincoln shrugs, “I, uh, took a page out of your book. I made Susan let me talk to him on the phone.”

Lincoln wants this conversation to end. He lets the lies spill out of him one after the other, without trying to be careful about it. Half of him wants Michael to catch on, force him to tell the truth about Sara. But he knows, he knows, that if Michael found out about Sara’s death he would not be in any sort of state to plan an escape. And then LJ would be dead, too.

“I’ve got a plan,” Michael’s voice is filled with conviction, and Lincoln feels relief. Of course lying was the right decision. Even if Michael never forgives him for it.

Lincoln nods, “Okay, what can I tell them?”

“We’re probably going to need more time.”

“I don’t think they’ll give that to you, Michael.”

“Then we’re going to need shovels.”

TBC...

second installment

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:07:29 GMT

A timely update, dear God what does this mean...

Title: Nothing Left To Take (2/?)
Characters: Sara, Susan B. Anthony, LJ, others in the future
Rating: PG-15, language
Length: 2,297 words
Spoilers: 3.04 "Good Fences," but barely
Summary: AU. What really happened to Sara (and LJ)?
Disclaimer: Everything herein based on creations by Paul Scheuring, FOX etc
Author's Note: These are pretty short chapters so hopefully the action will ~~start to~~ move pretty fast.

part one

Previously..

Sara swallows, suddenly wishing for that ridiculous invincibility she'd been feeling earlier. She feels ill and hopeless. Susan looks back at her, walks over, and Sara barely registers the swing her arm before the gun connects with her temple and her mind goes black.

-----

Claustrophobia doesn’t begin to explain the pulse-racing fear that makes her blood hum when she comes slowly to awareness. Everything is dark, completely black, and oddly silent. Her head is immobile and weighed down by something heavy and slightly rough. It sits heavily against the skin of her face, and her breathing quickens, heart jumping at her ribs.

She can barely open her eyes.

Her wrists are tied together, as are her legs, and she’s lying prone on the floor or something else that is equally hard. Her bottom feels numb, her shoulders ache. Bending her elbows, she awkwardly maneuvers her hands toward her face. Her fingertips bump clumsily into the… plaster? that masks her. It’s much thicker than it feels. This makes her skin grow hot with fear and anxiety.

What could they possibly be doing by covering her face with plaster? Her heart stutters as her mind flips through an invisible rolodex of options, but only one makes sense. They’re making a mold of her face.

This thought sticks uncomfortably to the back of her brain, like something caught between her teeth that she can’t get rid of. They knocked her out so they could create the mold, but… why. What would they want a mold of her face for? This question, she thinks, has only one answer. But that answer has an infinite number of implications that simply frighten her. They could use a mold of her face on another person in a shoddy picture to convince Lincoln and Michael that she’s still alive. It all boils down to one thing: they’re free to kill her.

Reaching around to the edges of the mask, she tries to pry it off of her face, but it’s no use. They’ve secured the mold with some kind of strap that attaches behind her head, and she can’t reach it. Her head is lashed to the table, something just loose enough around her neck to let her breathe. Dammit. A surge of rage makes her insides boil, she is completely useless. She feels an uncomfortable tickle against her spine, as if she’s been playing hide-and-seek and simply cannot keep still any longer. But here she has no choice. She tries to control her silent hysteria by cataloging her situation.

The mask is heavy and suffocating, barely letting enough air in through what she suspects are small holes by her nose and mouth. Her brain is fuzzy with lack of oxygen and it’s surprising that she’s not dead already. The fact that her breathing is rushed is making it harder for her to get air, and she begins to feel light-headed.

In spite of these strange new circumstances, she appears to be both alive and relatively unharmed. Everything is silent, and even when she moved her arms no one made any noise, which means she is probably alone.

Her throat closes up even more suddenly: LJ. What happened to him? Did they kill him? If they killed him Lincoln would never, ever comply with them again. Even if it did mean putting her life in danger. That was his son. She shuddered. Thinking helped to calm her down a little. And if she just kept her eyes shut she could pretend that she didn’t feel so trapped.

She began gulping air down in large, controlled breaths, when the sound of the door opening made her whole body tense.

“…be dry by now,” a familiar voice is saying above her. Bitch.

Before she can decide whether or not to pretend to be unconscious, someone reaches behind her head and unlatches something. Then she feels fingertips against her jaw, and suddenly, one half of the mask is gone She opens her left eye, instinctively, and blinks against the painful glow of the overhead light almost directly above her head.

She’s on a table.

She’s also in a different place.

