Author's Note: This has never happened to me before...

First, that I have a reputation (and that's never good, LOL). Second, that said reputation is why Razztaztic tackled me on twitter and made a special request. She shouted out (and I quote): "That last scene in 9.01, when Booth looks ready to break if she leaves? I need you to fill in those blanks."

So here I go with spackle and plaster, hoping I'm filling in the blanks Razz had in mind.

This is 100% Booth POV, told in three parts.

Episode tag for Secret in the Proposal.

~Q~

The letters, FBI, are an acronym for Federal Bureau of Investigation, but they are also stand for the motto of the organization: Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity. Booth is an honorable man who personifies the FBI motto, but standing up for his principles has never been harder than it is right now.

~Q~

This has never happened to him before.

He's never left his cell phone for so long that the battery died. He's never left his partner for so long that she stopped believing in him. He's never faced the silent stares and baffled questioning from his (still for now but not much longer)-friends, nor the loud slam! of violently hung up telephones when he tries to talk to former friends.

He's never felt so alone.

Even when his feet were being pounded into bony pulp in an Iraqi prison, at least he had the groaning misery of fellow prisoners of war to keep him company.

Special Agent Seeley Booth disengages his cell phone from the charger and turns it back on, noting four missed calls, one voice mail and one text message. They are all from Bones, his partner, calls he missed starting around 19:30 hours last night and the last one arriving around 21:15. He deletes them all without checking their contents, because exposing himself to more shame just seems like masochism at this point and he's not into that.

When he catches up to his partner at their next crime scene, Dr. Temperance Brennan is speaking to her boss (and his old friend) Cam, but Brennan falls silent and avoids his eyes as soon as he comes to stand beside her. He tries to keep it light and friendly when he greets her. "Hi, Bones."

There is a long pause before her single, answering rebuke, and what guts him is the hollow sadness that frames the words. "I tried to call you earlier." They both know she means last night, but at least she doesn't say that part out loud in front of Cam. What goes on between them isn't confined to just them so much these days (everyone has an opinion) which is all the more reason to appreciate her partial discretion.

"Yeah, you know, I forgot to charge my phone." That is partly true. He leaves the phone in his office whenever he wants to slip off the grid somewhat which is why he missed her calls at the time she made them. Last night he'd needed to talk to someone so badly that he'd gone to his former priest and confessor, Aldo Clemons, leaving the phone alone for so long that the battery had in fact died and he'd only discovered it this morning. He's telling the truth but he knows it looks bad.

Brennan glances at him very briefly, her eyes flashing a sorrowed reproach. "Christine wanted to talk to her Daddy."

She has hit him where it will hurt the most, both in reminding him that he hasn't seen his daughter since the previous morning, and in the implied message that if not for Christine, Brennan wouldn't have called him at all. If she were anyone else he might be tempted to think she's done it on purpose but he knows her. Knows she wouldn't be that deliberately cruel.

At the same time, her soft accusation reveals how little she reciprocates with a matching faith in him. And that has never happened to them before.

~Q~

Cam leans over to advise in a whisper that he's about to lose Brennan forever, a fact of which he is excruciatingly aware. All he can do is snarl back, "Mind your own business, Camille!"

And another friend is lost. She walks away.

He leaves them to extract mangled remains from the HVAC while he goes inside the hotel to find the manager.

An hour later Bones still won't look at him when she comes to find him in the victim's hotel room. Only there to announce her imminent departure, Brennan assures him the entire air conditioning apparatus is on its way to the lab and then she is ready to flee the scene. "You need me for anything?" And the subtext is clear: she hopes not.

She suggests the FBI forensics unit to help him sweep the room, something his pedantic partner has never been in favor of before.

The best and the brightest work at the Jeffersonian, she's infamously claimed more than once. For years, Brennan has insisted on directly supervising the collection of physical evidence from a crime scene but things have changed tremendously over the last few weeks. Now, she couldn't care less about working with him and in fact goes out of her way to avoid even seeing him unless it would be construed as blatant snubbing. It's even worse than those months when Zack was gone and Brennan seemed to manufacture excuses not to leave her lab and go out into the field with him. At least then, she was fully present with him on the occasions where he succeeded in getting her outside.

Now….

She stays at the window, avoiding him, shielding herself. They have grown increasingly unbalanced over the last three months but just during the last few days, they have both begun flailing so wildly that he knows a fall is coming. She is breaking away. Something has tipped the balance and she is falling off the edge.

"I need to get back to the lab," she tells him.

The only reason she doesn't leave right then is the faint whiff of Vodka that she detects on the gauzy curtains. She literally begins sniffing around the area, a fact that would have appalled him in their earliest days, amused him after that. Now it's a relief because it gives him another chance to speak to her.

"Listen, Bones. Um … about not answering the phone earlier…" He knows the missed phone calls are the most likely tipping point, knows she's falling away from him now because of that lapse. He knows, yet he can't tell her he's deliberately leaving his phone behind. She would ask why.

And he can't suggest Pelant in any way.

"I know you were lying." She won't look at him, but she doesn't have to. He can hear it, the low shaking rasp of betrayal. "And you didn't come home last night."

He's been away too much, he can see that now, but still, the implication of infidelity is impossible to miss. "I was working."

