A/N: A nasty stomach bug knocked me sideways the last couple days and there was no Booth to nurse me back to health, so I had to do it on own. Anyway, I'm still kind of woozy, but mostly back to my usual self. So here's that update I've been hearing requests for ever since Chapter 24 was posted. (Thanks for the interest. :0) ) Date #5 WILL be the next chapter. Scout's honor. It might even get posted tonight … and that kiss is fast approaching. ;)

The end of this chapter may be OOC Brennan, may be not. In my opinion, given the progression of this story, (particularly the candles), it's time for her to take this step. But I might have moved things too far, too fast. As always, I'd love your feedback on whether I got it right or wrong and why.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Flying in the face of national statistics—summer heat = rise in crime rate—things slowed down considerably at the Bureau in the immediate wake of Parker's diagnosis of viral meningitis. Leave it to the murderers to stop murdering—or at least to stop leaving their victims so disfigured that Brennan's services were needed—at the exact moment when tensions were running at an all time high between the partners.

It had taken Parker close to a month to return to his healthy, mischievous little boy self, and there had been no discussion about putting the experiment on hold. It was simply a given that Booth was going to spend every moment possible overseeing his son's recovery. That extended time period apart, coupled with Booth's never-discussed meltdown at the hospital and Brennan's post-date #4 freakout, resulted in the partners becoming increasingly awkward and jittery around each other whenever they did meet, both tapdancing around issues they sorely need to address, namely one "unfinished experiment."

When Rebecca called on Friday afternoon and insisted that Parker be allowed to spend the weekend with his best friend, even though Booth would have preferred to keep the boy under close watch for another month, Booth suddenly had Saturday and Sunday free. And there was no question how he wanted to spend those days.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He showed up at Brennan's doorstep at 10:00 pm, knowing Cam wouldn't have been able to chase her out of the office before 9:00.

She opened the door with her hair in a messy bun, clad in an indecently short, if shapeless, gray T-shirt that made Booth instantly hot under the collar. There still wasn't a version of Brennan he'd discovered that didn't scream SEXY, whatever she might be wearing.

"How'd you know I'd be awake?" Her blue eyes snapped.

"Good to see you too, Bones. Can I come in?"

"If you know me so well, then you already know the answer to that question." She huffed away, leaving the door open nonetheless.

It took Booth a moment to figure out why she was in such a bad mood. As he closed the door behind him and locked it, his eyes were drawn to a blood-saturated washcloth wrapped around her left hand.

"What happened?" he demanded, feeling the familiar protective instinct rise within.

"I was opening a can of food for Josie," Brennan said pointedly, opening and closing drawers in an apparent search for something.

One more reason to dislike the newest addition to his partner's life—a fat, extravagantly ugly black and white cat that was currently perched on the back of the couch, glaring at Booth. The animal was an unexpected rescue, acquired when Brennan and Hodgins had visited the local pound to find a puppy for Angela's upcoming birthday. One quick lesson on automatic food dispensing devices, and several dozen promises from Hodgins that he and Angela would babysit the cat if Brennan went out of town, and Temperance Brennan suddenly had a pet. And Booth had a rival for his affections.

"I wasn't expecting visitors so late," Brennan continued, her head inside a cabinet, "And when you knocked I cut myself on the serrated edge."

Booth draped his jacket on a chair and rolled up his sleeves. "Let me see."

"Why? You dislike blood."

"If it's my fault you got cut, then I want to see the damage."

"It's unnecessary," Brennan informed him. "I'm perfectly capable of attending to my own injuries."

He groaned. "You just can't make things easy, can you?" As she walked by him, he grabbed her injured arm, careful to place his hand well above the injury. "Let me see, Bones."

He unwrapped her hand gently, ignoring her protests, and peeled away the sodden cloth to reveal a nasty, jagged cut winding its way under her thumb.

Booth frowned. "This needs stitches."

"No, it doesn't. The laceration is shallow, even if it's visibly unpleasant, and has already stopped bleeding with simple compression. No subcutaneous tissue is visible. While the location of the injury is problematic and may temporarily impair the range of motion of the proximal phalange, the edges can be quite easily superglued together, saving us both a trip to the hospital. Haven't you seen enough of doctors lately?"

"All right." He didn't release her arm. "Where's the glue, then?"

"There's a tube in my medicine cabinet."

"Sit," Booth ordered, pushing her into a chair. He cut off then argument before it made it past her lips. "You can't superglue your own skin back together, Bones. Not with the cut in the location it's in, at least. The rational thing to do is to let me help clean you up, so that then I can tell you why I actually dropped by this evening."

Her nose scrunched ever so slightly, in that endearingly annoyed-Brennan mode, but she didn't argue.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Booth gathered up the glue, bandages, antiseptic ointment and a bowl of warm soapy water, only to re-emerge and find Josie curled up on his operating table beside Brennan.

"Scram, kitty," he commanded, giving the animal a firm nudge in the direction of the floor.

Josie flounced away, voicing her displeasure loudly.

"She could have stayed," Brennan protested.

"You're saying you want cat hair superglued into your skin?" Booth frowned at the tendrils of black and white fur now covering the table.

Brennan followed his gaze and spoke up defensively. "She's stress-shedding. The vet says it's a sign of nervousness and is very common in rescue cats. It should stop once she feels safe in her new environment."

Muttering to himself, Booth stalked back to the bathroom and grabbed a clean towel. Josie was just settling into Brennan's lap when he returned. Cat and FBI agent glared at each other defiantly.