How long has she been unconscious for?

Susan is standing over her, arms crossed, looking at the man that is on the other side of Sara. He’s holding half of the mold in one, latex-gloved hand. He places it on a shelf behind Sara’s head.

If they’re going to kill her anyway, which seems more and more likely, she might as well make it worth her while. Her arms move quickly, hand knocking the rest of the mask off, but before it can fall to the floor and shatter, Susan snatches it up and lifts it into the air. Her other hand wraps vice-like around one of Sara’s wrists.

Sara’s eyes turn to ice, but she doesn’t bother making eye contact. She’s the one in the vulnerable position. Best not to give in to Susan’s authority by cowing to her.

“What do you think you’re doing, Sara?” Susan’s maddeningly even voice questions her, “Would you like us to knock you out again so that we can make a mold? Did you like the drugs we gave you that much?”

Sara’s heart turns cold, thumping slowly in her chest, as if with a great effort. “What are you talking about?” Sara spits out.

Susan gestures for the man to take the plaster parts and leave, which he does. Then she lets go of Sara’s wrist, and takes off the restraint from around Sara’s neck, “Sit up.”

Swinging her legs over the edge of the table, Sara takes a moment to let the blood rise to her brain. She drops her hands onto her lap and stares at her fingernails.

“What did you do to LJ?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

Her chest cramps, her breath catching, and before she can stop herself she blurts, “Why?”

Her unspoken qualifications are obvious: I’m the one who helped Lincoln find us, not LJ.

Susan’s face gives nothing away. “You’re going to have to cooperate with us from now on, Sara. I hope that you understand the gravity of the situation.”

Sara narrows her eyes, curls her mouth into a snarl, “You can rot in hell. If you think killing an innocent child is going to make me listen to—“

Susan smiles, “We’ll see.” And with that, she turns to walk back out the door.

The room Sara’s in has no outside windows. The door has a narrow glass panel, but it takes a few tries before Sara is able to untie her feet so she can hobble over to the door.

Obviously it is locked, and when she glances through it, all she sees is a dark hallway with old tiled floors. She blows out a breath of frustration. Her fists slam into the small window with enough force to shatter glass. Nothing happens.

She rests her forehead against the wall, tears springing to her eyes. She looks down and notices for the first time a small bit of tape securing a cotton ball to the crook of her elbow. They fucking drugged her.

Another wave of rage courses through her, and she slams her hands against the wall again and again and again and again, until she crumples to floor with exhaustion. She refuses to give in to her tears. Tears won’t help her now, they won’t help anyone, especially not LJ. And that’s her fault, along with a lot of other things. But the important thing is to keep her head, and get out of this situation, not fall prey to their mind games.

Again, she takes a deep drag of air, one after the other, until her vision clears and her breathing normalizes. With her head against the wall, she surveys this room. Not only does it lack windows, but it lacks much of anything else. One low wooden table, used as her bed. The belt that had been securing her to is now gone with Susan.

The rope that had been around her ankles lies abandoned on the floor. She reaches forward for it, and begins to roll it into a ball, shoving it into the pocket of her jeans.

Behind the wooden table, on the wall, is one rickety looking shelf. On it rest a number of clear glass vials, and plastic covered syringes. Her heart flips and lands somewhere in her throat. Those fucking bastards. Her eyes squeeze shut. If she can just get out of this room. Who knows when they’ll come back to see her. Tomorrow, to take her picture with the newspaper, probably. If only she could get out of this room.

In order to do that, she looks forlornly at her hands, she’ll need a little bit more range of motion.

She can’t help but wonder why they would tie her up only to leave her alone to untie herself, but figures she’s being watched by a camera or that there are any number of gun-toting henchmen lurking in the building beyond her door. None of this would surprise her, and it sure as hell won’t stop her from trying to get away.

Her bones are tired, her head heavy, her fingers slightly numb and tingly, her sides aching from being hit and kicked a number of times in the last few days. Trying to reach down inside of her and grab onto something that will galvanize her spirits, she leans forward, and begins to gnaw at the ties. Her jaw aches after a minute or so, but it only takes that long to free the first end of the rope. The knot begins to loosen.

-----

“Where am I!?!” LJ’s voice echoes hoarsely across the empty room, bouncing, ignored, off the ears of the man standing guard over him.

“Hello? I know you can hear me. What’s the difference if I know where I am I can’t do anything about it. Just. Tell me. I can go on talking for hours, you know. Nothing to stop me. That can’t be fun for you, can it. If you just tell me where I am, I’ll shut up.”

