Bones Fic: the luck I've had (can make a good man turn bad) 1/1
It was inevitable really...
Title: the luck I've had (can make a good man turn bad)
Author:shootingstars88
Rating: K
Disclaimer: All characters are property of HH et al, no copyright infringement intended.
Timeline: s3 finale.
Summary: "What the hell Bones? I'm in my house, in my bathroom, in my bathtub!" A little Booth POV and a missing scene for The Pain in the Heart.
A/N - My first Bones fic! I’m fairly new to this fandom, having marathoned the entire series this summer so I’m still getting a feel for the characters at the moment. The title is taken from 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' by the Smiths and any dialogue you recognise is lifted from the ep itself. A companion piece and missing scene surrounding the events of Wannabe in the Weeds/The Pain in the Heart because that seems to be a bit of a right of passage for fic in this fandom.
For
fiery_twilight , for getting me into this show in the first place.
~
FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth was not a man easily rattled.
Years of hiding behind enemy lines had seen to that, when he was just a soldier with sand in his eyes and a shot to take, long before the Bureau had finished the job with homicide and horror and all of the bones that came with Bones.
FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth took a bullet for his partner and traded two weeks of his life to catch a monster. He did not shudder even listening to his own eulogy.
But tonight, finally home in his own apartment, he found he wasn’t feeling much like FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth at all. Tonight he was back to being just Booth, the Booth to her Bones, the Booth to his squints, the man who had lied to his friends.
And Booth, at this exact moment in time, was feeling distinctly rattled.
“What the hell Bones? I’m in my house, in my bathroom, in my bathtub!”
Being barged in on naked could have that effect on anyone.
Brennan yanked the needle from his record, shutting off the music that had been playing loud enough to annoy his neighbours.
She spun back to face him, momentarily distracted by his appearance. “Why are you wearing a hat that dispenses beer?”
He squirmed under her critical gaze, turning defensive. “Hot tub plus cold beer equals warm beer. Hat equals solution.”
If she appreciated the attempt at scientific reasoning, it didn’t show. “And that cigar? Very unhealthy.”
He defiantly took a draw, considering whether to tell her that he’d been saving this really, very, very expensive cigar for the day he finally caught the sonofabitch who promised to crash his funeral. He exhaled, deciding not to mention it. Damn thing didn’t taste much like victory, after all.
“Ok what the hell do you want now Bones? ‘cos I’m not really feeling too relaxed.”
Earlier, he blamed his discomfort on anything he could think of - his healing bullet wound, the stress of the past few weeks, the Gormogon case, but even a warm bath and a cold beer had done nothing to ease the uncomfortable weight sitting on his chest.
“You should have told me that you weren’t dead,” she told him abruptly, finally arriving at the reason behind her unannounced visit.
The words landed like a physical blow, adding new weight to the strange pressing ache that he’d tried to relieve with alcohol and nicotine and denial.
Avoiding her eyes, he blamed protocol and bureaucracy until she was furious and so was he, standing up and yelling, “I took a bullet for you!”
“Once! That only goes so far!”
Just for a second, something other than anger slipped through the cracks in her voice.
Embarrassed and exposed, Booth did not catch it. Instead he sat back down, drawing her back into an argument that was long past simple bickering.
“Did you really think I needed to be vetted by your boss? Don’t you trust me?”
She looked down on him, confused and angry and betrayed and not for the first time that day, Booth felt the cost of his good deed.
Despite his best efforts, after hungry dogs and serial killers and absent fathers and all the things he’d ever tried to shield her from, this time he was the one who had hurt her.
“Of course I do,” he assured her quickly, horrified that she should have reason to question this.
“Then why wasn’t I told? It must have been something that you said...”
“No, I don’t know why you weren’t told,” he reminded her, feeling his irritation with the Bureau rising again and trying to keep evidence of it out of his voice.
“But you said that I should be? I mean, aren’t you curious why I wasn’t?”
Knowing her as he did, better perhaps than even she realised, he understood what she was looking for.
“Yes! Do you want me to find out why you weren’t told?”
She accepted, casually, as though it didn’t concern her much, “if it’s important to you.”
He almost laughed at that because she wasn’t very good at lying at the best of times and definitely not to him. Knowing why mattered. It mattered because she’d spent two weeks thinking him dead and he knew from the way she’d barged in here, exhausted desperation in her eyes, that she didn’t understand her own reaction to that. So she had pushed aside the subtle vagaries of her emotions and looked to what she could understand.
She would take comfort in the facts.
He would give them to her and always wonder about the rest.
Some things never changed.
His promise secured, she left as she had arrived, abruptly and without warning. A pause to flick his music back on and she was gone, sliding the door shut behind her.
