Title: I Don't Know How

Author: Not An Infant

Rating: K+

Summary: In the end, I was responsible for what we had become.

Disclaimer: I own Bones just like I own America.

A/N: As I know you're all trying to find me so you can kill me with your bare hands for taking such a long hiatus, I've cleverly gone into the Witness Protection Program for lazy-a** authors, so you can't find me! HAHA! But seriously, I needed to take a long break and figure out how to come up with the best story to get back some of my readers who were mad as hell at me for adding in Twilight. I didn't realize so many people were annoyed by it. I should have made myself clear: the only reason I made TWO chapters of Twilight-related romance is because after the first one, everybody was telling me how much they HATED jacob! I felt like I HAD to balance it out with an edward-lover (Booth). But there will be NO MORE Twilight references! That I swear to you.

But for now, this one-shot comes from the 100th episode DISASTER, and it brought me out of my funk with Alaska. Thank you to all of those who haven't put me on their hit list--this one's for all of you!

I Don't Know How

"I gotta move on. You know, I gotta find someone who's gonna love me in thirty years of forty or fifty."

In the end, I was responsible for what we had become. I had been the first to break away from our friendliness, the first to start a chain of dislike that escalated out of control.

"I've moved on."

Just like that, things between us changed. In my defense, I was hungover and unhappy about being unceremoniously dumped from a case that I was actually beginning to enjoy. But I shouldn't have taken it out on Booth, because I know it wasn't his fault that he had to fire me. At the time, I had no idea it was against the law to punch anyone in the nose twice.

But still, what's happened had happened, and things went the way they went, and now he is standing in front of me, telling me that he wants us to take a shot after five years of establishing a friendship based on our intelligence and desire to rid the world of evil. He wants us to bring back what was lost to us that rainy evening outside the bar so long ago.

"I'm the gambler. I believe in giving this a chance. Look, I wanna give this a shot."

This is actually the first time he's asked me for something. It makes me feel like I have to pay him back for all the years he's been protecting me. I never asked him to protect me all those years. I feel a bit defensive; he first tells me that there is a line between workers that we cannot cross, and now he is asking me to take the fatal step over the line (metaphorically) with him.

If he has learned anything about me in the last five years we've known each other, it is that I am not programmed to go with my gut.

I think with my head, and my head says that he deserves someone who he can still love in thirty years. Someone who can give him children and a big house with a dog and a golden ring and still be lovable over the course of those thirty years. And there may be no reason we cannot be a couple right now, when we are young and uninterested in having children NOW, but in time, when there is nothing left for us to do for the world, when it's time for us to do for ourselves, I won't be able to give him what he's waited so long for.

So I muddle my real feelings with scientific jargon in the hopes that it will speed him out of the idea, but he keeps pushing until I break.

"I'm not a gambler. I'm a scientist. I can't change. I don't know how."

We have always seemed compatible as friends and colleagues, but when you come down to it, the bare bone of the problem, that's all there is. He is a gambler, and I am a scientist. He can move forward. I have to stay where I am. Forever.

I shouldn't have asked if we could still work together. I should've just left him alone. I hurt the people I love, just like my parents.

And now we're walking awkwardly together, away from the building, while he's pulling himself together and I'm wondering if I said the right thing, or if we will ever be the same again.

In retrospect, I should have said that I loved him more than anything, and that was why I was doing this, because when you love someone enough, you'll let them go.

A/N: After this, I'm not watching Bones anymore. I am being constantly disappointed, and this was the last straw. Until they get together, I'm not doing this anymore. Sorry I waited till the end of the story to tell you, but I wanted you to read this one. :(