Author's Note: A special thanks to all the anonymous 'guest' reviewers and those who aren't signed in. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts or offer encouragement. It's just wonderful that you do that.

~Q~

Fan Mail - Lodestone

~Q~

He held this truth to be self-evident: Seeley Booth never fully understood the definition of attraction until he made the acquaintance of Temperance Brennan.

(Most people think attractive means pretty and most people are wrong.)

Oh certainly, he'd met beautiful women. He'd liked many, loved a few, proposed to one, but in hindsight none of them were truly attractive. A beach might be filled with a billion beautiful stones, each one lovely to look at and some so special you want to take them home, but every now and then one finds a lodestone.

That is the one who becomes indispensable, the one who makes you wonder how you ever got along without her.

Nobody knows for certain how a lodestone is made, only that it is magnetic where all other stones remain inert. It's not that the stone is attracted to the magnet; rather, the stone itself becomes the magnet, becomes imbued with the mystical force that pulls on iron and holds it tight. A lodestone does nothing with intention, its existence is accidental and inexplicable. Yet ... get close enough and it also proves irresistible.

This all might sound too scientific but it was Pops, his grandfather, who had explained the whole idea to him. "Seeley, one day you will meet your lodestone, the woman who will knock you off your feet. You won't know what hit you when she didn't raise a finger and you will never know why she's the one who raises you up when no one else can. It'll just be. You'll feel her pull on you immediately, like iron drawn to a magnet. I met your grandmother and that was it — I was done."

Pops was an old romantic so naturally youthful Seeley paid no mind to the warning. He didn't believe such a thing as a feminine lodestone existed, or fate, or soul mates. He didn't believe any of it until the day he walked into a lecture hall and found Dr. Temperance Brennan in the midst of attracting one hundred enraptured anthropology students. She was lovely but that wasn't where her magnetism came from. It was just something uniquely her: this unbelievable mix of beautiful, awkward, overconfident, unexpected shyness, obnoxious genius, hypnotic metallic eyes, and just ... the whole package. Before the day was over she'd added one more to her roster of attracted iron students, an FBI Agent who didn't know the first damn thing about bones or lodestones.

But good lord, he wanted to learn!

Once iron enters the lodestone's magnetic field it can't stay away from the magnet; once they connect, they can only be parted from each other by a greater force. From the moment Booth encountered Brennan, he'd mostly remained in her magnetic field and the closer they got, the stronger the forces of attraction and repulsion pulsating between them. This had confounded Booth for months after he'd met her, the way she could push him away as violently as she pulled him near.

Only during the last few days had Booth begun to realize why his grandfather's metaphor wasn't quite right. Pops had described iron reacting to the lodestone, little realizing the power that could pull between two magnets. There's a thing called polarity that pushes them apart if they're aligned the wrong way, a force so strong it's nearly impossible to overcome. But flip one of them around...?

He'd finally flipped himself around, reversed his polarity to point towards hers, north and south aligned. If the force on them was strong before they'd stopped holding themselves apart... well, it was inexorable now that they'd come into full alignment.

Attraction.

This was exactly the sort of thing that draws planets to suns by the force of gravity or holds magnets tight together in defiance of gravity and every force on earth other than the prying of human hands.

The force of her manifested in him as an irresistible compulsion to get near, which was the same need drawing him across the room now. As he rounded the exam table the electric buzz of energy hummed beneath his skin, growing louder the closer he got. And despite her caution she held steady, watched him come nearer, did nothing to halt the advance, because he was her lodestone every bit as much as she was his.

"Do you trust me?"

Spoken so low she barely heard, a private whisper between the two. An unswerving gaze gave him his answer, better than the pucker folding into her brow or the puzzled parting of her lips. She didn't step back. That gave him an answer, too.

There was a cotton-eared dampness in the Bone Room, the result of voices from the larger lab outside careening around the corner to bounce against a polished concrete floor and glossy Sterilite storage drawers. He could hear a buzzing coming from her pocket and behind the blue patch at her hip, a faintly glowing screen glimmering weakly through blue cotton.

The problem with a lodestone is she attracts indiscriminately. Through no fault of her own other than just the spectacular woman she was, Bones had unwittingly attracted someone else. A dangerous admirer.

"What is he telling you?"

So many messages bombarding her over the last days — the warnings, the constriction — all of them circling around her like a lariat that was meant to draw her away from a force she could resist no more than he. If they kept coming, got stronger, would they succeed in pulling her away or only tear her apart?

"I don't care."

It came out strained. Her eyes dropped at last, her gloved hand cupping down over the pocket almost protectively, until she realized what she was doing and stopped. Bones swallowed rather heavily, her chest moving rapidly under the force of shallow breaths.

Two steps closer, so close his lips tingled and his body primed itself for contact. It was electric, magnetic, twin forces she would say existed on a continuum. They were alone for the moment but it could end at any time so kissing her the way he wanted to was out of the question. To avoid a lapse he went around her, coming around the unguarded flank until he was standing outside her line of sight. Vulnerable before him lay her exposed nape, a long curve connecting brain to heart.