The heavy beat filled the bathroom again, not quite loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Instead they ran away with themselves, spinning in circles like the record, round and round, going over and over the choice he’d made two weeks ago and only just begun to question.
He had lined up at his own funeral as sure he was doing the right thing as he’d been when the Bureau had first suggested it to him, straight out of the trauma room and high as a kite on painkillers. Two weeks alone to ponder his choice hadn’t changed his mind but a powerful punch from her and he just didn’t know anymore.
He’d given his rehearsed apology into the stunned silence at the cemetery with a conversation from not so long ago ringing in his ears. In the bright morning he’d seen only lamplight and liquor in paper cups and she was asking, “are you going to betray me?” and two weeks ago, without even knowing it, he had done just that.
Staring at the door behind with his partner had just disappeared, Booth let out a huff of breath, annoyance at the universe for making him feel guilty when all he’d tried to do was catch a bad guy. He turned his attention back to the comic in his pruning fingers, trying desperately to put her out of his mind.
As if to prove him wrong, a voice in his head that sounded disturbingly like hers pointed out that his efforts to relax had clearly failed and so rationally, and damn it when did she start arguing with him when she wasn’t even there, he should admit defeat and try something else.
Something stronger than beer seemed called for so he stood up and pulled the plug, reaching for a towel and drying off. Once the steam across his mirror had cleared, Booth peered at his reflection and ran a tentative hand along his jaw, remembering the punch that had been her only response to his reappearance.
The others had been a little more welcoming, cornering him at the cemetery before he could chase after her. There’d been a tight hug from Angela, a slap on the back from Hodgins, a warm hug and a vicious smack from Cam, even a tentative smile from Zach, yet in the shadows under their eyes he saw the one thing he’d failed to grasp before.
It was not two weeks of his life that he had sacrificed, but two weeks of theirs.
And unknowingly, two weeks of hers.
He didn’t need her to tell him what it had been like. He found the answer in the pile of Limbo identifications stacked on her desk, all dating from the past two weeks, in the way she wouldn’t look at him, like she was afraid he wouldn’t be there if she looked too closely.
It wasn’t strictly his fault, he knew that, but Booth wasn’t a squint and so knowing wasn’t enough. The cold weight sat on his heart was, he realised, the difference between knowing something and feeling something. The one thing she never quite understood.
Dry and dressed in the sweats he’d earlier tossed into a bathroom corner, he slid open the door and stepped out into his darkened apartment.
And there she was, sitting stiffly on his couch, her outline barely visible in the pale yellow glow from the streetlight outside his window.
“Bones?” he called, surprised. “You’re still here?” He reached out to flick on a lamp.
Warm light flooded the room and she started, as though jerking awake. She didn’t speak, just slowly stood and turned to face him. Booth, who had been padding slowly across the floor towards her, froze where he stood.
She looked tired, tiny and fragile in the middle of the floor. Her blue eyes held no spark of anger now; they were wide and over-bright, glazed with tears she had not allowed to fall. For a moment, she was the little girl whose parents had gone out and never come home.
He wanted to say that she was right, that he had taken a bullet for her but that only goes so far, wanted to promise that from now on he would go farther. But then, he never was quite brave enough when it came to her. Instead he defaulted to humor, anything that might spark some life back into her.
“Bones, I ... d’you want to hit me again? I probably deserve it.”
Her only response was to walk the three steps separating them and throw her arms around him.
For a moment he froze, then as her palms came to rest splayed across his back he lifted his arms from his sides and gently wrapped them around her. She was cold so he pulled her in tighter to his chest, warming her body with his own as she buried her head in his shoulder.
“I missed you,” she said, a confession that tumbled from her lips quickly, each word nearly tripping up the other. He felt the tension drain from her body and knew that she had carried this fact with her all day, a palpable burden now released.
He considered the weight of his own burdens, all the things he could never bring himself to tell her.
He couldn’t tell her that he’d picked up the phone every day for two weeks, desperate to hear her voice, that he couldn’t dial that final digit because one word from her and he’d have blown his cover and come home.
But there was one thing he could say and really, really mean, so he did.
“I’m sorry, Bones.”
She said nothing, merely pressed herself closer to him, redoubling her hold. He knew himself to be forgiven, even if she did not know it yet.
When they finally broke apart she was smiling vaguely, her cheeks flushed with warmth again.
“You want a beer?” he offered, already moving towards the kitchen.
She hesitated for a moment, then relented. “Ok.”
Her voice reached him just as he pulled open the fridge door, sailing in from the other room.
“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you yet.”
He laughed quietly to himself and reached for two beers, feeling the tightness in his chest finally easing.
As they clinked bottles, her eyes held his for just a moment too long, as always. For the first time since he was shot, after two weeks of feigning death, he felt alive again.
