Bones Fic.
Title: Set Down Your Glass
Author: britishwannabe1
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Rating: T
Word Count: 3323
Disclaimer: I don't own Bones. The title comes from the Snow Patrol song of the same name
Spoilers: General, Season Four (includes recent episodes)
Summary: A conversation over food and beer changes the way both Brennan and Booth see their relationship.
It was a slow change; it started with them leaving the diner to go to his place for a couple of beers. In this event, they decided to just go to the Founding Fathers for food and beer. Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.
But it wasn’t the location that was changing, it was their relationship. Suddenly, they unconsciously decided to just skip the crowds, the hurried atmosphere of a bar in D.C. Some how, they ended up at his apartment at day’s night. No restaurants, no bars. Just home.
Their relationship in the last few months had changed drastically, his lowly lit apartment mirrored this hinged development; they were understanding of each other’s wants and needs, intimate in their words and subtle actions. They knew far too much about each other for the bright lights of the diner or the hustle of the bar. Now, the silence that dissipated between them was more comfortable than anything as they clinked beer bottles and sat so close their legs were almost touching. Yes, his apartment represented a corner of the world where they were allowed to be together with what they knew. Because nobody else would understand what they knew about each other, the tiny details and intricate philosophies. Their partnership was put through special trials, and they endured them valiantly. Only they could understand what the other had been through: the contemplation of suicide, the darkness of confinement, human-on-human destruction, the pangs of love. His apartment was a confessional. The diner, the bar, they were far too noisy.
Everything was on the verge of everything. He could feel a dramatic change in the air. Her guards were slowly coming down, and his strength was weakening. He thought about lines and denial; it took him back to his gambling addiction, and those meetings he had to attend where you stood up in front of strangers and admitted to them what you barely wanted to admit to yourself. Admitting the truth was always the first step, acknowledging the existence. THIS addiction wasn’t imaginary, it wasn’t restrained. Of everything he struggled with in his life, admitting to himself that he needed Temperance Brennan, needed her in every way that a man needs a woman, was the most difficult thought he ever had to reconcile.
Temperance Brennan was another kind of addiction, the kind you could never beat, should never beat.
Where he had difficulty with his mind, she had difficulty with her heart. They were out-of-balance, out-of-sync. But somehow they kept bumping into each other, bouncing off. Cyclical. Maybe their relationship was something she would describe as "orbital". He would just say that it was complicated.
She was a materialist. She survived the day by placing her mind in things she could pick up and hold in her palm. The more he grew to understand her in her entirety, the more he realized that the material things were the least important aspects of this wholly material-based world.
~~~~~~~~
He unlocked his door and stood back to let her in first. After awhile there were no formalities. She tossed her jacket on the arm of his chair. He laid his on top of hers.
They had picked up some Chinese food. There was a bunch of different dishes in front of them; they never ordered separate meals anymore. They just shared everything in their own strange form of communion.
They ate in silence at his kitchen counter. It was more silent than usual though. Booth noticed that she was picking at her food listlessly. There was something on her mind. Outside, a car honked somewhere in the distance.
"How is it?" he asked lightly.
Brennan didn’t glance up. She was usually more direct than that. "It’s really good."
"Do you need another beer yet?"
"No, not yet."
He couldn’t say he had ever seen her like this before. She was easy to read, almost too easy to read. He knew that most of the time she was feeling the opposite of what she appeared. He knew that when she appeared distraught, it was because she could no longer hide what she was feeling. But tonight she was...different. She was almost cold. He never thought of Temperance Brennan as cold. Passive aggressive was not her forte. Bones was always forthright, honest. And now, there was something sitting on the table, separating their rhythms. It was unnerving. With heavy air amongst them, it was like the whole outside world was staring at them through the window they sat at.
"You okay Bones? You’re eating slower than usual tonight."
"I’m fine. I guess I just wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was."
"I know you haven’t eaten all day. You can’t be full yet."
