Series of Oneshots by BethSwift

Um... hello. This is my first visit to the ABY. I've been over at the other site for a while, but this one seems prettier . I thought I'd post some oneshots here, and see what you might think of them. They're all completley different from each other- some long, some short, some romantic, some angst and from different POV. Please drop us a note about what you think of them. This is the first one. Enjoy reading


Feeling The Heat

Booth let out another groan and pulled yet again at his shirt collar. The recent heat wave would be a cause for celebration if it had been the weekend, or better yet, a holiday, but when he had to spend all day being boiled to death in a lab, it was pure torture. The air was so thick with humidity that Booth felt like his lungs had been replaced with gills and they were all swimming underwater.

Trust the Jeffersonian air conditioning to wheeze its last breath on the morning of the hottest day so far.

He tried to sprawl further over the couch in a vain attempt to release some of the excess heat. It didn’t work. He lay face down, his shoes and trademark stripy socks on the floor. His bare feet dangled off the end of the couch, as did one arm and the end of his red tie. Moaning again he pressed his cheek into the leather.

Bad idea.

With the way sweat was slowly giving him a full-body clean, his face was glistening and as his smooth skin touched the leather it felt like someone had superglued his cheekbone to the seat. He gave an undignified grunt of surprise. Carefully, but still wincing, he began to peel himself away from the horrendous material.

Ssssqqqquuueeeee-

“Booth, that is disgusting.”

Sitting up, he rubbed his sore face and sent a half-hearted scowl in Brennan’s direction.

“Yeah well, you could’ve warned me what leather would do to my skin.”

Brennan was sitting at her desk, her face with a similar sheen and flush as Booth, and probably every other Squint in the Lab. Her computer monitor was displaying various reports that gave her a headache just to contemplate in this oppressive heat; it seemed to drain not only sweat, but all energy from your body, leaving you nothing but dizzy. She had managed to grab a small handheld fan from the store cupboard before the inevitable morning rush and wafted it in front of her red-cheeked face. She eyed Booth innocently. “I thought that would’ve been obvious.”

“Obviously not.” Booth glared at her from his position on her office couch.

“I apologise,” Brennan replied surprised at her partner’s sharp tone, and somewhat irked, “Next time you decide to melt your face onto leather I’ll be sure to give you prior warning about its impact on your complexion.”

“Sarcasm? From you?” Booth stood up shocked. The all-day heat was grating on his patience and as more sweat trickled between his shoulder blades and carried on down his spine, he fought the urge to run to the nearest pool and throw himself in. He rolled his neck and took a step closer to Brennan’s desk. “Since when do you use sarcasm?”

“I don’t. I was just trying to be helpful, but I’ll know next time not to bother.”
“You do that just to annoy me, don’t you?”

Her only response was to smirk wickedly up at him and carry on fanning her face, closing her eyes in bliss as the air sent a cool breeze across her hot skin.

Laughing without humour, Booth leant both hands palm down on her desk and leaned forwards slightly, his infamous charm smile playing on his wet lips. “Lend me your fan Bones.”

Brennan opened one eye and, seeing his perfect smile and hearing his wheedling tone, she began to move the fan away from her face and nearer to his, which smiled in triumph, until...

“No!” And she snatched it back at the last second.

The look of disbelief and outrage on Booths face made her burst out laughing.

His smile fell and, in the face of her mirth, he asked, “Why not?”

“Because I’m using it. You should have got your own earlier when I told you to. It’s not my fault you were too busy buying donuts to get one before they were all taken.”

“But it was the last one! And I was hungry!”

She shrugged and he scowled.

“I would’ve shared mine with you.” He accused.

“Earlier you said you were going to steal Cam’s desk fan and sit with it in front of you face. How is that sharing?”

“That was only because I wanted to talk into it so I could sound like a robot.”

Brennan stared up at him with undisguised incredulity on her face.

“What?”

“You know, you talk into the fan, really close, and your voice comes out sounding like a Dalek.”

“What’s a Dalek?”

“Doctor Who?”

“Wha- who, me? I’m Doctor Brennan, Booth, but you know that already.”

Booth looked exasperated. “Oh, I give up!” He threw his hands into the air. “It’s too hot for this.”

A mischievous grin tugged at the corner of her lips, and she raised the fan to her face again, bathing in its cool breeze. “Oh, I don’t find it that bad...” She teased.
She closed her eyes to further prove her point and Booth seized his opportunity. With movements that seemed too swift in the humid air, he grabbed the fan and pulled it from her loose grip.

“Ha!” He cried triumphantly.

“Hey!” She jumped up from her chair, her mind worrying fleetingly about sweat marks, and hurried round to Booth who had retreated back towards the couch, fan whirring in front of his face.

“You snooze, you lose, baby!”

Brennan scowled back at his cocky grin. “Give it back Booth.”

“Mine now. Possession is nine tenths you know.”

“That’s ridiculous! Just give it back, it’s boiling in here.”

As Brennan walked closer to him, palm outstretched to demand the fan back, he backed away smiling, until his legs banged against the end of the couch. Seeing that he now had nowhere to run, Brennan smiled devilishly at him and shot him a look that clearly said ‘I’ve Got You Now’.

Booth gazed at her in all her heat-wave glory. Her face was flushed a vibrant cherry colour, and a slick sheen of sweat glistened along the valley of her neck and down her chest. She stood before him with one hand on her hip and an expression of amused victory on her stunning face.

