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anthrofreshtodeath · 11 months

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Crossover Angst

Find previous rizzles/bones crossover work here.

—

When Booth hops out of the Sequioia and opens Brennan’s door, it’s already kinda late. He’s an in-bed-early, wake-up-even-earlier sort of guy, and this Boston team… They burn the candle at both ends. All ends. Hell, they even strike a match under the middle. He’s tired, and he’s hungry, and he needs a couple hours away from the mania to talk things over with his partner.

Who just so happens to be the woman he’s madly in love with. Christ.

“What is this place?” Brennan asks, rousing him out of his exhausted musing. They amble toward a little storefront on Prince Street, which has seen its tourists exit for the day, leaving locals to patronize the restaurants, the butcher shops, the bakeries, during their last few hours of operation. Angelina’s.

“Little Italian joint, Bones,” says Booth, pulling open the door. The heavy, wooden frame squeals as it swings out, and he licks his lips in some relief. “Hear that? Means the food’s gonna be good.”

Brennan is only inches ahead of him, and she turns with a little disbelief. “The squeaky door?” she chuckles, “how could that possibly relate to the quality of food?”

“Don’t know how to explain it; don’t need to,” he tells her. “There’s mostly Sicilian fare but apparently they’ve got a puttanesca that rivals your own.”

“Your favorite,” Brennan chides. “The whore sauce.”

“The whore sauce,” Booth affirms. “But it comes from my neck of the woods, from Rome. So hey, can’t go wrong, right? Anyway, Rizzoli said they had some good vegetarian options.”

“Ah, Jane recommended it,” Brennan draws out. She takes off her trench coat and hangs it over the back of an old wooden chair when the waiter pointed them toward a table toward the windowfront. “That’s why we’re here.”

Booth knots his eyebrows together. He’s good at reading Brennan, probably better than anyone else, but he’s stumped here. That jumble of words usually signals jealousy, especially in girls - women - but Bones looks pleased. Humored. “That a problem?” he asks, searching for more. He needs more.

“Not at all,” Brennan answers. She does this thing where she shrugs and scoots her chair in at the same time, but the movements are fluid. There is no waste, no excess in the motion of her body. This enthralls him; it always had, though he hadn’t realized it until his love for her crashed down on him in a particularly painful, sweet revelation. Smitten had felt like an apt descriptor, but when Jane told him about the Sicilian thunderbolt, that punch of lightning, that felt perfect. And painful. It’s painful to watch her move, but also exhilarating, like he’s just stuck a fork in a socket. “You respect her.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. She’s good people,” Booth says. He takes the menu given to him by the waiter, and nods toward the middle of the page, where all the red wines are named. “Give us a bottle of the Sangiovese, huh? You’re gonna love this one,” he tells Brennan when the waiter nods and turns their wine glasses right side up before going back for the wine. “It’s bold. Real hearty, velvety Italian flavor.”

“Sounds like we’re still talking about Jane,” Brennan teases. Her eyes sparkle when she looks at him, and she offers him one of her signature, garish winks.

Booth turns dour. He crosses his arms, his crisp white shirt rolled up just under his elbows on either side. “What?” he demands.

Brennan registers the change in mood, and he thinks about lightening up because he can tell she doesn’t know what she’s said, what she’s done, but dammit if he isn’t tired of the games. “Well, I… I wasn’t being very serious, Booth.”

“You weren’t, huh?” He prods.

“No, but, what would be the issue if I were? She’s attractive, you’re attractive, and you’re both single. You seem to suit each other. At least, superficially,” Brennan reasons aloud. She leans forward, puts her elbows on the tablecloth. She believes she’s making sense.

And maybe, in any other world, she would be. Maybe, in another world where she and Booth are just partners, just coworkers who collaborate to bring murderers to justice, just colleagues who sometimes grab after-work drinks, this argument would make sense. Rizzoli is… well, Rizzoli looks like a supermodel and she drinks some of his old army buddies under the table. She’s loud and to the point and kind of grumpy, but he can be, too. He thinks back to that early morning last week, when they’d held hands in mass while the priest ushered them through Eucharistic prayer. After all night at the scene of the first fresh crime they’d encountered in their time together, blood and brain matter and torn flesh seared in their consciousness, they’d agreed together that only the blood of Christ would wash it all away. So they’d dropped their scientists at their respective abodes and trudged into St. Joseph’s just after sunrise. And they’d touched because they needed the intimacy, the spirituality, without all the goddamn battle.