“No, LJ,” Susan enters the room, silently, through the door next to where the guy is sitting in a chair, “we’re not going to do that.”

“Then tell me where Sara is,” he looks at her defiantly.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that, either.”

“Then I’m afraid the next time you take my picture with a newspaper I’m not going to be able to cooperate, either. We’ll see if my Dad and Uncle keep doing what you want then.”

“That’s an interesting trick, LJ. You must be a very smart boy,” she replies coolly, unconcerned.

He burns with anger. He’s tied to a wooden chair that is not particularly comfortable. He’s angry because that last thing he remembers is a sack dropping over his head. And now, to top it all off, he and Sara have been separated. And sure, he was mad at her for throwing her damn shoe out the window because then the guards moved them. But really it’s because his Dad was right there. Close enough to touch. The sound of his father’s voice echoes around the chamber of his head.

If only LJ could have fought harder, gotten away from the guards, helped his Dad, something. He stares at the floor. This is fucking ridiculous. There was nothing he could do. Sara is probably dead by now. If he just keeps quiet and doesn’t move they might at least give him food and water, and let him go when this whole fucking disaster ends.

He snuffles back his emotions and stares blankly at the floor just in front of his feet. Susan’s pointed black pumps tick across the floor, coming into view after a few moments. Small room. Dirty floor. Nice shoes. He wonders idly how much money Susan makes doing shit like this, and figures it must be a whole damn lot. Because why else would you get into this kind of work? Unless you have no soul. He bites back his amusement.

His head is suddenly yanked backwards, Susan’s nails digging into his skull and twining painfully in his too-long hair.

“The fuck!?” he lets out, startled.

“LJ,” her voice is dangerously low, “if you ever try anything, anything, like what you pulled before, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

LJ swallows roughly. “Do what?” his indifferent demeanor suddenly gone, skittering away with the force of her irrationality, “I didn’t do anything.”

“Then how did your father find us?”

“How the hell should I know, he’s a pretty smart guy—“

The fleshy smack of skin on skin reverberates in the air of the dusty old room. LJ’s eyes water, his shoulders jerking as his hands instinctively try to reach for his face.

“This is not an opportunity for you to make jokes, LJ. If you cooperate, you will be treated fairly. I think that is as much as you can expect from a situation like this. How did your father find us?”

“I. Don’t. Know.”

Susan steps back, hands landing on her hips. “Good,” her smile is shark-like. As she turns to leave, LJ can’t help himself.

“Where’s Sara?”

Susan let’s out a long-suffering sigh, and shakes her head slightly, “I’m sorry, LJ,” she starts, and something in her eyes tells him that she’s not sorry about not telling him but sorry for something else entirely, his heart hammering and sweat prickling to the surface of his skin, he suddenly knows “Sara’s dead.”

The door swings shut silently, locked from the outside with a resounding click.

TBC...

What does PB fandom have in common with a large, land-locked bird?

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:10:54 GMT

Why, everything of course.

I am pleased to be posting my very first ostrich!fic. SWC, gone? I DON'T THINK SO. I'll keep my head in the sand, thanks.

Title: Nothing Left To Take (1/?)
Characters: Sara, Susan B. Anthony, LJ, others
Rating: PG-15, language
Length: 1,343 words
Spoilers: 3.04 "Good Fences"
Summary: Technically AU. What really happened to Sara? Potentially multiple parts, if I work up the strength, courage, and time.
Disclaimer: Everything herein based on creations by Paul Scheuring, FOX etc
Author's Note: This may be rushed. Please to be giving me constructive criticism and any corrections. Maybe I should bite the bullet and find a beta. Or not.

The back of the van is cramped and dusty, and probably hasn't been used for years. It smells distinctly like manure. She wonders if they'd had to scramble to get rid of old gardening equipment before they could toss her and LJ back there. She swallows back another wave of nausea and tries to meet LJ's eyes through the murky darkness. He is studiously avoiding her gaze, eyes on his wrists and the raw marks chafed by the rough twine used to hog-tie them.

She lets out a sigh and feels more and more like a bratty teenager. She couldn't say at what point in her life she stopped fearing her death, but it must have happened somewhere between being tortured and held at gunpoint. By now, she's so used to having the muzzle of an automatic prodding her around it's become silly. Maybe if they had shot her in the knee or something, but they haven't done anything and she's feeling invincible.

She can't get rid of the rage sizzling through her veins, the frustration pushing against her skin. They were so fucking close. They were on the fucking boat. Lincoln was exonerated. They were free. She squeezes her eyes shut at the blank-faced Asian man in her head, the sudden pounding of her heart.

