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Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

Booth felt awkward and painfully aware that he was alone as he pushed open the door to Brennan's bedroom. The silence that greeted him made him feel invasive, reminding him that the only thing he was sure about was that he was decidedly unsure about everything and had been that way for far longer than he cared to remember.

"Don't be stupid," he mumbled quietly to himself. They were fine. They were better than fine. They'd talked, albeit briefly, and most of it without using actual words, but he was beginning to feel that even if they weren't quite on the same page yet, they were at least reading from the same chapter. She just needed some time to think, that's all. She'd asked for time. And then she'd told him stay.

She hadn't asked for space… only some time. Time to let the dust settle around crumbled walls of her rationality. How long could that possibly take? He wondered grimly.

He groaned softly and shook his head, thinking about how true it was about being one's own greatest enemy.

They were going to be just fine, he repeated to himself over and over inside his head, unsure if he felt more or less certain of that with every passing mantra.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered, hastily whipping his shirt over his head before he had time to talk himself out of it.

A plan was formulating inside his head, and while he was fairly certain that it would backfire on him in every possible way, he decided that tonight was the night for vulnerability. He'd prove to her that he was done with hiding from her… hiding his interest in her, his fears of what would happen, his worries about what might not ever get the chance to be, his desire to make her his own in every possible way he could conceive of, his hope that she would want the same from him… done with hiding his love from her.

But she hadn't allowed him to say it. He'd finally been so close, just on the verge of letting those four letters roll off his tongue and into reality where they couldn't be disguised or buried or denied anymore, but she had stopped him.

She hadn't wanted to hear them.

That, more than anything else, was making his fingers drum in an agitated cadence against his thighs as he paced nervously back and forth inside her bedroom, waiting anxiously for her to join him there and terrified of the actual moment when she would.

She wants you to stay, he told himself.

Vulnerability was not something that came as a common craving to him. He was so used to being the shoulder to cry on, the rock upon which everyone around him leaned, and he'd been that way for so long that he no longer knew how be on the other side of that give-and-take partnership. He did what he could to spackle over the cracks and flaws in his being, not necessarily in any attempt at ill conceived perfection but more as a way to add a protectively thicker barrier on those scars that hurt the most. Those were not things that he liked to or made a habit of putting on display where just anybody might see them.

But Brennan wasn't "just anybody," he reminded himself, and tonight he wanted to be the honest man that he always liked to believe that he was with her, more so now that he didn't have to pretend that he was satisfied with the strictly platonic structure of the relationship that they had successfully maintained for so long.

Because it hurt to think that she might not see him that way, that she looked through him to see every other man on the planet but him. And even though rationally he knew that wasn't true, rationality was something that was always ironically absent when it came to him and the ever-empirical Dr. Temperance Brennan. No matter how much she tried to force-feed him logic, nothing about them would ever really make sense in ways that could be measured and charted or even really verbalized. On paper, they never should have been able to function together, both too stubborn to overlook the overwhelming differences that quantified them as individuals. And yet, years into this unlikely partnership, the only thing that either of them was more passionate about than their intertwined career paths was each other.

Booth sighed loudly, his naked chest rising and falling with the futile attempt to keep himself together. Rubbing a nervous hand over his face, his fingertips brushing against the burn of whiskers that he reminded him that he was desperately in need of a shave, and then his shoulders rolled in a to-hell-with-it motion.

His fingers worked quickly on the fastening of his jeans, and in seconds he found himself standing naked at the edge of her bed as he waited impatiently for her return, petrified and yet complete desperate for her to see this vulnerable side of him. Desperately hoping to see that she might still respect him once she had caught him defenseless and unguarded. Desperate for her to see that he trusted her with even the ugliest parts of himself, those parts that even he couldn't bear to see.

A breath blew in a slow puff between pursed lips.

He sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, rubbing his fidgety hands hesitantly up and down the tops of his thighs as his gaze settled absently upon his bare feet, his eyes roaming the veins that pushed up against the surface, perusing the long-healed fracture lines that he knew disfigured the bones underneath. He could always see the breaks, even through the fleshly canvas that wrapped them and the sinew and muscle that strengthened them, but he always saw the damage that was underneath, and he wondered vaguely if it was anything like what Brennan saw when she looked at a human being. She saw so easily beneath the skin to the vulnerability of the bone. Did she see the person, the behavioral and emotional make-up that they were composed of, or was her first instinct to see the dead skeleton beneath the animated flesh?

He wondered if she had to work to differentiate between the two, and if maybe that was why she had such a difficult time connecting with people on a more personal level. Perhaps that was a price that she paid for her genius, for her talents… that her knowledge of what lay beneath was so vast and so ingrained that it consumed and blinded her to the intangible human that was submerged under the weight of the body.

