[No spoilers - I envision this somewhere around "Santa in the Slush", definitely pre-writer's strike]
Inspired by the prompt: Bones, Booth + Brennan, they really, definitely aren't in love. Everyone else is misreading the signs.
(from comment_fic LJ)
Everyone thinks we're in love. That might just be easier.
No, what we share isn't love.
Certainly, the rumors are fueled by the fact that where there is trust, things like passing lust is allowed to flare up. Sure, I get a thrill of sexual excitement when he displays acts of male aggression. And he gets antsy whenever I wear a blouse, left open just a button too far. It's biological. But we both know that we're both armed with the kind of weapons that Kevlar cannot stop, so it never goes beyond that.
Sometimes, his emotional nature gets the better of him. He romanticizes our confidences, wonders what if… I blame that single drunken kiss from our first case. Before we both knew better. But in the end, he always comes back to knowing that I'm never going to appreciate the flowers and rings and the other trappings of love that he so deeply values, usually when I step on some sentimental gesture, unknowingly wounding him.
Sometimes, I forget that he's not a fully rational person. I'm certain that he'd be damned good in bed and his muscular form and symmetrical features have a way of setting off my libido that makes me want to spend some time enjoying it. But then he'd get that wistful, sappy look on his face, ready to pronounce his undying love, propose marriage and fantasize about little children, and I know better. He would make a night of mutual sexual gratification into way more than what it was.
And those things, they keep us apart. But it's the secrets that lead us back together, back to trust.
He knows about my childhood. The parts that have nothing to do with my parents and everything to do with the reason that no one ever gets the real story of what happened after Russ left me. He had to unseal the records, had to appear in my apartment. He forced me to de-compartmentalize memories that I hadn't let loose since they'd been formed. He likes to fix things and he thought he was going to heal me that night. Instead, he learned that I have a high tolerance for liquor and that I do know how to cry.
I have met the addict he tries to hide – up close and personal. His eyes had seemed blank when I'd found him that night in Vegas. He'd been about to lay down a bet he would never come back from, but I dragged him out. Heels and tight little dress be damned. Rage had flared up as I shoved him in the hotel room, but all it took was a picture of his son to deflate it. No matter how many times I've tried to convince him that it's a disease, something that he shouldn't be ashamed of, where this is concerned, he is completely irrational. Well, more irrational than he usually is.
There's something about knowing these secrets that lie that deep – that even those who know us best wouldn't dare ask about – that makes us seem closer. There have been other secrets too, other acts which have earned us each the right to invade personal space, both physically and metaphorically. We're both vigilantly defensive, even secretive in our own ways, so when the people around us see these little invasions, they can't help but wonder. So when we protect each others' secrets, it only fuels their suspicions, but even that is just part of keeping ourselves safe, part of rebuilding the trust that cracks just a bit each time our opposite natures inadvertently leave behind little scars.
At times it's grueling, the push and shove between trust and recoiling. But we're both moral people, with mutual goals, even if they are professional, who don't trust easily. And we're equally reluctant to abandon what we've found together – Trust that is both rational and emotional, equally impossible for either of us to deny.
So, no, we're not in love. It's far more complicated.