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Booth is not very often happy when Bones isn’t around. They’re partners in everything they do. He always feels uneasy without her, even if there’s no actual reason she needs to be there.
And then his phone rings at almost one in the morning, and he’s glad Bones is away for a conference for once.
He checks the caller ID, and groans before he picks it up.
“What do you want, Sweets? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
There’s no response. Guilt pricks at him. Sweets wouldn’t call him in the middle of the night for no reason. The kid can be annoying, but he’s not rude.
And then, on the other end, a muffled noise, almost like a sob. Sweets still doesn’t talk.
“Sweets?” Booth says, feeling panic creep up his spine.
“ I’m sorry, ” Sweets gasps. “ I shouldn’t have - I shouldn’t have called you, I’m so sorry - ”
“Whoa, whoa, hey,” Booth stammers. He sits up and flicks on the lamp. “What’s - just, tell me what’s going on, are you okay? Are you hurt?” Kidnapped? Attacked, maybe? Why would he call Booth and not 911?
“ N - no, I’m not hurt, I think I might’ve - walked into a wall, at some point, but I’m okay, I think… ”
“What do you mean, you walked into a wall , you think? Where are you?”
“ Uh, a bar somewhere. I went - with some old college friends. ” Booth wasn’t under the impression that Sweets had any college friends. Bad influences, he’s guessing, by the way Sweets sounds. “ ‘M really drunk. I think. ”
“You think?” Booth asks sarcastically.
“ Uh-huh, ” Sweets hums, clearly having missed his tone. “ I… I dunno how to get home. ”
“Okay, so why’d you call me? Can’t one of your friends take you?”
“ Most of ‘em left. ” A distressed noise comes through. “ And I don’t - I don’t want them to bring me home. I don’t like them very much. ”
Booth tries not to laugh. “What about Daisy?”
“ No, ” Sweets says even more fervently, which is a little bit concerning, since Booth is (was?) under the impression that they were annoyingly crazy about each other.
Booth scrubs a hand over his face. “Okay, so - you want me to pick you up, yeah?”
“ No, wait - I’m sorry, you don’t - ” Sweets stammers.
“I’m already up,” Booth interrupts. “You’re at a bar, it’s one in the morning, and you sound like you’re too drunk to walk. Do you want me to come and get you, or do you want to try and get home by yourself?”
A few seconds of silence. “ Come n’ get me. ”
“Yeah, okay,” Booth sighs. “What’s the name of the bar?”
“ Uh… we’ve been to like… five bars. Too many bars. ” Sweets groans. “ I think it started with a C, maybe. ”
Booth looks up a list of bars, and reads out all the ones that start with C.
“ That one, ” Sweets interrupts. “ I think - yeah, it was that one, probably. ”
“Alright, I can be there in about - twenty-five minutes, ish. I don’t know how bad traffic is.”
“ Okay, ” Sweets mumbles listlessly. Booth wonders how drunk he actually is - maybe his drink got roofied, although Sweets is usually sharp enough to catch that sort of thing.
“I’m gonna hang up, okay? I’ll see you there. Stay put.”
“ M’kay. Love you, bye, ” Sweets mumbles, probably on reflex, and then the phone beeps as Sweets hangs up on him.
-
Booth can’t seem to find Sweets at first. The bar is loud, as he’d expected, but Sweets isn’t outside waiting for him, and he can’t find him inside either, and his mind is a cyclone of kidnapped? Murdered? Mugged? until he checks the bathroom.
“Sweets?” Booth calls.
“Huh?” A familiar voice replies.
Booth pushes the last stall door open. It’s unlocked.
Sweets is sitting on the floor, curled up with his knees against his chest. His eyes are slightly unfocused when he glances up at Booth. At least the floor in here looks like it’s regularly cleaned.
“Hey,” Booth says after a few seconds of awkward silence.
“Hi,” Sweets replies. “I’m drunk.”
Booth bites his lip and tries not to laugh. “Yeah, I noticed.”
Sweets looks down, and stares at his shoes.
“Okay, c’mon, up,” Booth prompts, and extends a hand down for Sweets to take. He reaches up to take it, and misses about five times before Booth grabs him underneath the arms and hoists him into a standing position. He stumbles immediately, leaning on Booth heavily.
Even though he’s pretty skinny, Sweets isn’t really a lightweight when it comes to drinking. Booth hopes this doesn’t happen often, because if it does, he’s heading straight to liver failure.
“What happened with your friends?” Booth asks. “Were they - were they being rude to you, or something?”
