Okay, yeah, this is a day late. I know you all probably hate excuses, but last week was spirit week at my school, and my weekend was busy. So, I just put several hours into cranking this out. I hope you will think it was worth the wait. :)

The following morning, thankfully, was one of relaxation and enjoyment. The tensions which had somehow come up late the previous night had gone in the pale glow of the sunrise, and she found herself laughing easily with him as he attempted to feed her a strawberry and she attempted, with equal vigor, to convince him that her hands were perfectly ambulatory.

Somehow, he still ended up succeeding.

They stayed in well passed noon, the television playing some cheesy soap opera in the background as they occupied themselves in easy conversation that managed, shockingly, to avoid delving back into the realms of the unfinished case which would be awaiting their return the next day.

Brennan was feeling just a faint tinge of hunger as the clock made a somewhat loud tick signaling that it had just reached one o'clock, and her stomach loudly complained to him, even when she hadn't been willing to with her voice.

Chuckling, he pulled her into his arms, holding her prisoner in his warm embrace as she struggled only weakly against him, laughing as his hands tickled the sensitive skin around her naval.

"Booth! Knock it off!" she cried, twisting futilely.

"I thinks someone's hungry," he replied teasingly. "You sure we're going to make it until tonight? Cuz if you sneak off to get some vegetarian sandwich or something, you'll ruin your appetite for dinner."

"How about ice cream, then?" she suggested with a raised eyebrow.

A wide grin encompassed his face, and his brown eyes melted as their corners crinkled in only a way that his could. "See, Bones, this is why I call you a genius."

"Because I think of good food options?" she asked, a laugh invading her voice, "Booth, that hardly constitutes as a measure of brain capacity or the ability to comprehend-"

A moment later she was rolling back in his arms, fighting to free herself as he resumed his tickling attack.

Finally he released her, and she rolled away, gasping slightly, her hair a tangled mess.

"I should shower," she said somewhat breathlessly. "Then we can head out... I saw a Friendly's when we were driving here."

Promptly, he stole her breath away again with his lips, and she broke away somewhat reluctantly, breathing much harder now.

She slid off the bed and quickly gathered up a reasonable outfit before slipping into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her. There was a part of her, one that she didn't let have a say much, which was telling her to invite him in with her, but the other part of her brain was telling her that she should finish as quickly as possible so they could leave. He probably still needed to shower, too.

That last point wasn't helping her other argument much.

Her logical side ended up failing, because he was the one to knock on the other side of the door, asking a hesitant, "Bones?"

She opened it for him, the water already running and her clothing already strewn on the floor. His eyes widened, and a grin roguishly took over his features as he swooped forward to capture her lips once more.

The ice cream had been a successful idea, but they'd been left with not much to do following it. They sat on a bench outside the restaurant in the cold chill of the day, when noon was just beginning to crest over and the clouds were unwilling to let it brighten even the slightest. It looked like they might be in for snow, but she was hoping against it, knowing that if the skies let loose there was always a good chance they'd be stuck driving home in it later that night.

They had vacated their room at the bed and breakfast, collecting their belongings and stowing them neatly in the trunk of the vehicle before they'd set out. Now they were, quite truly, stranded without a place to be.

"What time did you say our reservations were for?" she asked again, even though she was well aware that they were for five o'clock.

"Five," he repeated dully.

It was supposed to be a rather nice Thai place, according to Booth, and she was happy to go along with whatever he had in mind, but for some reason she felt uneasy about tonight. It was one of those feelings that wasn't logical, one that he would probably categorize as coming from his 'gut,' and that was what worried her most. Those were the things he specialized in. Not her. So for her to be having them now, about this dinner...

She was concerned.

But she could deduce the reason behind it rather simply, just from the look on his face. Clearly he was concerned about something, with the amount of anxiety his facial expression at the moment was exuding, and that must be rubbing off on her.

She wasn't about to ask him about it, either, because she actually had a fairly good idea of what it was.

Brennan wasn't clueless... well, not as much as she had maybe been before. It wasn't hard to tell that maybe Angela was right about certain things. And, to be quite honest, she'd done a bit of research. Nothing fancy, or technical, just a bit of fiction reading on the subject of proposals. It wasn't something she had ever written herself, or even had a part of in real life, so she knew that she was uneducated about the subject. From what she could see now, though, with the way Booth kept glancing at her, twisting his hands, and occasionally reaching into his pocket...

She could figure it out.

And it terrified her.

It was so easy, wasn't it, to just logically consider a situation when one was not actually in it? How many times had she gone over events of her life long after they had passed and imagined how she could have done them differently to alter the outcome? How many times had she thrown herself into her work, into her studies, into her martial arts training, to convince herself that things would not turn out the same again? And yet, somehow bad things still happened to her. Kenton, after all, was not expected. That should have been avoidable. She should have been prepared. And thinking about it from the safety of her bedroom in the weeks following, it had been impossibly easy to imagine how she would redo the situation if it were to happen again.

