#sarah booth | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

a-small-batch-of-dragons · 1 year ago

Text

lies are only as good as the person telling them (and you’ve never claimed to be) part 4

Read on Ao3 Masterlist

Pairings: bishops/nolan booth

Warnings: gunshot wound

Word Count: 3089

Nolan gets shot, the Bishops have to deal with their feelings.

"Drive," Sarah orders, pressing her hands hard to Booth's side. John pulls the car around and the tires squeal as more gunshots ricochet off the back bumper. She grits her teeth and presses harder, willing the blood to stay inside Booth's body. "Stay awake, do you understand?"

"I understand that you're currently fighting with my ribs, yeah." Booth yowls like a cat as she pushes down harder. "Hey, hey! Take it easy, I bruise like a peach."

"You're not sweet enough to be a peach," she mutters, too caught up in the fact that Booth is bleeding out from a bullet he took from her to worry about the words coming out of her mouth, not when he's rapidly losing color in his cheeks. "Just stay awake."

Even with his paling face, he still manages to make an offended pout. "I'm plenty sweet enough! I even have the rock-hard pit in my—okay, okay, ow, ow!"

"Do you ever stop talking?"

"Not when I'm awake."

"Keep him talking," John barks from the front seat, "as long as there's bullshit coming out of his mouth, we know he's not about to die."

"Aw, you do love me."

She hears the hitch in John's breath better than Booth does, she's sure, and she doesn't imagine the way John leans into the curves of the road a little more, trying to get them through the next mile before Booth ends up bleeding to death all over the back seat. She grits her teeth again and pushes even harder. Booth winces, his expression contorting in pain, but he doesn't say anything else.

"What were you thinking?" Sarah hisses, shifting her grip as the car swerves around a turn.

"I was thinking that I'd rather not see you get shot right in front of me," Booth grits out, "that's what I was thinking."

"That was reckless of you."

Booth huffs a wet laugh. "What, making sure you don't get shot? You're welcome, by the way, and yeah, maybe not my finest moment, but you tell me how polished and suave you'd be if you saw someone pointing a gun at your partner."

Sarah's hands stutter and her gaze snaps up to Booth's. Booth isn't looking away, isn't biting his lip, doesn't look like he regrets what he said at all. No, it's far worse than that; despite Sarah's best efforts, his eyes are dropping lower and lower. His breathing is slowing under her hands and in a panic that she will deny later because Sarah Black does not panic, she presses down hard enough that she can feel something under her give.

But it works. Booth's eyes snap open again and he stares at her.

"Stay awake," she orders and it comes out more like a plea, "just stay awake until we can get you someplace safe."

The corner of his mouth tugs up the smallest bit and she hates how much she hates the fact that it looks like such a pale imitation of his normal smirk. "The Bishop has a heart after all, how touching."

"You're one to talk," she scoffs if only to cover up her relief that he's talking again, "you just took a bullet for me."

"Which I still can't tell if you're happy I did or not." He coughs once, twice, as the car swerves around yet another turn. "I'd ask if it'd kill you to say thank you, but I think I know the answer already, so—"

"Thank you."

Booth stops. His mouth drops open. "Okay, I definitely must be dying because I could've sworn you just said 'thank you,' and I—"

"You are not dying," she says firmly, as blood covers her hands, "and I did say thank you."

He goes to say something else—I'm sure it was excellent, Nolan, don't worry—but then he's coughing again and the wound under her hands gushes. She pushes harder and gets him to lie down in the backseat, climbing on top of him and using her full weight to press down on the bullet wound.

"Whoa," he mumbles, half-dazed, half-confused, "if this was all it took to get you on top of me, then…"

He trails off before he can finish his sentence and despite everything, she smiles. "If it's what you wanted, you could've just asked."

"Nah…you'd keep it from me," comes his reply, voice beginning to slur, "you're…you're so clever…you'd make—make me work for it…"

"Booth? Booth!"

"'S okay," he mumbles, eyes starting to droop again, "jus' a…jus' a minor s'tback, see? 'S not…'s none of my b'sness anyway…"

"Stay awake," she pleads again, pushing down as hard as she can as John curses and swerves again, "stay awake Nolan, you need to keep your eyes open. Just look at me, alright? Can you do that?"

Nolan's eyes blink open slowly and a slow smile manages to make its way onto his face. The soft sort of smile you see when the person isn't thinking about it, the one you can't really feel until someone points it out. Nolan is giving her that sort of smile now, as she presses down on the wound that should have been hers, as John drives them through the streets of Paris. Nolan just looks up at her, and he smiles, and how could she ever have believed him capable of the same sort of cruelty she was?

"There," she hears herself say as his breathing grows raspier and raspier, "it's okay, Nolan, you're going to be alright. We're going to get you someplace safe and fix you up, right? Then you'll be quipping and annoying us just like you always do, alright?"

"Tha's me," he slurs, "pain in the ass."

John's hysterical chuckle mixes with hers as Nolan grins with dopey pride. Something terribly sad occurs to her then as she has to adjust to keep her balance.