Her head drops back against the wall. She squirms against the floor, trying to move her legs to sit more comfortably, but recieves a swift kick to her side for her efforts. She glares up at the assholes holding them hostage. It's two guys who between them have as much intelligence as her childhood pet Winston, a dog that got run over because he fell asleep under their car in the driveway. One of them is shorter, sturdier, with pinked skin from the heat and a close-cut head of red hair that looks like it would be curly if it could be. The other is taller and leaner with hard gray eyes and a beak-like nose. He's sititng in a chair bolted to the floor right behind the driver seat that faces the back of the van. He has an intimidating piece of weaponry standing on the floor between his knees.

He's been sweating a lot. And shouting. She thinks they might be in trouble for almost losing the hostages. She smiles.

The red-head guy sits on the floor with his back against the doors, he's the one who kicks her when she moves. She glares at him though she can hardly tell if he's looking at her or not.

She uncrosses her legs and stretches them out so they rest next to LJ. He glances down her bare right foot. LJ has got something of his father and uncle in him, though it's hard for her to explain what. He's been through more than she has and at a much more difficult stage in his life. He had not wanted her to throw her shoe out the window. He'd seen what she'd been trying to do. And, though they were guarded much of the day and night, they had managaed a few whispered conversations. She was advocating for being an active hostage, and trying to escape, but he was too scared. He thought they would be killed, and that if they stayed put they'd eventually be reunited.

Both of them knew the story: they were being held, whereabouts unknown, by captors unknown, until Michael broke some man out of prison for these people. When he did that succesfully, they would be returned to Michael and Lincoln.

The way that Susan told them all of this, on the first day, made Sara believe that staying in their custody would only lead to their death. This was not something she would contemplate, not when she had been fighting for so long for a life of her own. And it was probably within her grasp, once she got past the fucking henchmen and their fucking rifles.

She banged her head gently against the side of the van a few times, when the van suddenly took a sharp turn, causing her to slide sideways and lose her balance. They came to a sudden stop. They'd been driving for hours and being motionless only amped up the low-grade nausea that had been roiling around her stomach. Swallowing hard, she turned instinctively to the door as it creaked loudly before opening. She blinked against the light coming from the open doorway of the house they were parked in front of. She caught LJ's gaze, but his features were set and he wouldn't meet her eyes. The red-headed guard motioned for them to get out and they struggle to get to their feet, hopping unsteadily from the back of the van to the ground.

Only then did Sara notice Susan standing just behind the guard, and when Susan's eyes met hers, she gave Sara a smile that was neither kind nor reassuring. They walked in a line over the tangled growth of the yard and into the one-room structure, outwardly a small home but inwardly an empty holding cell. It had two windows, barred from the inside, and only the one door. This did not look pomising.

-------

"You threw your shoe out the window, Sara."

Sara stares evenly at the wall just over Susan's shoulder, refusing to give in to her intimidation tactics. She's perfectly manicured despite the cloying heat, despite the late hour, despite the unseemly locale. In her hands she holds a long, gleaming knife. Behind her, some new guards have arrived and now the whole bunch of them are opening boxes and doing something that Sara can't see. When she tried to look around Susan at the action, Susan had rotated her chair to face the opposite direction, and stood in front of her.

Now, Susan leans forward, her shiny hair sliding from behind one ear to form a curtain next to Sara's face. Her hands go to the arms of the chair where Sara's hands are tied, cold fingers locking around her aching wrist's. Sara's feet are also tied to the legs of the chair, and, for an added measure, ducktape has been wound around the back of the chair and her forehead, trapping her head in one place. Susan leans imperceptibly closer, until her face is hardly any distance from Sara's at all.

"Just remember, I didn't want to do this."

"What--" Sara begins to ask, but then her chair is turned again, facing the whole room, and her eyes widen as they untie LJ from his own chair, dropping a brown sack over his head and dragging him from the room.

"No, wait, where are you taking me, NO, SARA, WAIT, WHERE--" but the butt of a gun to the back of his head shuts him up and they half-pull, half-carry his limp figure from the room.