The same principle applied here.

She had thought about this, quite thoroughly, or so she had believed, and she'd come to the decision that it might be reasonable to accept what Booth wanted. But now? When the possibility was directly in front of her?

It felt so much more real, and her mind was spinning with possibilities for outcomes, none of them looking positive thus far. She could say yes, but somehow her mind was shaking its head desperately whenever she landed on the idea. The reality of what it would mean seemed to crush her. It was Booth, and she loved him, and she wanted to spend forever with him...

But there was a difference.

When Sully had asked her to sail off with him, there was that moment, that first realization of what it meant, where she'd felt a happiness so great she couldn't even explain it in words. It was the feeling that she was wanted, that he wasn't sailing off to leave her... but rather to be only with her, because he loved her.

And then reality had caught up, and told her that she was giving up everything for one thing, and that wasn't logical. There had been Booth to think of, and Angela and her other friends, and her brother who she'd only just started to reconnect with, and her work... her work that she loved so desperately.

Brennan was someone that loved her beliefs. She stood by them, because they protected her where nothing else would. And when something trustworthy and wonderful took their place like Booth now had, she relied on that to be the thing that was there for her. But her beliefs were still hers. They belonged to her, as a part of who she was. And she liked to think, somewhere deep inside her, that it was part of why he loved her.

She had grown and changed, and her beliefs had come with her. She had freely admitted that she loved him, and that she believed in love, but a part of her had come to the belief, at the same time, that maybe she hadn't lost the ability to love so much as she'd simply kept it tucked safely away where only someone like him could possibly find it, knowing that he alone wouldn't break its fragile form.

But marriage had never appealed to her. As a teenager, she hadn't imagined her wedding the way Angela claimed to have done. She hadn't even thought, at the darkest times, that she'd ever find somebody willing to even try to be with her. And when she finally did, it fell apart. And every time afterwards it had done exactly the same thing.

It was only logical to lose that part.

Wanting to get married, though... that was a belief which had never existed in her mind, young or mature, until recently when she'd thought about it so much from being so close with Booth.

In short, it felt almost as if she was abandoning herself completely, if he were to ask and she were to accept. It was a ritual, yes, and an archaic one at that, but it had great meaning to the people involved. And it would affect her, and it would affect him.

She knew he wanted it, because that was the way his beliefs went, but she also wanted to incorporate her own. She didn't want to be swallowed up by change.

Change had already stolen so much from her.

He wasn't trying to do anything of the kind, she knew that, but it still felt like that would be the outcome.

And suddenly she wasn't surer of anything than she was at that moment of the fact that she was going to say no if he asked.

Because she didn't really have another option if she didn't want to shatter.

The afternoon passed slowly. They finally settled back into their seats in the SUV and drove around for a while, just observing the local architecture while she pointed out meaningless facts, but they could both feel the tension in the air.

When five o'clock finally rolled around she could almost see the sweat beading up across his forehead as he held the door of the restaurant open for her. She smiled back politely, but was fully aware of the fact that the expression didn't quite reach her eyes from the grimacing smile that she got in response.

They took their seats and picked over the menu, making pointless conversation that was a great effort on her part. She had a hard time trying to come up with new topics every time a silence hit, and she always seemed to think of only sports or Parker. She desperately hoped that those weren't the only two things she ever asked him about, and then found herself wondering if he thought she used his son as a leeway into conversation. She was lost in semi-fearful thought, her eyes staring at one fixed spot on the menu, when he reached a finger up and tipped the top of it down so he could see her eyes.

She stared up at him in surprise, her mouth forming a slight 'o' shape and her fingers still curled around the edges of the laminated paper.

"Everything okay, Bones?" he asked, the frown that had been between his eyes all afternoon far more pronounced now.

She stared for a moment at it, and then gave a quick bob of her head. "I'm fine, Booth."

The frown line didn't go away, but he didn't say anything in response, going back to his own menu. She sighed and lifted hers back up to once more shield her face as she attempted to focus enough on the cursive typing to find something that looked good to order. She wondered if he'd already selected something and was waiting on her. How long had she been staring at the menu that he'd gotten concerned enough to ask her that question in the first place?

Biting her lip, she selected a vegetable dish almost at random, read quickly through the description to be sure it didn't actually have meat mixed in, and then set down the menu gingerly on the table, her eyes flicking up to check on him.

His eyes were fixed on his menu still, but they were firmly aimed at one spot. It seemed that now he was the one lost deep in thought. One hand curled around the side of the menu, while the other one tapped out a meaningless rhythm on the soft crimson tablecloth.