She didn’t respond. He saw her shoulders tense.
Sometimes, it felt like loving this woman was a burden he couldn’t handle. He wanted to handle it, but it was a daily conflict that cornered him at every opportunity. It was the paradoxical enigma of his individual existence; they were more passionate in their platonic romance than most consummated couples were in all of their intimacies. Waking up in the morning was the reminder that she was not next to him. Going to sleep at night was the reminder that he could not know where she was at every second of the day. It shouldn’t bother him, for he knew she was completely capable of taking care of herself. But love- you take it everywhere with you. Love for other human beings is meant to be used for something greater than just a selfish comfort. It’s a channel- a method- for doing the best you can at everything. It was the best kind of strength. She was supposed to be his strength. But slowly, every passing day grew longer than the day before. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. They were all the same to him. Because she remained. She.
He loved her. Patience was a virtue. Patience is his virtue. But their love was a stalemate. A ticking clock. It tormented him. He needed an acknowledgment. Reciprocation seemed so distant. A car honked in the distance.
She twiddled the chopsticks in her hand.
Her face was blocked from the light. He stared at the top of her head. "You know, you get this look on your face when you’re concentrating. When you examine bones you get this stern expression. It’s almost like an explosion can set off in the background and you wouldn’t even notice."
Her face shot up with the mention of his observation. She was direct again, he felt nervous under her stare.
"How did you know I hadn’t eaten anything all day?"
Her question interrupted his line of thought.
"What?"
"Just awhile ago you said that you knew I hadn’t eaten anything all day. How did you know that?"
He set down his beer and sighed. "It was just a lucky guess, Bones. Forget I even said it." He lifted his hands in defense and quickly went back to his food. This time, she was left staring at him.
"No, no it wasn’t...you know me, Booth." Her eyes were penetrating, the blue was steely in quality, almost marble-like. Her eyelids twitched gently, her face set like a statue.
"Of course I know you. It’s part of my job to know you. That way if you’re in danger, I know how to protect you."
Her stony features scrunched up in mild disgust. "It’s part of your job?"
He set his chopsticks down. They lightly clinked against the beer bottle. "You know what I mean, Bones."
"No, no I don’t actually," her demeanor was slowly becoming confrontational. "See, somehow even though we’ve only spent the latter part of the day together, you’re able to tell whether I have or have not eaten. How can any human being just look at another person and say with certainty that that person has not consumed food sometime in the day?"
Something had set her off. Something was simmering beneath her. For the first time in recent months, he didn’t know how to approach her outburst. Her vulnerability was laced with detachment. Where was the Temperance Brennan that rationalized her emotions and moved on gracefully? What could possibly bother her so much that she dwelled on it? The hidden facets of her cracked and splintered soul were becoming apparent. She was a three-dimensional prism of sharp edges and multiple sides. The white light that shone through her slowed down to a crawl. In her, the white light turned into the colors of the rainbow.
Suddenly, Booth softened. She did that to him.
"What’s scaring you right now?"
Her eyes darted to the window. Through the blinds, the street lamps reflected in her orbs.
Her voice was small.
"It’s just...I’m getting used to it."
"To me knowing you?"
"Yes."
"Bones, despite what your rationality may be telling you, it’s good for other people to know you."
"Yes, I know this. Anthropologically speaking, humans are dependent on other humans in society, and I can see how this would lead to a gradual knowledge of one another. I just wonder how much you know about me that I’m not aware of."
She was a child again. She was fifteen years old and her parents had just driven off. Without explanation, without warning. With love.
He stared at her and smirked. "I can tell you what I do know. I know you’re not as oblivious as you pretend."
"Yes, I’m not. Sometimes it’s just easier to feign ignorance in the face of some circumstances. It’s easier that way."
He waited a few seconds. Waited.
"Why?"
"Because I can pretend that some people aren’t as close to me as they really are."
