Set during the famous last scene from the 100th Episode - Season 5, Episode 16, The Parts in the Sum of the Whole.
"I can't change. I don't know how."
Desperate, pleading. Tears escaping.
She hates herself for making his face crumple like that. Hasn't ever seen him defeated before. Doesn't know how to halt this downward spiral they've started.
"Please don't look so sad."
He usually tells her how to fix things.
Instead he's looking at her with red-rimmed eyes, broken.
She's struggling to keep her breathing in check.
"You're…" he starts.
"Tell me how to change." She blurts.
He's staring at her, open mouthed, whatever he'd been about to say evaporating into the night.
"Tell me Booth." She insists. "If you know, tell me."
He's frozen in place. Scrunches his eyes shut and opens them again, wanting to make sure this isn't some bizarre beyond belief dream.
Blue eyes, wide, traumatized and expectant.
A gulp and a steadying breath.
"Bones, I…" he starts, searching her face, not fully understanding. "I don't want you to change."
"But you said that you know we'll be together in fifty years and I can't be that person, Booth. I'm not capable of putting reason aside and gambling everything on anecdotal fairytales. I'll say the wrong thing or… or do the wrong thing," she says, frantically, "and you'll end up hating me. I don't want us to hate each other."
He's looking at her steadily, and she's suddenly having trouble reading him.
"I don't need you to change your entire belief system, ok, Bones. I just need you to want to be with me. I just…" he sighs, deflating. "I just want you to want to try."
"Statistically if we…" she trails off, faltering. Feels him slipping further away. This isn't the way to make him understand.
"Booth, you're too important to me to gamble away being your friend." She takes the smallest step towards him, pausing. "Too important to gamble away whatever this is."
She can see him searching for a solution, recognizes the strength in his gaze, the set of his jaw.
Tilts her head to the side, another tear escaping. Hoping she hasn't already blown past the point where he'll never want to talk to her again.
"Okay," he starts, "so, we lose the gambling analogy."
She frowns.
"I'm not supposed to gamble anyway, right? So it was a stupid thing to say."
She's still frowning at him, looking utterly perplexed.
"So now you don't want to…"
He cuts her off, panicking that he's making it worse.
"No! Yes!"
Spiraling.
He starts again.
"I mean, I want to… I've always wanted…" It shouldn't be this hard for him to get his words out.
He takes a couple of deep breaths, staying the rising panic.
Turns to face her fully.
"I'm in love with you, Bones. I love you. I have been in love with you for a really long time, and that hasn't changed, it hasn't weakened." He has no idea if he should even be telling her this, but now he's started he suddenly feels the need to get everything out in the open. "It's just… more embedded somehow. It's not something I can stop, or change, and I'm not sure that I'd want to, even if…" he trails off again, considering the heartbreaking look on her face. "I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. And I'm sorry that I've sprung this on you, but I thought you knew. I'm going to keep being in love with you, ok… even if I try to move on, it will still be there."
She's quiet, watching him, waiting.
"This is not a childish infatuation. This is me understanding who you are and wanting you. The person you were five years ago. The person you are now. The person you will be in another five years from now."
He feels exhilarated, freed and drained.
"I just want you to think that I'm worth us trying." He adds quietly, hanging his head.
She's silent for a painfully long time.
He raises his head again, knowing that he needs to take her rejection on the chin.
She blinks back fresh tears, droplets clinging to her lashes.
"That's your evidence."
It's not a question, but a closed statement.
They stare at each other.
She's overwhelmed with the responsibility of how to phrase her next sentence. How to introduce her thoughts to the stillness of the air around them without getting it wrong.
"I've thought a lot about what would happen if we ever crossed that line," she begins, noting the furrow in his brow. "When we first met it made perfect sense to me that we'd sleep together. I expected that we'd do that for a few weeks, a couple of months maybe, and that you'd eventually become tired of me and move on."
He's not sure how to respond, not sure she wants him to, but has to set her straight,
"Bones, that's not what…"
"I know," she interjects, "I realized that as soon as you told me about your gambling problem."
A deep breath.
"I walked away that night because it was too much. Too much expectation. You had this shiny idea of me based on limited information, on being impressed by the forensics work I brought you, on being attracted to me because I punched a judge, on thinking I was something… more. I was never going to be capable of living up to whatever image you'd built up in your head."
He's watching her, dumbfounded.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean… I didn't mean to…"
She reaches out, gripping his hand.
"I'm not telling you this for an apology, Booth. There isn't one needed. I'm just telling you how I felt. How previous encounters had framed my own expectation."
He nods, still not understanding her direction, but knowing he needs to hear everything she has to say, if only to soothe this.
"For a short while, after you'd convinced me to work with you again…"
"After you blackmailed me, you mean." He butts in, the hint of a smile juxtaposing his tear-stained cheeks.
She matches him, the smallest laugh escaping.
"…I thought that maybe we'd begin sleeping together then." She blushes slightly, refocusing her gaze on their joined hands. "In secret of course. I had it in my head that the attraction was part of the reason you'd hunted me down. That… oh, I don't know… enough time had passed for you to see me for what I was. I thought it would perhaps be a fun way to break the rules a little."
"You erm… you never said anything."
"You were seeing Tessa," she shoots back, giving him a hard look.
Expects him to look contrite.
Instead he levels his gaze. Open. Booth.
"I only started seeing Tessa after we were working together again. You made it so abundantly clear that I was barking up the wrong tree by even thinking there was anything more to us than our professional relationship. I wasn't even sure about that side of it for a while… you got so angry at Dr. Goodman every time he accepted a case on your behalf."
She frowns, thinking back.
"I was annoyed that my freedom was being controlled. I wasn't used to being assigned and loaned out like a commodity." Sighing, she closes her eyes and grips his hand impossibly tighter. "It took me so long to regain my freedom that it just struck the wrong note when I felt that being taken away. It didn't mean that I didn't want to work with you or that I didn't like you."
She feels him tug her forward gently, his free arm settling on her shoulders in a half-embrace. Leans her forehead into his chest.
"I should have known." He whispers, above her head.
"How could you have done?"
He feels her breath warm through his shirt with every syllable uttered.
"Well then I should have been more considerate." He counters.
There's a lingering silence, tense only in the willing of each other not to move. Not to break this.
Eventually she speaks.
"Booth?"
"Hmm." Murmured in response.
"I know we have a lot more to discuss, but do you think it would be ok if we got Chinese takeout and took it back to your apartment?"
He's quiet for a moment longer, so she quantifies, lifting her head.
"I'm very hungry, and your apartment is very comfortable, and I don't think that right here is necessarily the place to discuss everything."
The smile she gets in response is reassuring.
He nods.
"Yeah, Bones. We can do that."
She steps back, disengaging and immediately feels the loss.
As they turn to walk in the direction of his Sequoia, he holds his arm out to her.
She smiles up at him, slipping her hand into the crook.
They both know that this isn't fixed.
They're cracked and beaten down and exhausted beyond belief, but they're not broken.
Although I understand why the writers did what they did on the show, this scene in the 100th Episode always struck me as being oversimplified, compared to the messy, drawn out reality of conversations like this. I wholeheartedly think this will have been hugely down to editing restrictions & hitting that pesky 45min marker for content! Who else thinks he gave up too quickly, and that nobody explained themselves?
Thoughts and feelings on the above please, as this is my first instance of straying from absolute canon.