3:24 A.M.
A tuft of brown hair pokes out from the top of a matted, formerly fuzzy, beige blanket. It looks loved, worn past the point where anybody who had no attachment would have thrown it away. The man beneath it is snoring intermittently as he succumbs to a dreamless sleep.
Next to him, the wide brown eyes of his fiancé stare, frustrated, at the ceiling. She does not mind the dingy blanket touching her bare skin. She forces him to wash it once a week. She nudges his side with a not-so-kind elbow.
"Lance," she growls in his ear. He doesn't move.
The phone rings. The cacophonic din being the sound that woke her in the first place.
"Lance!" She shoves him harder. The blanket pulls under him as he rolls, unconsciously away from the source of the disruptions to his pleasant sleep.
"Lance-a-lot! Wake up," she's sitting now, her brown hair standing on end, giving her silhouette the appearance of a frightened cat.
"Huh?" A confused groan escaping the protection of the coveted blanket.
A loud, ringing phone is pressed to the approximate location of his ear, "somebody is calling you!"
Lance pulls the blanket away from his covered face, eyes squinted against the abrasive sound that blared into his ears.
"What?" he asks, he winces as he forces his sleep-pained body into a seated position, "oh. Thanks, Daisy," he mutters, pulling the phone from the slender hand of the frustrated woman.
Daisy slumps onto the dark blue pillowcase without another word.
"Sweets," he answers the phone with an all-too-obviously faked vivacity.
"Sweets," the voice on the phone growls back.
"Booth?" Lance's eyes widen, mostly because he has escaped the remaining hold that sleep had on his body, but the increase in heart rate and surprise at his friend's phone call are also contributing factors.
"We need to talk," Booth's speech is slurred. Sweets can hear the faint sound of a television raving in the background.
"Are you okay?" Concern is evident in the young psychologist's voice. He can't stop his brain from analyzing the situation upon impact of the drunken speech. He had told Booth to gamble. He had told Booth take a leap of faith. He had told Booth to confess his love to the woman they both knew he was in love with. He had broken a code. He had influenced an outcome he had promised not to interfere with. His word barely escaped his tired lips.
"Are you okay?" Booth mocks, "Fuck off, Sweets, you had no right-"
Deescalate. Don't let him say or do anything he'd regret tomorrow. See if he'll go to sleep, and come talk first thing tomorrow morning.
"I think we should talk about this in person-"
"Yeah, of course you do. I'll be waiting in your office. Watch your fuckin' back, kid."
Empty threats. He's drunk. He's angry. Something obviously happened. He's mad at you. . . but he needs you.
"I'm sorry-" he hears the line click, indicating the call has been ended before he can finish.
Sweets closes the phone and lowers it to his chest. His eyes stay fixed on the ceiling as tears threaten to spill from their place. "I'm sorry," he calls softly into the universe, hoping Booth could feel the sincerity in his apology from his place in his own home.
Bright red lips quiver in the darkness of his room. He wishes for daisy to open her eyes, but he wouldn't dare rouse her from her sleep to explain to her his failures.
How could she reject him? What could possibly have happened?
His hands fiddle relentlessly with the matted fur of his favorite blanket.
How could I have been so wrong? How could I have let him do this?
Darkness soon moves to a pale blue light, filling the room with the hope of a new day that has already been crushed by sorrow, resentment, and fear. Sweets' hands move to rub the eyes that deceived him into seeing the world so differently than what it actually had been. He's a Profiler. He's a Clinical Psychologist. He's trained in abnormal behavior. He's trained to see what others don't.
He's trained to be delusional.
Thoughts race through his head, trains crashing into other trains physically paining him as he imagines every detail he filled in to make his story seem like reality. Dr. Brennan is hyper-literal to protect herself, no, Dr. Brennan is hyper-literal, there is nothing more to it. Dr. Brenna feels a connection to Booth that is much stronger than she does to others-- because he is the only one who has had the patience to develop real relationship with her.
Agent Booth is madly in love with somebody who does not love him back.
I convinced myself of a reality that I wanted to be true. I saw deeper meaning in a story that presented itself as it was. I allowed my judgement to be clouded by a love story that I wanted to be real. I could not separate facts from a romantic fantasy I projected upon them.
24 years old and the boy's body begins to ache in the same places he conditioned himself to crave pain fourteen years ago. His thoughts fracture, dragging his mind from professional failure to personal worthlessness.
I ruined his life.
He feels the compulsion he knows he will never quite shake. He can't help but hear his body telling him the only thing he can do to stop the spiral is to tear open wounds that healed years ago. He needs to open the skin to let the thoughts seep out.
I ruined their partnership.
Dark blue veins bulge from the clenched fists of a man who has since learned to channel his feelings into actions that don't hurt his body. He pleads with himself to stop valuing his life less than his proficiency in psychoanalysis.
"You're breathing so heavily, Lance-a-lot. Are you okay?" Her voice is frantic. She's seen this before.
Wide brown eyes meet wide brown eyes. He relaxes his jaw, unaware of how tightly he was biting the inside of his cheek. He tastes blood. His eyes close, and his head falls onto the backboard.
"You're having a panic attack," Daisy concludes, watching the pale face of her fiancé relax at her touch.
She climbs on top of him, centering her weight above his pelvis. She wraps her arms as much around him as she can without forcing him to sit up, putting pressure on his shoulders.
"You're okay, baby. Deep pressure will help you feel more grounded. I know it makes you feel more anxious at first but try to remember how you feel after you start to come back down."
The sound of fast, labored breathing fills the air before breaking into gasping sobs. Tense muscles begin to relax. Tiny crescents on calloused palms begin to fill out, as if they were never there.
"I'm- So- Sorry," a loud, ugly, sniffle breaks up his words, "I didn't mean to wake you up."
"Shhhh," love pours out of her pursed lips.
"I-" he repeats the pronoun over and over again until it explodes into wailing.
"Last time I told you a story. I'm going to tell you another story."
He nods, unable to calm himself enough to speak. Her voice is soft, barely registering to him at first. Blue light turns to yellow as the sun breaks over the horizon. Birds tweeting draw his attention away from his brain. Daisy's voice brings images of love and life and his breathing slowly finds its way to a gasping rhythm.
"I love you," hoarse, and choked. The words fall from his mouth without regard for her story. She doesn't mind.
"I love you too," She kisses his forehead softly.
Small hands wipe wet tears from the cheeks of a broken man. Strong arms hold a thin waist. Soft breathing becomes almost inaudible as genius brains filter it out as background noise.
"Thank you," his voice sounds more like his own.
"Always," it falls from her lips so easily. Her mind is clear, she is not clouded by sleep, or sex, she is in love. Endlessly, helplessly in love with the puffy, snot-covered, stitched together man beneath her. She kisses his forehead again.
"You should shower when you're ready. The alarm's gonna go off in like twenty minutes anyway."
"Yeah," he breathes out the rest of his feelings as he speaks. Today is going to be a bad day, but he will be coming home to a woman who loves him almost as much as he loves her.
"Lance-a-lot?" She's smiling as she locks eyes with him.
"Hm?"
"I know how to make you feel better. I mean, if you're up for it."