FF - Bones - B/B - Of Pumpkins and Glass Slippers
Title: Of Pumpkins and Glass Slippers
Author: zerodetorres
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Rating: PG
Timeline: Nothing specific. One tiny spoiler for End in the Beginning.
Summary: "High-risk situations, he'd once explained to her, and with his words, he'd traced over the pencil marks with a marker, its felt tip leaking ink into the canvas of their relationship."
Notes: Many thanks to britishwannabe1 for the look-over and for being generally awesome. You know you rule. ♥
Stories begin with 'once upon a time' and end with Cinderella marrying the Prince.
But this is not Cinderella's story.
It is theirs.
*
There is a line.
There is always a line.
High-risk situations, he'd once explained to her, and with his words, he'd traced over the pencil marks with a marker, its felt tip leaking ink into the canvas of their relationship. Yet, for the sheer space their line occupies, for its thickness, its length, one has to wonder how both still manage to straddle it without falling over, falling in.
But, like Cinderella and the Prince, the line is really just a metaphor.
She's not particularly good at those, he reminds her often.
*
Stories are made up of moments, and told in parts. They have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The beginning:
"What, you want to spit in my hand? We're Scully and Mulder."
"I don't know what that means."
The end:
"Do you love me?"
"Yes. Do you want me to prove it to you?"
The middle:
Is an incredible journey jam-packed with moments of bliss, of heartache, and of hope. A lot of hope.
But the beginning isn't really the beginning (from a scientific point of view, she accepts the Big Bang Theory), and the end has yet to be penned (every ticking second acts as a paradox). The middle - that's the bulk of every story. It's where Cinderella receives an invitation to the ball, where Cinderella meets her fairy godmother, where Cinderella dances with the Prince. It's where she laughs, cries, hopes, despairs.
It's where she dares to dream.
There are cases, murders, and unwanted anthropology lessons. There are hours spent together in labs, interrogation rooms, and diners. There are words exchanged, words unspoken, and words unheard. There is a struggle, a push, and a pull.
And then, there is this.
*
"Booth, can you come here for a sec?"
He hesitates outside her bedroom door. He hears the sound of zippers and swallows hard. "Uh, what do you need me for?"
"Just get in here."
He...sort of stumbles into her room. Not in the way he would've liked, but he finds himself staring at her with his hands in his pockets, nervous as hell. Pathetic, he thinks to himself. Pathetic. She's standing in front of a mirror, barefoot. He doesn't know why this is the first thing he notices but it is, and she's wearing this dark purple dress that ends just above her knees. It reminds him of the bridesmaid dress she'd worn at Hodgins and Angela's wedding, and that doesn't help his nerves. She must've noticed his hesitation because she smiles at him in the way that she does when she's on to something.
"Could you help me with the-" She writhes a little, her arms stretched awkwardly across her back to hold her dress up. "Booth?"
Pull it together. "Yeah. Yeah, sure." He forces one leg in front of the other and approaches, carefully positioning himself behind her. One hand pinches the two sides of her dress together while the other fumbles with the zipper. Her arms fall to her sides, and he likes this. This trust.
The skin on her back is soft and pale, warm, alive, and he's unsurprised to find the heat rising from his fingertips up along his arms, into his chest, then back down to his lower extremities.
She's still smiling at him in that way, through the mirror now, and he can't help but curl his lips into a sheepish grin. He leans closer as he draws the zipper up along her spine, and she reflexively arches her back - maybe from the cool of the metal, maybe from the warmth of his skin. He hears himself chuckling, his lips right next to her ear.
"You look incredible," he murmurs, tooclosetooclose.
Her smile widens, and a tint of pink rises in her cheeks. She tilts her head toward his. "I know," she replies, confident but somehow still unassuming. "I was going to wear something simpler, but then you showed up in this suit… "
He chuckles again, his eyes falling to her curved lips. "It's not a competition," he teases, his fingertips daring to skim her back through the fabric of her dress. "But if it were, I would definitely win."