Is this all he expects from them? Just the occasional bone thrown to the world's most annoying dog? Does he think that's all he is to them?

Too late does she realize that in her moment of distraction, Nolan's eyes have fully closed.

"Booth? Booth!" She pushes down harder. "Nolan!"

***

"In here," John says, rushing to the bedroom and laying the too-limp form of Nolan Booth on top of the sheets, "grab the kit from the bathroom."

Sarah is off the next moment, her shoes clicking across the floor as John rips open Nolan's shirt and throws his own jacket to the side. He curses—the bullet's already gone through and through, which is why Sarah was having such a hard time keeping all the blood inside him in the car, and why he's still losing color.

"Here," comes Sarah's voice and he rips the kit open immediately, "I'll get everything else."

He barely has time to shoot a thanks or even an acknowledgment over his shoulder as he gets to work. Nolan will not die on their watch, they won't let him. He's a goddamn stubborn son of a bitch but they're more stubborn than he is put together, and they're sure as hell not gonna let him slip away.

"You think you can just tap out now and make us do the rest of the work?" he finds himself muttering as he works over the limp body. "Not a chance in hell. This whole thing was your idea to begin with, so you're damn well gonna stick around until it's done, you hear me?"

Nolan doesn't say a word, and John curses the part of him that ever wanted to shut Nolan up for good. He doesn't want that, he bargains with the universe, he wants the Nolan that pokes and prods at them all the time like it's his goddamn job. He wants the quips and the jokes and the innuendoes that perfectly walk the line between funny and too crass. He wants the asshole that's unfairly good at singing on key while he works on the blueprints or the lockpicking kits. He wants the dipshit who went right up to the people who betrayed them, double-crossed them right back, and then invited them to work with him on the biggest score they could ever remember.

He wants Nolan Booth, damnit, and if this bullet takes him from them before they've even gotten a chance, he's gonna march right down to whatever pit in hell they decide to stick his soul and drag him back to the land of the living.

"Come back here, you prick," he mutters as he gently cleans away the worst of the blood so he can see what he's doing, "you're not getting away from us that easily."

Sarah's hands join his and together, they patch the worst of the bleeding before Nolan can bleed out. He lifts him carefully in his arms as Sarah ruthlessly strips the sheets from the bed, tossing the mattress protector too for good measure. She remakes the bed with astonishing speed and strides to the bathroom to start getting the blood out. It's what she needs to do, he knows, pour her frustration at the situation into something so it doesn't blow up in their faces, but that doesn't make him move from his self-appointed vigil over the too-still Nolan.

Just watching his chest go up and down, up and down.

When night's fallen and Sarah's scrubbed the sheets within an inch of their lives, she comes to sit next to him. They don't say anything, just sitting silently as the moonlight spills across the bed. Nolan's hands are still bloody. He gets up and goes to the bathroom, getting a washcloth and running it under the warm water. He goes back to the bedroom and picks up one of Nolan's hands in his, tenderly cleaning the blood from his knuckles. When he's finished with the hand, he offers the washcloth to Sarah. She takes it and cleans his other hand as John keeps a hold of the one in his.

"I think he'd be a great dancer," Sarah murmurs after an eon, her eyes still on Nolan's knuckles.

"I think so too."

There's another moment of quiet.

"I think," Sarah says again, her voice even quieter, "if you asked him to dance, he would say yes."

John swallows around the lump in his throat. "Yeah?"

"You might have to ask a few times," and now Sarah's holding Nolan's hand too, the washcloth draped over the foot of the bed, "and he's probably going to say no at first."

"But you think if I show him I really want to dance," John finishes, "you think he'd say yes?"

"I do."

They look at each other across the too-quiet room.

"Are you—" he stops to clear his throat— "are you gonna ask him to dance too?"

She looks down at him, her fingers idly toying with the cuff of his sleeve. "I don't know if he wants to dance with me."

He huffs. "Didn't sound like that in the back seat."

"But that's who he is," she says back, "he makes the jokes and he takes the hits because it's expected of him."

"But he doesn't do things he doesn't believe in."

"You're biased," she says with the ghost of a smile.

"Of course I am," he says and she laughs, "but so is he. You two had a thing going way before he even knew about me."

"That was different."

"Is it?"

She looks at him, and she looks at Nolan, and she slowly lets out a long breath.

"He needs to wake up first," is her eventual concession, "and then…then it's going to take him a while before he's up to dancing."

"That's okay with me. Is it okay with you?"

She smiles and she looks like the Sarah Black he knows and loves again. "No one ever got anything worth having without having the right amount of patience."

See, he says silently to the sleeping Nolan Booth, we're waiting for you, you asshole, come wake up already.

***

When Nolan wakes up, he's very, very confused.