For the first time that day he was glad for the heat since it meant that any extra reason he was sweating and getting flush could be blamed on the high temperature. As more sweat broke out on his back and chest, sliding through the patterns on his stomach, he had the wild desire to rip off his shirt and throw the oppressive piece of material away from his burning skin, desperate to relieve the heat. He ran a hand though his hair.

“Tell you what Bones.” He leered, his voice pitched low as a whisper, a challenge in his stance and tone. “If you want it... come and get it.”

A fierce flash of something wild and unrestrained blazed in her eyes at the challenge and it didn’t take long for her ingrained competitive streak to kick in.
Swiftly she lunged for the fan. Laughing he jerked it away just in time but her deft fingers managed to encircle his wrist. The competition made her grin again and she reached with her free hand for the fan once again.

Seeing her coming he quickly dropped it and as she missed again he caught it in his other hand. He held it high above her head and grinned as she tried to pull his arm down so she could reach. Her finger brushed his pulse point and realising she was about to get the fan he rapidly dropped his arm, still holding the fan, and held it behind his back.

His calves pressed into the side of the couch as she moved in closer to reach behind his back and he ended up sitting on the arm of the couch. She stepped between his open legs and reached for the fan.

The breath caught in Booths throat as she slid her hand around his waist. The cocky grin had faltered and his body tensed as her fingers found way to his spine.
Brennan felt it too as he stopped struggling to dodge her from getting the fan. She looked up and caught his gaze. His eyes smouldered and she knew hers did too. She liked it far too much how his back felt under the thin damp fabric of his shirt and her hands froze.

Slowly Booth withdrew his hand from behind his back holding the fan. Her hand stayed in place. For a long moment, the silence stretched between them as they breathed shallow and rapid from their tussle. His lips felt suddenly dry and he licked them quickly. She glanced down at his newly moistened lips, glistening in the heat.
Suddenly they met in the middle as lips crashed together. Hands roamed, moans escaped, and it didn’t take long for them to fall backwards off the arm and land together, entwined on the couch.

On the floor, next to the shoes and the stripy socks, the fan lay forgotten as the two smouldering partners found a much more effective way to deal with the heat.

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Reviews = …well if not ‘love’, then at least something similarly warm and fuzzy.

ive read this story before somewhere.... luved it then and loved it again

It's on the FF website I think. I wrote it a while ago Glad you like it Cheers

*Fanning myself over here*that was great !

I was just talking about Booth using that "come and get it" technique over in the Spoilers. So nice to have you expound on it!

Welcome, BethSwift, to our humble little abode here in theABY!

BethSwift wrote:It's on the FF website I think. I wrote it a while ago Glad you like it Cheers

yeah....that would be where i read it
and welcome to the aby. im sure u will like it here....i do.
look forward to reading more of your fanfic soon

Thanks for the warm welcome, I'm glad you like my oneshot. Here's another one, it's short, and it's from Jack's POV. Probably best read if you think back to the beginning of S4. I hope you like it.

If Only

When we’d first been told about the experiment, you can guess my reaction. Me? I’m all for scientific inquiry. Okay, this one may not have had any cool explosions and there were no bugs or slime involved, but still, it was an experiment. And a weird one at that. Not weird as in peculiar, more… creepy. But perversely fun nonetheless. I mean, it was only a dummy, right? Nothing got hurt except a bit of fluff and stuffing. And maybe the dummy manufacturers feelings.

We all stood around the platform, the dummy in the centre. The ‘cocky’ FBI agent didn’t like it at all, but I can’t blame him. It was kind of freaking us all out to some degree, especially Angela. Maybe I might have made a light-hearted joke at his expense, but after I saw him lay into the dummy with Zach’s retrofitted knife, the words were clamped down on, never to be uttered aloud. Okay, mental note: it would be a bad idea to get on Booths bad side.

Brennan and Cam hit hard, but I wasn’t surprised. Warrior women, both of them. Angela squealed. My heart melted. I mean, she couldn’t even stab at a fake dummy. The woman I know and love.

And then… there was Zach. We watched him take the knife and step up to the dummy. None of us said a word, but we were all sort of looking forward to seeing Zach get his violence on. I mean, I love him, but look at the guy.

He took a deep breath and raised the knife to shoulder height. His brow furrowed in deep concentration, squinting at the dummy as though it were a perplexing maths equation or a shattered skull. Something to be rationalized, solved. He bit his lip and with all the concentration he could muster, he finally took that step forward and lowered the knife.

One slow swoop, as though prodding a sleeping person to see if they were asleep or unconscious, and the dummy had a neat, if shallow hole in it.

I grinned. Cam shot me a look that barely managed to tell me “Don’t laugh” before it was hidden with a badly controlled smirk of her own.

Zach stepped back, proud, and laid the knife on the table.

I carried on smirking, and the grin barely managed to cover my teeth. My heart sang at his sweet, endearing, but totally pitiful attempt at murder.

As I drive towards McKinley Psychiatric Hospital, the smile dies on my lips. The smirk turns up into a grimace, and what once filled my heart with laughter, now drowns my soul in pain, so deep, so raw, as to bore a hole through my chest. My fingers tighten involuntarily on the steering wheel and for a moment I can’t see through the blackened haze of the memory.

My chest heaves and I choke on tears that won’t fall.

If only I could take it back.

If only I could have saved him.

If only irony wasn’t such a total bitch.

Oh, and they still think that he killed the lobbyist. I wonder how bad Hodgins felt about all of this, especially with all the conspiracy theories he prattled on about.

Thanks!