She laughs and bats him gently on the cheek. Her forehead falls instinctively to his, brushing it. He tingles, hopes it resonates to her, and for a moment, the line thins, fades, dissolves, until they're nothing more than two people enjoying each other, the evening, the places they've been, the places they'll go tonight, and the places they wish to visit.
The party they are attending does not take place at a palace, and the most charming young lady present does not earn the honor of marrying the Prince. In fact, there is no prince.
Pumpkins do not transform into carriages at the swish of a wand, or mice into equine. There are no dances under the moonlight, and no promise of eternity.
There is only them, and everything between them, including the line that reforms no matter how many times it's chased away. And when she leans closer, their faces separated by a fraction of an inch, he will not kiss her, because he understands the line, respects it, and even as his body responds to her proximity in ways that cannot be explained empirically, he channels the scientist in her and files the moment away under chemical reactions and neurotransmitters.
And for the moment, it is enough.
*
"You know what, Bones?" he asks, his shoulder bumping hers as he leans against her on the couch. He's had a little too much to drink.
She takes a sip of beer and plays along. "What, Booth?"
"Parker, he really liked it, you know, Bones. That thing you gave him for his birthday. He really liked the-" He motions wildly in the air. "You know." More gestures, and he makes an O with his thumb and index and brings it up to his eye. He peers through it.
"Microscope?" she supplies.
"Yeah! Microscope!" He draws a shape in the air, which she can't quite figure out, then pushes his fingertip to her face, nearly hitting her in the eye.
She eases his hand back down to his lap and smiles at him. "I know. I was there."
"He's always squinting at things now, talking all scientific-like," he continues, drawing his eyelids together as though focusing on something in the distance. "Think he'll grow up to be a squint?"
"I don't know, Booth," she replies, tilting her head. "Would you mind if he did?"
"Naaah," he draws out. "He should do what he loves, you know? As long as it's legal and moral, hey, whatever he loves." His fingertip begins wandering again, this time trailing her thigh, and she knows that sober Booth would never do anything like this. But she figures she mustn't be too far behind herself because sober Brennan would be stopping him. His finger pauses somewhere along the curve of her hip, and he refocuses his eyes on hers. "If Parker can grow up exactly like you, I'd be a happy guy." His proud smile fades almost immediately. "Well," he backtracks, "maybe not exactly like you, or he'd be a woman. I hope Parker grows up to be a man, Bones."
She chuckles. "You're drunk."
He laughs, loudly. "Maybe. You know what else?"
"What, Booth?"
"I..." he says, then stops. He leans closer, and quietly, sincerely: "After my boy, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, Bones." His words are oddly genuine, strangely coherent, and the intensity in his eyes startles her.
"Yeah?"
He nods energetically, his lips curling into a smile brimming with delight, and she does not tell him he is drunk again, because she prefers to believe that it's true, that she's significant in his life, and that her relationship with him has meaning beyond a convenient mix of heart and brain. Something beyond the badge and the bones.
Maybe he is drunk, she thinks, and maybe she is, too. Maybe they are two drunk fools fumbling around each other with no certain destination in sight. Her father used to tell her a story about a girl and a glass slipper, and she'd always marveled at the way every element of the story - despite being statistically unsound - slid flawlessly into place.
But what if the glass slipper had fit the foot of an evil stepsister instead? Would the Prince have married Anastasia or Drizella, despite knowing he'd danced with another? Or was Cinderella's happily ever after entirely independent of the path taken?
Brennan had always wondered if stories allowed for shortcuts and detours, if the choices she'd made last week, last month, last year will alter her conclusion, or if they'll merely blur the details in some predetermined course of events Booth calls fate.
She doesn't believe in fate.
She believes in choices and changes and control.
Even under the guise of alcohol, she senses the line pressing against her side, between their bodies. It is ever persistent, ever unyielding. And when he leans his cheek against her shoulder, his hand sliding lazily along her thigh, she will stop him, because she understands the line, accepts it on the same level that she accepts the complexity of the skeletal structure. She will invite him to crash on her couch while she retreats to her own room, a wall and a metaphor separating them in their sleep.
But for the moment, it is enough.