Booth bent forward until his breath caressed and her scent clouded and then he thought he could almost taste the tension thrumming between them. It had a salty tang, like touching his tongue to a nine-volt battery. He spoke and the words washed over her.

"Do you feel ... how close I am...?"

Less than a quarter inch separated them (he wondered how much in millimeters) and it was too much so Booth got just that little bit closer and brushed his lower lip against the back of her neck. He heard her draw a sharp breath as he pulled back to whisper again.

"He wants to be this close to you..."

"You don't know what he wants," she insisted, still strained.

With one finger Booth found the top of her spine where it vanished into her uplifted hair and brought the tip down, slowly; torturous, barely skimming, not really touching at all. Under his roving fingers her body was stiffening, tightening. At the base a knot where her necklace lay so he swirled around it and then withdrew.

To his surprise, she kept her back to him, her head tilting forward just a little as she fought for control.

"Let me see it then."

Returning to her with two fingers he traced the soft patch of skin behind her ear, skimming downwards over her skipping pulse to where neck curved into shoulder, beneath her collar, stroking forward to the collar bone. Goose flesh appeared on his partner even though he'd barely touched her and her gaze clung rather stubbornly at the door. "See what?"

Turning her, pressing her back towards the Sterilite wall of bones, Booth brought his mouth to hers, almost kissing her with the words. "Give me your phone."

She blinked, those gorgeous eyes becoming almost lodestone black under the influence of her dilated pupils and belated recognition of how thoroughly he was seducing her. "No."

Booth's biggest mistake might be this: getting too damn close. He wasn't in control of himself anymore, the arousal he could see in her had begun wreaking havoc in him as well but even then he might have managed it if she hadn't said no. In the end it was always going to be her unyielding nature that turned him on the most. With a growl his fingers curled around the base of her skull as the attraction brought their bodies together. Not slow, not controlled, his mouth devoured hers, his body crowded hers, his thigh pressed between hers as he pushed her back into the Sterilite wall and she forgot herself too much to remember what a cardinal sin this was.

All of it.

Kissing in the lab, in the Bone Room, in the midst of an analysis, while she was wearing gloves, all mortal sins to a scientist. She forgot it all, her nitrile blue palms eagerly crawling up his arms as she gasped and clung, crashed her head backwards into a bone-rattling drawer when Booth plunged his hungry mouth down her throat. A remnant of reason mocked Booth with the irony of how very much she was yielding now, a mere minute later, and in a place he would have expected the most resistance from her.

Or himself, for that matter.

Only hours ago he'd been plotting a long campaign and the likelihood of success had already dwindled down to a flash paper's chance in hell. One provocation from her and his resolve went up in smoke, not even ashes left.

"Doctor Saroyan approved the MDC—" The dull delivery of good news from her intern caused both partners to wrench themselves apart while Zack stalled in the doorway, very much resembling a fish unexpectedly thrown up on deck: eyes bulging, mouth popping open and closed (not a pretty sight). The droning fumble continued as he searched for a way back into waters that didn't feature his mentor locked in a passionate tryst two feet from evidence. "Oh! Uh, I'm..."

Bones looked equally flustered as she steadied herself and fought back a blush with little success. "Thank you. I was just..." Her guilty gaze flicked up to her partner's as the blush burned brighter. "You should go, Booth."

Now Booth knew he was the one opening his mouth for futile purposes. It took five more seconds before her 'advice,' delivered as it was with desperate mortification, finally filtered all the way in. "Oh. Yeah." He stepped backwards and her gaze was now climbing the proverbial wall, looking for escape in any object that wasn't one of the two men watching her with such opposing poles of astonishment.

"I- I'm sorry," a thoroughly rattled Zack finally managed. "I'll just—"

"No!" Very sharply, Bones shouted and then drew a deep breath to compose herself. "Booth is leaving."

She fumbled down at her gloves, peeling them off, one lip suffering a sudden mauling between edgy white teeth as she shook her head.

The thought splintered through Booth's muzzy brain that once again, all eyes were on her today. Furious at his own lapse, Booth spun and stormed towards the intern, his glare blasting the kid with unspoken invective. The kid quailed, turning ghastly grey, but even that wasn't assurance enough. Booth stopped at his side to threaten darkly, "If you say one word about this to anyone, I will cut out your tongue."

The tongue was as good as gone anyway, judging by the way it was flopping uselessly in his mouth. "N-no. Don't, don't worry."

Three more steps and he was outside the room. Two more after that to remember why he'd gone in there to begin with. One more to recall that fiery black glint in her gorgeous eyes when she said no.

Booth halted, still thoroughly riled up and now torn between pissed and admiring as he realized...

Now he was heading back in, startling her as he stalked her, his eyes blazing furious purpose and when he was right next to her (with Zack still floundering in the background) Booth grabbed one of her arms and held her just slightly but firmly enough to convey he would not allow a second diversion. "Sometimes, Bones, I think you know exactly what you're doing."

At first she gave nothing away, just gazed back in mute dispassion.

"You thought I'd forget." He kept his eye on her the entire time, noting each tiny shift that showed him he was right — the most subtle coming only after he'd plunged his left hand into her right pocket and extracted the phone. That's when her brow tightened and he smirked. "You're good, but I'm better."