Blind to the forest for the trees… he wondered….

Had years of practice and training and study made it impossible for her to see the forest of the soul that was fused between the lines of a field of bones, or did she only see the trees for what they were, as parts to make up a whole, like a complex puzzle just waiting for her to piece it together? Or did she have more control than that? Did she see everything just the way she wanted to see it? If he'd made it his life's work to be the human lie detector in their partnership, he couldn't help wondering if she'd taken on the role of the human x-ray. He saw through the deceit to find the truth. She saw through flesh to discover the evidence. But what did all that mean when they turned those talents on each other?

What did she see when she looked at him? She'd seen the x-rays, she knew the breaks and the scars and the stories but…

He wiggled his toes for a second, thinking about the way he viewed himself differently whenever he looked down at them and saw nothing but the broken pieces that had been put back together, those pieces that he hid beneath garish, comically colored socks, thinking of the way he buried his old hurts behind the elastic walls of cotton-woven humor.

He'd always thought they were so different. Even when he was drowning and swallowed up, suffocating in his unrequited love for her, or at least the love that he thought he'd been alone in until that one glorious moment when he'd slipped and she'd caught him with her kiss. Now, the more he thought about it, the more he couldn't help realizing just how wrong he'd been for so very long, how'd he'd missed seeing through the lies they'd told each other, how he hadn't been able to see her heart through the barrier of her flesh.

Talk about missing the forest, he thought with a soft, sad smile.

It all cycled in a steady whirlwind through his head, his fingers twitching nervously on his thighs as he stared down at his feet, reliving things he'd never really be rid of. The past breaks that lay hidden beneath the fleshy present… that past that was also future, for that day when the flesh decayed away and revealed the scarred bones underneath… that future that promised to become present with every heartbeat that passed away and faded into eternity.

He idly wondered if she'd ever stare down at his bones one day, and he couldn't help but wonder what she'd see if that day ever came. There were markers aplenty marring his skeleton, subtle little reminders of the life he'd led and which she'd be able to read from him effortlessly, probably with more ease than she'd ever been able to read him while he was alive. Or would she look down and see ferocity with which he'd loved her, the intensity with which he'd missed her whenever they were gone from one another, the promises that he'd done everything in his power to keep… would she see the way he'd died with her on his mind as he slipped into the darkness?

"What are you thinking about?" she interrupted softly, leaning against the doorframe with her head tilted slightly as she studied him, her arms folded across her stomach.

He glanced up sharply, startled.

"Nothing." He said quickly, wiping his sweating palms on his legs, suddenly feeling more exposed than he'd anticipated he would as he sat completely naked and vulnerable at the foot of her bed with her watching him carefully from across the room, fully dressed with that contemplative look on her face.

She didn't say anything, just slowly pushed away from the wall and crossed the distance between them until she was standing in front of him, towering over him as he sat on the edge of her bed. His gaze dropped back to the floor, studying the patterns on the rug beneath his feet as he listened to her soft footfalls drawing nearer, flinching slightly as her bare feet came into view while she waited patiently in front of him. His head twitched to the side, unsure of the indecision that had settled in the pit of his stomach, his eyes darting nervously about the room before he finally lifted his gaze to hers, a shaky breath stealing from his lips.

Her face was calm but blank, the planes of her countenance smooth and expressionless, but the way her hand lifted to kiss his temple with the pads of her fingers, slowly, gently, trailing just the tips ever so softly down the side of his cheek to the strong, hard line of his jaw, feeling the muscle tick as it revealed the tension he was struggling hard against his instinct not to hide from her… no, the way she touched him was anything but expressionless. His breath caught, somewhere between a sob and a sigh as her thumb brushed his bottom lip and then lifted to cradle the side of his head, trying to smooth away the frown lines with her fingers.

Without a word, she peeled her sweater over her head and tossed it aside along with her bra, her blue eyes watching him, studying him with that unreadable expression she wore whenever he managed to surprise her buried beneath her work in Limbo. Those meticulous blue flames caught the slight flaring of his nostrils, the subtle darkening of his eyes as the pupils bled into that soft coloring, nearly impossible to discern in the dark shadows of the room where the only light fed in pale white shafts of ghostly afternoon fog through the parted curtains. She watched his pulse jump against the skin of his throat, his forcibly quelled anxiety almost palpable on the air.

She reached out to him again slowly, as if afraid that he'd spook if she moved too quickly. Her hand found his face, cupping his cheek with gentle strokes of her fingers as she soothed him, her touch softening the wrinkled brow that uncertainty had drawn together.