*
They slide in and out of moments like the ever-shifting landscape outside Cinderella's horse-drawn carriage.
Moments are fleeting, but memories only fade.
*
"Sometimes you say things."
He frowns, a mouthful of sandwich bulging in his cheek. "What things?"
"Things. Sentences formed by parts of speech," she rambles. "Subject and predicate, direct and indirect objects."
"Bones, you're losing me here."
A cautious smile adorns her lips. She feels unsure for the first time in a long time. "I just-we're always living in a solitary moment."
"That's…" He grins. "That's philosophical of you, Bones."
She shakes her head. "From a physical point of view, it really doesn't make sense, but you've been saying things like that to me for so long that I think I've come to accept that sometimes they have a meaning beyond the purely scientific. It's how people - 'normal' people, as you like to say - speak to one another, isn't it?" She pauses thoughtfully, tilting her head to meet his eyes. "I was thinking… about us, and how we're living in the moment. It's not really something that I do. It's something that Angela does, something that Sully-" She notices his cringe and experiences a tinge of guilt. "-used to do. They live in the here and now, but I prefer to plan things out. I'm very goal-oriented."
"I know," he says quietly, like he's already sensed the direction and predicted the outcome.
"I-we've been living in the moment," she tells him plainly. "I'm not satisfied with that. I can't be."
His Adam's apple bobs as he processes her words. "What are you saying, Bones?"
"Are we more than the here and now?" She shifts against her seat, unsure how to interpret his prolonged silence. "I just…do you remember, right before I agreed to work with you? You told me, 'We're Scully and Mulder,'" she recalls, "and I didn't know what that meant."
He nods, his lunch abandoned on his plate. "I remember."
"I looked them up," she explains. "They were partners."
"They were," he echoes.
A silence stretches between them, and she had things to say, words, phrases, combinations thereof, but her own apprehension surprises her. "Just so you know, so-called paranormal phenomena can actually be explained quite satisfactorily by basic scientific principles. I was not impressed with the show's exploration of the possibility of the existence aliens." She's stalling. There's a point somewhere, but she's stalling. "Although, the conspiracy theories would be right up Hodgins' aisle."
"Alley. It would be right up Hodgins' alley." Booth's knuckles begin tapping the countertop anxiously. "You were saying something about Scully and Mulder, Bones?"
"I-" Damn it, Booth. "Even though it is merely a television show, from my observations, I ascertained that Scully and Mulder were extremely attracted to each other, both sexually and intellectually, yet they did not act on those urges for many, many years." She exhales a steady breath, but it does little to soothe her nerves. "You said that we were Scully and Mulder. Are you going to make me wait?"
His eyes grow wide, dark, but they never leave hers. "I-" But the rest catches in his throat, and she never hears it.
She looks down at her salad and frowns. "You once told me there was a line between two people in high-risk situations, and I told you that I understood," she rehashes, her eyes finding his again. "But I don't."
His response is slow, calculated. "You don't understand the line?"
"No. Not…not entirely, at least. Not anymore. For instance, if I kissed you right now, would you respond?"
"Bones…"
"Would you?"
"Yes."
Her heartbeat quickens at the thought. "Would you do so merely because it is a physiological reflex?"
This one takes him a few moments, and he looks away for the first time. "No, Bones. Look, I don't know what you're trying to get at but-"
"Don't you?" she asks, firmer than she'd intended. She softens. "You're always the one who tells me to think with my heart. It's-I'm giving this a try, Booth, and I think-I think this is what my heart has to say, so to speak. We live perpetually in finite moments. I hold on to things you say in the hopes that one day, I'll understand what's taking us so long. I'd like to ask you, but I don't think you understand it either. We should-I would like for us to learn this together, but…you've established this line, and well, you tell me that I'm not very proficient with metaphors. I'm not. I accept that I'm not. But everything around us changes and we're still here. You say these things to me, and they mean something, and every time, I think, this is it, maybe today, but we always fall back into our old rhythm."
He's watching her now, silently, his eyes glossed over with unshed tears. It surprises her until she blinks back the moisture in her own. She reaches across the table, two fingertips sliding preemptively across his cheeks before she can process the motion. Her hand snaps away, but he catches her halfway, fingers intertwining as their arms fall to the table. He brushes the pad of his thumb against her knuckles.
