So, I rewatched Man in the Morgue last night while the rest of you watched Critic in the Cabernet. Yes, I do hate not having FOX. It's evil. This morning I was bored and I wrote this short little one-shot of Booth's thoughts while they were at the restaurant. Hope you enjoy :)

I don't own Bones. :(

"Why are you nice to me?" she asked curiously, shaking her head in wonder and smiling a bit as though in some sort of confused disbelief.

God, she always asked the most incredible questions. And he always had trouble answering her in a way that she could understand. A way that wouldn't freak her out.

Why was he nice to her? Because underneath that shell of hers, behind those walls, was a woman who cared so much that is she showed it at all she was terrified it would leave her alone and unprotected.

She was, hidden behind the science, someone who was lost. Who'd been abandoned more than once and distrusted people now in general.

But she was strong. She stood up against what she didn't agree with and she never conceded without a rational reason. She worked so hard to do what was right, and she struggled, sometimes almost helplessly, to understand things that were beyond her.

He could see the hurt in her eyes whenever she related to a victim... whenever a case reached her emotionally.

She'd been through so much. She suffered more than she let show. But yet, here she was, working to help the world and other people. She'd wanted to come into the field to expand, to understand further, to help on another level, and he'd shown her what it was like.

She'd changed him as a person, too. He'd never told her, but she had made him see the world in a different way. And he watched her work now with fascination rather than contempt. And... he got a strange sense of pride whenever she succeeded, either at stopping a suspect, finding what they needed in the bones, or, most importantly, when she talked to someone and let them in on her emotions for their benefit. Without thinking of herself for a even a moment.

She was changing as a person as well, and it gave him a form of... joy, seeing her smile at him or listening as she shared something personal without any prompting. Simply because she trusted him enough to let him in.

It hurt, too, to see any pain in her eyes. And seeing her now, those injuries and that cast on her wrist... it made him wish he could just make it all better... made him want to protect her all the more from anything that wished her even the slightest bit of harm, physical or emotional.

He'd almost lost her, more than once, and that idea of her just suddenly gone from his life, pulled away in an instant because he wasn't fast enough, because he didn't protect her as well as he could have...

It was incomprehensible.

So... why was he nice to her..?

Because he cared about her. Because he more than cared.

His expression softened as he looked back at her beautiful blue eyes that were still watching him intently, waiting for his response.

Her smile was so gorgeous, too.

"Because they think they get away with it," he spoke up at last, giving her the logical reason that would make the best sense to her.

I was true, what he went on to tell her about how she made murderers unsafe and put them where they belonged. It just wasn't as true as what he'd been thinking about.

Maybe he'd tell her someday... give her all the reasons why she was so amazing, why he cared, why he was nice to her...

Why he loved her.