Potential Energy

They sat in his car, both staring out the window with the air con blasting the heat away silently. Tangible quiet was torture for Temperance, who normally couldn't stop the flow of complicated words and facts and events and just complete, utter, nonsense - because secretly, she hated silences like the one that occurred at that moment, so awkward and full of potential.

Potential energy, possibly. Yes, energy. The energy to change and create and move. Only, real human people don't care for such things. They believe in fate.

Fate was a stupid excuse for not knowing which way things were going to turn.

But she rather liked the excuse, because it allowed for moments of pure weakness. Like when she had realized that Booth really wasn't a bad guy to fall in love with. That had been a weak moment. Temperance wondered how she had even survived that. But it had happened, and she was sure it wasn't anything too serious.

(Oh God, no she wasn't. But it was better to believe that, than to admit anything else.)

She had, of course, endured much worse than a simple silence. But sometimes, she didn't know what was worse: Life threatening situations, or actually feeling the space where words or actions should be.

She could be so full of shit sometimes.

Booth turned to her, opened his mouth, closed it, and then turned back to stare out the window again.

Fate was stupid.

He did it again, and again, until finally he mumbled "What should we do?"

What should we do? What kind of ridiculous question was that? What should we do?

Temperance had never, ever once said anything about her feelings of infatuation with him - because it was going to pass, like everything else. So why on earth was he asking such a silly question?

"We should drive," Brennan said, looking him squarely in the face. And drive he did.

For no good reason, he just powered up the car, reversed from the bay that over-looked the park, and just drove away. Maybe into the sunset, maybe away from it. It was somehow symbolic of their weird, complicated relationship.

Yes, they both liked each other, probably more than they should. And yes, there was a definite tension between them all the time. (So much, that everyone noticed.) But it wasn't sensible, or reasonable, to start something that could get way, way out of hand based on a little crush or apprehension.

Temperance could not, for the life of her, figure out why it was so important that they were both in his standard, FBI SUV, with the air con blasting away, just driving. It was some sort of psychological crap that Angela liked to get her into, some crazy, messed up metaphor that she had no desire to think about.

Fate was stupid, so were metaphors.

Angela would believe that fate had put them there in that car, but fate was stupid, and didn't exist - it was just potential energy. So Angela was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Yes. That was it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. (As mean as she felt admitting it, even only to herself.)

"This is crazy," Seely said, his voice hysterical and deep and soothing. Just how it had always been.

Brennan agreed, it was crazy. Driving with no direction was a crazy thing to do. It was unexpected, and unplanned - and she had been taught to fight those two things.

"This is crazy," he repeated, and looked at her for the briefest of moments. Just a glance towards her, chin resting on her hand, elbow leaning on the door.

She couldn't say anything, because really, what could she say?

"This is crazy," he muttered again, not looking at her again because she was extremely distracting.

(Temperance Brennan really did have good bone structure.)

To fill the empty space for a second, Temperance hummed an acknowledgment.

She only agreed it was crazy because it was their first proper day off in God knows how long, and he had kid-napped her. So she wouldn't do something idiotic, like work. She was full of bad habits, and apparently, not being able to take a proper day off was one of them.

The car wound around bends and corners and flowed down streets, past parks, houses, buildings. Thousands of people must've passed by, but Brennan wasn't sure how long they had even been in the car.

After a while, Booth flicked on the radio - obviously frustrated with the silence - and some station started blaring a variation of new and old music. If anything, the noise just added to the tension.

Maybe an hour, maybe two hours, later the car slowed to a stop and they were back where they had started. Only at a later time - the weather had cooled off a bit, there were more children running around the park than there were people in trim suits. The trees were the same, so was the grass and the benches and the winding playground for the younger kids to play over. It was nice to know that some things didn't change quickly.

Most things did, and could, because Booth leaned over the console and pressed his mouth against Temperance's in a desperate attempt to make some sense of their crazy, aimless drive.

Fate was stupid.

A/N: Inspired by horrible amounts of homework about kinetic and potential energy. School is evil, but fuels my creativity. XD