She squeezes his hand. "And perhaps this is only a testament to the strength of our relationship," she continues, fighting against her rising emotion. "But it's not enough for me, Booth. I can't explain it, but it's not enough. The line-" She squeezes his hand again, searching his features for comprehension. "I hope I'm not being presumptuous."
"No, you're not," he reassures her. "Bones, the line is-I don't regret many things in my life, but sometimes I wonder…I wonder if things would be different." His tone is even, but she reads his quiet relief. It's honest, and he doesn't need many words to convey this to her. Something tugs at the corner of his lip. "I'll kiss you, Bones. You won't even know what hit you."
She smiles faintly, the heat rising in her cheeks "That's not really what I meant, Booth."
He grins, and with five gentle words, makes a promise. "We're not Scully and Mulder."
She knows what that means.
*
It's late.
He'd known it'd be a good night when he'd rung her doorbell earlier in the evening, and she'd answered wearing the dark purple dress he remembers from a moment past. She'd been barefoot again, cheeks glowing as a bright smile had spread across her face.
"I told you the door would be unlocked."
"You look beautiful, Temperance."
She flushes. "Are you calling me Temperance just because we're going on a date?"
"I'm calling you Temperance because it's your name."
"Oh." Her smile widens. "Come on in, Seeley."
"Okay, you know what? Last time I try something romantic with you."
She leans in and brushes her lips against his cheek, her palm inadvertently pressed over his heart. "Thanks, Booth."
He'd considered taking her somewhere less mundane and predictable than a restaurant, but he wants to do this right. Their lives are shrouded in strange, outlandish events, and he makes the reservations in the hopes she'd appreciate some normalcy. She had.
Over vegetarian dinners - even for him - they'd exchange anecdotes from their pasts, each trying to best the other with their stories. She'd told him about the hamster she'd owned when she was eleven, and he'd shared with her his first job making deliveries for the local bodega. And whenever one would slip too close to painful memories, the other would quickly steer the conversation away, and the exchanges would continue until the late hours of the night, neither realizing the time until it'd pressed against closing hour.
It's everything he'd dared to hope for and more. He doesn't know how they can remain so fundamentally unchanged and still be defined under this new classification, but he likes it a lot. Their relationship had always necessitated multiple definitions, but now... now he could add another.
On the drive back to her place, he grows nervous for the first time that night. The evening had completely surpassed his expectations in every way, and he doesn't want the conclusion to be underwhelming. He's made a promise he wants to deliver, but he doesn't know if it'll be awkward, and how.
Before he has a chance to figure it out, he's pulling up to her apartment building. He shifts his car into park.
She turns to him. "Are you in a hurry to get home?"
His heart begins pounding, because he understands this one. "No," he replies.
She smiles. "Stay with me for a little bit?"
He agrees. Of course he agrees, cutting the engine and sliding out of his car. Only there's more pressure now, and more potential for awkwardness, but then she slides up beside him, her hand finding his and squeezing lightly. And he realizes something. Something significant. Something revelatory. He realizes that the perfect night does not have to conclude with the perfect ending, because they are not characters out of a fairy tale, racing against a timer that spells doom with two words soaked in finality: the end.
For them, there is no race and no timer, there is only a promise of happily ever after, and they have all the time in the world to reach it.
Their story will not end tonight, no matter how horrifyingly devastating his stay is. He will have chances to rectify his mistakes, should he make any. This is not a fairy tale. There are choices to be made and alternate routes to be taken.
She's smiling at him, and he knows.
He draws her toward him, fingers still intertwined, and he holds her against him for a moment before pressing his lips to hers, testing. Her hands ease from his, palms sliding up his chest and shoulders to rest at the nape of his neck, and she pulls him closer, lips moving just the way he'd remembered. Just the way he'd dreamed.
Then the moment ends, their lips separate, and he smiles at her. She leads him into her house, the line falling in tattered shambles at their feet.
