Chapter 14. A Good Look in the Mirror

Brennan leaves Angela's office in a daze and heads for the bathroom. Splashing cool water on her face, she lets it drip onto her collar and run down her neck. She peers into the mirror and thinks to herself, "Why is this so difficult for me? Why is it so hard for me to relax, give in, allow myself to be vulnerable … like everyone else?"

She knew Angela was right. The kind of love making and passion Angela described, the kind of love Brennan knew Booth was capable of giving, and inspiring, was exactly the kind Brennan desperately wanted to believe she could have. She had seen it in him; had heard him say it with her own ears.

As she gazes questioningly into the mirror, she recalls something Booth said to her one evening after they had just wrapped up a curious case involving grown adults who enjoyed engaging in "pony play." In pony play, one partner takes on the characteristics of a pony and the other plays the part of the rider. While Brennan had conceded that she was not averse to role-playing with sexual partners as a way of mixing things up, Booth found the whole concept of pony play disturbing and disingenuous.

At the diner that evening, he had insisted that pony play participants went to a lot of expense pretending to be something in the name of crappy sex. Brennan recalled objecting to how he could know that these people, unconventional though they were, were having crappy sex. His reply had left her speechless and breathless and had been indelibly written into her memory – like a cranial tattoo – as the most sensual and beautiful thing she had ever heard one person say to another. She closed her eyes now, visualizing him across the table from her, and recalled what he had said:

"How do I know they are having crappy sex? I'll tell you why," he began. "Here we are. All of us, basically alone. Separate creatures just circling each other. All searching for that slightest hint of a real connection."

"Some looking in the right places. Some just giving up hope because in their mind they're thinkin', Oh, there's no one out there for me. But all of us, we keep trying over and over again. Why?" he had asked, "Because every once in a while two people meet and there's that spark."

He looked straight at her while saying all of this, as if he had practiced it – or perhaps this wasn't the first time he had given this speech – though she had a suspicion that it was.

She remembers feeling acutely aware of the rise and fall of her own chest, the sound of the ocean rushing around inside her head.

"And yes, Bones," he continued, "maybe he's handsome and she's beautiful and maybe that's all they see at first. But Making love," he paused and leaned further across the table toward her. "Making love," he said just above a whisper, so she had to lean in closer to hear him, "that is when two people become one."

Though she could barely speak, she had managed to whisper, "Booth, it is scientifically impossible for two objects to occupy the same space."

"Yeah Bones," he replied, "but what's important is that we try. And when we do it right, we get close."

"To what?" she had asked, wanting to believe him, but constrained by her knowledge of the laws of the physical world. "Breaking the laws of physics?"

"Yeah, Bones. A miracle," he responded with a smile that melted any parts of her that hadn't already dissolved into a gelatinous puddle of defenselessness.

"Those people prancing around pretending to be something they aren't, that is crappy sex," he said, looking straight into her eyes as he said, "compared to the real thing."

When he had finished, she was speechless ... and shaking. Fortunately, he hadn't seemed to notice that. He couldn't have been more vulnerable if he had been sitting across from her completely naked. The way he had let her see him, know him, created a physical sensation in her she could only describe as how a magnet must feel when it is in close proximity to another curiously strong magnet. There's an undeniable force between them, an urgency to be near each other.

Brennan found Booth's brand of intimacy to be simultaneously frightening and titillating. It dawns on her that the intimacy he had always offered her was more than a physical intimacy – it was an emotional intimacy. He frequently got just close enough for her to feel that intoxicating heat of his body, but he never stepped over that wall that she had erected to protect herself. He respected her need for control.

How is it, she marveled now for the first time, that he has always been able to do that, and I have never felt anything but safe? Why is it that I feel anxious about all of this when I am alone with my thoughts, but in his presence I feel comforted, protected?

Brennan recalls thinking to herself that night in the diner after the pony play case, that whoever finds herself on the receiving end of Booth's lovemaking would have to be someone who would receive him with an equally intimate vulnerability.

This is what she was referring to when she told Hannah to be sure about her feelings for Booth before moving in with him. Brennan had known that Booth would give Hannah his heart, but she wasn't sure Hannah fully understood what this meant – or would be able to fully reciprocate. Unfortunately for Booth, he learned too late that Hannah was not worthy of what Booth was offering. Or Maybe Hannah was afraid – maybe Hannah had the same fears Brennan had had more than nine months previously.

This train of thought brought Brennan back to the mess she was currently in the middle of. What if Hannah also had the same revelation Brennan had had during the case of the surgeon they found buried under a tree in a bad part of town. It was while solving that case that Brennan had an epiphany, realizing that she didn't want regrets. It was then that she had told Booth about her feelings for him. Maybe Hannah had come to the same conclusion and was regretting turning Booth's proposal down. Since Brennan and Booth were not really together – perhaps Hannah wanted to give it another try.

What fresh he11 would it be to finally be vulnerable, and strong, and ready to take the final chance with Booth, only to have come to it all too late?

Brennan closes her eyes at the sadness, the devastation, of this possibility. "I can't go through this again," she says out loud. "If they get back together our partnership will have to change. We will have to stop working together. Watching him with Hannah will break me."

She feels she cannot blame Booth for getting involved with Hannah the first time around. But a reconciliation with Hannah, when he is free to make a choice between the two of them? It was unfathomable. "I will have to get a new partner. I couldn't do it, couldn't watch them together. No longer working together would also devastate her.