AN: This story takes place after the end of season 5, but we're just going to assume the whole Hannah thing never happened, because I like to forget that it did. Booth and Brennan have been together for a few months by now, and summer is just starting.

Some of this stuff may seem a little OOC for Booth, but he always hides his emotions really well, especially when he's in pain, and we never get to see him in the summer. If you think it's too far from Booth's personality to be believable, I suggest you go back and watch a few key moments that inspired this story. I don't want to spoil the story for you, so I listed these key moments at the end of the fic.

I'm still working on a new chapter for I Died Happy, but if I didn't publish this story soon it was going to come out of my ears

Note: As much as I wish I did, I don't own these characters.

This was not a good day to be anywhere near Seeley Booth. Not that he had been particularly welcoming at all for the past week, but today everything about him just screamed back off. He had been in a bad mood for a while. He knew it was nothing new; it happened every summer. He also knew everyone had noticed and reacted to his mood. At first he tried to keep his temper in check because he knew the Squints weren't really used to his indiscriminate and all-encompassing anger, but when he thought about it, that fact only pissed him off even more.

He was especially irritated tonight because of their newest case out in some no-name town in the sticks. The moment he stepped out of his truck he was assaulted by the blistering heat, and it was all downhill from there. The body was especially gooey and had all the standard nauseating smells and insects. Naturally, Bones dove right in. He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to investigate, but getting information out of anyone was like pulling teeth. By the time they started the drive back to DC, Booth was ready to snap—it had been a lousy day, he had no leads, and he was sure the townspeople he had spoken to were some of the dumbest people in the country.

Booth knew his temper would even out sooner or later, he just had to give it some time. Once the weather settled and he could start the fun things like taking Parker to the beach or the park and playing in the sun, he would be able to calm down. Some summers it seemed like Parker was his only joy, especially since Bones came into his life. She had contributed to his problems more often than not during the summers since he'd met her. Before Parker… He didn't like to think about much of his life before Parker.

In the past few days he had barely spoken to Bones, not because he was annoyed with her at all, he just didn't want to let her see his anger. Their romantic relationship was still fairly new and he was afraid of scaring or hurting her. This year she had done nothing to contribute to his foul mood, but the beginning of summer never failed to set him on edge, and he needed to protect her from his demons. He was actually excited to be able to spend the summer with Bones instead of just thinking about her all the time.

He and Bones were just sitting down to a session with Sweets, a new requirement for the partners since they announced their relationship to their friends and the Bureau. The FBI felt it was necessary that they attend regular sessions with the toy psychologist to ensure their relationship didn't interfere with their ability to work together. Booth and Brennan felt it was a complete waste of their time.

Brennan sat on Sweets' couch deep in thought. She didn't know what she did wrong. All she knew was that he was pulling away from her and she couldn't stop it. She didn't know if it was something she should wait for him to come to her for or if she should mention it to Sweets. Was she doing something wrong in their relationship? Maybe she made him angry and he wants her to figure it out. It seemed to her like he would have spoken to her about it by now; he very rarely kept anything from her. Whatever was wrong, it was bothering him immensely—he had barely spoken to her or touched her for a week.

From the moment they sat down Sweets noticed something was wrong with the partners. The distance between them was quite obvious—Brennan looked very unsure of herself, while Booth looked more hostile that he had seen in quite a while. Usually when they were having a fight, you could practically feel the electricity they generated in the air by the heat of their argument. That was not the case tonight. After a moment or two of observing them, Sweets asked, "Is something bothering you, Booth?"

"No. I'm fine, thank you," he said defensively.

Sweets didn't really expect any other answer from him. Booth always clammed up when he had a problem. However, the look on Brennan's face betrayed that there obviously was something wrong with her partner, and it looked like she didn't know how to handle it. Sweets zeroed in on her immediately. "Doctor Brennan? Is there something you'd like to say?"

She hesitated with her answer. Was this one of those things that was meant to stay between them? She decided there was nothing for it but to tell Sweets. "Booth has been… rather angry lately. He won't talk to me. But any time I ask him about it, he insists there's nothing wrong."

"That's because there is nothing wrong, Bones," he said, though his tone suggested otherwise.

"I don't think that's true. I'm not the only one who's noticed it. Angela said that you've been very annoyed lately and that you have an insect in your anus. If that's true you should have that removed as soon as possible, it could potentially be very dangerous. Perhaps you should consult with Hodgins."

Booth shuddered and said, "Bones, there is so much wrong with what you just said I don't even know where to begin."

She opened her mouth to respond, but the words died in her mouth. Sweets knew there must be a serious underlying issue if the partners couldn't talk to each other—they talked about everything. He was surprised that Booth didn't even correct Brennan's attempt at the colloquialism. After a minute of looking over the agent, Sweets had an epiphany. "Why don't you like the summertime Agent Booth?" he asked.

"What?" snapped Booth.