The canvas of their relationship begins filling with color.
*
The clock never strikes midnight.
Author: zerodetorres
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Rating: PG
Timeline: Nothing specific. One tiny spoiler for End in the Beginning.
Summary: "High-risk situations, he'd once explained to her, and with his words, he'd traced over the pencil marks with a marker, its felt tip leaking ink into the canvas of their relationship."
Notes: Many thanks to britishwannabe1 for the look-over and for being generally awesome. You know you rule. ♥
Stories begin with 'once upon a time' and end with Cinderella marrying the Prince.
But this is not Cinderella's story.
It is theirs.
*
There is a line.
There is always a line.
High-risk situations, he'd once explained to her, and with his words, he'd traced over the pencil marks with a marker, its felt tip leaking ink into the canvas of their relationship. Yet, for the sheer space their line occupies, for its thickness, its length, one has to wonder how both still manage to straddle it without falling over, falling in.
But, like Cinderella and the Prince, the line is really just a metaphor.
She's not particularly good at those, he reminds her often.
*
Stories are made up of moments, and told in parts. They have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The beginning:
"What, you want to spit in my hand? We're Scully and Mulder."
"I don't know what that means."
The end:
"Do you love me?"
"Yes. Do you want me to prove it to you?"
The middle:
Is an incredible journey jam-packed with moments of bliss, of heartache, and of hope. A lot of hope.
But the beginning isn't really the beginning (from a scientific point of view, she accepts the Big Bang Theory), and the end has yet to be penned (every ticking second acts as a paradox). The middle - that's the bulk of every story. It's where Cinderella receives an invitation to the ball, where Cinderella meets her fairy godmother, where Cinderella dances with the Prince. It's where she laughs, cries, hopes, despairs.
It's where she dares to dream.
There are cases, murders, and unwanted anthropology lessons. There are hours spent together in labs, interrogation rooms, and diners. There are words exchanged, words unspoken, and words unheard. There is a struggle, a push, and a pull.
And then, there is this.
*
"Booth, can you come here for a sec?"
He hesitates outside her bedroom door. He hears the sound of zippers and swallows hard. "Uh, what do you need me for?"
"Just get in here."
He...sort of stumbles into her room. Not in the way he would've liked, but he finds himself staring at her with his hands in his pockets, nervous as hell. Pathetic, he thinks to himself. Pathetic. She's standing in front of a mirror, barefoot. He doesn't know why this is the first thing he notices but it is, and she's wearing this dark purple dress that ends just above her knees. It reminds him of the bridesmaid dress she'd worn at Hodgins and Angela's wedding, and that doesn't help his nerves. She must've noticed his hesitation because she smiles at him in the way that she does when she's on to something.
"Could you help me with the-" She writhes a little, her arms stretched awkwardly across her back to hold her dress up. "Booth?"
Pull it together. "Yeah. Yeah, sure." He forces one leg in front of the other and approaches, carefully positioning himself behind her. One hand pinches the two sides of her dress together while the other fumbles with the zipper. Her arms fall to her sides, and he likes this. This trust.
The skin on her back is soft and pale, warm, alive, and he's unsurprised to find the heat rising from his fingertips up along his arms, into his chest, then back down to his lower extremities.
She's still smiling at him in that way, through the mirror now, and he can't help but curl his lips into a sheepish grin. He leans closer as he draws the zipper up along her spine, and she reflexively arches her back - maybe from the cool of the metal, maybe from the warmth of his skin. He hears himself chuckling, his lips right next to her ear.
"You look incredible," he murmurs, tooclosetooclose.
Her smile widens, and a tint of pink rises in her cheeks. She tilts her head toward his. "I know," she replies, confident but somehow still unassuming. "I was going to wear something simpler, but then you showed up in this suit… "
He chuckles again, his eyes falling to her curved lips. "It's not a competition," he teases, his fingertips daring to skim her back through the fabric of her dress. "But if it were, I would definitely win."
She laughs and bats him gently on the cheek. Her forehead falls instinctively to his, brushing it. He tingles, hopes it resonates to her, and for a moment, the line thins, fades, dissolves, until they're nothing more than two people enjoying each other, the evening, the places they've been, the places they'll go tonight, and the places they wish to visit.