Sweets shrugs. “I don’t like them. I didn’t wanna come out here in the first place, but I felt bad for saying no.”
Booth guides Sweets’ arm to wrap around his shoulders, and manages to lead him outside. Sweets shivers when they step through the threshold.
“Something going on with you and Daisy?”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t want me to call her.”
“I don’t think I’m in love with her,” Sweets mumbles, the words slurring together.
“You’re - what? ”
“‘M gonna throw up,” Sweets says instead of elaborating, and stumbles away from Booth to retch into a nearby trash can.
Well, that doesn’t bode well for the rest of them. Sweets and Daisy are practically an ideal couple. Just the other day, Booth overheard Daisy mention something about having kids.
Sweets descends into a coughing fit, and groans. Booth pats his back awkwardly.
“Sorry,” Sweets says hoarsely.
“Just don’t throw up in my car. It’s brand-new, you know.”
“Okay.” Sweets stands up straight again and leans against Booth’s side.
“You’ve gotta help me out a little here,” Booth grumbles. “I’m not carrying you. You’re skinny, but you’re not that skinny.”
“Sorry,” Sweets says again, and steps away. Booth grabs him by the shoulders to keep him from biting the concrete. He trips on at least six more sidewalk cracks.
They get to Booth’s car about ten minutes later. Getting Sweets into the passenger seat is remarkably similar to trying to force a perp into a police car.
“I don’t have a lotta friends,” Sweets says a little bit too loudly. “My friends kinda suck.”
“Do you think I suck?” Booth asks, out of pure curiosity. Honestly, he notes with a twinge of guilt, he’s pretty mean to Sweets a lot of the time, he wouldn’t blame him if he did.
“Sometimes,” Sweets decides. “Not right now, though.” He squints at Booth’s face. “Are you mad at me?”
Booth considers this. On the one hand, Sweets did wake him up in the middle of the night. On the other… well. He pictures Sweets spending the night in a bathroom stall, shivering.
“Not really,” he says.
Sweets doesn’t respond, nor does he ask Booth to take him back to his apartment. If he’s having problems with Daisy, he probably doesn’t want to go back there, anyway.
-
Sweets collapses onto Booth’s couch face-down, still in his clothes.
“You sure you don’t want me to call Daisy?” Booth asks, just to make sure.
Sweets shakes his head vehemently. Booth remembers the marks on his back, the discussion in his office. Sweets isn’t scared of her, is he?
… Well, if Daisy’s hurting him, Booth will make sure she’s fired. Heck, he can make sure she’ll never find a job again. That… might be a little extreme, actually, but there’s a protectiveness behind it, the kind that’s usually reserved for Parker and Christine.
“Alright, then.” Booth turns to go upstairs, but Sweets keeps talking.
“I thought I could…” Sweets mumbles. “I miss my mom. Everything’s, just…” He makes a noise halfway between a whine and a sob.
Something in him aches intangibly. “You’re drunk,” Booth tells him gently. “Just go to sleep. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sweets agrees quietly, and is silent. On the whim of an instinct he can’t place, Booth touches his hand to Sweets’ dark curls, and gently ruffles his hair.
-
Sweets remains fast asleep until almost noon.
He lies sprawled across their couch, in a position that can’t possibly be comfortable. His back is going to be very sore. Maybe Booth should’ve taken him to Parker’s room, although actually dragging him up the stairs would have been a whole other nightmare.
Booth hears a groan from the couch, and then sees Sweets’ head pop up. He’s wincing at the sunlight in his eyes. Booth walks over and pulls the curtain shut.
“Thanks,” Sweets mumbles. “... Why am I in your house?”
“You got drunk and you called me to pick you up.”
“Oh.” Sweets digs one of his knuckles into his temple, squeezing his eyes shut. “Thank you.”
Booth hands him a plate with three pieces of bacon on it. Sweets picks at them halfheartedly, before setting it down on the coffee table. Probably still nauseous. Poor kid.
“Booth?”
“Yeah?”
“Why didn’t… why didn’t you take me back to my place?”
He debates how to answer this. It’s probably best to just be honest. “I was under the impression that you and Daisy were having some problems.”
“No, we’re not,” Sweets denies. “Everything’s fine - what - what did I say?”
“That you weren’t in love with her.”
Sweets’ face - already pale and kind of sweaty - goes a shade lighter. He’s still for about thirty seconds, and then drops his head into his hands, pressing the heels into his eyes. He doesn’t respond.
Oh, this is so above Booth’s pay grade.
Cautiously, he sits down next to Sweets on the couch. Sweets’ breaths are a carefully measured four seconds long.
