It's sudden, when it happens – a case he wishes she'd drop, the usual resistence, his determination to protect her – and he's walking her to her apartment building when a car comes screaming past.
"You shouldn't have jumped in front of me," she says, not looking up from his medical files.
"You shouldn't be looking at those."
She traces a finger lightly along his x-rays. Where the bullet had burrowed through his ribcage. And older: ghostly lines marking his fractures. Things heal, it's true, but they can't be erased. "You don't always have to be the hero," she says, suddenly angry. She shuts the folder.
"Yeah," he says, "I do." He flicks his eyes to the TV, a baseball game without sound. "Hey, we both survived."
"Barely," she snaps.
"You'd rather I let you get shot?" he asks. A nurse brings his lunch; he winces at the clatter of the tray.
"I'd rather nobody got shot."
"Logical."
She glares.
"Hey, you're my partner, Bones. I'd do it again."
He would die for her – she knows it suddenly, certainly. "You –" she begins, and can't breathe. Live for me, she thinks but doesn't say.
They'd kissed, once, but it was mistletoe and didn't count. The nurse who takes away his tray again, once she's gone, gives him a knowing smile. He turns his head away.
"We got them," says Brennan, hovering in the doorway. "I brought the file – if you wanted to look at it."
"Yeah, thanks," he says, stretching his arm the few inches he can.
"Caught them red-headed."
"You mean red-handed."
She frowns at him. "That doesn't make sense. Their hands weren't bloody. They concocted the murder in their minds."
"Right," he sighs. "Well. At least it's over. On to the next lowlife."
"Yep," she says, and doesn't move.
"Don't you have those bones from the...some kinda metal era?"
"Zack can handle it," she says. Her fingertips flutter over his palm, turned up, gauze-taped. She has seen him kick down doors and knock dealers unconscious with one blow. But now his body is lacerated and bruised; he's held together with stitches and all-too-fragile skin.
It had been hours, hours; she'd paced the waiting room, Angela quiet and large-eyed on the plastic seats. "It's been too long," she'd said, "something must be wrong."
"You don't know that, sweetie."
Reason, then: why dread something that hasn't happened? That can't happen, that couldn't happen, though logically she knows he's mortal like anyone else.
When he gets out of the hospital, he's halting, stubborn; he's exasperating, but he's hers, and his lungs draw air in and out. So she lets him snap at her and doesn't say a word when he collapses on his couch, worn from the walk inside when he'd refused her help.
"Home again, home again."
"Piggity pig."
"Close enough," he says, and lets his arm rest on her shoulders when she sinks down next to him.
"How's it going with Monty?" he asks.
She sets the bag of groceries on his kitchen counter. "I think he quit."
"You think?"
"Well, he stormed away after I yelled at him for contaminating the remains and I haven't seen him since."
Booth grins. "Maybe you should quit yelling at people."
"He was going to pick up the skull!" Tendrils of hair have come out of her ponytail in indignation.
"I'm just saying, he's what, your third agent? Be a little kinder, Bones. Live and let live."
"I work with dead people," she says blankly.
He sighs. "No wonder I'm the only one who can put up with you. You miss me now, huh?"
"I do not."
"Yet you bring me food."
"Well, I don't want you to starve."
He grins at her. "Thanks, Bones, that's real sweet of you."
She sets bananas next to his fridge. "You should make sure to eat these. Potassium –"
"Hey," he says, moving closer, "I promise to keep myself well fed. I'm a big boy, I can manage."
"I thought about stealing you some hospital pudding," she says, with a trace of a grin.
He groans. "I think I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime."
"Just as long as you've got a lifetime," she says sternly, and motions towards the bananas. "And keep your cell phone with you, in case you fall –"
"I'm not ninety," he protests. "I'm careful."
She looks pointedly at the bandages still taped to his chest.
"Well," he amends, "mostly."
"I just –" she begins, but trails off.
"Hey," he says again, wrapping his hand around her wrist. "I'm all right, okay?"
She nods, once, then buries her face in his neck. His hands settle on her waist, delicate; the moments tick by and she stays still.
She never thanks him for saving her life.
He knows, though.