"You can't! Don't do this! STOP! LJ!" she jerks uselessly against her restraints, sweat prickling all over her skin, shame and guilt and grief replacing her organs, "Wait! Susan," she tries to address this robotic woman, this cold-hearted bitch, "Susan, please," her voice cracks and with it the rest of her strength, emotions suddenly pouring in to fill all of her emptiness, tears blur her vision, "Not LJ, please, he didn't do anything, he's just a kid, he's just,"

The shrill ring of a cellphone cuts Sara off, and Susan doesn't even spare her a glance as she answers it and walks over to one of the windows. Sara hears LJ's muted cries as he regains consciousness. Then she hears two gunshots, followed by silence.

A dull buzzing in her ears gives way to the sound of Susan's voice, clear-cut and hard, telling someone on the other end of the line that "It's being taken care of."

Sara swallows, suddenly wishing for that ridiculous invincibility she'd been feeling earlier. She feels ill and hopeless. Susan looks back at her, walks over, and Sara barely registers the swinging arm before the gun connects with her temple and her mind goes black.

...

TBC

Can We Make It A Different Moment?

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:45:14 GMT

(I had written a longg entry about many fandom-related things. And then accidentally deleted it. *Headdesk*)

First: were it not for certain events regarding a certain actress and a certain series, I would not have realized just how much I love The Office. That is to say, EXTREMELY A LOT MUCH.

But I'm functioning perfectly fine over here because, and I don't want to delve into this too intensively, SWC is such a stellar lady and actress that she will, in time, go on to wonderful things. Magnificent things. Roles that are even more kick-ass than Dr. Sara, if that is even possible. Oh, wait. Of course it's possible, it's Sarah Wayne Callies

.

I have been trying to decide whether or not to quit Prison Break in light of these events but have come to terms with the fact that, whatever my internal moral code thinks, Wentworth Miller's prettiness is something that will always outweigh my higher thinking. In other words, I simply can't stop myself. Even if that means bitching at the TV for entire episodes except for the parts where WM is being really intense and or Amaury Nolasco is being adorable.

Sooooo, yeah. I'm sad and disappointed and bitter and whatever, but that's kind of where The Office comes into all of this. I don't even know what other funny things happened in this episode. Probably there were amusing parts.

Everything is drowned out by a rooftop conversation about when they first Knew. Hello. This is so frakkin' cute it kills me ded. Mixed Berry yogurt? Ah, young love.

I can't wait for there to be a wedding episode(!).

last post for a while

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:44:36 GMT

Quickly, as I am packing like a mad-woman:

-I am so behind on reading teh ficcies that I don't know what I'm going to do before season 3 starts. ~~um, gorge myself on fic? hee.~~

-I only have the one story for the birthday challenge, but whenever in the future I finish the other story, I'll post it.

Characters: Michael, Lincoln, implied Michael/Sara
Rating: PG-13 (light swearing)
Length: <400 words
Spoilers: Minor for 1.10 "Sleight of Hand"
Summary: ambiguous future and a birthday gift
Disclaimer: Not mine.

“Are you gonna at least get her a card?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh man, c’mon Michael! If you don’t get her flowers you have to get her a card.”

“We’re unconventional.”

Lincoln snorts, “Unconventional, my ass. Sounds more like you’re about to be broken up.”

Michael glares at his brother, turning his cart into the paper aisle, “I’m getting her something, alright? And she doesn’t want flowers.”

Lincoln trails behind Michael, tapping his fingers against the rows of colorful paper that he passes.

“That’s what all women say, Michael, and then when you don’t get them flowers,” Lincoln makes a whistling noise, “that’s when the shit hits—“

Michael is staring at a sheaf of papers, as long and wide as his arms, smiling slightly and obviously not hearing one word coming from Lincoln’s mouth.

“Mikey?” Linc tries, standing closer and glancing back and forth between the paper on the shelf and Michael’s eyes.

Michael turns to him then, and claps him on the shoulder. “You can’t bring me down about girls anymore Linc, I know what I’m doing with this one.”

“Hey, I’ve always been your wingman, Michael,” Lincoln tells him as they turn from the aisle. Michael ignores him.

They continue walking down the wide linoleum path in the center of the store, now with the large pad of paper sticking up awkwardly from within the confines of their little shopping cart.

After a few seconds of silence Lincoln turns back to his brother, “So are you going to tell me what it is that you’re getting her or…?” but instead of responding Michael turns the cart down into an aisle of markers. He grabs a fresh package of fancy looking pencils, and Lincoln continues, “because making her an enormous birthday card doesn’t seem the way to go.”

Michael rolls his eyes, “I’m making her blueprints.”

Lincoln pauses, “Oh. How romantic.”

Michael grins at his big brother as they turn into a check-out line. “I’m making her blueprints for the house I’m going to build us.”