Rizzoli’s perfect on paper.

There’s just, y’know, the problem of both of them being in love with someone else. That thought, of yet another opportunity crushed under the weight of Bones’ magnetism, under the way she expands so as to push anything else out of the room, leaving nothing but the two of them and his annoying heart, angers Booth. He turns his eyes toward the flow of wine out of the bottle and into their glasses. He concentrates only on that so that he can speak without raising his voice. “Why you gotta do that? Why- why you gotta try to hook me up with people?”

“Booth, I was just-”

“No! No,” He shudders when he hears his volume the first time, like he’s gunshy of himself. He quiets down, a fist going into his hand when he props his elbows up on the table like she had. “You… I laid my heart out for ya, Bones. I told you I was in love with you. And god help me, I think you feel the same way. But for whatever reason, you didn’t… you can’t go there with me. And I’m tryin’ to be respectful of that. But this? Tryin’ to get me to go out with other people when you know I’m not even thinkin’ about anyone else right now is…”

“Alright, alright,” Brennan puts up her hand just so he’ll stop. “I… I won’t. I won’t anymore. I just… I care about you, Booth,” she confesses, her blue eyes screwed up and watery like she’s in pain, like she has any right to be in pain when she’s done all the pushing. “You deserve to be happy.”

“That doesn’t sound like you stoppin’,” he grumbles.

“I can’t give you what you want. I… don’t know how to be what you need,” Brennan whispers. She cries openly now, and Booth waves the waiter away as a kindness.

But he still seethes. “Easy, Bones. Just be you,” he says, low and full of spite.

“But it’s not that easy. Of course it’s not that easy. I’ve been me with you for years now and I still… I’m still…”

“Afraid?” He mocks, and when she nods because it doesn’t register with her, because she doesn't see the way he has intended to hurt her. “I just… I don’t get it. Help me understand, here, Bones, because you don’t seem to have trouble bein’ what other guys need. Jerks like Stires, Wexler, oh and god, Mark. Remember Mark?”

“I don’t appreciate-” Brennan’s face drops, she sniffles, and her brow furrows, but Booth pushes right through.

“So it’s me, right? Because you have no problem giving them the time of day, and I’m right here. I’m right here and I’m better. So it must just be that I don’t do it for you. I’m not enough of an asshole,” He is quiet and severe, leaning in to make his point.

She looks toward her glass of wine, thinks about throwing it in his face. And Booth knows he’d deserve it. But the bell over the door rings, and whatever, whoever Brennan sees, makes her put her hand down. “I’m leaving. This isn’t the time, or the place. If you want to have a discussion about this like an adult, give me a call.” She rises, snatches her coat from her chair, and glares at him for good measure.

“Oh? And where’re you goin’, huh?” Booth demands.

She aims to hurt him because she puts her face in his. She only does that when she spits fire. “I’m going to Jane’s. She invited me over to watch the game.”

“Oh yeah? Do you even know which game?!” Booth calls when she starts to walk away. He guesses that Jane’s invite was probably for the C’s game, which is currently just underway, and he guesses that Bones had originally turned it down.

“Doesn’t matter!” She shouts back. She’s right. Really doesn’t matter.

___

“Hmm,” Maura holds Jane’s face as they kiss, soft and sweet in the low candlelight illuminating Jane’s small bedroom. Jane is on top of her, they’re under the covers naked, and god it feels good. Like eating cake with your hands or pouring a second glass of rosé when you said you’d just have one. “Hey.”

Jane groans because talking breaks the kiss open. She writhes closer, deepens the post-coital, sweaty embrace between them in hopes that she can erase all language.

Maura must deny her. She offers Jane one last kiss, but then she tilts her head so Jane’s lips shift to her chin, across her jaw, down her neck. “Hey, hey…” she tries again. “I saw you stuffing down that Powerbar on the way back from Amherst this morning. Was that the last thing you ate?”

At the mention of the Powerbar, Jane’s stomach grumbles on Maura’s own. “What’s it to you?” Jane snarks. There is no bite in it, or rather, no power, because Jane currently bites on the mark she’s already left on Maura’s collarbone.