“What happened?” Booth asks. “Was - did you have a fight?”
“No.”
“Was she cheating on you?” Booth guesses. “You weren’t cheating on her, were you?” He starts running through possibilities in his head - falling out of love, sexuality crisis, maybe - when he first met Sweets, he did think he looked kind of gay -
“ No, ” Sweets nearly cries. “No, no. I - I would never. ” Sweets lifts his head, crossing his arms in a sort of self-hug. He won’t look at Booth. “Nothing happened, I don’t - I don’t know if I was ever in love with her, or - or anyone -”
Sweets cuts himself off with a shake of his head, and Booth seriously regrets all the times he’s brushed him off to get on with a case, all the times Sweets tried to share details about his life with Booth the way Booth does with everyone else, and Booth shoved a stack of paperwork into his arms and walked away.
Sweets is staring at the blank TV screen and starting to hyperventilate.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Booth interrupts. “Hey, breathe, okay? Talk to me.”
Sweets glances up at him, looks him in the eyes, unsure. Trying to get a read on him. Booth raises his eyebrows in a go on gesture.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Sweets says after a moment, his voice fragile. “My head is killing me.”
It’s strangely heartbreaking. He’s still not exactly sure why Sweets is freaking out, but he’s feeling like he needs to make it stop as soon as possible.
Calming down Sweets is pretty different than calming down Parker or Christine, though. He’s kind of curious, though, what Sweets’ reaction would be if he offered to take him out for ice cream or buy him a Lego set.
Booth hesitates for a moment, before scooting closer, and wrapping his arms around Sweets’ torso.
Sweets inhales sharply, almost a sob, but not quite.
“You shouldn’t hug me,” he says, his voice cracking a little. “I probably smell really gross.”
“Yeah, you kinda do,” Booth agrees, mostly to lighten the mood but also because it’s true, and Sweets laughs brokenly.
Sweets’ breathing is slightly labored, like he’s in pain, and then Booth remembers that he probably is.
“Go take a shower, okay?” Booth tells him. “You’re hungover and exhausted. I’ll grab you some aspirin and a change of clothes. We’ll worry about it after that.”
Sweets hums assent and pulls away.
-
An hour later, Booth finds him on the couch again, staring into empty space. The F.B.I. sweatshirt Sweets is wearing is big on Booth, but Sweets is practically drowning in it. Booth can see the tips of the scars on his shoulders poking out from underneath the oversized neckline.
Sweets doesn’t look at Booth when he sits down. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he repeats quietly.
“There’s nothing wrong with you. People fall out of love all the time. You’re a psychologist, you know that.”
Sweets shakes his head. “No, it’s - I don’t think I was ever in love with her, Booth. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with anyone. ” He fixes his eyes on the coffee table. “I do love her. But it’s - it’s like there’s something else that’s supposed to be there, something that’s missing."
“What do you mean?”
Sweets chews on his lip. “I don’t like having sex,” he says bluntly. “With her, or… or anyone, really. Like I can’t - I can’t make myself want it. And I get - I get uncomfortable when she’s all lovey-dovey with me. Like, you saw me at that party, the surprise party we threw for you and Brennan, and she said something about us having kids, and I realized I don’t want to do that even though I should want to , but she does, and I don’t want to just say no to her.” The rest of it rushes out in one breath, and Booth is surprised his face isn’t turning blue.
“Sweets, you’re allowed to say no to people. You have to, sometimes.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he groans. “I think she’s just started to believe that I want whatever she wants.”
“I mean, have you ever told her otherwise?” Booth points out.
“I’ve tried!” Sweets cries. “I - okay, there was this one time she was trying to get me to have sex with her in Brennan’s office -”
“ What? ” Booth snaps.
“ I know, I told her no, the walls are glass, and I wasn’t in the mood, and she -”
He breaks eye contact, staring at the carpet and fiddling with the cuff of his sweatshirt anxiously. “She just started kissing me, so… so I agreed.”
Booth whistles. “Do not tell Bones that. She will be pissed at you.”
“Well, it didn’t get that far, she - Daisy, she thought of something, about the case, and left, and then Cam found me sitting on the floor with my tie undone,” Sweets continues, and it sends an odd chill through him. Sweets, on the floor, disheveled and alone.
“You realize that’s basically assault, right?”
“What? No!” Sweets protests. “Daisy wouldn’t - she knew I’d agree.”
“That’s still not…” Booth sighs. “You need to make your boundaries clearer.”
