Bones: Fic - Enough of Me (2/4)
A/N: I am thinking the timeline for this is “early season five,” since Booth memory issues seem largely resolved at this point in canon, and I am choosing to let them play out a little further here.
It’s two days later, and Brennan is standing in his office right before lunchtime. Booth’s stomach rumbles, but he shoves hunger to the back of his mind. Brennan’s hit her stride, holding up an x-ray and waving her hands around with panache. He doesn’t think she’d take kindly to being interrupted.
“-there’s some damage to the Hallux, that’s the big toe, Booth, that looks like it was made by grinding down the end-“
Booth winces, “What, like from torture or something? I thought this was a teenage girl.”
Brennan tears her gaze from the plasticized sheet in front of her and looks directly at him. He meets her gaze, but shifts slightly as she moves to sit on the edge of his desk. It seems so familiar, almost an intimate sharing of workspace.
“No, it is a girl. The grinding likely came from the repeated motion of placing her weight on her toes. This, coupled with the slightly malformed metatarsals and the ankle remodeling, indicate to me that this girl was a ballerina.”
Brennan pulls the leg of her slacks up, tugging off one of her shiny black pumps. Booth catches a flash of her ankle, a hint of pale skin.
She holds the shoe up; then shows him her hand.
“If this is our victim’s foot,” she says, wiggling her fingers, “then continually shoving it into her pointe shoes would eventually cause her bone structure to adapt to the narrow space.”
Sticking her hand into the shoe, she squishes her fingers together to demonstrate.
Bemused, Booth smiles.
“Alright, I get it. Ballerina. Thanks for the very unscientific show-and-tell.”
“It’s not a problem. I want you to understand, Booth.”
His comment was flippant, but the sincerity behind her eyes gives him a moment’s pause. Because somewhere in the tangled recesses of his mind, he knows that she’d rather have an actual pointe shoe, and that she does not consider the hand a suitable substitute for a foot. Not matter how similar in bone structure they actually are.
But she wants him to understand, to be comfortable. And so she sacrifices scientific integrity for his mental well-being.
“Okay, I, um…I understand.”
“She must have been a very good dancer,” Brennan adds, matter-of-factly putting her shoe back on, “she had a very highly arched foot, and her injuries indicate that she practiced frequently.”
“Good enough to have made someone jealous of her?”
“There is no way to know that from her remains, Booth.”
He opens his mouth to say he didn’t actually need an answer when he catches her smiling at him, happily watching him squirm for a moment.
She has a nice smile, even if it does seem a touch superior at times.
“Knock, knock! I’ve got lunch!” A voice rings out, and a pair of mile-long legs appears in his office doorway. Bearing take-out, no less.
“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry,” Caroline flushes, putting a hand to her mouth, “I didn’t realize you were in the middle of something.”
Brennan glances at the newcomer briefly, then stands. Booth watches her face, finding no trace of jealously, just mild interest. She reaches for the file on his desk.
He’s almost disappointed.
“It’s fine, we were just finishing up. Caroline, this is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan; Bones, this is my friend Caroline Boegale.”
Is it him, or do his partner’s hands still suddenly when he says friend?
He hasn’t got time to ponder the issue, because she’s shaking hands, saying that yes, she is the novelist Temperance Brennan, and moving toward the door. He follows her.
“I will contact you from the lab with any further results,” she says, nodding at him in farewell.
Whoosh, fast-forward and let the cars on the street move until their lights blur into streaming incandescence.
Booth leans back against the door. He cannot hear her stifled sobs anymore, without the noise he’s practically alone in a foreign place. His eyes travel the shelves he can see from here, looking for the woman he knows in a collection of objects.
He’s looking for a way to explain this, but he can’t. Not the way one should, anyway.
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This is going to be a little longer than I originally thought. Hope no one minds.