"She'll be fine in my lap, Booth," Brennan said quickly. "The vet says it's important for her to physically bond—"

"Yeah, yeah," he cut her off, feeling none too charitable toward the hissing feline who was partly responsible for his partner's injuries. The same hissing feline that was 'physically bonding' with his partner's lovely lap, just above a scrap of red lace that was visible where her T-shirt had ridden up dangerously on her thighs. Damn cat's getting more action than me! "Just make sure she stays where she is."

He laid out his equipment on the towel, dragged a chair up to the table and sat down. "This may sting," he cautioned, immersing her hand in the warm water.

She flinched slightly, but otherwise said nothing, continuing to scratch Josie's ears soothingly with her free hand. The cat growled and purred simultaneously, sounding like a miniature piece of farm machinery.

Once Booth was certain the laceration was clean, he dried the injury, applied disinfectant, and set to work sealing the edges of the wound.

"I wouldn't have expected you to be so good at providing first aid," Brennan commented.

"Army Rangers, Bones," he reminded her, taking the backhanded compliment in stride. "Not the first time I've superglued a wound. Yours is far from the worst I've seen. When I was in training, one of the obstacles courses we had to run included a pit covered in knee-high barbed wire. We had to climb in and climb out on our backs and bellies while wearing 45 pound rucksacks. One of my buddies caught his leg and tore it open all the way from knee to groin."

Now Brennan cringed. "Was there a medic nearby?"

"Sure, if he'd asked for one," Booth replied, drawing the skin flaps together so they matched as closely as possible. "But he wasn't about to."

"Why not? That kind of injury would have required prompt medical attention, particularly given the likelihood of infection."

"Because, Bones," he explained patiently, "Once you'd gotten that far, you weren't about to quit and have to start all over again. He had me glue the injury closed and finished the course with the rest of us."

"That kind of irrational, self-aggrandizing display of alpha male prowess is precisely why the military—"

"So, Bones," he interrupted her deliberately, unwilling to get into the same old argument yet again, "Are we, uh, still experimenting?"

That took her offguard. While she processed the question, Booth began bandaging her hand.

"If we were, we'd be on the second week," he added, eyes focused firmly on the work in front of him. He was afraid of what he'd see if he looked at her face. "I was kind of figuring maybe 2 more dates, call it even, so we can finally get to week 3? I mean, if you still want to keep going, that is."

"I would very much like to continue the experiment, Booth."

He pressed the final strip of tape in place, looked up and caught the small, shy smile on her face before it vanished and was replaced by a typical look of careful equanimity.

"If you do, that is. If you don't—"

He stopped her with a gentle finger over her lips. "Don't go there, Bones. I'm in it for the long haul and you know it."

Josie chose that moment to yowl loudly. Brennan burst out laughing, the throaty, no-holds barred sound reverberating through the apartment.

"See? The damn cat doesn't like me," Booth exclaimed, grateful nonetheless for the comic relief. "Why'd you get her anyway?"

"She keeps me company." Brennan rubbed the chubby animal's belly.

"So my company isn't enough?" he teased.

"It's nice having someone to come home to at night," she said, the amusement in her voice suddenly gone completely. Traces of loneliness filtered through the silence that hung between them. Loneliness Brennan had previously refused to acknowledge even existed in her life.

Their eyes met again and she dared him. He could've avoided the conversation as they had so many times. But she'd been brave enough to go there. So he followed along, even if he was terrified that this would cause her to shutdown faster than a bank whose burglar alarms had been activated.

"I'd like to be that someone you come home to, Bones." Booth tugged her free hand away from where it rested on Josie, ignoring the hiss of protest from under the table. He held her fingers in his lightly, drawing circles on the palm of her uninjured hand. "Someday, I mean. No wedding ring needed, even if that would be nice, obviously …" he clamped his lips shut, aware that he was babbling

To his overwhelming relief, she didn't pull her hands away, or avoid the topic or invent an excuse to send him packing. Instead, she caught the bull by the horns and sent it stampeding squarely in Booth's direction. "Angela said that after the sixth week you'd want us to move in together."

"Whoa!" That one came out of left field. He made a mental note to ask Angela what the hell she'd been thinking. If anything was going to make Brennan run, it was the idea of such a seismic shift in their fledgling relationship.

Booth held up his hands in the universal "stop" sign. "That's a little fast, don't you think, Bones? I mean, I know we've worked together for almost 6 years, but this is a whole new thing opening up between us."

"I would agree that Angela's 6 Steps for Dating are strictly arbitrary in their design." Brennan played with the buttons on his rolled up right sleeve. "However, I have also recently become more aware of my tendency to distance myself emotionally from you when I'm concerned that a new development in our personal relationship might affect our partnership."

You could've knocked Booth over with a feather and he would've gone over easy.

She smiled crookedly at his expression. "Isn't this the point where you melodramatically say 'Who are you, and what have you done with my partner?'"

Okay, Hodgins might have had a point with all his conspiracy theories. Someone had clearly stolen Booth's Bones away and replaced her with an identical prototype that not only was self-aware, but also actually had a halfway decent sort of humor.

"Booth." Brennan's voice dragged him back to the blue-eyed, auburn-haired reality confronting him so sincerely from across the table. "I can't promise I won't have a similar reaction should we decide to consider moving in together at some point. All I can promise is to try and remember to let you know what's going on inside my head before backing away."

"That's more than enough for me, baby," he answered softly.