A/N:
A post-Mayhem end of episode M-Rated 'lovemaking' tag. Consider it what could have happened instead of "Same, Not Different," a Magpie's Nest piece if Booth's response to his realizations was a bit quicker.
This one's for Alanna and the several others who've asked for a new 'making love' fic for this collection.
Newton's First Law of Motion
Breaking a dish.
Hot water.
The trunk of a car.
Fair warning. Fair. God and His saints and angels were crying at the fact that she thought somewhere inside her that maybe, just maybe, being locked in the trunk of a fucking car for two fucking days might have been fair.
You knew—just knew-- there would be a story like that. All the things you two talked about, all the things you pried out of her, despite knowing her, spending time with her, wanting to spend all your time with her— you two still never spoke about anything like that.
Not that you'd told her most of your stories. It was hard to feel angry at her for her own unpoured-out well of dark stories under the circumstances.
You two had a tacit agreement—you'd only discuss what you felt comfortable admitting to, or felt willing to be pushed on. You each could ask, yes. But the other one could look away, change the subject, say not tonight, refuse to answer the question or respond to the prod. You could play it safe, not reveal the things that had scared you, not act on the thoughts about her that frightened you more.
There was so much—so much—she'd never told you. And so much you'd never told her. Tonight's admission scared you—and not just because of all her horrors that you knew nothing about, the ones she still hadn't told you that might have made a difference in your even knowing her, in her being alive for you to know. No—tonight's admission scared you because she just flung that story out there, and then dared you not to follow her.
You'd told her all this time that it's okay, that it's what she should do, that people who care about her wouldn't judge her and that she'd have to share things in order to forge a connection. You never thought she'd be ready to share something that raw before you were. You weren't ready to dare that equal confession, much less anyone else. Much less Sweets.
For all her genius, her beauty, her everything, you'd always thought you could trust your own heart to tell you when it was safe to let go of things and say them out loud. And yet here she was—challenging you to say something you didn't know you might ever say to her, despite how much you … well, she was Bones, if you told anyone, it would be her. And instead of her seeming shocked or disgusted, she gave you that tremulous smile then gave you her half of that look the two of you had that said she wouldn't ask and you could say more or not as you chose.
And then, metaphor of metaphors, she put your handkerchief damp with her tears back in your pocket. Folded carefully, arranged precisely, placed gently, that small square of fabric was patted just firmly enough for her elegant fingers to say something so simple and scary as she touched you so briefly right near your heart. It was a small physical touch, but from where you stood, it felt like a thunderbolt, jolting you down to your bedrock.
Your heart's safe with me, and I'm putting mine right here with yours.
You were frightened out of your wits. She felt her heart was safe with you, and oh, you wanted to give her yours more than anything else in the world. You always thought you'd say it first, that you could trust yourself to know when it would be the right time to tell her the scary things she would need to know before you took that last leap so you didn't scare her away. But you'd been wrong. As you thought more about it, you realized you were even more wrong than you initially thought. Last week's visit to your place took on a whole different light, her "I concede I feel jealousy," and her "I want to believe" the same thing as all your references to "eventually" and "someday" and "someone."
She was ready before you thought she would be. What else hadn't you said that you'd decided she wasn't ready to hear, when it turned out you were the one not ready to speak? What else had she said that you hadn't heard?
Ready or not, where the hell did you start?
Why had you let Gordon-Gordon drive her and Sweets home? Why hadn't you insisted she stay, or insisted that you drive her yourself? That's right-- you were still completely bowled over by her admission and by the way she didn't blink over yours. You were just completely astonished that she dealt with you as she always did, like what you'd said didn't change things between you.
What you'd said didn't change things between you, no matter how much you thought her confession changed your perception of her. But not Bones. No-- she seemed to believe that you were still the same person as before you'd said anything.
Ready or not, you had to start somewhere, sometime. It might as well be now, because you sure as hell weren't going to let someone else follow her, move while you still tried to decide.
This is a bad idea. This isn't the time for it. This is too soon. Shut up and stop being a coward, you told yourself as you knocked, calling "Bones, it's Booth."
"Booth," she said, a calm look on her face and a quizzical note in her voice as she stood to the side and let you come in.
"Bones, I ... I should have called first, I know," you said, then laughed almost hysterically at the way you mirrored the words she'd said only a week ago when she came to your apartment, trying to start a conversation you weren't ready to have, trying to make you budge from the position you'd taken.
"It's fine," she said, shutting and locking the door, then following you into her living room. "Is everything alright?"
"I could ask you the same," you said cautiously as you perched at the edge of one of her chairs. She looked at you a long moment, considering your question.
"Are you asking me if I am troubled or worried or concerned by what happened back in Sweets' office?"
