What's Going On: Marvin Gaye

Booth watched as she carefully placed each bone in the open casket, her movements elegant in their precision. It seemed like forever since he'd been in the lab watching her work and here, deep in the bowels of the county courthouse, she still retained that distinctively studied manner that was almost poetic in form.

"Bones?"

She cocked her head as she arranged the skull at the head of the casket and nodded to the bearded man who brought the lid down.

"You weren't in your room this morning. I thought we could have breakfast."

His knocks on her door last night had gone unheeded and his phone calls had gone immediately to voicemail. This morning had been only more of the same.

She snapped off the latex gloves as the two men wheeled the gurney from the morgue. She seemed to pointedly avoid looking at him.

"I wanted to get a head start on the paperwork." She was pulling together a few items on the sole desk in the room. "I also had some things to work out with Cam."

He stepped closer. Brennan sorted the papers on the desk into folders and divided them into three piles. The crash doors behind them thudded close and they were alone.

"I just thought we could eat breakfast together."

He kept his tone hopeful, part of him praying she would move on from last night's scene in his room.

She looked up from her laptop that she was closing then encasing in its sleeve. "I thought you'd be having breakfast with Deputy Bitunjac."

Booth closed his eyes and tried to wish it all away—the whole mess he'd made of his relationship with Hannah and now the current one with Brennan. He should have done something last night to sketch a clearer picture of what had happened, but his ego had not let him.

She took his silence for an admission. "Sweets would probably say that entering into another sexual relationship so soon after ending one with Hannah was healthy, although he would probably use a colloquialism such as getting back at the horse that threw you."

Her expression was neutral, but he had the sense that was only because she was retreating further into herself.

"Up; it's back up on the horse."

"Sex is a healthy. . . ," she started, weaving together a familiar topic with pheromones and seratonin levels and enough squintology to drive a man insane.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he interrupted her all-too-clinical lecture. "It's none of your business if I slept with Janet or not."

His words rattled around the empty morgue.

They were effective enough to halt her explanation. He could tell he had stung her. She stood before him with that damned neutral expression cooling on her face offering no hint as to the rich emotional life he knew existed behind the facade. And somehow he knew in that exact moment he had been the chief architect of this new wall she'd erected.

But she couldn't just allow the growing silence to speak for them; she had to unleash the truth.

"It was clear that she wanted to sleep with you, Booth. A healthy, adult male such as yourself. . . ."

"Stop it. I did not sleep with that woman, Bones."

His voice had risen to cut her off and seemed to bounce around them in the empty morgue. This time the silence was painful. And all too short.

"I didn't mean to interrupt anything last night, Booth."

This time he caught a flicker of emotion and it startled him at just how raw it was.

Pain.

The old building creaked around them, settling its hundred-year old frame deeper into the soil. In the hollowness of that room, he could find no words to explain anything that had happened over the last several weeks much less the last 72 hours. She had just provided him an uncensored insight into what she was thinking and feeling, and he had no response but a damnable silence.

They had tried to make this work. Partnership. Hell, he didn't even know what it meant anymore. They solved cases together. They put things right for victims and for the families. She unlocked the mysteries of the bones and he arrested the bad guys.

But they had never really tried to set things right between them. They'd only put on their best faces and pretended that all was right with their world. And he didn't really know where reality began and the fantasy ended.

"Our agreement, Booth, was for me to work in the field as well as in the lab." Her words were cool, measured. "Sometimes my services are more valuable in the lab than in the field as evidenced by this case."

"What?" He choked out the word. "What's going on, Temperance?"

He caught the surprise at his use of her first name.

"I understand that you merely acted as a consultant to the sheriff and his deputies in this case, Booth." She forged on with her explanation and he hung on trying to make sense of what she was saying and fearing where she was going. "I understand that I was needed here, in the morgue, providing a complete examination of the bones and maintaining contact with the team at the Jeffersonian."

"I didn't mean to exclude you, Bones."