Maura hates that she doesn’t hate it. That she won’t hate walking in public with it on, she won’t hate people seeing it and wondering. Or knowing that it was Jane. “That was almost twelve hours ago. Let me feed you.”

“You already did,” Jane snarks, teeth still out and nipping.

“Jane,” Maura warns. “I’ll go to Angelina’s. Pick something up and bring it back. Eat with me?”

“Angelina’s, huh?” asks Jane, rolling over onto her back so that her shoulder touches Maura’s. Maura kisses it. “Sounds good. I told Booth about it a few days ago. Thought it might be a good place for him to take Doctor B.”

Maura stops mid-smooch, lips pursed and frozen against Jane’s still-warm skin. “And how are things between you and Doctor Brennan?” she finally asks when she regains her thoughts.

“Uh, normal? Things have been a lot less heated,” Jane says. “Uh, well, maybe that’s not the right word. Things are a lot less acrimonious.”

“But still heated?” Maura prods.

Jane chuckles. “Hey, don’t put words in my mouth when I specifically took ‘em out. But I mean, I’m tryin’, honey. I really am. I invited her over to watch the Celtics and Lakers tonight. Teach her the rules of basketball so she, I dunno, can make it a whole game without embarrassing Booth.”

“And she said no?” Maura turns her head at the exact moment Jane turns hers, and they gaze into each other’s eyes. Jane won’t be able to turn away.

“She said no,” Jane affirmed. “But at least she knows I am attempting friendliness after last week.”

Maura pauses for a long time. Then she inches forward to kiss Jane. She injects it with lust, with luscious and wet intent as she rows their swollen, dusky lips together. “Jane?”

“Yeah?” Jane sighs.

“Don’t fuck that woman,” Maura threatens.

Jane smirks, and immediately Maura knows she’s shown Jane a weakness. But there’s no way she can take it back. She hardly cares about her exposed desperation. “Which one?” asks Jane. “Abby in payroll? She’s been wanting me to ask her out for years,” she teases. And god, she’s right. Abby wants Jane, pines for Jane even now. Even if Jane is full of shit. Maura frowns. Jane laughs, then quiets. “Or the Chief Medical Examiner? I heard she’s a real ice queen but I think she likes me.”

Maura softens at that, and shakes her head. This time, it’s her teeth that sink into Jane. Both soft and hard, and into Jane’s shoulder. “Don’t. Fuck. Her.” she reiterates.

There is no room for discussion.

“You got it,” Jane kisses Maura’s forehead with kindness when Maura latches onto her with possession. “You really gonna go get food? Because I could go for that Brasat’.”

“Beef, hmm? You’re quite hungry,” Maura muses, but she does sit up and look for the jeans she put on to come here.

“I just burned an NBA game’s worth of calories!” Jane answers back, But she blushes when Maura looks back from over her shoulder and smirks. They lock eyes, and certainly, the same scene, where Jane grips the corner of the bed while she drives into Maura from on top, crying out when Maura scratches long red lines down her back, runs through both their minds. “But I don’t have to tell you that.”

“I am going to get food, yes. I’ll even get an appetizer for us to share. But you have to get up now,” Maura orders. She stands, her pants on, and she shuffles around until she finds her bra. After that’s on, she shrugs her blouse over her shoulders. Jane continues to lay, and her eyes flutter shut. “I mean it, Jane. I’m not ordering all that food just for you to be too sleepy to eat. Get up. Get dressed. Turn on the game - find a way to stay awake.” Maura says. Then she throws a decorative pillow in Jane’s face.

“Ouch, fuck! Alright, alright, I’m gettin’ up,” grouses Jane.

She does indeed sit, and Maura rewards her with a kiss to the lips. “Good. I’ll be back. Set the table.”

“Yup,” says Jane.

Maura slips on her sandals, and lingers in the bedroom doorway. She doesn’t say anything, but catches Jane’s eye one more time and nods. Then she leaves.

Her car is close; Jane had given up her parking spot for Maura and put the unmarked around the corner. Maura had hidden the giddy, bubbly smile the gesture inspired and opened her legs instead.

She really, really needs to stop doing that. At least, long enough to give her some time to think. Cases like this were always hard, and up until now, Maura had medicated by sliding Jane into place on top of her and blanching her brain. Well, now appears to be more of the same, but then, they’d been married, and it had been… allowed.