You snorted. Only Bones would encapsulate something so raw as both your admissions in such a polite, detailed manner now that she'd had time to gather herself.
"Yeah. That's what I'm asking. I ... ah ... I'm not so sure for my own part."
She looked at you another long moment, sitting opposite you on the couch. "I shouldn't have pushed you like that," she said sadly. "I'm sorry, Booth. I ... just ... it just happened, and I thought he needed to know... "
"People get up every day and do good things no matter what happened before." There. It wasn't so hard when you said it like you were talking about somebody else besides you.
"Yes," she said carefully. "That. But I still shouldn't have pushed you like that. It was ... unkind."
She seemed deeply contrite and was becoming even more so the longer you looked at her, her voice dwelling on that last word, "unkind." God knew what your expression must be for her to be looking at you like that-- you were always using that word. Jesus, Seeley, way to be unkind yourself. You cleared your throat around the lump taken residence there and spoke.
"No. It's okay. Really. You know you were right about it not always being kind to avoid telling the truth. Just ... I was surprised and ... shocked by what you said ... and just ... completely off guard. But you were right-- sometimes things just have to come out whether we're ready to say them or not. Sometimes the fact that it hurts or is scary in the telling matters less, because it's more important that someone else hear it and know it's okay anyway. The ... the being kind part is just a ... stalling tactic." Stalling. Yep. I've been stalled, still, unmoving no matter what I thought I was doing for two years? Three? Longer? Since she dared me that first time to be a cop? Stalling, that's one way to describe it.
She looked immensely relieved, and that small line between her eyes when she worried smoothed out.
"You're braver than I am, you know," you said then, jumping in as your doubts still dragged at you. "You don't always know what's going to happen, but you dive in anyway."
Far braver. She didn't have my grandfather, whether or not she thought it would have been a cardinal sin, and she's still here. Whatever thoughts she had about not being here, she dealt with them. Alone. Christ. No, not even Christ, at least you'd had Him to believe in although it hadn't really helped at the worst points.
"Not really," she said with a sour twist to her mouth. "Most of the time I stay a mile away from the pool."
You barked a laugh. You weren't ever sure what metaphors Bones would get and which ones she wouldn't, even after all this time. She still surprised you.
"Yeah, well, better that than always standing at the edge, planning out that one perfect dive over and over in your mind, without even climbing the ladder to take a better look at what you're diving into to see if it's safe after all." Your tone was incredibly bitter as you tasted the time wasted filling your mouth.
"Quite a pair, hunh?" you asked then.
She tipped her head and nodded as she looked at you, then said quietly, "yes."
You stood, knees ready to knock, hands sweating, cold running down your spine. "You asked me almost a week ago about something, and I thought you were just asking generally, but now I think maybe you weren't."
She waited for you to continue-- not prodding, not pressing, just waiting to see what you'd say. Still, for the moment. How long would she wait for a response?
Here goes. Climb the damned ladder and jump.
"See, I thought... I wanted to think... hold on a sec, Bones, be patient with me." You stopped. Thought. Gripped your cold hands together. Opened your mouth again. Forced the words out.
"I thought ... I let myself think you were speaking generally about ... being in love and ... losing yourself in someone, and ... wanting to believe there was someone you could believe would make you happy. I ... didn't think you were speaking specifically, I thought that you were asking me if it was generally possible. I didn't get that maybe you were asking ... me a specific question."
She stilled as you spoke, her gaze sharp and soft all at once. When your throat closed over again as you looked in the depths of your eyes, she spoke. "And now you think maybe I was asking you if it was possible. You, not just someone."
You nodded, speechless. What if you were wrong? What if it wasn't your own life, alone, burning around you? What if it was doing this, daring this, that consumed you and left nothing behind?
"What do you want the answer to be?" she asked softly.
You went over to her, took her warm dry hands in your cold sweaty ones, and tugged her up to stand, your bodies practically touching. "I ... don't want to keep saying someday but ... I'm not sure, I ... don't know if I'm ready ..."
She pulled one hand out of yours and placed it over your heart where she'd patted you earlier, though you'd left your jacket and handkerchief at home this time.
"Is anyone ever really ready for anything?"
You chuffed a laugh, the rhetorical question just begging the answer out loud-- she was daring you for the second time today to just say something, to stop dodging the question.
"No. No, that's impossible, it's hard enough telling when's soon enough," you replied, looking down at her hand over your heart. The warmth of it was physical and emotional, the latter so warm that your ice-cold doubting hands started to melt.
"So ..." she asked, more vulnerability and doubt in her eyes now than when the two of you stood in Sweets' office hours ago, "when's soon enough?"