Booth reached out a hand and rested it gently on top of her warm fingers. Fear was something he had seen in her eyes before. Not in the interrogation rooms or in the lab, nor on the field. But always in the quiet, always in a home, a graveyard. It was foreign to her. She was scared of things she couldn’t comprehend in her genius.
He knew the answer before he asked the question.
"Are you scared of me?"
She hesitated for a moment, picking the words from a box.
"Not of you, per se. Just of the way you make me feel."
The question hung between them, unspoken. He needed to give life to it.
"How do I make you feel?"
He caressed her knuckles. Brennan stared at their hands and a smile donned her cheeks. She sniffed. "Like I’m not alone. Sometimes, like I’m an alien in the world. Like the more I come to know you, the less I feel like I know anything at all. But usually, I feel at peace when I’m around you. Like right now." His hand didn’t move. He squeezed at her index finger like a child.
"Sometimes I feel guilty."
Her face calmed with her confession. His was taken aback.
"You have nothing to blame yourself for."
She shook her head. "No. You’re just so much better..." she motioned to the air between them, "...at this than I am. I wish I knew you like you know me."
"You do Bones. You know more about me than anybody. I’ve told you things I’ve barely had the courage to tell myself."
"Really?"
"You better believe it."
She nodded. "That’s comforting I suppose. You’ve done so much for me Booth...I wish I could at least read you. I try to comfort people, it usually doesn’t turn out right. I’ve never been good at it. Even as a child. It was never that I couldn’t empathize, my social abilities were just very limited."
"I know, Bones. I know."
"And you know me. And that’s dangerous. When people know me, they usually don’t like what they find."
"Well, I know you. I know the good, the bad. And I’m still here."
She smiled. She tilted her head.
Booth let go of her hand. "It’s hard understanding you. I know so much, and I can’t do anything with it."
It was there. She took it.
"You can do whatever you want with it."
It was symbolic. It was almost literary. You can do whatever you want with it. The possibilities. It was audible in a way that could only be heard by a sensitive heart. And here they were, two misfits in a world of suffering. A world of suffering in which they worked to restore order in the midst of chaos. It was the other paradoxical enigma of his life. Both paradoxical enigmas were the same, he realized. Life was funny in that way. Things were always less complex than they seemed. He learned that from her. He was alone, but he was not lonely. In his kitchen, the ticking clock stopped. Around them, the world revolved. If he told her that, she would have scoffed at his metaphorical sensibilities. He would have laughed at her for not understanding that she, Temperance Brennan, was almost a metaphor herself.
Reality stepped out from the window blinds. She was staring at him, waiting for a response. Waiting.
"Right now, we’ll save it," he said with a tinge of uncertainty.
She blinked and smiled. "It’s what’s best, I suppose," she started, "but you’re ready though."
"I know, but you’re not." It was the only thing he was sure of.
Her eyes shifted downward. "Yeah."
"We’ll let it rest for now. Do you need another beer yet?"
She nodded vehemently. "Yeah, I do." She perked up slightly.
"Bones?"
"Yeah?"
"Ask me any question you want."
"Why?"
"Just do it. Anything you want to know about me."
"Okay. How come you never stopped believing in God?" she stated forthrightly.
He hadn’t expected her to think of one so quickly. He should have known Temperance Brennan by now. "What do you mean?"
"There was a time in your life when you wanted to commit suicide. Surely you felt some sort of anger towards God."
"Yeah sure I felt anger Bones, but it was never like that."
"What do you mean?"
"I hated God Bones, but I never stopped believing in him. I think that’s why I hated him...I was so angry at him because I couldn’t stop believing in him."
"Your anger was irrational Booth. A loving God would never have put you through a traumatic childhood like the one you endured."
"That’s where you’re wrong Bones. There’s two sides to everything. Good and evil, love and hatred. It was only in my suffering that I was able to know what was good. Because I suffered, I know what it means to love a child, to love what I do. If I hadn’t suffered, I would never have met you. The paradox of life, Bones."
