Title: Five Ways Brennan Finally Admits She Loves Booth
Author: Xans
Fandom: Bones
Rating: All around PG, PG-13ish
Genres: Romance, mostly
Archive: Here, my lj… yada yada yada
Pairings: Booth/Brennan
Warnings: Mild angst?
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are borrowed shamelessly from the creator(s) with no intent to make profit—unless comments are now profit—or to claim as my own creations. In simpler terms: so not mine, however much I adore 'em.
Summary: From the Five Things meme, the title kinda explains it.
1.) Brennan was going to die. Oh, she'd thought that many times before, and at those times believed it to be true. There was no escaping this time, no rescue by her knight in FBI issue Kevlar body armour... Brennan was going to die and nothing and no one could save her. She saw death every day. Worked with death, day in and day out. Yet still Brennan had failed to see death working her. She'd seen the doctor, got the second opinion. Brennan sat in her apartment nursing a beer, and she fought tears as she tried again and again to think of a way to break this to Booth. It didn't matter so much how the other "squints" would react; it was his response she feared, the impact on Booth that she worried the most about. And Brennan finally admitted to herself why Booth was so important to her. She loved him.
2.) Her assistant Zack was fiddling, pretending to be setting up something for the lab to hide the fact he was eavesdropping. Hodgins openly watched like an avid fan at a tennis match. Angela was saying, "Sweetie, he's gonna be fine. You know he's done things like this before."
Brennan seethed. "It's different."
"Different how?" Hodgins asked skeptically.
"I love him!"
Zack dropped any pretense he was working and turned to stare with Angela and Hodgins. She stiffened defensively under their combined scrutiny.
"Well, I do," she said. "I--love--Special Agent Seeley Booth."
3.) Brennan never said she loved him, and refused to consider marrying Booth. She said she slept with Booth because it's an intense biological urge to copulate, particularly after they've been through a harrowing experience that threatened survival. She said they lived together because that it's expedient to share living quarters since they share so much else. Still, it slipped out one day, as Booth drove them to another crime scene. "I love you," and there was no taking it back. And Brennan realised then... that she didn't want to take it back.
4.) The poor man was heartbroken, informed by Booth that Brennan had identified his missing wife's remains. Booth took leave of the bereaved man to investigate for anything pertinent in the woman's possessions, leaving Brennan alone with him. He sat there, his head clasped in his hands and tears falling freely. "Mr. Stone, I'm terribly sorry for you loss," she said helplessly.
He paused to look up at her. "Do you have any idea what it's like?" Stone asked. ""Not knowing? Fearing--" he broke off. Brennan attempted to shape her expression to something sympathetic. People skills had never been her strong suit. "Have you ever been in love, Dr. Brennan?" the man asked suddenly.
Her eyes flicked in the direction the FBI agent had gone. She nodded, and Mr. Stone smiled in understanding.
5.) Christmas, she gave him a pendant of Saint Francis of Assisi: patron saint against solitary death. So he gave her the keys to his apartment.