The party they are attending does not take place at a palace, and the most charming young lady present does not earn the honor of marrying the Prince. In fact, there is no prince.
Pumpkins do not transform into carriages at the swish of a wand, or mice into equine. There are no dances under the moonlight, and no promise of eternity.
There is only them, and everything between them, including the line that reforms no matter how many times it's chased away. And when she leans closer, their faces separated by a fraction of an inch, he will not kiss her, because he understands the line, respects it, and even as his body responds to her proximity in ways that cannot be explained empirically, he channels the scientist in her and files the moment away under chemical reactions and neurotransmitters.
And for the moment, it is enough.
*
"You know what, Bones?" he asks, his shoulder bumping hers as he leans against her on the couch. He's had a little too much to drink.
She takes a sip of beer and plays along. "What, Booth?"
"Parker, he really liked it, you know, Bones. That thing you gave him for his birthday. He really liked the-" He motions wildly in the air. "You know." More gestures, and he makes an O with his thumb and index and brings it up to his eye. He peers through it.
"Microscope?" she supplies.
"Yeah! Microscope!" He draws a shape in the air, which she can't quite figure out, then pushes his fingertip to her face, nearly hitting her in the eye.
She eases his hand back down to his lap and smiles at him. "I know. I was there."
"He's always squinting at things now, talking all scientific-like," he continues, drawing his eyelids together as though focusing on something in the distance. "Think he'll grow up to be a squint?"
"I don't know, Booth," she replies, tilting her head. "Would you mind if he did?"
"Naaah," he draws out. "He should do what he loves, you know? As long as it's legal and moral, hey, whatever he loves." His fingertip begins wandering again, this time trailing her thigh, and she knows that sober Booth would never do anything like this. But she figures she mustn't be too far behind herself because sober Brennan would be stopping him. His finger pauses somewhere along the curve of her hip, and he refocuses his eyes on hers. "If Parker can grow up exactly like you, I'd be a happy guy." His proud smile fades almost immediately. "Well," he backtracks, "maybe not exactly like you, or he'd be a woman. I hope Parker grows up to be a man, Bones."
She chuckles. "You're drunk."
He laughs, loudly. "Maybe. You know what else?"
"What, Booth?"
"I..." he says, then stops. He leans closer, and quietly, sincerely: "After my boy, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, Bones." His words are oddly genuine, strangely coherent, and the intensity in his eyes startles her.
"Yeah?"
He nods energetically, his lips curling into a smile brimming with delight, and she does not tell him he is drunk again, because she prefers to believe that it's true, that she's significant in his life, and that her relationship with him has meaning beyond a convenient mix of heart and brain. Something beyond the badge and the bones.
Maybe he is drunk, she thinks, and maybe she is, too. Maybe they are two drunk fools fumbling around each other with no certain destination in sight. Her father used to tell her a story about a girl and a glass slipper, and she'd always marveled at the way every element of the story - despite being statistically unsound - slid flawlessly into place.
But what if the glass slipper had fit the foot of an evil stepsister instead? Would the Prince have married Anastasia or Drizella, despite knowing he'd danced with another? Or was Cinderella's happily ever after entirely independent of the path taken?
Brennan had always wondered if stories allowed for shortcuts and detours, if the choices she'd made last week, last month, last year will alter her conclusion, or if they'll merely blur the details in some predetermined course of events Booth calls fate.
She doesn't believe in fate.
She believes in choices and changes and control.
Even under the guise of alcohol, she senses the line pressing against her side, between their bodies. It is ever persistent, ever unyielding. And when he leans his cheek against her shoulder, his hand sliding lazily along her thigh, she will stop him, because she understands the line, accepts it on the same level that she accepts the complexity of the skeletal structure. She will invite him to crash on her couch while she retreats to her own room, a wall and a metaphor separating them in their sleep.
But for the moment, it is enough.
*
They slide in and out of moments like the ever-shifting landscape outside Cinderella's horse-drawn carriage.
