(The Boneless Bride in the River)

Thank you for your continued interest in my stories. I really appreciate it.

I don't own Bones.

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He'd known her for a couple of years and he'd worked with her for about 18 months and he was certain he was reading the signs right. Booth was about to lose his partner and he didn't know how to stop it or even if he should. Brennan and Sully were serious about each other and even though he hadn't heard either one of them say they were in love, Booth had to assume that Sully was for it to have gone this far. It didn't matter if Brennan didn't believe in love, she did believe in like and she really liked Sully, apparently more than she liked him.

Booth had thought as long as Brennan stayed his partner, he could stand the thought of her sleeping with other guys. She might be physically attracted to good looking men, but Booth had been certain that none of them could ever capture her heart. That truth had shattered in a myriad of pieces once Sully had entered her life. Booth now knew that it was possible that Sully had found a way to crack that wall that surrounded Brennan's heart and he was going to take her away from the Jeffersonian and Booth. He had thought that wall was impenetrable, but now he knew it was just impenetrable to him.

Sully had bought a boat and he was going to quit the FBI. Booth had been fine with that until Brennan had told him that Sully wanted her to go with him. For just a brief moment, he thought about begging her to stay, but he had stopped himself before he'd made a fool of himself. Calmly he had told her that she should go instead. Like a man trapped in a nightmare he had urged her to go with Sully, knowing that if she did that it would be the end of his partnership and probably his friendship with her. With Sully in her life, she wouldn't need him.

He didn't want to hold her back if she had really found love. Booth knew about her miserable past and if she could find someone that she could really like and be with then he wasn't going to stop her. She deserved to live a life filled with love and affection and if Sully could give her that then Booth was happy for her or at least he could try to be.

Angela thought that Sully lived a wide life and that Booth lived a narrow one. He had denied her observation, but deep down he knew it was true and he was kidding himself. He loved working for the FBI. He was doing great things and he was slowly balancing out his cosmic balance sheet. He had a young son and couldn't move away to somewhere more exciting or exotic. His world was narrow and he didn't want to trap Brennan in that narrow world with him. He had often thought that someday he'd have the guts to tell her how he felt about her and maybe they might try to have a relationship, but now that opportunity was gone and he'd never know if they were meant to be together or not.

The case was over and Booth knew that Brennan was making a decision that would affect them all. If she left, he would have to find another anthropologist to work with him or he'd be chained to his desk, working the job he was being paid to do and not the job he loved to do. Booth wasn't sure if there was another anthropologist that was good enough to replace his partner and if there was if he could work with that scientist. It had taken him months to get used to Brennan's quirks and arrogance, but Booth had learned that she had a right to be arrogant. She was a genius and absolutely brilliant. His partner could get a job wherever she wanted one and not miss a beat in her career. He couldn't do that and that was the reality of the situation.

To be honest with himself, he didn't know if he really loved Brennan or not. Sometimes he thought he did and other times he thought he was in love with the idea of being in love with Brennan. It confused him and his track record with women was pretty terrible which didn't help the situation. He had no intention of giving up looking for someone that wanted to share a life with him, but he wasn't sure that Brennan would have ever seen him as anything other than a friend. Love was complicated and he had failed too many times to assume that he wouldn't destroy his friendship with Brennan trying, so he hadn't really tried.

Oooooooooooooooo

Booth was sitting in his office, when Sully entered his office and plopped down on the chair in front of his desk. His friend looked like he'd been hit by a 2x4, so Booth closed the file on his PC and turned to face his friend. "She told you no?"

Slowly, Sully nodded his head and tried to understand what had happened. "I was so sure she would come with me. What's keeping her here? She couldn't even tell me that. I mean I asked her and she just said she can't. That's it. You know her better than I do, she's your partner, why can't she go with me?"

His thoughts flitting through the reasons why he thought she might have refused, Booth latched on to the one true thing he knew about Brennan. "She hates change. The pyramids are better at change that she is . . . if you stayed . . . maybe you two might have a chance, but asking her to leave a job she loves and worked so hard to obtain . . . you're asking her to give up something she spent years working for . . . if you stayed . . ." He couldn't finish the sentence. The last thing Booth wanted was for Sully to stay and continue to see Brennan, but he couldn't come right and say that. At that moment in time, he was praying to all the saints in the heavens that Sully was going to leave without Brennan and he wasn't about to jinx that.

"But I'm not asking her to stay away forever, just a year." Sully couldn't come to grips with what had happened or didn't want to. "Life if so short and she's not willing to see the fun side of life. She's all business when it comes to bodies and bones and . . . and death. She's surrounded by death. I could show her a different life, but she won't even try."

Booth shrugged his shoulders and realized that he was happy. He hadn't been happy since Brennan had started dating Sully and now that Sully was out of the picture he had his friend and partner back. Maybe someday he might be able to find a way to get past that friendship thing and move towards something else, but right now, he was as happy as a pig in whatever pigs were happy being in. "Bones worked her ass off to get where she is in life, Sully. She's the top of her field and to just walk away from that would be tough. Bones is intense . . . she can't help who she is. I try to get her to relax and sometimes she listens to me and sometimes she doesn't, but she has to be who she is. You don't want to work around murder anymore, but some of us still want to do our jobs and get justice for the ones that didn't have it before. You go and you do what you have to do and I'll take care of Bones. She's not just my partner, we're friends too."

Sully nodded his head. "She needs someone to see the fun side of life, but I've got to tell you, you're intense too. I don't think you have a lot of fun either . . . just my opinion. You're a great guy, but . . . okay, I'm not trying to insult you. This just didn't turn out like I thought it would." Standing, Sully leaned over the desk and shook Booth's hand. "Take care of her Seeley. She's not going to take care of herself. You two need to find a way to have fun and stop obsessing over your jobs. It's going to put you both in an early grave."

Sad for Sully, but glad for himself, Booth shook Sully's hand and watched him leave. He knew he had another chance with his partner and friend and maybe someday he might find the guts to try to move them into something else, but for now, he was happy and he wasn't going to question his good luck.

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