She wanted you to do this. She already thought it was time. She already thought she was safe with you. She just had no idea if you felt the same and yet she tugged at you anyway. Your voice caught in your throat again, and your free hand rose of its own accord to press her hand over your heart to your chest.
"Soon enough's already taken too long," you said.
You took that last unspoken dare, leapt from where you'd been stalling-- waiting too long-- and jumped, no longer worried about whether you'd drown. If you did-- what a way to go. Without all of her, you would dry out and crumble if you stood still as she moved further away from that line you'd drawn. She couldn't wait there forever, she was already in motion.
Lips met and there was pressure on and around you, her body and lips against yours. The shock of the water surrounded you, a wholly new element from the air you'd been in just moments before. You swam deeper. Your arms were around her, hers around you, and you didn't need to breathe, you just needed to never stop kissing her.
She tasted like red wine and cassoulet and the eclairs you'd bought for dessert, since Gordon-Gordon claimed he was no baker. Maybe not, but he'd sure as hell stirred the pot and brought things to a boil. But over and under and all around all of those things she tasted like Bones and more and never enough and what the hell was I waiting for.
Breathing was a painful interruption of your drowning yourself in the smell, taste and feel of her, the need to look gone because she was right here and you didn't need to guess what her eyes meant, how she was going to react-- because she was already reacting.
You breathed heavily, forehead against hers, too close to look in her eyes but close enough to see her tongue dart out to lick her lips wonderingly.
"Okay?" you murmured, half-speechless at how your heart hammered in your chest and the feel of her pressed all the way up against you with none of the distance of your ridiculous guy hugs denying you the fullness of her warmth.
"Yes," she said almost breathlessly, her own chest heaving slightly against yours. Her arms were holding you tightly, both to her and holding herself up-- both good things because your arms around her were doing the same.
The feel of her breath on your neck was all you needed to take the plunge again, and your mouth was on hers even as you could feel her pushing you back towards the bedroom, her hands on your hips guiding you around obstacles you already knew were there, all the time you'd spent in her apartment.
"I know my way," you gasped, and now you finally did understand, all of it. You picked her up, groaning as she wrapped her legs around your waist and sealed her mouth to the side of your neck. You turned quickly and headed down the hall to her room. The door was already open-- good thing, you'd have kicked it down otherwise-- and the dark bulk of her bed in the unlit room wasn't hard to make out. Three steps had you there and the two of you fell into the bed, Bones lying beneath you and her hands making short work of your shirt buttons and belt buckle. She'd changed from that dress she wore earlier, the one that showed off her curves and those white graceful arms of hers, and the knit top she had on was easy to push up enough to admire the skin your actions revealed. As she pushed your shirt off your shoulders and down your arms, you knelt up to shrug off the fabric. She unzipped your fly as you did, then grasped you firmly after snaking her hand into your boxers.
"Christ, Bones," you cursed, looking down at her to see an interested and solemn expression on her face as she shoved down your pants with her one hand while she still stroked you with the other. Multi-talented as always, your partner. "Here," you grunted, shifting just enough to peel off the rest of your clothes even as she sat up and pulled off her top. You were quick enough to push her back into the bed and take over the pleasure of pulling her pants off, skimming the silk of her legs with your fingers as you peeled the fabric away.
White lace briefs, white lace bra, whiter-still skin. She licked her lips as she watched you toss away the clothes clumped at the end of her bed, lifting her hips as you tugged at her panties and unclasping the front of her bra herself, those perfect, generous breasts spilling out for your viewing pleasure. As you crept back toward her after tossing her things off to the side, your rock hard arousal drew her attention and she smiled slightly as she took you in hand. You nearly fell at how good it felt when she stroked you and fondled your balls at the same time, but you managed some bit of control and lay on your side as you pulled her close to you. As she continued to stroke you, you concentrated hard on tracing your fingers over her hip, down her waist and over her ribs before teasing your way over the top of her breast. Now that you were here, you felt like you had all the time in the world, so you traced your way up to her face and pulled her in for a kiss, her body flush against yours.
So soft, so warm, so strong, so tender-- so many things, all of them Bones. Your lips and tongue moved against and with hers, your limbs tangling as you ran your hands over her curves and let her hair slip through your fingers. Your lips left her mouth to adorn her face, shoulders and neck while her hands on you plucked and stroked parts of you that hadn't ever been erogenous zones before Bones. You'd slung a leg over her hip as you cupped her face in your hands to kiss her again, and she arched against you almost languidly, the feel of her skin on yours a slow sliding of silk. She grasped one of your arms as you continued to kiss her, her hips undulating against you as you explored the depths of her mouth.