Moments are fleeting, but memories only fade.
*
"Sometimes you say things."
He frowns, a mouthful of sandwich bulging in his cheek. "What things?"
"Things. Sentences formed by parts of speech," she rambles. "Subject and predicate, direct and indirect objects."
"Bones, you're losing me here."
A cautious smile adorns her lips. She feels unsure for the first time in a long time. "I just-we're always living in a solitary moment."
"That's…" He grins. "That's philosophical of you, Bones."
She shakes her head. "From a physical point of view, it really doesn't make sense, but you've been saying things like that to me for so long that I think I've come to accept that sometimes they have a meaning beyond the purely scientific. It's how people - 'normal' people, as you like to say - speak to one another, isn't it?" She pauses thoughtfully, tilting her head to meet his eyes. "I was thinking… about us, and how we're living in the moment. It's not really something that I do. It's something that Angela does, something that Sully-" She notices his cringe and experiences a tinge of guilt. "-used to do. They live in the here and now, but I prefer to plan things out. I'm very goal-oriented."
"I know," he says quietly, like he's already sensed the direction and predicted the outcome.
"I-we've been living in the moment," she tells him plainly. "I'm not satisfied with that. I can't be."
His Adam's apple bobs as he processes her words. "What are you saying, Bones?"
"Are we more than the here and now?" She shifts against her seat, unsure how to interpret his prolonged silence. "I just…do you remember, right before I agreed to work with you? You told me, 'We're Scully and Mulder,'" she recalls, "and I didn't know what that meant."
He nods, his lunch abandoned on his plate. "I remember."
"I looked them up," she explains. "They were partners."
"They were," he echoes.
A silence stretches between them, and she had things to say, words, phrases, combinations thereof, but her own apprehension surprises her. "Just so you know, so-called paranormal phenomena can actually be explained quite satisfactorily by basic scientific principles. I was not impressed with the show's exploration of the possibility of the existence aliens." She's stalling. There's a point somewhere, but she's stalling. "Although, the conspiracy theories would be right up Hodgins' aisle."
"Alley. It would be right up Hodgins' alley." Booth's knuckles begin tapping the countertop anxiously. "You were saying something about Scully and Mulder, Bones?"
"I-" Damn it, Booth. "Even though it is merely a television show, from my observations, I ascertained that Scully and Mulder were extremely attracted to each other, both sexually and intellectually, yet they did not act on those urges for many, many years." She exhales a steady breath, but it does little to soothe her nerves. "You said that we were Scully and Mulder. Are you going to make me wait?"
His eyes grow wide, dark, but they never leave hers. "I-" But the rest catches in his throat, and she never hears it.
She looks down at her salad and frowns. "You once told me there was a line between two people in high-risk situations, and I told you that I understood," she rehashes, her eyes finding his again. "But I don't."
His response is slow, calculated. "You don't understand the line?"
"No. Not…not entirely, at least. Not anymore. For instance, if I kissed you right now, would you respond?"
"Bones…"
"Would you?"
"Yes."
Her heartbeat quickens at the thought. "Would you do so merely because it is a physiological reflex?"
This one takes him a few moments, and he looks away for the first time. "No, Bones. Look, I don't know what you're trying to get at but-"
"Don't you?" she asks, firmer than she'd intended. She softens. "You're always the one who tells me to think with my heart. It's-I'm giving this a try, Booth, and I think-I think this is what my heart has to say, so to speak. We live perpetually in finite moments. I hold on to things you say in the hopes that one day, I'll understand what's taking us so long. I'd like to ask you, but I don't think you understand it either. We should-I would like for us to learn this together, but…you've established this line, and well, you tell me that I'm not very proficient with metaphors. I'm not. I accept that I'm not. But everything around us changes and we're still here. You say these things to me, and they mean something, and every time, I think, this is it, maybe today, but we always fall back into our old rhythm."
He's watching her now, silently, his eyes glossed over with unshed tears. It surprises her until she blinks back the moisture in her own. She reaches across the table, two fingertips sliding preemptively across his cheeks before she can process the motion. Her hand snaps away, but he catches her halfway, fingers intertwining as their arms fall to the table. He brushes the pad of his thumb against her knuckles.
