Disclaimer: Please, they would've been together since the pilot if I owned it.

Booth had run a monologue through the deepest of his thoughts before slinging the blanket beyond him to pull himself out of bed. He looked at the woman beside him, a smile too wide he probably would not be distinguished as himself. It was so unlike him, how happy he was. Walking on the balls of his size ten feet to maneuver with as little noise as his two-hundred something pound self could force. He placed the measuring tape earlier farther than he had thought, taking five gigantic strides to reach the dresser where it was homed. It took him another five to reenter the bed and fiddle with the woman's right hand, reciting soft prayers in hopes she remains undeterred. He wrapped it around her ring finger and memorized the three digits printed where the end of the tape met the measure. An apprehensive thought made him pause, is the right ring finger the same as the left? He dumbs down the science but grew anxious because what if it wasn't? Before he could reach to her other side where her left hand laid still and inviting on the pillow, the phone rang. He did not know whose, and at the moment, did not care because he felt the cold ground hit his back. Booth had fallen off the california king, startled. He made an attempt to look like he was awoken, squinting his eyes and rasping his voice when he saw the blonde woman groan and reach for the ruckus on the night stand.

"It's like–" he looked at the digital box, "–three a.m."

The woman was too lethargic to acknowledge his complaint. She propped herself on an elbow and placed the phone on her ear. "What?"

Booth placed the tape under the bed like a bustling fourteen-year-old caught in defiance (the age description not far off from the truth as his lovely significant other would attest). He sat on the floor and crossed his arms on top of the bed, staring intently as the woman groaned into the phone.

"Jesus, Antonio…" She piqued into the microphone. "Okay, fine…Just next time, please wait until I'm actually awake…No, I really don't…Thanks for the update…Also, get some damn sleep," she stressed before hanging up.

"Who was that?" Booth was back on the bed pulling the blanket up his bare chest.

"You know that robbery piece we were working on?" Her arms found their way around him, instantaneously. His lips found her forehead likewise as he nodded in accordance to her question. "Yeah, well he was finally caught on camera about thirty minutes ago and it turns out he's a cop," her voice muffled on his skin, but clear enough to alert Booth.

"Wait," he suddenly perked. "The thief is a cop?"

She felt herself dozing off, her words getting lighter, but pushed out a last-minute explanation: "It's an undercover cop manning one of the gangs downtown. I guess the job got a little too exciting and he succumbed."

As a patriot and a cop, he grew disappointed.

"If I knew journalism was going to wake me up in the middle of the night I would've dropped the job so quickly…" She mumbled into him making him ease.

"I love you," he whispered. He did not think she heard but the slightest movement he felt on his skin, where her lips were, assured him that she had.

"I love you."

Her hand tightened the red fabric he had around his collar. Always the rule-bender he was, never conformed to the dress code. No one ever made him, anyway. The best agent they could ever and will ever have was him; solving cases, sometimes with great autonomy nowadays, that the allowance of colored ties—personally-catered to him only—was the greatest form of expressing their gratitude for his service. All the bureau ever asked of him was to do his job as best he could, they never really thought that he would reach for the moon in doing so. His loyalty tolled precedence over any mischief they already foresaw in hiring a twenty-something army vet.

"Be careful, okay?" She always said that before he walked out the door. Every day he went to work, every day she spoke the maxim.

Routinely, he responded with: "Always am." It was like saying "I love you", but in different words, claiming the endearment in a language understandable only to them.

The seven months he had spent away in the camouflage ensemble felt so familiar to his Ranger days, but so unlike in that, he had found someone. Three months after professing his love for another woman, he had found someone who returned it bearing cognizance to her own feelings. Hannah was not unsure or indifferent about her love for him. She was sure of it. She was one hundred percent in it, unlike Rebecca, unlike Cam, unlike her.

Booth always thought his partner was for him. He knew she loved him. No matter how unsquinty he was, he was not brainless. He understood signals even the most socially-obtuse presented, no matter how she felt she hid it. But the steps at the Hoover building and how she had responded told him more than she let on. She loved him, that is for sure, but she did not love him enough. There was only one man in her life who was capable of changing her. Tim Sullivan dragged her out of the lab, something Booth could never do. Not even for a weekend could he convince her to drop her work. For once in his life, Booth saw her more excited about being on a boat than looking at calcium composites. He once asked her to go on vacation, but to no avail found her at a dig site. She did not think of bones or anthropology with Sully. She did not spit out facts about cultural mating systems and family hierarchies. Not with Sully. She treated him like he was a gem from a separate world. If she believed in deities, her behavior with Sully was as close to adoration as the universe will ever see from her. It was not until the end of it all when Booth realized that work was still so important to her that she could never sail off to other islands to live another life with him. Still, no matter how much she enjoyed the fruitful works of anthropology, Sully was as close as anyone ever came in unraveling her.

