Bones: Fic - Enough of Me
Booth doesn’t mean for it to play out like it does.
He stands in her doorway for a long time, because there isn’t anything else he can say or do. He’s a gentleman, albeit not a Southern one, but a gentleman nonetheless. He opens car doors and pulls out chairs. He removes his hat when he walks inside. He doesn’t tolerate rudeness and he treats women with respect.
Yet here he is, listening to the girl he made cry through her bathroom door.
He cracked his own heart in the process, does that still make him a gentleman?
Rewind, take it back. Hands on the clock corkscrew out of control and it’s forty-eight hours earlier and none of this has happened.
Booth takes the treadmill up to a frenetic pace, his chest heaving as he races against no one. He likes to end his workouts with a burst of speed-the rush of adrenaline lasts through his shower and drive. It lasts until he gets to Brennan.
Her.
One thought and it’s enough to spiral into a thousand million tangents. Booth is worried about himself, this fascination borders on obsession. Only it isn’t, because he just cares about her…a lot. And she cares about him too.
Only not in the same way. He thinks.
He’s pretty focused on his partner, not his feet, so he doesn’t see the impatient-yet-apologetic-looking woman standing next to his machine until she taps on the display screen.
“Sorry,” she begins, “the guy at the desk told me you’ve been on the longest, so…”
Booth is totally confused for a split second.
“What?”
“The treadmill? You can only be on them for forty minutes when-“
“-all the machines are full.”
He glances around, and yes, it is so. Booth wonders how out of it he’s been; he hadn’t even noticed how crowded the gym had gotten.
He’s off the machine, wiping it down. The woman keeps talking, chattering on and on. She’s pretty, has a nice smile. He exchanges pleasantries; a have a nice workout, a brief goodbye.
Booth sees the woman again a few hours later. He’s at his desk, alternately thinking about work and wondering what Brennan’s doing tonight (probably working). How can he get Brennan to stop working all the time? Booth has this feeling that it used to be a lot easier. A dinner bribe here, a “let’s discuss the case” there.
But, the woman. She’s blonde, tall, and walking past his office.
“Hey!” she calls out, some Virginia twang rippling through her voice. It’s warm and appealing.
“Hello,” he responds, politely.
And just like that, they meet.
Her name is Caroline, and she does hail from the Virginia highlands. She’s bubbly and almost happily aggressive in her manner of speaking. She’s a nice girl with a big heart, and it shows.
She insists that she should bring him a coffee from the cart downstairs, repayment for what she terms ‘shoving him out of the gym.’ Booth assures her it’s fine, but she’s a Southern lady, and they live by their own code of manners. Somewhere in there this translates into coffee and a Danish.
She hands him the coffee and heads back to her desk. No phone number scribbled on the napkin, no flirty-flirty look as she heads to the elevator. Just a warm “see you tomorrow” and a smile.
He likes her. Not likes-her likes her, but she’s nice and new in town. And he hasn’t thought about a certain beautiful doctor in hours.
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This was originally going to be a little one-shot for INYSMC, but the idea got more complicated on the page than it was in my head. This first bit is a bit short, so consider it a teaser or something.
Also, you can find all my fic in my memories or at ff.net. I have written for Bones, Lost, Veronica Mars, and Gossip Girl. I think that's it.