Lincoln raises his eyebrows, “That’s a pretty big deal, Michael.”

Michael shakes his head, as if it’s something he’s dissected a million times, and smiles slightly, “I know what I’m doing. It’s Sara. This is right. I’m making us a home.”

fin.

late to the party

Fri, 25 May 2007 05:38:49 GMT

I may or may not have been slacking but I am on top of things now.

This is for challenge #3 over at pbhiatus_fic even though it was due some time ago. At least I'm posting at all? Yes. Of course. Think positive.

Characters: Sara/Michael
Rating: Mature
Length: ~2400 words
Spoilers: 2.10 "Rendezvous" (barely)
Summary: Smutty smutty smut smut. Also, technically AU. Generic Sara and Michael on-the-run fic.
Disclaimer: Everything herein based on creations by Paul Scheuring and Company

In the middle of the night the bed creaks, and she wakes to the feel of the mattress shifting beneath her. Her face presses into the pillow, hands underneath it as she lies on her stomach. She had been very, very tired when they arrived at the motel room.

Blinking against the darkness, she makes out Michael’s figure as he sits at the edge of the bed, and then stands, walking to the bathroom. She pulls the blankets further up over her shoulders and tries to fall back asleep. The room is silent but for Lincoln snoring quietly in the other bed. Sleep begins to pull her under again when the sound of the shower turning on tickles her senses.

That’s strange, she thinks, opening her eyes and wrinkling her brow in confusion. The clock reads 2:07 am and she knows Michael wanted to get an early start but this is ridiculous.

Michael’s palm stutters down the wet tile in the shower. His fingertips turn white as he presses against the wall, holding himself up. The warm water slides over his scalp and down his neck and back. He leans forward and lets his forehead rest against the wall for added support.

He flexes the fingers of his right hand around his shaft, his last thread of control fraying. Pumping himself a few times slowly, he lets out a deep breath.

“Fuck,” he murmurs against the wall.

He slides his thumb over the tip of his erection and his hips jerk slightly—he can’t remember the last time he was this aroused. Swallowing hard, his hand starts to work up and down, slowly at first, but building speed gradually.

He leans forward even more, his left hand sliding under his head so that his forearm is braced against the dirty tile.

Sara makes a decision—Michael needs his sleep too—and raps twice on the bathroom door. Opening it just a crack she says in the loudest voice she’s willing to use, “Michael?”

Michael’s hand stills and he feels his cock pulse beneath his fingertips. Shame heats his cheeks, and he pulls back to stand fully under the spray.

Clearing his throat he responds, “Yeah?”

He feels her hesitating before she asks, “Can I…”

“Uh, yeah, come in,” he tells her, thankful for the opaque white shower liner.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, “I don’t mean to—“

“Hold on,” he cuts her off, “I can’t hear you,”

It’s hard to have a conversation over the spray of the shower, and it’s been so long since Michael’s taken an actual shower in an actual bathroom with a woman present that he seems to have forgotten this. Besides which, he doesn’t want her to have to shout while Lincoln’s still sleeping. True, Linc is the kind of person who could sleep through a small tornado, but why take the chance of waking him when everyone is so on edge.

Michael cuts the water, and now it’s just him, naked and conspicuously aroused, behind a shower curtain, and Sara, he can picture her with her arms crossed, on the other side.

“What were you saying?” he asks in the silence that fills the room.

She clears her throat, “Um, I know you said you wanted to get an early start, but don’t you think we should wait until a little later? I’m tired and I can tell that Lincoln is and I know you must be—“

He can’t help the smile that pulls at the corner of his mouth, “Sara,” he says warmly, “I’m not taking a shower because we’re going to be leaving soon.”

“Oh.”

There’s a brief but awkward pause.

“So why are you taking a shower?”

Pressing his lips together he feels his rapidly deflating erection begin to harden again. He presses his eyes closed, “I was, uh…” he clears his throat, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh. Okay, well, I’m going to—“

“Yeah.”

He hears the door click shut. He waits a moment before pulling back the shower curtain and stepping out.

The door swings open suddenly, “Michael—“

Sara freezes in the doorway, mouth open, eyes wide but averted quickly. He flushes deeply; there’s no hiding that she saw him naked and obviously still aroused. It makes him harder. Dammit.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he asks her to close the door, his voice rough. She does, but she stays on the inside of the bathroom.

Her cheeks are pink and she’s staring hard at his chest. “Michael,” she begins, hesitant, “you couldn’t sleep?”

She raises her gaze to meet his.