Booth stared up at her, warring with the throes of his own vulnerability even as his hands reached out to cup her hips while she stood there, her jean-clad knees brushing against his bare ones, her hands coming up to rest delicately on his shoulders. He stroked her skin absently with his thumbs, and then he leaned in, pressing a kiss to her navel and when she didn't object to their broken eye contact, he let his eyes fall closed and focused on wet lines he was creating on her stomach with his mouth. He could feel her gaze burning him through the top of his head, but she didn't speak and so neither would he, he decided. She'd wanted a reprieve from confessions, and he had only one left to give. So for now he was content drag his lips across her bellybutton while his dexterous fingers slowly began to unfasten the catch on her jeans and slide them over her hips.

She stepped out of them easily when he pushed them down her legs, her hands stroking lazily across the breadth of his shoulders, her thumb occasionally grazing his neck whenever his mouth drew a quiet breath from her. But her eyes never wavered, staring down at his dark head of short hair as his nose brushed the bottom of her ribcage.

He slipped his arms around her body to draw her closer to him, and she slid easily onto his lap as she brought her knees to rest on either side of his hips, straddling him while he adjusted his weight to catch a little more of his balance with his feet against the floor. One of his long, thick arms curled around her back, resting along the length of her spine as his palm splayed wide between her shoulder blades to hold her body up against his chest. His other palmed her low on her hip, pushing the heat of her center closer against his belly. The position aligned his mouth with her breasts, and he eagerly sucked one of her nipples between his lips, kissing her with dark, wet heat, his tongue fervent, his teeth pensive, his lips respectful and needy as he loved her pebbled flesh.

She crooned softly as her hands moved up to cradle the back of his skull, pressing herself closer to him as her shoulders curled forward as if she could wrap herself around him. Her hips rolled slowly, mercilessly over the tempting hardness of his erection, rubbing herself with his heated flesh as her thighs parted a little wider, struggling to settle her body still closer to his. When he bit her, she cried out and her head fell forward, her cheek resting on top of his head while one hand fisted in his hair, the other dropping to sweep over his broad, hard back.

"Booth," she groaned desperately.

Without a word, he lifted her body up slightly, adjusted his hips, and then pushed himself inside, muffling a groan against her sternum at the way her muscles stretched for him, the way her thighs tightened and clenched a little bit against his body, every fiber of her willing, eager and desirous of every sensation he could give her with just a simple push.

"Uhhh, gu… god, please."

"Ah fu—"

His head shot up, his eyes locking with her own as they grew smoky and dim with the embers of her desire. "Did I hurt you? If you're sore—"

"No no no," she said quickly, shaking her head in vehement denial as she gnawed her lower lip between her teeth and rocked her hips forward. Not that she wasn't a little sore. They had been undeniably rough with each other not even an hour ago, his pelvic rhythm having been no more gentle on her body than the hard floorboards had been but…

"So… uhhmm, Booth… it's good, it's so good, so goo-ah," she cried softly while her lips sought out his, mumbling her words of pleasure against his mouth while she leaned over him.

Her hand slipped up his throat, silently urging him to tip his head back further so that she could bring her lips to his neck, kissing the stubbled underside of his jaw as her words became thick and unintelligible. Her movements were slow and lethargic, her pace meticulously smooth but anything but sluggish. He could feel her heartbeat hammering wildly inside of her, the muffled thudding of it pulsing its rhythm against his own as if struggling to find the synchronization between them. Her blood rushed and throbbed, and her breath heaved with exertion while her limbs coiled with slow, sweet deliberation, pressing and gently rocking them together.

When his hand slipped to that familiar place at the small of her back, the other still supporting the length of her spine, she let her thighs slip apart a little more, sliding down as deep as either of them could go, and then she stilled, letting her fast, hard breaths quiet while she draped her arms loosely about his neck and rested her forehead against his.

"Booth," she said calmly, if a little breathily, after a moment. "Booth, please tell me what you were thinking."

Her voice was steady, hushed but hungry for so much more than just the push of his body between her legs. The distress on his face had been blatantly evident when she'd joined him in her bedroom, his anxiety rolling around him like waves and her newfound resolve was desperate to soothe and calm this man that cradled her so gently and caressed her so reverently.

He sighed and leaned back to glance up at her, reaching up to cup the side of her face, smiling when she nuzzled slightly closer into his welcomed touched. Their eyes locked, held, and he squinted ever so slightly as he watched her face hovering above his.

"You," he said. He swallowed hard. No more secrets, he'd promised. "What… what you see when you look at me."

