Until the last few minutes of The Sum in the Parts of the Whole, when Brennan breaks Booth's heart by "protecting" him from herself, I adore the episode. I had it on late last night while I was cleaning up and a line struck me in a way it never has before. It's a throw away line, pretty much, but interesting nonetheless.

"Booth had a gambling problem before he met me."

Oh, really, Dr. Brennan? But after you, not so much, eh?

So this is what you get from that. One-shot.

Gambler

"Booth had a gambling problem before he met me."

Agent Seeley Booth knew what his partner meant. That before he met her he was struggling with a gambling addiction. Even now he claimed to have been getting it under control when he met her. The truth was, he got it under control because he met her. What she didn't know, may never know, is that it stopped, forever, the night he kissed her in the rain.

Back then he wouldn't admit to anyone what made him stop. He just said it was time. He would have denied left and right it had anything to do with Temperance Brennan.

But the truth was that a rejection like that from any other woman, the promise of sex, the hint of something more and then taking it back, leaving him standing there like an abandoned puppy, would have sent him running into the pool hall. Only with her, it didn't.

He'd thought she was hot, no doubt. Punching that judge was just about the hottest thing he'd ever seen. But aside from that, she was gorgeous, brilliant, fun and mysterious in a good way. A bad poet would say she'd touched his heart. A better description was that she had grabbed onto his soul.

He'd told her he'd thought maybe things with them were going somewhere and it wasn't a line. Standing in the rain, nearly nose to nose, something had come over him.

He'd first felt it the first time he saw her. It was like his whole body was buzzing, his brain was screaming and his heart was pounding in his ears.

Then, under the tiny overhang in front of the bar, a little drunk from the alcohol, but mostly drunk on her, he'd known.

She was it.

He'd always been a romantic. Both his brother and Rebecca had chided him in the past for believing so strongly that feelings were the answer to everything. Sometimes, they said, feelings got in the way. You have to be practical, rational, like this woman in front of him now. The one he wanted to kiss.

But he didn't listen to them. He could be practical when he wanted to be, but he didn't want to be at that moment. He was far too lost in this woman to think about the advice of past lovers or a jealous brother. He wanted her in every sense of the word and could feel with every fiber of his being that she was the woman he was meant to be with.

She was a woman of science, but moreover a woman of principles and truths. And what was that they said? The first step to treating a problem is admitting you have one. If this was as real as he felt, then he had to start with truths.

"I have a gambling problem. But I'm working on it." It wasn't a lie at all. At that moment, with those words, he'd begun working on it.

"Why did you feel you had to tell me that?"

"I don't know. I just feel like, um, this is going somewhere."

"Why do you feel like this is going somewhere?"

"I don't know." But he did. Instead of that he offered "I just feel like I'm going to kiss you."

She beat him to it. He was so ready, but she leaned in just a little farther than he did, taking control.

He had never, ever, kissed or been kissed like that. Not before that, and certainly not since. He felt his heart surge into his throat and then down into his toes, finally settling a with a giddy feeling back in his chest. He felt his future.

That kiss verified everything for him.

She was the one.

"Wow" was all he'd been able to manage.

And then she'd left him standing in the rain. She changed her mind. Now, after spending years with her, he suspected it was because she may have felt their connection too and that frightened her into going home alone.

So he went home alone as well. Other days, other women, he would have gambled.

She was worth more than that.

And that was the day he became a recovering gambling addict. For her. He had to be a better man if he ever wanted a chance with her.

They'd fought nastily, said mean things. He was withdrawing from gambling and bitter that she had dangled herself in front of him, this beautiful relationship he could imagine and then yanked it away, left him alone. She struck him, furious, claiming she would never work with him again, that he was a bully, when chances were she was more afraid of what she'd felt than of him.

Of course, she didn't know any of this. Not really. But it made it no less true.

"Booth had a gambling problem before he met me."

And when he met her, he'd been given a solution. An answer. A reason. A remedy. An antidote. A cure. A second chance to be better.

A better agent.

A better father.

A better man.

Yes, the man he was was because of her and he would spend his life thanking her, even if that meant nothing more than guy hugs and partner things and stolen fries and late night take out and slightly invaded personal spaces.

Because one gamble he would never take was that he could live a life without her.

He already knew that he couldn't.

~end~

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