Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, or the title of this piece. I borrowed it from a Calling song. However the idea is mine.

A/N: This happened to me and you write what you know. A guy I liked asked me the last question in this chapter and I answered verbatim as Brennan does.

And I have made some changes to this. Regarding American and British terms and some grammar. Also added the odd sentence.

Could it be any harder?

"What did you say to him?" Angela hissed, as soon as her foot crossed the threshold of Brennan's office.

Her friend glanced up, face carefully blank, as if she had just been roused from a deep thought process and you were wasting her time for nothing. "Say to whom, Ange?"

"Don't give me that, Sweetie. You know exactly who I am talking about." She watched in frustration as Brennan refused to comment. "Booth, sweetie. What did you say to Booth?"

A brief flicker passed through Brennan's eyes, easily missed by those who didn't look too closely. But Angela had been watching Brennan for more than a year and that one flicker spoke volumes to her. Something had gone down in Brennan's office and her friend did not want her to know.

"I saw him come in here not a half hour ago looking apprehensive but happy and five minutes ago he storms out with an expression on his face like all colour has been drained from his world." Angela paused, waiting for a reaction. When none was forthcoming, she continued: "So that leads me to believe that sometime in the twenty-odd minutes Booth was in here with you, something happened. So spill!"

"Deductive reasoning, Angela?" Brennan tried and failed to smile. "Are we rubbing off on you?"

Angela refused to be riled. "Don't change the subject, Sweetie. What happened?"

"I don't know!" Brennan groused. "Why couldn't he just leave well enough alone? Everything was fine. Why did he have to change everything?"

Angela frowned. "Honey, you have to give me a wee bit more than that. I don't do cryptic speech."

Brennan expelled a gusty sigh, ignoring her friend in favour of continuing her rant. "Who does he think he is? He can't just come in here and turn it all on its head. That is not how it works. It was comfortable this way. We knew where we stood and now he came in here and destroyed all that on a whim. Stupid alpha-male tendencies."

"You're still not making any sense, Tempe."

"Well,, I have work to do, Angela. There's a Peruvian mummy on the slab that needs to be authenticated. And I need to supervise Zack when he identifies body 494." She jumped up, feverishly collecting her papers. Angela's hand on her arm stilled her movements immediately. She let herself be pulled back down on her couch, keeping her eyes glued to her hands so she would have to meet Angela's all too perceptive gaze.

"Tempe, start from the beginning and tell me what happened."

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Brennan futilely attempted to concentrate on the task at hand. Three reports needed to be finished off so Booth could countersign them, Hodges preliminary report on the Silphidae beetle they had found in the mummy bindings was in. Then there was Zack clamouring for attention, worried about his first solo classification. He needed somebody to metaphorically hold his hand. And as a cherry on top, her editor was pushing her to read through the last editor's draft of her second book. She was drowning in work and loving every minute of it. It kept her mind too busy to think about..

"Hey, Bones. You busy?" Booth's voice jerked her from her thoughts from the work at hand and back into the real world. She stared past him with a little frown marring her forehead.

"Do we have a new case?"

Booth shifted in the doorframe, obviously debating something with himself. With jerky movements he stepped fully into her office and closed the door behind him. And once again he seemed lost as to what to do next. He flopped down on her couch with uncharacteristic gracelessness.

"Is there something you wanted, Booth? Because I am really busy."

"Bones, I know you're busy. This. This won't take long." He stared down at his hands and then back up at her. "Could you maybe sit down?" He patted the seat next to himself.

Brennan fidgeted in her chair for a moment, before giving herself a push. She stalked over and joined her partner.

"What's up, Booth?"

When no answer was forthcoming, Brennan spoke once more. "Listen, either tell me what this is about or leave. Cause I don't have a lot of time today and I can't just sit here and-"

"Bones! Just be quiet for a second. One second." He waited for her nod and after a moment took a deep breath and launched right in.

"Bones. Temperance. We're partners. We are good partners. Have the best track record in the whole agency. We work well together. And I thought that was enough. That to complicate things would destroy what we already have. But when I saw you with Kenton, I realised that it would never be enough. I want more. I want us to be more."

Brennan could only stare at him for once in her life completely lost for words. She made no move to extricate her hands when Booth enfolded them in his, met his gaze head-on as he laid his heart on the line.

"I guess what I am saying is that I like you more than just as my partner. And what I want to know is how you see me. What do you think of me, not as your partner, but as a man?"

Brennan swallowed past the lump in her throat and answered without thinking. "You scare me."