She shoots him a disgusted glare, contemptuous as she's pulling on a pair of rubber gloves so she won't have to contaminate herself with his falsehoods. Something about the Vodka corner has caught her attention, or maybe it's just the incipient argument. She isn't leaving yet, which gives him hope that he can undo the damage of forgetting to check his phone when he got back to the Hoover last night. One stupid little mistake can't be the end of them.

Angry at himself, at the situation, he tries to remind her of what she knows he's been doing. "I have my regular hours plus I'm trying to catch Pelant."

"Angela agrees. She says that you're lying, too."

And now he knows what's changed. Now he knows why they're breaking, why she's fallen away, and there's nothing he can do about it. She doesn't have him so she's turning to her best friend.

"Angela. Well, you know, Angela doesn't know everything." What is he supposed to do now, when her best friend is the one pointing suspicious fingers and he can't defend himself. He looks around the room, noting a television, a radio. It's paranoid to think that Pelant has prewired this room but that is the problem with that one phone call.

A simple mind game. Brilliant, really. One phone call is all it takes. One.

Pelant had described the park and people so thoroughly that Booth had no doubt Pelant was watching him in that one, single moment. He has no doubt that Pelant could, at any point in time, be watching him. Or maybe not. Maybe Pelant is on some tropical beach laughing his ass off while Booth's life crumbles into dust. And that is the lazy simplicity of it: Pelant doesn't have to do anything else because the seed of paranoia has already been planted during that one damned phone call.

In any given moment Booth doesn't actually know if Pelant is watching, only that the potential exists. And that terrifying potential is what tortures him and keeps him obedient. This is what it's like to be stalked: it's the unrelenting fear that he's being watched even when he probably isn't. The helpless rage that drives him is dampened when he sees tears in her eyes as she tries to keep her mind on her task.

She thinks he's cheating on her.

And she's trying not to cry when she thinks he's lying to her.

How could this happen to them, that she has actually forgotten what kind of man he is? The only reason he's not angry is because he can see how much pain she's in now that she's lost her faith in him. Pelant can't be everywhere, Booth decides. He glances around nervously but takes the risk because he can't bear to see her crying. "I'd die for you."

Even though she doesn't look up or pause, he can see the faint stiffening of her shoulders when the words hit. He can see that she doesn't believe him.

"I love you." God, please let her believe me.

But he doesn't think that prayer is going to be answered.

~Q~

His phone rings about an hour after Brennan leaves him at the victim's apartment (because she decides Sweets would make a better choice of partner). They have so many differences, she intones bitterly (so it must be no wonder he wants someone else).

It's not true: those differences are what he adores about her. She's Bones and he knows she's given him far more than he could ever give her (a well-controlled gambling addiction, a highly successful career, love, friendship, a daughter ... his very life). He loves her so much that he would gladly stop breathing if that would make her happy.

Booth answers the call halfheartedly. The voice is sympathetic. "Hey, man, how are you doing?"

And Booth is surprised. "Hodgins?"

"Yeah." There's an awkward pause while Booth waits for another blow and Hodgins wonders how to start. "Look you know I've been trying to stay out of it, right?"

"Doesn't look like that at the moment," Booth growls.

Hodgins puffs a tired breath, feeling all kinds of caught-in-the-middle, but he's called for a reason. He searches for the right words, the right tone, the right advice to give. "She's a scientist, you know."

Booth rolls his eyes.

"She's looking at the evidence, at the patterns, and right now the evidence is mounting up against you. It's making you look guilty." Though Booth can't see this, Hodgins glances uneasily out into the larger lab, hoping to avoid detection long enough to get his point across. "If you're innocent, you've got to give her evidence to the contrary."

"How the hell am I supposed to do that when your wife is telling her..." He cuts off, knowing that snarling at Hodgins isn't in his best interest because the bug man is the only one who's giving him the benefit of the doubt. But it's true. Angela is feeding Brennan's fears and slamming a sledge hammer onto the wedge Pelant inserted between them. Angela is the one splitting them apart, one slithering blow at a time.

"I know. I ... I'm sorry. I'll talk to her, try to get her to back off."

"The damage is already done. She's accused me of lying."

Hodgins winced, wanted to stay out of it, but knew he'd have to defend his own wayward wife. "I'm going to try to say this as nicely as I can. Just try not to take it personally."

"Take what personally?" What could be more personal than Angela telling Bones he was lying to her?

Another cautious pause. "Angela has been cheated on, in the past. She's done some cheating, too. Okay? So ... you know, you not ... coming home and not answering phone calls. It looks like..." But he doesn't say it. He's just showing the evidence.

Booth pinched the bridge of his nose, tired and paranoid. "Do you think I'm cheating?"

"I don't know what to think," Hodgins hedged. "Just keep trying, okay? Don't give up on her."

Tears spring to his eyes and he looks down at a blurry floor. She's giving up on him, he can feel her pulling away, but somehow Jack Hodgins's encouragement is the hardest thing to hear.

~Q~

Author's Note: Writing Booth in present tense seemed like the right approach because it makes the tone of this much more tense and in-the-moment, just like Booth is throughout the episode. Poor guy. :(

Look for part two tomorrow night, and part three the night after that. There may be a part four if you readers need it to restore your happiness. You'll have to let me know... ;)