And since the fish was out of the basket as far as Zack was concerned ... Booth pulled his partner forward and hit her with a hard, possessive kiss, the kind that left her in no doubt of who had won this round.

In that very short span of time, Zack had gone from terror to awe. He watched Booth stride back out with unmitigated hero worship that even Booth's terse warning — "Not one word, Zack" — couldn't remove.

"How does he do that," Booth heard Zack mutter, the moment he'd cleared the door. "If I kissed Naomi like that..."

"Zack." Brennan's strangled rebuke made Booth laugh, just a little.

The phone buzzing in his palm, however, made him frown. As he opened it and looked down, the string of messages sent shudders down his spine.

Oh. My. God.

Ohmygod.

Each line came separately, the stanzas marked by longer time intervals in between.

Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly.
Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy,
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there.

And an hour later, a warning cluster.

Oh no, no, said the little Fly, to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair, can ne'er come down again.

He'll cause you pain.

They were all dated last night, in the last hour before midnight. The next batch began around seven this morning, what she'd awakened to.

I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high
Will you rest upon my little bed? said the Spider to the Fly.
There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,
And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!

And then the warnings once again, just after eight.

Oh no, no, said the little Fly, for I've often heard it said
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!

He'll see you dead.

The stalker knew where she was last night. The horror flooded him with nausea as Booth closed his eyes and replayed exactly what had happened in her office. The spider. Was it any wonder she'd screamed if she'd been getting messages like this all morning?

Just as he was about to lose his breakfast all over the lab's polished concrete floor Bones burst out of the door behind him, her pallid face a perfect match to his. "I didn't want you to see."

"Why the HELL didn't you say anything." Evil words boiled inside his mouth, scalding lips, teeth and tongue because he wouldn't let them escape to splash over her with caustic fury. But he was so freaking pissed off right now...

"Booth..." Helpless against his rage and yet curiously unafraid, she wiped an errant tear away and shook her head. "It doesn't change how I feel."

He wasn't even half way through them all, the messages that had harassed and terrorized her all morning long.

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, Dear friend what can I do,
To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you?
I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice
I'm sure you're very welcome, will you please to take a slice?

While they were eating breakfast?! Yes, the time stamp matched. Another expletive blistered inside his mouth, along with stomach acid.

Oh no, no, said the little Fly, Kind Sir, that cannot be,
I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!

You didn't listen to me.

"Damn it, Bones, this changes everything!" Booth bit the words out fiercely, terrified out of his mind. "He's threatening to kill you!"

~Q~

Author's Note: Sorry (not sorry), the evil author is at it again. But don't worry: the next chapter is half finished already so it should post on time ... which is Friday, which is only five days away. ;)

Literary Note: The Spider and the Fly, by Mary Howitt, 1829. Believe it or not this is a fable meant for children, warning against falling for flattery.

Scientific Note: Many ores of iron, nickel and cobalt will be attracted to a magnet, but not to each other. Occasionally a particular type of iron ore (magnetite) will undergo a natural process whereby its magnetic field is intensified into north and south poles and when this happens, we call it a lodestone. It becomes a magnet capable of attracting ferromagnetic materials to itself. It's the difference between putting two paperclips together — both are attracted to magnets, yet with each other nothing happens — and putting the paperclips next to a magnet. The paperclips can not attract each other but the lodestone, a natural magnet, will attract them both.

Lodestones were first described in 600 BCE, when the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus noted a natural black stone was capable of attracting iron objects. He had no idea how it worked and suggested the stone must have a soul! For centuries we've known lodestones exist yet had no explanation for why some samples of magnetite were naturally magnetic and others weren't. A sound hypothesis may have finally been proposed by Dr. Peter Wasilewski of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who suggested certain types of magnetite develop a magnetic field only when struck by lightning. (Electricity and magnetism are both part of the electromagnetic spectrum. He proposed that a lightning strike temporarily creates such a strong magnetic field around the magnetite that its crystals are realigned.) So far, tests at Goddard where lightning is studied, have upheld his hypothesis.

The following sources were quite helpful:

1) Magnetite and Lodestone, by Hobart King at geology dot com: Geoscience News and Information.
geology dot com / minerals / magnetite dot shtml

2) "Lodestone," National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University with National Los Alamos National Laboratory
www dot magnet dot fsu dot edu / education / tutorials / museum / lodestone dot html

More on Thales of Miletus, who is credited with inventing the scientific method and was often cited by Plato and Aristotle, as well as others.

3) O'Grady, Patricia, Thales of Miletus (c. 620 B.C.E.—c. 546 B.C.E.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource.
www dot iep dot utm dot edu / thales /

Ironically, given Thales' desire to find natural explanations for observed phenomena, Aristotle used Thales' explanation of the lodestone to argue on the nature of souls. "Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded of his views, seems to suppose that the soul is in a sense the cause of movement, since he says that a stone [magnet, or lodestone] has a soul because it causes movement to iron." (De An. 405 a20-22)

4) Ibid. Chapter 7: All Things are Full of God.
www dot iep dot utm dot edu / thales /