The bathroom is very small, he suddenly realizes. And he’s naked but for a thin towel and she is definitely not wearing a bra, which is part of what started this whole mess. He’s holding the towel together in the front, sort of awkwardly, in an attempt to save what dignity he has left.

“Sara, please, I, uh,” he lets out a breath and slides one hand over the back of his scalp, “I’m sorry.”

She blinks at him before stepping closer, close enough to touch. Her hair is short, but she somehow looks the same. Wide eyes and soft mouth. “Did you mean what you said to me on the phone?”

“What?” His brain struggles to catch up to the conversation. The bathroom is still warm from the shower, the steamed up mirror evidence of that. He stares at the curve of her cheek, watches her throat as she swallows, follows her collarbone to where it disappears beneath her tee shirt. He can just make out the swell of her breast, the way the worn cotton pulls around it, outlining it. His fingers clench as he tries to ignore how the weight of her breast would feel cupped in his hand. He snaps to attention at the sound of her voice.

“The first time you called me and told me you were sorry about what happened, did you mean what you said after that?”

He can’t meet her gaze. He was beginning to understand, after she left him to be tortured, that she really doesn’t care for him anymore. Whatever they had before has clearly become another victim of his plan, but now she’s looking up at him and standing so close to him and she smells so fucking good.

He can’t decide whether his almost embarrassingly strong reaction to her is due to the length of time since he last had sex, or if it’s just simply her.

“Yes,” he tells her simply. It was real, and it will always be real to him.

He stares at her.

She feels goose-bumps at his words and the way his eyes darken as he looks at her. Her hand goes to his shoulder as she leans forward, her eyes staying on his for a moment before dropping down to look at his mouth. She moves her head forward, one breathless millimeter at a time, to press her mouth to his. She kisses him softly, but insistently. At first, he doesn’t respond, his mouth remains still. Then he’s capturing her lower lip with his teeth, and his hands are hot on her hips, and when he presses her back into the bathroom door the towel falls from his hips, and she feels him warm and long against her stomach.

She pulls her head back from his, their mouths separating with a slick pop. Their breathing is labored, and they both stare at each other. Michael drops his forehead against the door, next to her face, and he mutters, “I really think you should go back to bed before something… happens.”

She slides one hand from his back around to his stomach and down, wrapping her hands around him. He is hot and smooth, and she tightens her grip.

His gasp sends a shot of arousal down her spine. “Sara,” he grits out, “Please.”

“Please, what?” Her voice is low in his ear.

“God,” he says, swallowing. He can feel her hipbones beneath his palms, and the muscles of her stomach quivering beneath his thumbs. Her breathing is slightly ragged, and if he has to look into her eyes he knows that he won’t be able to stop himself.

“If you don’t,” he breathes through his nose, her hand still wrapped around him, her thumb sliding up and down the sensitive flesh while he speaks, “If you don’t stop I’m not going to.”

For a moment Michael thinks he has said too much, revealed the depth of his feelings, made a fool of himself, scared her, something, but then he feels her lips against the lobe of his ear when she whispers “Who said anything about stopping?”

His mouth seals over hers in a moment, one of his hands sliding underneath her bottom and pulling her against him. Her arms reach back around him, palming the smooth skin of his back, sliding over his bare ass.

His tongue slides against hers, before he moves to her throat and leaves a trail of open-mouthed kisses along his way to her collar bone.

Pulling away from her, he pins her to the bathroom door with his hips, “Take this off,” he rumbles and she flashes him a grin, pulling the tee shirt over her head. His eyes glaze over, watching her breasts bob up pertly while she pulls her shirt over her head.

She watches him watching her. He can feel her gaze as he lifts his right hand, extending his index finger and tracing a delicate circle around her nipple. Her nipple hardens into a tight bud while a flush creeps over her chest and face.

“Michael,” she breathes, and he looks up into her eyes this time. He puts his finger to his lips as he backs away, and he crouches, hands at her hips again.

“What—“

“Shhhh,” he says, his breathe tickling her belly. She leans her head back against the door, closing her eyes.

He slides the cotton boxer shorts she’s wearing off of her hips, eying her skin as it is revealed, until he realizes she’s not actually wearing underwear. His mind contracts, the scent of her curling into his nose and sparking a tingle in the base of his penis. Trying to remember to breathe, he slides the palm of his hand down the back of her calf, stopping behind her ankle and squeezing. She lifts her foot out of her shorts, and then he repeats the same process on the other side.

Once she is standing completely nude in front of him, he places both of his palms behind her knees, sliding them up to the underside of her bottom, and gently moving her legs apart.