She trots down the stairs and out the side exit of the building, straight into the parking area. She gets in her car, turns on the engine, and sighs. They’re grown adults. They can sleep with whomever they please, including each other. But something about all of this feels forbidden, and Maura wonders if that’s why she likes it. That’s the part that she needs to slow down on. The part she needs to figure out. The part that feels like using, as she’d confessed to Jane some nights ago.

Angelina’s is not far from Jane’s place, maybe a ten, fifteen minute drive, so Maura calls in her order before she pulls out of her spot. Maura also contemplates all these things as she maneuvers there, and mourns the Maura who had put down some of the best boundaries of her life at the start of her divorce. Where is that Maura? When she pulls up to the neighborhood, Jane’s old neighborhood, she finds a spot on Hanover Street and makes the short trek over to the storefront, resolving to worry about boundaries after she gets food into Jane’s belly.

When she pulls open the old wooden door and steps inside the entryway, her sandals scrape against the mosaic-style tile until she stops where she stands. “D… Doctor Brennan?” she sputters when the woman herself stands up from her table. Brennan says something to Booth, Maura can tell him by his shoulders, hulking and sad. And then, Brennan makes her way to the door. Toward Maura.

She’s angry. Maura reads the microexpressions and stands aside, while offering a half-smile and a look in that direction. No eye contact, that would make the both of them too uncomfortable. “Doctor Isles,” Brennan says, just before she pushes toward the door. “Have a great night.”

“Are you-? Where-?” Maura is still shocked to see the both of them here, she feels as though she should say more, that they should have a perfunctory conversation at least; her Brahmin upbringing vibrates within her. But Brennan is already gone.

The door swings and rattles in its frame and there are a few head turns from other patrons, but that settles quickly enough as Brennan’s form retreats into the North End evening. Maura walks up to the counter, hands over her card, and in less than a minute or two, both it and her boxes of food are brought out to her, tied up nicely in a plastic bag.

She is about to leave, to abandon the awkward situation she just messily dove into, until she turns and sees Booth’s face - well, she should revise. She doesn’t see his face, because it’s in his large hands, the heels of which press into his cheeks. She shakes her head, and then she crosses the few short feet to get to him. “Sangiovese is one of my favorites,” Maura tells him. He jolts, just a bit, and squints when he looks at her.

“Doctor Isles, hey, how are ya,” He says. There is no conviction in it.

“I’m just fine,” she starts. Then, she puts her bag of food on the table. “I’m picking up dinner for my ex-wife when I know I should not be. I’m very confused. All the time.”

He chuckles once, bitterly. “Yeah? Me too. Join the party,” he says. Then, he shrugs, like the assholishness is something he can remove like a coat. “I’m sorry, y’know. That you and Rizzoli are such a mess.”

“I’m sorry you’re going through your own mess,” Maura nods toward the door. “Is she alright?”

Booth sighs, and leans back into his chair, his glossy eyes toward the ceiling. “I don’t think so. I think I made the mess. And right now she’s, agh. Well, apparently she’s over to your guys’ place to catch…” he slides his watch around, “well, I’m assuming Celtics/Lakers.”

“She’s… she’s going to Jane’s?” Maura asks. Her head pounds, and she squeezes her hands together. She sucks her teeth.

And Booth, of course he reads that. He quirks a brow. “You didn’t know?”

“I thought she said no,” Maura’s acrimony leaks through the veneer, but she pulls it back as soon as it trickles forward. “You didn’t even get to eat?”

Booth chuckles. “No, no we didn’t.”

Maura pats the top of her bag. “Well, let’s eat this, shall we? It’s warm. We shouldn’t let it go to waste.”

Booth leans forward, rubs his hands together. “What about Jane?”

“She ate,” Maura snaps, pink suffusing her cheeks. Vengeance is a dish best not served at all. Her own words ring hollow and mocking in her head - do not fuck that woman. “And if she gets hungry enough she can have some cereal. We’re here, we should enjoy the cuisine while it’s fresh.”

“You know what I really wanna do?” says Booth. He downs the rest of the glass of wine in front of him. “I wanna go over to that bar next door. Screw the food.”