~
Title: the luck I've had (can make a good man turn bad)
Author:shootingstars88
Rating: K
Disclaimer: All characters are property of HH et al, no copyright infringement intended.
Timeline: s3 finale.
Summary: "What the hell Bones? I'm in my house, in my bathroom, in my bathtub!" A little Booth POV and a missing scene for The Pain in the Heart.
A/N - My first Bones fic! I’m fairly new to this fandom, having marathoned the entire series this summer so I’m still getting a feel for the characters at the moment. The title is taken from 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' by the Smiths and any dialogue you recognise is lifted from the ep itself. A companion piece and missing scene surrounding the events of Wannabe in the Weeds/The Pain in the Heart because that seems to be a bit of a right of passage for fic in this fandom.
For
fiery_twilight , for getting me into this show in the first place.
~
FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth was not a man easily rattled.
Years of hiding behind enemy lines had seen to that, when he was just a soldier with sand in his eyes and a shot to take, long before the Bureau had finished the job with homicide and horror and all of the bones that came with Bones.
FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth took a bullet for his partner and traded two weeks of his life to catch a monster. He did not shudder even listening to his own eulogy.
But tonight, finally home in his own apartment, he found he wasn’t feeling much like FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth at all. Tonight he was back to being just Booth, the Booth to her Bones, the Booth to his squints, the man who had lied to his friends.
And Booth, at this exact moment in time, was feeling distinctly rattled.
“What the hell Bones? I’m in my house, in my bathroom, in my bathtub!”
Being barged in on naked could have that effect on anyone.
Brennan yanked the needle from his record, shutting off the music that had been playing loud enough to annoy his neighbours.
She spun back to face him, momentarily distracted by his appearance. “Why are you wearing a hat that dispenses beer?”
He squirmed under her critical gaze, turning defensive. “Hot tub plus cold beer equals warm beer. Hat equals solution.”
If she appreciated the attempt at scientific reasoning, it didn’t show. “And that cigar? Very unhealthy.”
He defiantly took a draw, considering whether to tell her that he’d been saving this really, very, very expensive cigar for the day he finally caught the sonofabitch who promised to crash his funeral. He exhaled, deciding not to mention it. Damn thing didn’t taste much like victory, after all.
“Ok what the hell do you want now Bones? ‘cos I’m not really feeling too relaxed.”
Earlier, he blamed his discomfort on anything he could think of - his healing bullet wound, the stress of the past few weeks, the Gormogon case, but even a warm bath and a cold beer had done nothing to ease the uncomfortable weight sitting on his chest.
“You should have told me that you weren’t dead,” she told him abruptly, finally arriving at the reason behind her unannounced visit.
The words landed like a physical blow, adding new weight to the strange pressing ache that he’d tried to relieve with alcohol and nicotine and denial.
Avoiding her eyes, he blamed protocol and bureaucracy until she was furious and so was he, standing up and yelling, “I took a bullet for you!”
“Once! That only goes so far!”
Just for a second, something other than anger slipped through the cracks in her voice.
Embarrassed and exposed, Booth did not catch it. Instead he sat back down, drawing her back into an argument that was long past simple bickering.
“Did you really think I needed to be vetted by your boss? Don’t you trust me?”
She looked down on him, confused and angry and betrayed and not for the first time that day, Booth felt the cost of his good deed.
Despite his best efforts, after hungry dogs and serial killers and absent fathers and all the things he’d ever tried to shield her from, this time he was the one who had hurt her.
“Of course I do,” he assured her quickly, horrified that she should have reason to question this.
“Then why wasn’t I told? It must have been something that you said...”
“No, I don’t know why you weren’t told,” he reminded her, feeling his irritation with the Bureau rising again and trying to keep evidence of it out of his voice.
“But you said that I should be? I mean, aren’t you curious why I wasn’t?”
Knowing her as he did, better perhaps than even she realised, he understood what she was looking for.
“Yes! Do you want me to find out why you weren’t told?”
She accepted, casually, as though it didn’t concern her much, “if it’s important to you.”
He almost laughed at that because she wasn’t very good at lying at the best of times and definitely not to him. Knowing why mattered. It mattered because she’d spent two weeks thinking him dead and he knew from the way she’d barged in here, exhausted desperation in her eyes, that she didn’t understand her own reaction to that. So she had pushed aside the subtle vagaries of her emotions and looked to what she could understand.
She would take comfort in the facts.
He would give them to her and always wonder about the rest.
Some things never changed.
His promise secured, she left as she had arrived, abruptly and without warning. A pause to flick his music back on and she was gone, sliding the door shut behind her.
