Discovery

Chapter 46

Special Agent Seeley Booth woke with a start. He looked at the clock on the bedside table and groaned. It was only seven o'clock in the morning, far too early considering he hadn't been able to get to asleep until well past four o'clock in the morning. He rolled over, looking to see if Parker was still asleep, but he felt his heart jump into his throat when he saw that the little boy wasn't there. Booth sat bolt upright, unconsciously looking to see if the window was still shut, despite Willow reassuring him that vampires couldn't enter a house without a verbal invitation. The window, however, was shut and Booth got out of bed, pulling on some clothes on top of the shorts and FBI t-shirt he had slept in. Stepping out of the bedroom, Booth looked up and down the corridor for signs of Parker or that anyone else was awake.

Following his gut instinct and remembering the night of the storm back in D.C the first time Willow visited, Booth walked down the passageway towards Willow's room. He cracked the door of Willow's bedroom open, tapping lightly on it. Upon getting no response, Booth poked his head into the room, smiling when he saw Parker, curled up against Willow, both of them sound asleep.

Satisfied that both of his children were safe and sound, Booth headed downstairs, ready to make up a pot of coffee. He knew what the squints were like when they had not had enough sleep and he knew it was best practice to have coffee on hand to calm any grumpy scientists.

Booth glanced into the living room on his way to the kitchen. Sweets was sound asleep, snoring quietly on the couch, but Zach was sitting up on his air mattress, his legs drawn up to his chest and his chin resting on top of his knees thoughtfully. The youngest squint's gaze was far away and distant and Booth knew that Zach had slept even less than Booth had.

"Zach," Booth said in a soft voice, "I'm making some coffee. Do you want some?" Zach startled violently at the sound of Booth's voice, obviously having not realized Booth was there.

"No, thank you, Agent Booth," he politely declined. "I find that coffee tends to make me think and I don't believe that would prove advantageous for me at the present moment, considering what we saw yesterday."

Booth nodded. He should have known Zach would be jumpy after the previous day. Zach was still getting over his stabbing from the previous year emotionally... Booth was certain that Zach had a minor case of PTSD and seeing the violence at Willow's high school graduation, watching a battle from the sidelines was bound to have brought on some less than pleasant thoughts and memories of Zach's time in Iraq.

Booth would know, his sleep had been plagued by nightmares of Willow's and Parker's dead bodies, marked with vampire bites to the neck, pale and cold. Booth knew that he woke up another time and his face and the pillow had been moist with tears, as if he had been crying in his sleep.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Booth asked Zach. Zach hesitated before working his way out of the cocoon he had made himself out of his bedding and trotting around Sweets, who was still sleeping, and followed Booth into the kitchen.

"So... did you have nightmares as well?" Booth asked, getting straight to the point as he started making the coffee.

Zach paused. "No... I don't think I slept, but I still imagined several things that were very frightening and nightmarish. I think that, had I fallen asleep, I almost certainly would have had nightmares," he replied honestly. Booth nodded in understanding. From the occasions when the squints had slept at the lab over the last year, Booth knew that Zach often cried out in his sleep and suffered badly from nightmares.

"Yeah, I must admit, I didn't sleep overly well either," Booth admitted, deciding that he would try and help Zach. Over the past year, they had gotten to know each other better and now Booth had a greater degree of respect for the younger squint.