Her eyes sprinkled with tears. "You’re a soft person," she said.
He smiled. "Not nearly as soft as you."
"People always tell me that I’m hardened, cold and unfeeling."
"Those people also don’t know that when you haven’t eaten in all day, you complain about doing paperwork. When you have eaten, I usually have to drag you away from it."
She leaned on top of the counter coyly. "You know what I know? I know that if you hadn’t suffered, you wouldn’t be able to read me so well."
He chuckled. "You’re right, Bones."
She smiled and shook her head nonsensically. "I should probably go."
"Do you need me to drive you home?"
"No, I think I’m okay."
He grabbed her coat from underneath his and strung it around her lithe frame. "Drive safely."
"I will," she said as she started to turn the knob.
"It’s gonna happen one of these days, Temperance."
She stopped, slightly flabbergasted, and turned to face him. "What’s gonna happen?"
He looked at her disapprovingly. "You know what I mean."
She nodded. "Yeah, I do."
He walked over to her and pulled her into his shoulder.
"Just promise me something, okay?"
She looked up at him.
"Don’t try to fight it," he murmured, the air from his lips brushing against her nose.
She understood. "I can’t promise I won’t. But I will certainly try not to."
With that finality, she walked out of the door. He stood there for awhile, praying to God. Finally, he went to the kitchen to clean up the counter.
~~~~~~~~~
His apartment. It was a place of intricate subtleties. She had never been a big fan of subtlety. It wasn’t that she didn’t notice things, the fact of the matter was that the little things in life were the hardest to deal with. She could dig through human wreckage, seeing dead bodies strewn about for what looked like miles on end. But a hurting child would stare at her, and she was completely undone. The little things had this air-like motion; they constantly floated around her, never quite settling into something material, something she could put in the palm of her hand.
Love- she knew what it was. She experienced it everyday. Whenever Russ left her a message on her voicemail, whenever she identified a body from Limbo, whenever Angela asked her to go have a drink. Whenever Booth could see right through her. But she couldn’t define it, she didn’t know how to use it. She only knew how to survive. She only knew what she thought was just and fair in a society that held so many suffering victims upon its shoulders.
She wanted to believe that love was a strength, that it gave you more control over yourself. But it had always been the undoing of her.
Booth found strength in love. He used it as a means of selflessness.
Booth also once told her that she loved too much. She replied that she couldn’t love too much if she didn’t believe in love at all. He told her that she believed in it, she just didn’t know it, because there was a difference between knowing and believing.
Brennan sat in the drivers’ seat. The window reflected the buildings surrounding her. She looked upward. She could see Booth’s apartment. The light in the kitchen was still on.
She wanted to go back up there. She wanted him in all the ways a woman needed a man. She loved him. She didn’t know it yet.
Brain and heart, Bones. Brain and heart.
Echoes, echoes. The day would come when she would have to make a decision. She would have to define happiness.
She hated ethereal ideas. But why did people always act like they were the most important things in the world, the only things that could bring happiness?
Booth’s voice in her head told her it was because they were the only things that could bring happiness.
This is worth it.
They had clinked beer bottles.
She loved him, she believed this. She needed to know it. Did she know it?
There was physical proof that she loved him. She spent more time with him than she did with any other man, she would give up her own life to save his. She would do whatever she could for him, anything to help him be happy.
Based on the evidence, she would have to conclude that she loved him. She knew it.
At the end of the day, she was just a little girl. A scared child. He knew her too well. Maybe she was starting to know him too well.
Scared. That’s all she was.
She glanced up at his kitchen again. Her hand clutched the door handle. Just one quick pull of it, and she could run up the stairs to his apartment, and fall into his arms in the way she always imagined lovers would be together.
She let go of the handle and rested her head against the steering wheel for a second.
Straightening up in her seat, she finally turned the key in the ignition, and drove away.
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