Author's Note: This is a one-shot...for right now. A few people over at livejournal have already asked me if there's going to be another part, and I'm thinking about it. Let me know what you think.
As well, a HUGE thank-you to my beta: laeliamouse would I have done without you?
She's difficult and drives him crazy. The way everything has to be calculated and measured and a conclusion drawn before she makes another move; how everything needs to be logical in such an illogical world. A world where humans are the variables and emotions can't be calculated and put into a formula. Now she's got him thinking like her. Great. Just great.
He catches up to her, he's got a new case and already he can see her calculating. He smiles to himself. She'll never change, and he's realizing that he doesn't want her to. Even though he might not understand what she's saying half the time, he's starting to understand what she's saying when she's not talking, when she's filling the air with her long words and complicated syllables.
They spend the day together, eat supper together most nights, drink coffee on a constant basis. He knows his way around her place, and she can tell him where he hides his stash of junk food for when Parker comes over.
He's realizing a lot and doesn't know what it all means. Angela keeps smiling a secret smile whenever he and Bones are together, the kiss under the mistletoe, how he didn't want it to end, not so soon. How he's realizing that this is the first time he hasn't done anything to show a woman he's interested. Ever. And that scares him.
It's because she's not like any other woman he's ever known. And this time it's not an understatement. It's like Angela and Hodgins, unexpected. Things just take time.
Angela pulls him over one day and gives him that look, and she doesn't have to add any words to it-- he understands it very well–but she does anyways, because with guys you can never tell. He has to laugh.
Bones is exhausted and hasn't been home in over forty eight hours, but still puts up an argument. He gives her raised eyebrows and tells her she's starting to smell. She knows he's right.
They play music in his car. Classical, and that surprises him. He turns to ask her why but she's already asleep. He chuckles and signals for his street. He knows that as soon as she wakes up, she'll kill him, take his body to the lab and say it was self defense of some sort or another.
He wakes up the next morning and she's breathing evenly next to him, her hair spread across his chest, hand curled ever-so-slightly. His hand is curled around her back, the other resting on hers.
He smiles and thinks back to the talk that Angela gave him, and he realizes she was right: it does feel right because it IS right. Knowing that her waking up in his bed is going to be difficult enough for her, he slowly and regretfully untangles himself from the swirl of sheets and legs and smiles when she lets out a small sound of disappointment.
That's when he promises himself something, standing in the middle of his room, sunlight filtering in, sweat pants climbing his legs with Bones in his bed.
He promises himself that he'll find a way. Find a way to show her what they can be, to show her what they already are.
Deciding to get out of the room before he dives back into bed and into her arms, he exits the room, knowing he'll have about fifteen minutes before his body is dragged into the lab. Just enough time to try to explain to himself this crazy things he's doing.