Without meaning to, she related the vibrant color to that of blood, and her mind easily snapped back to the lab, something she'd remarkably avoided doing for most of their weekend away. It was a Sunday night, and Cam had told everyone to take the weekend, but the building was probably still filled with workers and researchers at other stations. Some of her newer interns were probably hard at work in Limbo, identifying skeletons of people who had been left without names. A part of her yearned to be there, knowing that with every bone she studied, they were one step closer to having an identity. Having closure for their families.

And what about their latest victim? That young woman had a family searching for answers. Someone out there was responsible for her death, and they needed to be brought to justice for what they had done.

Tomorrow they would be back on the case, she reminded herself.

The waiter came around and offered them drinks, and then took their orders. They both spoke mutedly, saying only the minimum and then smiling and nodding politely as they handed over their menus.

They fell into silence immediately following his departure.

Booth seemed to be getting more nervous and agitated with every passing moment, and she knew that he probably felt that way because of the way she was acting, but since her actions were reactions to his... they seemed to be stuff in an illogical cycle of emotions. She wanted desperately to break it, but she knew that by doing so she might provide him with a false hope for a positive should he choose to go through with what she suspected, and she didn't want to do that.

And yet, at the same time, she knew that letting this continue was pure insanity. It could only hurt them both, and in the end the outcome was going to be exactly the same.

But, logical as she might be, she couldn't work up the courage that it would take to actually bring up the subject on her own. There was no proof that he was actually thinking about what she thought he was, and the risk of being wrong was one that kept her lips tightly sealed.

By the time their food arrived, they had gone from sitting and avoiding each other to constantly looking up and awkwardly catching the others' eyes before turning away. The sound of silverware scraping seemed like a wonderful distraction, and they both heartily took to eating their meals, staring pointedly at their food rather than each other. She caught his eyes on her a few times, though, and finally his voice reached her hesitantly, making her fork stop halfway to her mouth, and land back quickly on her napkin as she gave him her full attention.

"Something's wrong, Bones," he said. Not a question. "And I'd really like it if you told me what it was, because I don't know if I can handle much more of..." he gestured at her and the air in between them in general, "this. What's going on in that head of yours?"

"Something's bothering you," she countered immediately, catching him off guard.

"I think I asked you first."

"You did. That was your answer," she said simply. It took a great deal of effort, but she picked up her fork again and pretended to nonchalantly return to eating.

He stared at her for a long moment, and while she resisted the urge to look up and meet his gaze, she was fully aware of it.

"Temperance."

Biting her lip, she allowed her eyes to flicker to him.

He was staring at her, his eyes filled with too much emotion for her to decipher.

"I get the feeling you already know what's been bothering me."

She continued to worry her lip, but managed a nod, not breaking eye contact with him.

He sighed, and then slipped a hand in his pocket and pulled out a little velvet box. Somehow, seeing it for herself brought the reality crashing down all that much harder.

He didn't open it, but he placed it on the table and pushed it towards her with two fingers, until it rested only an inch away from her hand. His lips didn't ask the question, but his eyes undeniably did.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, shaking her head just a fraction and trying to maintain her composure as best she could. She didn't even want to think about what that answer would do to him.

He kept the same calm facial expression, but she saw his eyes flash, just for a split second, with something that was undeniably pain. It was gone in an instant, though, and so was the box.

"Can we pretend that never happened, then?" he asked, his voice tight. "And just get on with our evening?"

Despite the voice in her head that was screaming at her to explain and tell him exactly why she was telling him no -the one that sounded quite a lot like Angela- she simply nodded and managed a small smile. The one he gave in return was more like a wince, and it cut into her heart painfully.

The rest of the evening wasn't at all what she had been hoping it would turn into. There was no easy return to simple conversation, or long lingering glances, or even any hand-holding on the table that would have at least reassured her of the connection they still shared. It was much the same as it had been before the unspoken question, only with tense sentences filling the silence.

She spent the rest of the night, and the entire quiet ride back to DC, wondering if she'd made the right choice.

Oh dear, this wasn't what you were all expecting at all, was it? Hehe sorry about that. The characters wouldn't let me go through with a happy little perfect proposal though, not that I had one of those planned to begin with.

I'll let you stew over that for a while.

There will be more angst to come; after all, there has to be some plot and chaos in this fic. It can't all be cheery fluff and rainbows, y'know.

So... do I get a review? Please?

Oh, and thank you so much to everyone who supplied me with such wonderful spoilers :) I tried to respond to all of your reviews, but it's a bit of a challenge on my iTouch, and like I said, last week was chaos. I apologize to anyone that was missed :(