“Michael, you don’t have to—“ but he silences her with a long, heated look. She licks her lips. He can feel her legs tremor slightly with anticipation.

Putting his own fears aside, he spreads her with his hands, gently, and presses a kiss to her clitoris. He hums against it, and she whimpers slightly. Her hand lands on top of his skull, and he opens his mouth against her, pressing the flat of his tongue down and dragging it upward.

Suddenly her hands are on his shoulders and she’s pushing him backward. He lands hard on the bathmat, elbows catching tile, and suddenly she’s on him, and she’s right there. He can feel her warm and wet, and holy shit he’s going to explode.

He wants to tell her, but her mouth is on his again, her tongue against his own, her hand on his chest, her knees next to his hips, and then her other hand wraps around him. He moans against her, reaching down between their bodies but suddenly his tip is at her entrance, and she slides down on him in one stroke.

He makes an indecipherable noise; she moans.

They hear the bed creak in the silence that follows, and her eyes track to his. Her cheeks are flushed, maybe embarrassed, but when nothing happens she starts to move on top of him.

He pulls her down to him for another kiss, while one hand palms her breast. He wants to be a bigger part of this operation, can’t stand the slow loss of control as she slides up and down on him. He sits up suddenly, taking her with him, and her legs are behind his back, her breasts against his chest, her eyes showing surprise.

He grips her waist in his hands, helping her to ride him a little bit harder, a little bit faster. Both of them are breathing heavily, their bodies sliding together. Her lets go of her to reach between them, and she lets her head fall back. He watches her biting her lip, he knows she’s losing it but he’s about to black out when suddenly her movements become stuttered and her breath catches and her cheeks flush deeper and then her body arches and stiffens and she makes a noise in the back of her throat while one hand digs painfully into his shoulder. When she relaxes against him again she doesn’t really even pause. She clenches her inner muscles, levering herself with his shoulders, and bouncing up and down on him. It would be obscene if it weren’t so fucking hot. Then she leans forward her hips still riding him, and she whispers in his ear, “Let go, Michael, I want you to, for me,” and his hands slide around to her ass, helping her go a little faster even as he feels a familiar pressure building and coiling until he has to squeeze his eyes shut against the feel of her body around him and against him and her skin beneath his hands and her hair against his neck and then he gasps and bites down on her neck and his whole body shudders as he comes, hard.

He lays back against the floor, realizing then that when she had pushed him to the ground the towel around his waist had landed right beneath them, in some happy chance.

She gets up off of him after a moment, and pulls him to his feet. She reaches for her shirt next to the sink, but before she pulls it over her head, she pauses, looking up into the mirror. Michael is looking at her back, but not with the same look of disgust he’d had when she had explained to him what happened. He is staring at her cuts and her skin and thinking that he can never ever let her go. He looks up after a second to see the reflection of her eyes.

“I just want to make sure that you’re okay.”

He speaks softly, eyes resolute. A small smile comes to her face, and he thinks she might finally understand.

and then another entry for the very next challenge, mistakes (which I am on time for, *pats self on back*)

Characters: Sara/Kellerman
Rating: Mature
Length: 235 words, a wee ficlet
Spoilers: 2.04 "First Down"
Summary: AU, assumes Lance isn't gay.
Disclaimer: Everything herein based on creations by Paul Scheuring and Company

His mouth on her pulse, hands pushing up her shirt – oh this is so so wrong – but at least it isn’t Michael. At least she’s not so vulnerable that she’s on the edge of throwing her life away, yet again. His fingers are rough, sure of themselves, surprisingly cold. His lips are chapped, his stubble burns against her cheek, her chest, her breast bone, her belly.

They are sprawled across her bed and she thinks this is bad but at least it’s not a syringe and a glass vial, at least it’s not suicide.

When he says her name it’s unexpected. It’s not as deep and rough as she imagined. Not Michael.

She presses her mouth against his, finds his tongue with her own, pulls his shirt over his head and lets her hands slide over the wiry hair of his chest.

This shouldn’t be wrong. He’s such a nice guy. Maybe it wouldn’t be mind-blowing, but at least she’d know that she had control of her decisions, and that she was in control of what she wanted.

Suddenly Lance wrenches her arms behind her, flipping her on her stomach, a knee in her spine. Tears burn at the backs of her eyes.

It all comes back to Michael and she wishes that she didn’t feel relieved that part of his act, his insanity, had been true.

A fucking conspiracy.

She almost laughs out loud.

That's all folks.