Letters Written & Promises Kept

Part 5

Brennan sat on her couch, holding the letter he had written her. ‘Please always remember it…’ she wanted to do that but her disappointment in him made her angry and she fought the desire to rip it to shreds to match her heart. A light tapping on her door brought her back, she knew it was him. “Go away Booth.”

“Bones…let me in. I’m not leaving until we talk.”

“I don’t talk to dead people!”

“I’m not dead Bones!”

She got up and swung the door open angrily, “Now there’s something you should have said two weeks ago!”

He slid his foot next to the jam just before she tried to slam it shut. “Dammit Bones. Please just listen to me!”

She walked away from the door and from him, so he came in and closed the door. Following her to the couch, he sat on the table across from her. Her gaze fixed down and not at him, her hands laced tightly together in her lap, she remained silent.

“Bones I’m sorry. The bureau was supposed to tell you. You were on my list – my parents, Rebecca, Parker, and you…”

“Parker,” she gasped, realizing for the first time she had given the boy a letter from a father who was very much alive.

“What? What about Parker?”

If it had been physically possible, flames would have shimmered in her angry eyes. “I kept my promise Booth, not like you have any idea! You made me promise and I kept my word to you. Now your son has a letter from a father who is very much NOT DEAD!”

“Oh god Bones…I never thought…you weren’t supposed to think I was dead.” She watched the color drain from his face and part of her enjoyed it this time. “Wait…if you found Parker’s letter then…” he looked around frantically and saw it sitting near them on the couch. Picking it up and looking at his scribbled words, he noticed the tear stains.

Pain stabbed through his heart as he realized what the last two weeks had been for her. He knew what 12 hours had felt like…could he have managed two weeks?

“Temperance…” he whispered, putting the letter down and reaching for her hands.

“You said you’d never betray me and you did. You said you’d never leave me and you did. What else did you say that you didn’t mean Booth?” Painful as it was to hear, it was nothing compared to the sting of one of her tears falling onto his hand.

“Nothing Bones, I swear. This isn’t how I wanted things. You were supposed to know. You weren’t supposed to see this letter,” he paused, “I was supposed to tell you first...”

“There were lots of things that you were supposed to tell me first Booth! Why didn’t you?”

“This isn’t about the last two weeks right now. This is about the last three years. This is you and me and the lines we set without asking the other if we wanted them. Caroline knew it at Christmas under the mistletoe. I knew it. You knew it. No one said anything, but everything is out now isn’t it?” He paused to let them both take things in. “Temperance…look at me.” As she did, he held up the note she had written. “I need to know if this is true.”

“Where did you get that?”

“FBI Bones.”

“Where you even shot or was that some ruse by your precious bureau too? Did I kill that girl for no reason?”

Following her obstacle course of diversions, he shrugged off his dress jacket and removed his t-shirt to reveal the bandage over his wound, blood peaking through from the cemetery fight. He took her hand and placed it over the gauze, holding it there even when she tried to pull away. “Flesh, Bones. It’s messy and complicated, just like life sometimes. I know you like what’s underneath. Skeletons are clean and exact. They hold up all that fleshy mess, but this is me. That’s my heart beating. I stepped in front of a real bullet for you and I’d do it again. You shot the woman who did it…”

“…and I’d do it again.”

She didn’t sound as angry, but intermittent tears still rolled down her cheeks and Booth fought them back in his own eyes. “That was real danger, a real situation. I hate that what came after hurt you,” he admitted. “I swear Bones, I’ll find out what happened but I can’t go back when what is forward is finally out.”

They sat in silence with him still holding her hands, now resting in her lap and away from the gauze. “I meant it,” she finally whispered. “I meant it and I did it. Everything I wrote, it’s all true.”

“You were my last thought too,” he admitted. “I missed you these last two weeks.”

“I ached,” she admitted, more than a hint of anger and hurt in her tone. “I slept in your bed and cried in my shower. I mourned my partner and my friend and all the things I’d never hear you say.”

He cupped her face in his hands just as his letter had said he wanted to. “Temperance, look at me please.” She surprised him when she did and he brushed his thumbs through the tracks of fallen tears. “I’m here and I’m ok. I can promise that I won’t trust anyone more than I already trust you. Everything I know, you’ll know. You used to be my friend and my partner, but for a while now you’ve been my partner and…and…you read my letter.”

“Can we be more than partners?” she asked honestly. “Anthropologically speaking…”

“Yes,” he said cutting her off. “Yes, we can be more than partners. We have been for a while, don’t you think? We just never admitted it.”

“…or acted on it.”

“Was that a little grin I saw there Bones? Did you want me to show you how ‘not dead’ I am?” But before she could answer, his lips were covering hers in a tender kiss that spun their worlds together. There was no deal involved, no puckish lawyer manipulating them for her own enjoyment. It was the kiss he imagined giving her, a gift from his still beating heart. When he pulled back, she sat transfixed on his eyes.

“I wrote it, but I haven’t actually said it you know,” he whispered.

“I’m aware,” she smiled back, “but you will. You realize that I have only confirmed but not expressed as well?”

Booth’s face glowed when he smiled. It warmed her, or maybe that was the kiss. Leaning in she kissed him again, not ready to let that feeling go without protest.

Three years of being Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan…three years of Booth and Bones…but here, in her living room, all alone, they were just Seeley and Temperance enjoying the butterflies and their new type of partnership. It was long overdue.