She rolled and you followed. She clung and you took hold, and without any real thought you slipped inside her, the two of you already moving together in one fluid motion before you even completed your entry. In unison, she moaned in satisfaction as you glided to the end of your walls, exhaling a sigh of relief. She followed as you went to withdraw, letting you two set a rhythm that flowed as naturally as anything you'd ever felt in your life.
Your hands stroked and kneaded her time and again, learning the feel of her in your hands as she kissed and caressed you in return. Your declarations of how gorgeous she was or how good she felt or how incredible she was were met with her sighs of your name and gasps as you came together again and her groans as you sucked at her breasts.
"Booth, so good..." she gasped at one point, as you learned how a particular pass of your thumbs over her nipples coupled with a particular knead of your hands on her firm creamy breasts made her purr and arch into your hands. She started to quiver with tension, the eye contact you'd both maintained so far yielding to her groaning, gorgeous reaction to your touch.
Each time her eyes shuttered, each time she bowed or shivered in response to some thrust or stroke of your body on hers-- "dreamed about you so long, my baby," you said in her ear, cupping her head in your hands as your chests moved so closely together that each inch of your skin was on fire.
Her hands were less purposeful now, her hips against yours less rhythmic and her legs gripping and feet sliding over your back less assured, more reflexive and out of conscious control. You brought your hands down to her hips as she cried out at one fuller thrust, her satin heat still clasping you tightly, the flow of the two of you at her core utterly perfect. "Oh ... Booth ... please," she gasped, "need...."
"Need you Temperance, my Bones," you husked in her ear. Her abandoned response to you was so much more than you felt you deserved, but Bones had already proven herself further along in taking care of your heart than you were, so you could trust for tonight that she knew better than you about what you deserved. She shifted under you, drawing you in as she moaned "more" as she grasped at your shoulders, her eyes glazed when they weren't fluttering shut each time you thrust yourself all the way in.
Forget more. You gave her all. "Bones," you groaned, speeding the pace and cradling her hips in your hands. Her whimpering moan in response, her passion-stung lips and blue eyes as dark as midnight compelled you, and soon she cried out each time your hips came together. She suddenly shuddered, her body writhing against you as her walls flooded and grasped you with tight pulses, her expression lost to anything except the ecstatic way she screamed "Booth!"
The sight and sound of her saying your name like that and the feel of her around and beneath you was the end of your control, your "Bones!" shouted from the depths of your gut. Your release went on so long that it might as well have spilled four years of incredible tension, and your own moan of her given name as she clung to you sounded as helpless as you felt.
However it was, you hadn't completely collapsed or crushed her beneath you. As you regained attention and focus, you found yourself mesmerized by her pink cheeks, her slight wheezing breaths, her muscles quivering slightly in pleased exhaustion.
"Oh," you moaned, forcing yourself to roll from her. Your withdrawal from her heat made her whimper, but her complaint shaded to a sigh as you pulled her with you and brought her head to rest over your heart. Her hands idly caressed you as you lay together, bodies cooling as you wound her hair through your hands. Your hearts slowed and chests heaved less deeply, hands and limbs moving desultorily now. Slowly, with effort, you groaned and sat up enough to find her covers and pull them up over you both, not letting her out of your grip that whole time. As you flopped back onto the bed, a whoof escaped you as you hit the bed and her head hit your chest. You shifted as she did, and you found yourself looking at her as she curled her body over you, her head at the join of your shoulder.
"Okay?" she asked you this time.
"Yeah," you rasped in response, swallowing and licking your lips. "More than okay."
She craned her head up to kiss you and you met her halfway, this time not needing to play catch up. Your lips caught hers, your body in motion moving forward to match hers at the same speed, and coming to rest together. You'd followed her lead, and she'd lead you home, the two of you sliding safely to a stop here with your arms encircling each other.
"Mmmm," she hummed as you rubbed the small of her back with your hand. "S'nice. Rest a bit?"
"Whatever you want, Bones, you just let me know when you're ready to go again."
She chuckled and cracked an eye to look at you, a small grin on her face. "Mmm. It's been a long day. We can stay here for a bit. Enough bodies in motion for now."
Your eyes closed of their own accord and your limbs shifted to find a more comfortable position without thinking about it, and Bones followed you until you both stilled and you felt sleep start to steal over you, resting together.
"Bones? What's that bodies in motion thing?" you murmured into the darkness.
Her breath ghosted warm over your chest. "Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. Bodies at rest tend to rest. Newton's First Law of Motion."
Another thing you'd been wrong about, you smiled to yourself in the darkness. It hadn't been about breaking the laws of physics at all. It had been about following them.
Newton's First Law of Motion is sometimes called the Law of Inertia. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force; bodies in motion tend to move at the same speed unless moved upon by some outside force.