AN: Thanks for the reviews, Musicnlyrics and, once again, SouthunLady. Warning: Some sexual content, but not graphic.

You hear a noise in the night, and before your eyes are open, you have a gun in your hand, safety off, bullet in the chamber. When your eyes open, you thing you are dreaming, because Bones is standing at the foot of your bed the way she has in a million dreams. That's why you don't lower the gun right away.

"I'm sorry," she says. And now you know you're awake, but the adrenaline is still surging through your body. Vincent Nigel Murray died today with your hands pressed to his chest, slick, trying to hold in his blood. Broadsky took him out standing right next to you and Bones in the Jeffersonian—a place that had felt safe.

You realize you're pointing a gun at her. She gasped in surprise when you cocked the gun, but a second later the surprise faded. She is standing at gunpoint and she doesn't look scared or nervous or annoyed that you're still aimed at her. Why are you still aimed at her?

"Do you want me to put the gun away?" you ask.

"Yes."

She's there, standing beside your bed because she is sad and guilty and scared, but not scared of Broadsky. She's scared that her lost intern never knew that she cared and wanted him to stay. "He was looking at me, and he was saying, 'Don't make me leave.'" She understands so much more than she used to, but you forget sometimes how much she still has to learn.

You take her hand, and she sits beside you on the bed. She's not ready to hear your words about begging god for more time and the bargains desperate souls try to make with the universe.

She whispers so soft it's almost a sigh: "I just…" and you take her in your arms and lean back until your head hits the pillow.

"Yeah," you sigh back. A whisper would be too loud; she is not impervious. "That's why I'm here. I'm right here. I know it's hard."

They fell asleep in each other's arms. Booth slept better than he had in longer than he could remember. Brennan was not so lucky. She was wide awake in Booth's arms. They had shifted in their sleep to a spooning position. His right arm was wrapped around her, and his hand was loosely cupped around her left breast.

Brennan wasn't used to sleeping with someone in her bed. She'd never felt the need to literally sleep with sex partners. It was a recognized ritual within relationships—one she was willing to observe—but she had not been in a serious relationship since Sully.

Brennan and Booth had shared beds a few times when undercover. Sharing the one bed in Buck and Wanda's trailer had been awkward. They had fallen asleep easily enough, but she'd awoken not long after with his arms around her and leg between hers, and she'd felt aroused. Arousal was a natural response to REM, but this was a greater level of arousal than normally accompanied dreaming. She'd tried to ease out of Booth's arms without waking him, but it's not easy to sneak away from a former Army Ranger. He had bolted upright: "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Booth. We just became entangled in our sleep."

"Okay," he'd replied cautiously, squinting at her as she moved to the far edge of the mattress.

Now, years later, she was tangled up with Booth again, aroused again, and still wondering what she should do. Things were different than they used to be. They'd admitted during the blizzard that they still wanted to be together someday. Her date was still a month away. She wondered what Booth had written. Even if he'd written today's date, it wouldn't be right, would it? Anthropologically speaking, Temperance Brennan knew that mourners often had intercourse as a response to grief. Her train of thought was broken when Booth pulled her closer. She could feel him pressed against her, and his hand involuntarily tightened around her breast, making her giggle.

"What?" he mumbled. His eyes opened and he looked down. He let her go as though she had scalded him and pulled away. "Sorry, Bones. I didn't mean to. Asleep! I was asleep, and…"

She laughed harder. "Booth," she said, "come back." He wrapped his arms around her again at the invitation, although he was careful to put his hand at her waist. "Thank you," she said, and squeezed his right hand with her left hand.

He propped himself up on his left elbow and scrutinized her face. "For what?"

"For bringing me here," she said.

The fingers of his left hand slipped under her neck. He let go of her hand and brought his right hand up to her cheek. Bones turned to face him. His face was so close to hers. All she had to do was lean forward a little and Booth closed the distance between them.

It was every bit as hot at they'd imagined it would be, which Booth had not thought possible. They were both very physical people with a lot of stamina who threw themselves into any endeavor full-tilt. Add to that true love and eight years of sexual tension, and it was a miracle they survived.

The weird thing was, for Booth is almost wasn't like a first time. For years he'd been subconsciously filing things away: how her body reacted when he touched her; sounds that meant happiness, excitement, nervousness or pain. He'd spent the better part of a decade decoding the body language of Dr. Temperance Brennan, and this was like his doctoral dissertation on the subject. He shook off the thought, realizing that he'd been spending hanging out with scientists too much, and focused on drawing a certain sigh from his Bones—one he had last heard when he'd given her a back massage when she'd had an ache. The sigh meant that, for once, Dr. Temperance Brennan was completely tension-free.

This was definitely a first for Brennan. In short, she was trying not to freak out. She had never, as Booth put it, "made love." On top of that, Booth had made it known on more than one occasion that he didn't approve of kinky sex. What if she accidentally did something he thought was kinky? The thought dissolved pretty quickly, though, as Booth's clever lips and hands drew a long, deep sigh from her. When she saw the self-satisfied grin on his face, Bones couldn't help but giggle, which got him laughing, too.

That was the one thing that surprised them both: how at this deep, important moment—the one they'd both fought against and dreamed of—they could relax. Tomorrow they would have to sort it out: Vincent, Broadsky and what tonight meant for their partnership. In this moment, though, they could laugh and touch.

Booth thought of the promises he'd made to Bones in the past about love breaking the laws of physics. Tonight he was going to show her. Brennan was thinking how at-home she felt in Booth's arms, how needless her worries had been, and how she wanted to give Booth the best climax he'd ever had.