Because in the world he fell asleep in, he was very much the reluctantly dragged third wheel of the Bishops, who only teamed up with him because he blackmailed them into it. He was spat on and kicked around because he was an easy target and hey, he could give insults as good as he got. They kept him around because he was good, goddamnit, and he knows how to set up a good score. They needed him, and he needed them, and that was it. He took the hits because they couldn't hurt him in ways they hadn't already, and he took the good moments because he's a greedy bastard who doesn't know when to stop himself.

Including taking a bullet for the fucking Bishop.

Things got really hazy in the back seat, and not in the good, sexy way, but in the incredibly un-sexy blood loss way where he's not quite sure what happened, but he has vague memories of Sarah on top of him, telling him to stay awake, and saying thank you. He's not really sure what to make of those, nor what embarrassing things he ended up saying, but he's pretty sure that that world at least by and large makes sense.

The world he wakes up in, on the other hand…

Well, for starters, he blinks awake on a bed. Not a hospital bed, not a hotel bed, but an actual fucking bed. Hartley and the Bishop's bed, to be more specific, in that shitty little apartment on the outskirts of Paris. His mind would love to conjure up all the fun reasons why this could be happening, but then there's a blooming ache in his side and his head is pounding and the bed is cold, cold, cold.

Except it isn't, because there's a body like a fucking space heater right next to him, and he just manages to crane his neck to one side to realize it's Hartley. Actual, built-like-a-brick-shithouse Hartley, who blinks awake and smiles at him like he's something worth smiling at.

"Hey," he says, voice all soft and rough from sleep, "you feeling okay?"

Uh, no, he's pretty sure he's either died and gone to heaven or woken up in some parallel universe.

"Here," Hartley says, sitting up and reaching over him for the glass of water on the nightstand, "you're gonna be dehydrated, drink up."

Nolan goes to lift his hand when his body informs him that no, moving is not allowed right now, and a pained hiss escapes through his teeth before he can stop himself. Concern flickers openly across Hartley's face and he's sitting up more, turning and sliding a hand under Nolan's head to let him drink.

Water never tasted so good.

"That's enough for now," Hartley says when he's managed half the glass, "don't want you sick on top of the bullet."

Right. The bullet. The bullet he took for the Bishop. The Bishop—

"Hey, hey, hey," Hartley soothes as he starts to panic, one large hand pressing him down into the mattress, "shh, calm down. She's okay, she's just in the kitchen."

"Is he awake?"

"Yeah, he's up, he wants to see you."

"Don't—" he coughs through his dry throat— "don't put words in my mouth."

But then the Bishop actually comes around the corner and he can't stop the way he sags in relief at seeing her unharmed. She comes over to the bed, sitting down near his hand, and—and picking it up and putting it in her lap.

Uh, no, I definitely died and went somewhere else. What the fuck is happening?

Oh.

It's just part of their ploy, isn't it? To get him to—to—well, he doesn't know what the fuck else they want from him at this point. Shit, he just took a bullet for the Bishop and now he's completely and utterly at their mercy, what the fuck else could they want? It's not like he's in any position to stop them if they wanted to do something right now, they could just go and do the score and leave him here on this bed, in the apartment, all by himself, while they go and he's left alone, all alone—

"Hey, hey…"

"Shh…don't cry, Nolan."

"Look at me. Hey, Booth—Nolan, look at me."

There's a hand on the side of his face. The side of his face is wet. Why is the side of his face wet? Oh. One of them said don't cry. Is he crying?

"Do you need more painkillers?" There's still a hand on his face. "Sarah, can you—"

The hands on his start to pull away and he's clutching at them desperately before he can snap at himself to stop it. But it's too late, the Bishop is sitting back down and they're having a murmured conversation and then there's a cool hand on his face too.

"Don't worry," comes her voice, smooth and soft as fresh water, "we're not leaving, Nolan."

"You're stuck with us," Hartley agrees.

But—but—but that doesn't make sense. Nothing in this world makes sense and he wants to go back to the other one where at least things made sense, where things hurt but at least he knew when to expect it, not here where he has no idea what's going on and he just wants everything to go back to normal and then he won't be guessing, second-guessing, triple-guessing everything until they leave him again.

"Silly boy," the Bishop says fondly as tears drip like razorblades down his cheeks—there goes his resolve never to let them see how badly they hurt him— "did you think I would let you take a bullet for me and then let you leave without giving me a chance to pay it back?"

"I—I didn't—I didn't mean—"

"Shh," Hartley soothes, his big hand moving to card through Nolan's hair, "calm down, Nolan, it's okay. We can talk about this again when you wake up properly, just rest for now. You've worn yourself out."

"I'll wear you out," he mumbles back, more out of instinct than anything, and Hartley chuckles warmly.

"It's a promise, big guy."

Nothing makes sense right now, Nolan decides as that big hand lulls him right back to sleep, but if the Bishop is promising they're not going to leave him alone, and Hartley is laughing at his stupid jokes, he thinks that maybe he could figure out a way to make this world work.

Just for a little while.

#dragonbabbles #fic #red notice #nolan booth #the bishop #john hartley #sarah black

23 notes · View notes