“I should want -” Sweets pauses, does that face that Booth has come to realize means he’s thinking about something, pressing his tongue to the inside of his cheek. It’s kind of cute in a small-puppy sort of way. “I mean, ever since I was little, I’ve always - you know, dreamed of getting married, starting a family, white picket fence, all that, and it - it seems like my life should be perfect now, but it’s not, and it’s kind of falling apart, and it’s mostly my fault -”
“Sweets, you need to talk to her,” Booth interrupts before he can spiral any further.
“Are you kidding? She’ll kill me.”
“If you end up marrying her, and you’re not in love with her, she’ll know.”
“You’d think she’d know by now,” Sweets says miserably.
“She’ll know eventually. Trust me, okay, women always know sooner or later.”
Sweets gives him a serious look, and Booth fully expects him to start spouting some kind of shrink-y nonsense at him about no one can read minds and that’s not how relationships work, but he doesn’t.
“Booth, I was abused,” Sweets points out, which feels like a stab in the chest even though Booth already knows that, can see the scars on him right now, even. “I know how to hide what I’m feeling,” he adds, more quietly, and the knife twists.
“Maybe, but you can’t possibly tell me you want to do that for the rest of your life.”
Sweets’ throat bobs, and he buries his face in his hands. “No, I don’t,” he mutters. “I hate the whole - dating people. I thought Daisy might be different.”
“What do you mean, ‘the whole dating people?’”
“It’s stupid! ” Sweets fumes, misery partially forgotten. “It’s - okay, say you meet a stranger who looks pretty at a bar or something, right? Let’s go have dinner for an hour to see if we want to enter a relationship with the intention to spend the rest of our lives together! What could possibly go wrong with that model?"
“I’ve always found it works fine, personally,” Booth contributes.
Sweets crosses his arms. “It’s so stressful, for no good reason, and so many people get hurt because of it. People have gotten murdered, Booth . I’ve investigated those murders.”
Booth shrugs.
“You and Brennan were already going to spend the rest of your lives together, romantically or platonically, with or without a child,” Sweets says. “Even if you ended up in a relationship with someone else. So it makes sense for you to be together.”
“You’re weirdly critical of romance, for a psychologist.”
“Just because I understand the concept theoretically doesn’t mean I think it makes any sense,” Sweets grumbles.
“Touche,” Booth mutters. “You don’t have to date people, you know. Most people do it because they actually like, y’know, being in a relationship.”
“I know,” Sweets replies. “I just… I always thought…”
He trails off, and doesn’t say anything else. Booth hears a sniffle.
If Bones were here, he thinks she’d probably say something about historical tribes where people never married, and it probably wouldn’t help. Booth almost moves to give him a friendly hit on the arm, but then remembers how badly Sweets flinched the last time he’d done that without warning, so he settles for placing a hand on his back, careful not to touch the scars.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Sweets mumbles.
Booth winces. “I know I’m - I’m kind of a bit of a jerk, sometimes -”
“A lot of a jerk,” Sweets corrects. Booth laughs.
“Okay, a lot of a jerk,” Booth acquiesces, because Sweets is kind of right. “But, you’re - you’re family, Sweets, and I do care about you.” More than you probably know, he thinks. Definitely a lot more than anyone who sees us at work thinks.
“Oh,” Sweets says quietly. He blinks a few times, looking at a loss for words. A hand comes up to rub at his eyes.
Booth hugs him again. Sweets’ shoulders shake slightly.
“I am so tired,” Sweets mumbles into his shoulder after a few minutes.
“Then rest,” Booth replies. “It’s Sunday, you don’t have work.”
“... okay.”
He doesn’t move, just stays there with his face buried in Booth’s shoulder. He realizes Sweets doesn’t intend to get up. He feels too bad to shove him off.
“Yeah, alright,” Booth sighs, and reaches for the TV remote. Sweets is dead to the world within fifteen minutes. He doesn’t even snore.
-
“Booth told me you’ve broken up with Daisy,” Bones states diplomatically over lunch at the diner.
Before either Booth or Sweets can respond, Angela gasps. “ What? No way, what happened? I thought you two were solid.”
Sweets shrugs. Angela’s eyes widen even further.
Bones clears her throat. “Everyone experiences different levels of romantic and sexual attraction. A sizeable portion of the population experiences little to none. You are not particularly remarkable in that regard, Dr. Sweets.”
Booth marvels for the thousandth time at her talent for making innocuous sentiments sound like insults.
“Thank you,” Sweets says, seeming to understand.
“You’re welcome,” Bones replies politely, and returns her attention to her veggie burger.