Sweets tried to hide a smile when he saw he hit a nerve. "I asked you why you dislike the summer. I've noticed a pattern since I've begun working with you, that you seem to be considerably more bad-tempered during the summer. Especially at the beginning of summer."

Booth grumbled to himself when he realized Sweets had figured him out. He shrugged and said, "It's just not my favorite season. It's hot, the fleshy bodies smell way worse, the damned mosquitoes are just about everywhere. There's always great weather on days I can't see Parker. And you see how it feels working outside in a suit and tie when it's 95 degrees."

Sweets shook his head and said, "No, I think it's more than that. I've seen you irritated but this is something else. You've been like this before and it's not just simple irritation. There is some serious anger boiling inside of you, and there is something more behind it than weather—something deeper and more personal."

Booth looked away but didn't deny he'd been very angry lately.

After a moment Sweets continued, "Agent Booth, you have a very long history of denying or hiding your feelings for the benefit of others. By doing this you sacrifice the comfort you could find in your meaningful relationships for the sake of protecting those closest to you. As you can see, the result of bottling up your emotions like this is recurring incidences of being unable to keep the hidden emotion inside of you. It bursts out of you in a nearly uncontrollable way, most commonly in some epic fits of anger. It's extremely unhealthy for you and those around you."

Sweets saw he wasn't going to respond so he offered his own observations. "This behavior fits in perfectly to your established psychological profile. After your shooting a few years ago I assumed you were furious because I didn't disclose your death to everyone on your list."

"I was pissed about that, you're lucky I didn't slug you," he retorted.

"And after your brain surgery," Sweets continued, undeterred, "I believed the anger was due to frustration with yourself because you weren't remembering everything as quickly as you wanted to. As I look back on it now, I realize that your feelings extended beyond how you felt about yourself or me. Everyone was different around you because the fury rolled off of you in waves, much like now. Most people avoided you altogether except for Cam." He paused. "Why is that? She seems to be the only one who isn't affected or even surprised by your behavior."

Booth kept grumbling to himself but didn't answer. Of course Cam was used to it, she'd known him long enough to know how he hated the summer. He really didn't want to sit through this nightmare of a session if this is what they wanted to talk about, but he had no choice so he just sat there and tried to pretend he was anywhere else

Brennan was shocked. She had never noticed any significant change in Booth's behavior before now, and couldn't believe that she had missed such a marked change that had affected everyone around him. She thought back on the summers she spent with him, but she couldn't remember any outbursts like the kind Sweets mentioned. Except for one. The realization made her gasp.

"What is it, Doctor Brennan?" Sweets asked.

She looked at Booth and said, "You were angry. That night I came to your house after your funeral you were very angry. I was angry too, so it didn't really matter to me at the time, but you yelled at me the moment you saw me." She remembered that night very well. He'd been in his bathtub stewing (or was it souping?) when she'd barged in on him with his beer-hat and comic book. He wasn't at all shocked or self-conscious like she'd expected him to be. He was angry. So angry, in fact, that he'd promptly begun to yell at her.

"We used to yell at each other all the time," he said. "We still argue constantly. It's normal."

"You rarely yell at me like you did then. I would not call any part of that night 'normal' behavior for us." She says, looking at him pointedly.

Booth blushed at her remark, while Sweets looked far too interested in their exchange for Booth's taste.

He looked at her and said, "Well let's see… Why would I have been exceptionally angry that night? I had been shot in the chest trying to save my partner from an obsessive lunatic, and when I came back from that she was so angry with me that she didn't even seem happy that I'd survived the shooting. You punched me in the face for something that was out of my control, then broke into my house to yell at me some more, insinuating that I didn't care about you." He snorted at that. He turned to Sweets, "I had to spend the rest of the summer trying to get her to trust me again. Oh yeah, that was a blast," he said sarcastically.

"Well, you should have broken protocol to let me know you were okay," she argued. "How would you feel if you had to spend two weeks thinking I was gone because of the whim of a 10 year old with a doctorate, when it all could have been avoided if you had just called me! It's not my fault Sweets chose to experiment on us."

There was silence for a moment as that statement sunk in. Brennan and Sweets both realized that she had just outed him, and Booth took a second to let the implications of what his partner just revealed hit him. When it did, he was on his feet and going for Sweets. Brennan tried to restrain him while throwing a mildly apologetic glance at Sweets.

Sweets quickly composed himself, and with a surprisingly calm voice he said, "Sit down, Booth. You're deflecting—my past actions, while admittedly foolish, are not what's at issue here. We are trying to understand your current emotional state and what is causing you to be so angry. Hopefully we might be able to address the underlying problem."

"So you did do it? Well, good. At least now I have a good reason to be pissed at you. Maybe by the end of the night I'll finally be justified in shooting you," he said as he plopped down into his seat. He sat there seething as he waited for whatever they had coming at him now.

"Doctor Brennan, can you remember any other incidents when Booth seemed abnormally angry, particularly during the summer?" Sweets asked.