Her head tilted again, peering down into his eyes questioningly. "I see you, Booth," she said hesitantly, and he could see her struggling not to hide her eyes away from him now as she battled her own shortcomings with subtly. "I feel that I must not be understanding your meaning," she continued, unsure and decidedly frustrated.

He smiled softly up at her. "Sometimes it's like we're speaking different languages, isn't it, Bones?"

She cocked her head at him. "We never communicate in any language other than English, Booth."

"Yeah, but there are a lot of miscommunications between us, wouldn't you say?" he insisted gently. "Especially lately…"

Brennan nodded slowly, her eyes scanning his face intently as she tried to follow him between the language barriers that he was bringing to light. She understood what he meant. More often than not they did have to build metaphorical bridges between them, having to define things that they hadn't ever thought would need defining as they were forced to acknowledge and compensate for the vast differences in their worldly perspectives.

"I'd be forced to agree with that observation."

His smile pulled a little wider, amused by her formality even as she sat naked astride his lap with their bodies primordially joined.

"Is that okay, Booth? What I see when I look at you… is that enough?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yeah, Bones, that's enough," he assured her. "That's everything there is."

She nodded slowly, unable to resist moving her hips slightly though it caused her eyelids to flutter shut for a second at the feel of him touching so deep inside her, reminding her of just how much closer the passed few hours had made them, how much they had changed them… how much nothing would ever change them.

"No secrets, right?" she asked once she was able to open her eyes, though the lids were low and hooded, struggling for focus.

"No more secrets," he agreed.

Pushing his face into the crook of her neck, his hands moved to her back as he began rolling his hips up into hers. There wasn't the leverage for hard thrusting with them both sitting upright, so he settled into a gentle rhythm of rocking his hips upward, using his hold on her body to make her sway against his smooth undulations. Her arms curled under his arms and up around his shoulders, holding onto him desperately as her head tipped back to expose the long column of her throat to the heat of his mouth and the burn of his whiskers while her body moved in swelling waves over his.

"No secrets," he murmured as he sucked on her collarbone and stroked his tongue over the hollow of her throat. "Everything, Bones… every goddamn thing."

"Booth," she moaned softly, letting him taste the vibrations of her pleasure as he slanted his lips over the center of her throat. "Ohhh… yes, this… I… Booth, I--"

"Tell me you see everything, Bones. Tell me I'm not a coward for hiding all this time," he pleaded.

She sighed his name throatily into his ear as her head fell forward towards him, desperate for closeness, more proximity, more of this one man and everything that he offered and promised with such cavalier yet undeniable certainty. Because she wanted everything that he offered… she believed him when he said it was possible.

He moaned as she teased the shell of his ear with her tongue. "You know how often I think about you, Bones? How desperate I am for you?" he growled. He grabbed her hips with both hands, his lips burning a trail up her throat to just below her chin. "All the damn time," he breathed.

Booth let his hands slip from her body then so that he could reach up to cup her face, cradling her with his palms as his thumbs smoothed over her cheekbones, studying the shimmer of her eyes in the misty light. She smiled gently down at him, her irises swirling and storming with every turbulent emotion that was brimming inside of her, and he felt his lips respond in kind as he brushed a chaste whisper across her mouth.

"Booth." She gasped as she was flooded with another tender rolling of their hips. There was no thrusting, no need to suffer a withdraw in order to feel that slow but sturdy push inside again… instead he rocked below her, letting her ride the swell of his oceanic passions while they drowned together, breathing in the heat of each other, hips circling, undulating as they arched tighter against hot flesh and flexing muscle.

"Oh god, Bones," he moaned wildly, his gaze fused with her own glistening stare. "I'm so sorry… for everything. The things I've said, the way I've handled this whole thing, I… I feel like I failed you, Bones. That I didn't trust you enough, that it never even occurred to me to that that's exactly what I was doing even while I was doing it, I—"

She cut him off with a kiss, hushing him gently as her lips pressed to his, her hands covering the ones he still had anchored against her face, stroking his knuckles tenderly with her fingertips.

As tempted as she was for a taste of the warm tongue that he flicked against her bottom lip, she pulled away, clutching his hands closer against her face.

"Booth," she said steadily, clenching her muscles and rocking a little harder against him. "Are we making love?"

"What?" he asked, confused and struggling for breath as the passion continued to swirl distractingly between them.

"Are we making love?"

"I mmmm, god… yeah, we're making, uhh, making love."

"Good," she said, sliding her fingers to the base of his skull as she pulled his mouth back to hers, slipping her tongue inside to caress his while she mewled softly against his lips. When she pulled away for a breath, he followed her lips, leaning forward and dropping his arm to wrap around her shoulders as if to stop her retreat, obviously unwilling to part from her kiss.