"I know that." She shifted her stance. It was painful to watch her. "I also know that you are upset and hurt over Hannah's departure. I know you loved her, Booth, and you hold great store by romance and establishing familial bonds and you saw Hannah as an opportunity. . . ."

"Bones." He didn't want an entire recap of his shattered hopes especially since he had done most of the damage himself. "Just tell me."

He saw her slight nod before she took in a deep breath as if she were steeling herself for something more to shatter between them. "I'm not going back to Washington with you. Russ and Amy have invited me to stay with them for a week. My father is driving down and is going to join us."

There it was. In the silence were the unspoken hurts they had unleashed on the other and she was going off to lick her wounds.

She was hugging herself as she continued. "I've made arrangements for Dr. Edison to be your forensic anthropologist. He has no strong desire to be in the field, however, he may. . . ."

He let the details wash around them. It wasn't Maluku or some remote country filled with mass graves or ancient skeletons. But she had found a way to give them both some time and space.

". . . I've already informed Cam that I will be available, if the need arises. I'm only a few hours away by car."

Booth let out the breath he was holding. He tried a grin. "You're going on vacation." He searched her face. "I thought. . . I thought for a second there that you, you wanted to end our partnership."

This time he caught the emotion radiating from her; it was the same emotion thumping in his chest and making it difficult for him to breathe.

"We both need some perspective, Booth." Her voice was barely a whisper. She shifted again, her discomfort obvious. "The FBI and the Jeffersonian can do without us for a little while."

The ache that had seeped into his bones some time ago returned. He'd made a mess of things and his bruised ego and stubborn pride had only compounded it of late. But he didn't have the words or even a clear vision of what he could say or do to make things right again. To make them whole.

So he stood there, silent and uncertain.

"It's just a week, Booth." The careful veneer had slipped away and she was almost begging him to understand. "I'll be back in seven days."

If he had a response, it would have been cut off by the crash doors banging open. "Hello?"

"Dad?"

Max Keenan ambled into the room looking around him. "Russ sent me down to get you. He was afraid there'd be a few corpses laying around here." He grimaced. "He's got a weak stomach for that kind of thing."

He sketched a hello to his daughter and stuck out his hand for Booth. "So you two wrapped up another one?"

Keenan's handshake was firm and hard, just like the man could be.

"Yeah, yeah," Booth sputtered and looked at his partner. "Another one."

"Fog's cleared, honey. I started early this morning and made great time. Everybody's upstairs in that mini-museum thingy." He stopped and waited. And waited until waiting became awkward. "I interrupted something, didn't I?"

Brennan sighed but stood her ground.

"No, no," Booth finally said. "We're fine."

His partner caught his eyes and for a moment he believed it.

"So, let's say we blow this pop stand for that inn you were talking about, honey."

"It's a morgue, Dad. Not a pop stand."

"Pop stand, morgue. It's cold and creepy down here. Let's get upstairs where there's sun and warmth and get some lunch."

Keenan was herding his daughter who had swept up a handful of folders and was heading toward the door. "You're coming, aren't you, son?"

Booth stood frozen, still uncertain. Nothing had been settled. They could clear a case but not the crap that remained unspoken between them.

"Booth?" Brennan had stopped by the door. "I made reservations at Cheddar's Inn for all of us."

Her eyes were an open invitation.

"I'd get out of here before they bring in another dead body for the two of you to investigate."

"Dad."

Brennan's eyes hadn't changed. She beckoned him with her head. "C'mon, Booth. Lunch."

'You've got to come, Booth." Keenan leaned toward him. "You'll even out things. Four girls, three men. Otherwise they outnumber us and who knows, we'll end up at some kind of frilly doll shop or something."

"Girls?"

"Women." Keenan made a quick adjustment. "Women."

"Two women and two girls to be exact."

"Anyway you look at it, we're still outnumbered."

Booth made his own quick adjustment. He strode toward Brennan and took the folders from the crook of her arm. "We'll drop these off with the Sheriff, and meet you there, Max."

There was a hint of a smile from his partner. Even in the depths of that cold, dark place, his own fog was beginning to lift.