Booth felt he was it. He felt that he could go further than Sully did. Throughout the six years they had worked together, he felt himself break through her military-grade walls, with their after-mission unscrupulous banters at the bar, and him seeing every inch of her personality with the effect every case had on her like dead tigers or babies found in a tree or fostered children. They were a family. The signals were there. He took a chance and that landed his conscience six-feet underground, never to gamble on her again. He thought he was better than Sully. With great confidence, he really did. Fate was not ludicrous to him, he had come to terms that they were too different and God made them that way. They were separately the heart and the brain and Booth finally realized that his god made that symbiosis to build a partnership like never before. They were to be compatible enough to work well-oiled, but different to preserve the chastity, as God would have made in a brother and a sister. Angela's psychic was wrong.

Not like he believed her anyway. Not in the slightest bit.

"Why are you prancing?" Cam was on the platform, fiddling with the cheek of a homicide victim when Booth made his way through the sliding doors of the Medico-Legal Lab.

"Prancing? No one's prancing," he denied.

"It was more skipping than prancing," Hodgins butted, walking around the table with a petri dish and his other hand—arm, actually—shoulder deep in a liquid of god-knows-what.

"I was not skip-"

"You were skipping," Hodgins deadpanned as his arm escaped the mire, clasping something he had found. He gleamed at the particulate like he does with everything else disgusting to the average person.

"Does no one else smell that?" Booth asked as he made his way up the steps to the platform. His nose crinkled abnormally as he neared the decomposing on the table. "It's like a dead rat swam in a pool of overcooked cabbages and was thrown into a box full of dead rats who also swam in overcooked cabbages."

The two scientists paused simultaneously and stared straight at him, their eyes squinting with inquisition and curiosity. They peered at him like he bore three heads. Not two. Three.

His hand waved as a signal for them to go on and abandon his supposition.

"That, G-man, is hydrogen sulfide," Jack perked up at the info. He fiddled with the microscope happily.

"Meaning?"

"Sewage," Cam said as she stuck her hand inside something on the victim's side. "A couple of underground hermits found him in the systems."

"Okay but sewage smells better than that," Booth looked at the tank Hodgins had his arm in not long ago. Yes, sewage definitely smells better.

"That's because this sewage was twenty miles away from a near fracking ground. That's hydrogen sulfide times two. There's no way the crude oil made its way into the sewer system, though, so something tells me he was doused in it before being tossed. Why? I don't know. There's no evidence that he was meant to be incinerated." Hodgins explained as his arm fiddled around with the tank once again.

"So far," Cam spoke. "No evidence of foul play."

"Okay but something tells me he didn't just drop himself in the sewage."

"Yeah this is definitely a homicide," Hodgins said.

Booth nodded and looked around. "Where's Bones?"

"She's in her office. I can't give her any bones yet until I go through a full autopsy work up," she continued. "Also, be careful. She's mad because your forensics guys got to the scene before her and tampered with it more than she'd like. And, it's gonna be hours before I can give her her bones. Her morning isn't swell."

He chuckled at her apprehension and went to visit his partner. He leaned on the doorjamb to see how long she would notice his presence. There was a gigantic clear piece of glass standing next to her desk. On it were Post-It notes followed by larger pieces of paper. There were some pictures, though minimal. His first thought was that she had built a criminal profile or forensic map of some sort, but a title above them written with a marker in her handwriting said otherwise. Burning Fingers. It was an outline for a new book

"You have been standing there for five minutes," Dr. Temperance Brennan acknowledged him without peering away from her computer screen, clearly having felt his company the moment he stood in the doorway. He was not in her sight, but three different types of martial arts and self-defense training developed within her a third eye capable of feeling panoramic which he completely forgot about.

"Good mornin', Bones," he spoke charmingly.

She lifted her head and met his eyes, smiling. "Hey, Booth. Do you like the title?"