The heavy beat filled the bathroom again, not quite loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Instead they ran away with themselves, spinning in circles like the record, round and round, going over and over the choice he’d made two weeks ago and only just begun to question.
He had lined up at his own funeral as sure he was doing the right thing as he’d been when the Bureau had first suggested it to him, straight out of the trauma room and high as a kite on painkillers. Two weeks alone to ponder his choice hadn’t changed his mind but a powerful punch from her and he just didn’t know anymore.
He’d given his rehearsed apology into the stunned silence at the cemetery with a conversation from not so long ago ringing in his ears. In the bright morning he’d seen only lamplight and liquor in paper cups and she was asking, “are you going to betray me?” and two weeks ago, without even knowing it, he had done just that.
Staring at the door behind with his partner had just disappeared, Booth let out a huff of breath, annoyance at the universe for making him feel guilty when all he’d tried to do was catch a bad guy. He turned his attention back to the comic in his pruning fingers, trying desperately to put her out of his mind.
As if to prove him wrong, a voice in his head that sounded disturbingly like hers pointed out that his efforts to relax had clearly failed and so rationally, and damn it when did she start arguing with him when she wasn’t even there, he should admit defeat and try something else.
Something stronger than beer seemed called for so he stood up and pulled the plug, reaching for a towel and drying off. Once the steam across his mirror had cleared, Booth peered at his reflection and ran a tentative hand along his jaw, remembering the punch that had been her only response to his reappearance.
The others had been a little more welcoming, cornering him at the cemetery before he could chase after her. There’d been a tight hug from Angela, a slap on the back from Hodgins, a warm hug and a vicious smack from Cam, even a tentative smile from Zach, yet in the shadows under their eyes he saw the one thing he’d failed to grasp before.
It was not two weeks of his life that he had sacrificed, but two weeks of theirs.
And unknowingly, two weeks of hers.
He didn’t need her to tell him what it had been like. He found the answer in the pile of Limbo identifications stacked on her desk, all dating from the past two weeks, in the way she wouldn’t look at him, like she was afraid he wouldn’t be there if she looked too closely.
It wasn’t strictly his fault, he knew that, but Booth wasn’t a squint and so knowing wasn’t enough. The cold weight sat on his heart was, he realised, the difference between knowing something and feeling something. The one thing she never quite understood.
Dry and dressed in the sweats he’d earlier tossed into a bathroom corner, he slid open the door and stepped out into his darkened apartment.
And there she was, sitting stiffly on his couch, her outline barely visible in the pale yellow glow from the streetlight outside his window.
“Bones?” he called, surprised. “You’re still here?” He reached out to flick on a lamp.
Warm light flooded the room and she started, as though jerking awake. She didn’t speak, just slowly stood and turned to face him. Booth, who had been padding slowly across the floor towards her, froze where he stood.
She looked tired, tiny and fragile in the middle of the floor. Her blue eyes held no spark of anger now; they were wide and over-bright, glazed with tears she had not allowed to fall. For a moment, she was the little girl whose parents had gone out and never come home.
He wanted to say that she was right, that he had taken a bullet for her but that only goes so far, wanted to promise that from now on he would go farther. But then, he never was quite brave enough when it came to her. Instead he defaulted to humor, anything that might spark some life back into her.
“Bones, I ... d’you want to hit me again? I probably deserve it.”
Her only response was to walk the three steps separating them and throw her arms around him.
For a moment he froze, then as her palms came to rest splayed across his back he lifted his arms from his sides and gently wrapped them around her. She was cold so he pulled her in tighter to his chest, warming her body with his own as she buried her head in his shoulder.
“I missed you,” she said, a confession that tumbled from her lips quickly, each word nearly tripping up the other. He felt the tension drain from her body and knew that she had carried this fact with her all day, a palpable burden now released.
He considered the weight of his own burdens, all the things he could never bring himself to tell her.
He couldn’t tell her that he’d picked up the phone every day for two weeks, desperate to hear her voice, that he couldn’t dial that final digit because one word from her and he’d have blown his cover and come home.
But there was one thing he could say and really, really mean, so he did.
“I’m sorry, Bones.”
She said nothing, merely pressed herself closer to him, redoubling her hold. He knew himself to be forgiven, even if she did not know it yet.
When they finally broke apart she was smiling vaguely, her cheeks flushed with warmth again.
“You want a beer?” he offered, already moving towards the kitchen.
She hesitated for a moment, then relented. “Ok.”
Her voice reached him just as he pulled open the fridge door, sailing in from the other room.
“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you yet.”
He laughed quietly to himself and reached for two beers, feeling the tightness in his chest finally easing.
As they clinked bottles, her eyes held his for just a moment too long, as always. For the first time since he was shot, after two weeks of feigning death, he felt alive again.
~