She squeezes his hand. "And perhaps this is only a testament to the strength of our relationship," she continues, fighting against her rising emotion. "But it's not enough for me, Booth. I can't explain it, but it's not enough. The line-" She squeezes his hand again, searching his features for comprehension. "I hope I'm not being presumptuous."
"No, you're not," he reassures her. "Bones, the line is-I don't regret many things in my life, but sometimes I wonder…I wonder if things would be different." His tone is even, but she reads his quiet relief. It's honest, and he doesn't need many words to convey this to her. Something tugs at the corner of his lip. "I'll kiss you, Bones. You won't even know what hit you."
She smiles faintly, the heat rising in her cheeks "That's not really what I meant, Booth."
He grins, and with five gentle words, makes a promise. "We're not Scully and Mulder."
She knows what that means.
*
It's late.
He'd known it'd be a good night when he'd rung her doorbell earlier in the evening, and she'd answered wearing the dark purple dress he remembers from a moment past. She'd been barefoot again, cheeks glowing as a bright smile had spread across her face.
"I told you the door would be unlocked."
"You look beautiful, Temperance."
She flushes. "Are you calling me Temperance just because we're going on a date?"
"I'm calling you Temperance because it's your name."
"Oh." Her smile widens. "Come on in, Seeley."
"Okay, you know what? Last time I try something romantic with you."
She leans in and brushes her lips against his cheek, her palm inadvertently pressed over his heart. "Thanks, Booth."
He'd considered taking her somewhere less mundane and predictable than a restaurant, but he wants to do this right. Their lives are shrouded in strange, outlandish events, and he makes the reservations in the hopes she'd appreciate some normalcy. She had.
Over vegetarian dinners - even for him - they'd exchange anecdotes from their pasts, each trying to best the other with their stories. She'd told him about the hamster she'd owned when she was eleven, and he'd shared with her his first job making deliveries for the local bodega. And whenever one would slip too close to painful memories, the other would quickly steer the conversation away, and the exchanges would continue until the late hours of the night, neither realizing the time until it'd pressed against closing hour.
It's everything he'd dared to hope for and more. He doesn't know how they can remain so fundamentally unchanged and still be defined under this new classification, but he likes it a lot. Their relationship had always necessitated multiple definitions, but now... now he could add another.
On the drive back to her place, he grows nervous for the first time that night. The evening had completely surpassed his expectations in every way, and he doesn't want the conclusion to be underwhelming. He's made a promise he wants to deliver, but he doesn't know if it'll be awkward, and how.
Before he has a chance to figure it out, he's pulling up to her apartment building. He shifts his car into park.
She turns to him. "Are you in a hurry to get home?"
His heart begins pounding, because he understands this one. "No," he replies.
She smiles. "Stay with me for a little bit?"
He agrees. Of course he agrees, cutting the engine and sliding out of his car. Only there's more pressure now, and more potential for awkwardness, but then she slides up beside him, her hand finding his and squeezing lightly. And he realizes something. Something significant. Something revelatory. He realizes that the perfect night does not have to conclude with the perfect ending, because they are not characters out of a fairy tale, racing against a timer that spells doom with two words soaked in finality: the end.
For them, there is no race and no timer, there is only a promise of happily ever after, and they have all the time in the world to reach it.
Their story will not end tonight, no matter how horrifyingly devastating his stay is. He will have chances to rectify his mistakes, should he make any. This is not a fairy tale. There are choices to be made and alternate routes to be taken.
She's smiling at him, and he knows.
He draws her toward him, fingers still intertwined, and he holds her against him for a moment before pressing his lips to hers, testing. Her hands ease from his, palms sliding up his chest and shoulders to rest at the nape of his neck, and she pulls him closer, lips moving just the way he'd remembered. Just the way he'd dreamed.
Then the moment ends, their lips separate, and he smiles at her. She leads him into her house, the line falling in tattered shambles at their feet.
The canvas of their relationship begins filling with color.
*
The clock never strikes midnight.