"It's very impressive."

"Yes, I went online and searched for idioms. Apparently, to burn one's finger means to suffer the consequences of his actions. It originated from an English proverb," she gleamed. He just laughed. Despite her lack of social consciousness, she works very hard to try to understand. These moments make him proud. "Anyway, did you get the file?" She asked regarding the case.

"I did," he opened the folder. "Gideon Caster, twenty-nine, petroleum engineer, went missing two weeks ago. I have Aubrey looking through his background and Angela's on his social media. All I need is you." He said the last part in a manner he did not mean, almost intimate, but she barely noticed, back to her typing a draft on the computer.

"For what?"

"I tracked down his fiancee. She was the one that reported him missing. Let's go," he chimed.

"Why can't you take Aubrey?" She asked absent-mindedly.

Booth slumped down on her couch, seeing her continue to type and focus with no change in demeanor. She had been like that ever since they both came home from their sabbaticals. She was a little more closed off than he remembered. Maybe his perspective had been more withdrawn because his attention was to Hannah, but he was aware enough to understand that he was treating her the same way he always had. He knew he remained charming and attentive and they bickered still, but not so much with the same charisma as they had before. They were partners, but she always asked him to take Aubrey to investigate, as if her interest had suddenly dwindled.

"Come on, Bones! It's been awhile with just us investigating," Booth enthused.

Still, on her computer, she responded, "I just have a lot on my dish, Booth. Not right now."

He let out a small laugh at her solecism. "It's plate, Bones."

"What's plate?"

"It's 'I've got a lot on my plate', not dish," he laughed. Her face remained a little confused and he dropped it. She was not entirely a lost cause, but she neared such. "Come on. If you don't get up I'm gonna drag you out in your chair."

"That would work except you would have a difficult time trying to push the small wheels through the asphalt," she countered.

"I'll just carry you then," he joked.

"I would strike you if you do any of the sort, Booth." Brennan looked up from the computer, completely serious.

He chuckled, knowing full well she would. "Bones, please. It's been a long time since we've actually gone out to the field together."

She sighed and agreed, seeing him engage in a smile of triumph she could only roll her eyes to. With a grab of her coat, they made their way out to his car. Booth felt his phone vibrate and answered it without looking at the caller id.

"Booth," they entered the car and he started the engine, phone still to his ear.

"Hey, babe," Hannah's voice lit up his face. Brennan saw his expression and she smiled. His face lit up like a Christmas candle (or was it Christmas light?). "I'm about to leave for work. Can we grab lunch later, like, say, one o'clock?"

He looked at the clock in his car, pulling out of the parking structure and onto the road. "Works for me." Brennan studied him intently. Booth only expressed a similar sort of disposition in the presence of Parker. He was most certainly very happy with Hannah, considering her as part of the strings of people capable of unconditional love. That is what Brennan learned from Sweets, anyhow. Apparently, the concept of unconditional love is present extensively among parent and child, especially among mother and child. It lined up well in anthropology, the child obviously favoring the source of food in terms of survival necessity. But then Sweets also said that such bond can be formed between two people who have a connection only capable of being severed by death. Temperance had been to her fair share of weddings to understand that he was referring to the "death do us part" dictum romanticized by the church in the form of marriage. Aristocratic wives who had lived amidst Ancient Hindu practice threw themselves in fire when their husbands died because their lives ended when their significant other did. Back then, death never really did them part but she does not see the ritual still being condoned today. Why do people still participate in the thousand-year-old commencement of wedlock (done solely to authenticate monogamy) when they do not partake in any sort of ritualistic separation thereafter? The genius of Brennan's brain always ran wild with understanding, but rarely with the antiquated ceremonies so sacrilegious to people of modern age.

"Make sure to open your dinner on the twenty-seventh okay?" Booth spoke on the phone, earning a sight of confusion from Brennan. "It's a secret. But just make sure not to make any plans, please." He smiled wide. "Okay, bye. I love you."

Brennan could not help but mirror his joy. The man was onto something, and as his best friend (a title she had accustomed herself with fittingly), she was to find out. "What's so special on the twenty-seventh?"

Booth smiled wide. It was a larger one. A smile that Brennan would not be able to recognize Booth can actually form. It was Christmas tree! That is what she meant. His face lit up like a Christmas tree.

Like a child opening a present, he answered with the giddiness, "I'm gonna propose."