She thought for a moment. "No, I can't. I have no other observations that could confirm or deny any recurrence of unusual anger from Booth," she almost shamefully admitted.

"That's because Bones leaves every summer," Booth said scathingly.

Brennan was shocked by that. "I— I— …What?" She struggled to understand what Booth meant; she had no idea what to say to that outburst, and Booth wasn't being particularly forthcoming.

"Would you care to explain that statement, Agent Booth?" Sweets asked.

"I mean exactly what I said. Every summer, Bones takes off. She doesn't always leave physically, but every year she was gone from me as if she took a flight to the moon. She would pull away so much that it felt like she wasn't even there, even if she never left town. Then again, there have been summers when she really wasn't there, off in Guatemala or Tibet or Timbuktu."

Brennan looked back and forth between Booth and Sweets and said, "I don't know what that means."

After a moment or two of tense silence, Booth decided to explain himself further. To no one in particular he said, "This is the first summer I have Bones. I don't mean romantically, though that's true too. She's just always been off doing her own thing during the summer. The summer after we first met, she wanted nothing to do with me. I spent months trying to contact her but she made sure that would be impossible. I finally had to go through another agency before I could find my way into the same room with her, and that took over a year. After that first year of being partners, she took off on a dig for the whole summer. It was just as well because I didn't want to subject her to my short temper that would have started about the time she left—I'm always pissed at the world when summer starts, and we argued enough at the time when I was in a normal mood. She didn't need to deal with me when I couldn't keep a level head. But she had just found her mother and I wanted to be there for her, as her friend. I spent most of that summer worrying about her and wondering if she was okay.

"The next year, I spent the whole damn summer trying to get her out of the lab and into the field with me. I thought she was mad at me for arresting her father, but that wasn't the case. It was because I let Zack take off for Iraq, not that she told me that until he came back to the lab. She might have been in D.C. physically, but for me she was hundreds of miles away, completely unreachable. Even then I could feel the separation like it was a physical loss. Then there was the summer after that. I spent two weeks without her, which was hard enough, but then I came back to a seriously pissed off partner who made it perfectly clear that she never wanted to go to my funeral, even though she really believed I was dead. 'A complete waste of time,' she called it. That hurts, you know, to know that the person closest to you refuses to honor your life when it's over. Especially since I had decided to… Well never mind that, it's over now." He was silent for a minute before he continued. Brennan's face had been an unreadable mask while he spoke, but when he said she hurt him, there was a flash of pain and regret in her eyes.

"The summer after that I had to deal with figuring out what was real and what wasn't. Yeah, it was really frustrating, especially since the one person I would have gone to for help with that, whether she was my partner or wife, had left me. Took off without a word." He looked sad and defeated.

When he realized he hadn't finished his explanation, he continued with renewed venom, "And let's not forget last summer. I didn't think there was any way to top the summer recovering from brain surgery, but boy was I wrong. Not only was Bones gone, and I mean really gone, but I was back in the desert, teaching children to be killers. Then again, maybe that wouldn't have been necessary if somebody hadn't pushed me to take a gamble that made me lose everything."

With that last biting comment, Sweets and Brennan winced. It was impossible for anyone in that room to regret their actions from that time any more than they already did. Booth realized he had taken his bitterness a little too far when he saw their faces. He knew he needed to get out of there before he said something he would seriously regret.

"I'm sorry Sweets, but this is just not something I'm willing to discuss with you. You want me to work through my anger? Fine, I can do that. But I absolutely refuse to do it under the supervision of the FBI or Doogie Howser's kid brother. Come on Bones, let's go home." With that, Booth walked out and Brennan followed somewhat timidly.

Sweets didn't fight Booth's decision to leave. After years of working with the partners, he was well aware that there were many things they would only share with each other. At least he knew they would talk. If anyone could help Booth through this, it would be Brennan.

AN: Sorry for outing Sweets twice in two fics, but there really isn't anything else he's done wrong that Booth didn't know about.

If you want to know the inspiration for this fic, or you don't believe that Booth would be so affected by the things he says are bothering him, watch these moments: In season 3 premier, he was trying SO hard to get her to work with him, he said she hadn't called him for weeks, and the look on his face when Brennan told him she wanted to interrogate a suspect with him was beautiful.
In the season 3 finale, he's seems irritable when he's explaining to Brennan why he had to play dead, and he looked like it hurt his feelings a bit when she said she didn't want to be at his funeral. Plus he was kinda pissed when he showed up in his bathroom, then he yelled at Cam right after on the phone.
In the season 5 premier, his reaction to when Sweets asked him if he'd been in touch with Brennan since he'd been released from the hospital, then he looked so thrilled to finally see her when she sat on him in her office.

I made up the bit about her being on a dig after their first year as partners, but it seems like something she would have done after finding her mother.

I'm almost done writing the second chapter, so that will be posted soon =)

As always, I love to hear from you and I'm dying to know what you think of my story. I'm a little worried it doesn't all make sense. If you find something confusing, let me know so I can edit it.