But he was still confused, the orgasm he was hovering on the verge of making it more difficult than usual to follow her reasoning. He was having trouble focusing, couldn't seem to read between the lines of what she was saying, so for the moment he let it slide onto the back burner and let sensation flood over his body in wash of pleasure.

She was panting against his temple before dragging her lips across his brow, and Booth let his hands wander up and down her sides, brushing his thumbs against the soft outer curves of her breasts as his whole reason for living suddenly centered on waiting desperately to hear that hitch in her breath, feel that shudder of her spine, and the hot rush of her desire flooding all around him, pulling him along with her now that he was finally the one who was allowed to take her and follow her there.

Then the thought struck him like lightning in the desert, sparking him aflame with a crackle of electricity that would probably be fatal if it ever stopped feeling so damn good.

They were making love… him to her… she to him… love, she'd said…

Brennan spasmed in his arms, her body humming with the vibrations of her body's thorough satiation and her emotional, soul-quaking release, but when she was finally able to open her eyes and force her dilated pupils to focus on his face, she saw that his eyes were closed, his jaw clenched with his concentration as his body continued to rock between her quivering thighs.

"Booth," she whispered his name, dropping her forehead against his and cupping his face with both hands. "Come on, baby, let go," she urged, the appellation slipping unwittingly from her lips, but at the sharp intake of breath and the way his eyes flew open to greet hers, boring into her with tangible, throbbing possession, she could hardly bring herself to let her mind reprimand her for that irrational slip of the tongue. If something so trivial had that effect on him, brought him so much pleasure… she supposed that she could live with that irrationality.

"Baby," she tried again, getting a taste for it on the tip of her tongue. If it were scientifically possible, she would have said that the blackness of his eyes darkened further into a shade not yet discovered beyond that absolute purity of glistening onyx. Pleasure spiked through her blood, heating her battle-wearied body and chasing away her exhaustion as she got a sharp taste of how delicious it was to please this man.

She had once told Dr. Wyatt that she could not think of anything that she would not do to help Booth, but she was now discovering that she could think of nothing she wouldn't do to simply make him happy either, to tip the scales that much further away from discord. Protection was not enough, assistance was not enough. She wanted take away his pains, yes, but that wasn't enough. Because Booth deserved so much more than neutrality. Being trouble-free was only half the battle, and Brennan knew then that she never wanted feelings of indifference to touch this man again, that she wanted to do whatever she could so that pleasure might be the only thing that Booth ever felt again.

"Booth… baby," she altered with a chuckle when Booth gave a low growl at the loss of his treasured moniker, "Come on. It's your turn to feel good," she whispered against his parted and panting lips.

"No," he said, shaking his head though he didn't break away from where their foreheads still touched. "Don't, don't wanna stop… can't stop, can't ever stop."

"Why?" she asked softly, watching as his eyes squeezed shut again and his hands began to wander her body restlessly.

He licked his lips. "We're… uuuuhhh…. we're making love, Bones. You and me."

She stroked his cheeks silently, reveling in the way his body still pulsed inside her own, little tremors catching her time and again and keeping that rosy flush from ever cooling from her sweat-slick skin as she watched him, his brow drawing tight and pitted with desperate concentration, his eyelids clenched and his mouth hanging open under the force of his heavy panting.

"Again," he managed to plead.

"Baby," she breathed as another pinnacle rose and fell within her, making her hold onto him tighter as she moaned for him.

"We're making love, Bones," he said again, though it sounded as though he was talking to himself as much as he was to her. "You and me… love… we're making love."

He gasped as his body finally broke away from his mind, losing all control as he dropped his face to her chest, pressing his mouth against her heart while he rode through the wave on a sobbing moan of pleasure.

"Making love, making love, we're making love, making love, just you and me," he rambled on against her heartbeat, and as much as she wanted to, Brennan resisted the urge to press him tighter against her. She didn't want to risk muffling those words against her skin as they finally spilled out of him with the same reckless abandon that his release demanded.

"Love… you and me, Bones, just you and me, love…"

She held onto him tightly when he collapsed backwards onto the bed, his legs still dangling helplessly over the side of the mattress while she rode him down as he flopped back. His arms sprawled limply at his sides, unable to dredge up the strength to even flex his fingers, and Brennan rested heavily yet comfortably on top of him, her cheek pillowed just below the jut of his collarbone, idly stroking and soothing the smooth skin of his right pectoral while she listened to their heartbeats drumming together, answering the call of the other, and later she would barely remember mumbling the word "love" before her eyes drifted shut for the rest that her body suddenly demanded.