Maura hangs her head and she laughs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Booth. Now that he thinks about it, he’s sure of it. He drops enough cash on the table to cover the bottle of wine and then some, and then he stands up and shrugs his blazer on. “They’re havin’ their fun, why don’t we?”

“Ok,” replies Maura. She stands, too, and smirks when she sees her package on the table. “Screw the food. They have a scrumptious Amarone that I think you’ll like.”

“I will, huh?” asks Booth, holding open the door as they step into the cool spring air. He holds out his elbow and she takes it, even though the walk isn’t long.

“If you’re like me and the Sangiovese is also one of your favorites, yes,” Maura tells him. She gets the door of the next establishment, and she ushers him in with a hand to the small of his back, like Jane is moving through her.

He is surprised by it, but his smile is warm. Not bitter like it had been when she first saw him in Angelina’s. “Well you got me there, it is.”

They take their place at the bar, just a few other drinkers along its edge, and Booth insists that Maura order for them. She does, and he compliments her taste in reds. The dance floor is old, the lights swooping over it reminiscent of a high school dance, but he wags his brows when the music shifts. “Ole Blue Eyes,” he says when Frank Sinatra begins to croon. “My favorite.”

Maura sips the exceptional drink in her glass before setting it down. She pulls her lips back and stares at the napkin under her fingers. “Jane is partial to Dean Martin.”

“Well, can’t go wrong with the Rat Pack,” Booth says. “Hey, did you uh, did you tell her where you were? Tell her you weren’t comin’ back with her food?”

Maura’s face crumples when she shakes her head. She hides from him, and then she lifts her face up so that her tears don’t ruin what little makeup she has on.

Booth shuffles on his feet. Shit. “Uh, hey, Maura, hey. C’mon. You, you wanna go dance? No talkin’. We can just move a little.”

She looks up, and he looks down, and she can tell he has surprised the both of them with his offer. But, what the hell. She takes her drink, then he takes his, and she leads them over to the floor. They are by far the youngest couple currently dancing, the rest of the people their age at various tables, and they aren’t even a couple. They shouldn’t dance.

But Booth stands there, wide angles, gallant masculinity, open arms, and Maura folds into him. She puts her head on his shoulder and the hand he’s not using to hold his wine at his side goes between her own shoulder blades. Nice. Easy. Safe. He sways her, and she is content to be swayed by him - no expectations or rules.

It is the most comfortable she’s felt with a man wrapped around her - when he is devastated by his love for someone else. When her love for someone else keeps her heart far away from his. “I’m sorry,” she tells him.

“Hey no,” he assures her. “Tell me what you’re thinkin’.” Frankie sings and he holds her close, and fuck. This may be the saddest he’s ever been. He prays she doesn’t ask him the same question.

“I’m thinking that I’m here with the wrong Italian, Seeley,” Maura whispers, turning so that it bounces on the cavern of his chest. “You are so unbelievably kind. But wrong. But I can’t stop hurting her.”

“You know, I was just thinkin’ the same thing,” he says. She’s unburdened him with that confession. So hell, maybe, even though it feels like digging a hot poker into his belly, he should just confess, too. “I was thinkin’ that I’m here with the wrong scientist. But she, oh god,” he inhales without exhaling, a ragged breath that cuts into the air around them. He catches her tears like a virus, but his don’t fall. “She can’t stop hurting me. What a pair, huh?”

Maura wraps her arms around his waist despite her drink, as though she’s forgotten it and knows only the shape of the glass in her hand. She squeezes him because he is warm and if she closes her eyes he feels like Jane. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I feel like I’m looking at myself from the outside, unable to get her to stop.”

Maura doesn’t feel like Bones at all. But Maura needs him. Needs him to lie, needs him to hold her, needs him to ride out this slow dance and maybe a few more glasses of wine. “Things are… things are gonna be just fine, Maura. They’re gonna be just fine.”

She doesn’t say it back to him.

#lauren writes rizzoli and isles fanfiction #lauren writes crossover fiction too #god this was a little sadder than I intended #it will help you if you read the last piece for *sports context*#I imagine the very next scene to be Jane opening the door in her lounge clothes and a bowl of cereal hoping to see maura on the other side #but it ain’t maura #also don’t worry we’re not and nor will we ever be mixing ships here #b&b and rizzles are too in love with their respective partners to do that

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