Disclaimer: Sadly but obviously not mine, just playing here. Bones and its characters are property of Hart Hanson, Kathy Reichs, FOX and co.

A/N: Part 2 of what was initially going to be a one shot, but it ran away with us. This time Brennan POV. The wonderful asaneismRnuTs let me have a go at the steeringwheel for this chapter. Would NOT have been able to do it without her though.

The Woman with a Type

She'd never really thought about her type before. But tonight as she lay in her bed she took some time to think about the men who'd been in her life. In fact, she was trying to establish a pattern as to why she never seemed to be able to maintain a relationship.

There had been the highschool sweethearts ofcourse and a number of college flings. All faceless boys, nothing ever lasting longer than a couple of months.

In college she had started a relationship with one of her professors. An authority figure, the meaning of that did not escape her. He'd been more like a father figure to her than either of them had been willing to admit. In the end it might have been one of the reasons for their relationship not having lasted. They had parted amicably though and she'd still had warm feelings for the man when he showed up at the lab last year. Those feelings had been shot down for good when he pulled that number on her in court. In fact it was only thanks to Booth that she had regained the upper hand.

In the period after college she had been too focussed on her work to even think of dating and to be honest she'd thought it would be easier alone. The only semi-serious relationship she'd had after college had been Pete. When thinking about it now their relation had been about comfort more than anything else: there hadn't been a lot of emotional involvement it was a question of old habits. This fact was proven by Pete when he's made a bootycall upon her return from Guatemala. It was Angela's doing that she had started going out more in the past couple of years. Under Angela's pressure she had even started dating again, which lead to her two latest fiasco's:

Poor David had never really had an honest shot after having been interrogated by Booth on their first date. He had seemed nice enough and he'd been attractive too, with his tall athletic posture and dark hair. But the man had simply been too intimidated by Booth to want to risk repeating that experience.

She sighed, she would have liked to get to know David better. She'd really felt a connection with him online, but she's never gotten the chance to test the waters in real life. On the other hand she was thankful for having found early on about the man's lack of backbone.

Then there had been William, just a couple of weeks ago. She swallowed. He had seemed like a great person and even though she'd had her reservations with him being related to one of the victims of a case she couldn't stop her feelings of sympathy for the man who had taken care of his younger sibling after loosing his parents. She'd started opening up to him, her social skills blossoming in a way Angela would have been proud of.

It all seemed to be going very well until things came to a screeching halt when Booth had William arrested during dinner in a fancy restaurant. Ofcourse, the man she liked turned out to be a murderous bastard!

Angry tears still formed in her eyes when she thought back of this. How could she have been so naïve, so unseeing? And why did this kind of stuff happen to her all the time? Was she just attracted to the wrong type of men?

But then she thought back of the past week, the little family reunion they had. About being left all alone again, this time actually seeing the rest of her family drive away from right in front of her. It wasn't just her love interests that couldn't stand to be near her, her own family didn't even want her!

By now tears were freely streaming down her face and she let out a desperate sob. All of the pain that had been buried so well after all those years had been brought to the surface again. She couldn't help but come to the same conclusion the anxious fifteen-year-old Temperance had come to after having been left by her parents and later by her brother: there was something about her that made her unlovable. And despite Booth's kind words in front of the diner she knew she would never be part of a family.

She pounded her fists angrily into the duvet. She'd let her carefully constructed walls down. The walls that had been up since she was a teenager, those walls that were her safeguard from getting hurt. This only proved her point though: when people got close to her they couldn't run away fast enough.

Booth…

Booth, her partner. She smiled when she thought of him. They made a good team, what she lacked in social skills he more than made up for and combined with her scientific smarts they were all round. His typical pompous alpha-male behaviour had caused its fair share of disagreements between them and honestly, not a day went by without the two of them bickering. Truth be told, she didn't mind, to a certain level she even enjoyed their sparring. Because despite what was said, she knew he respected her as much as she respected him. This mutual and unconditional respect was what she'd missed with the other men. It was what made their partnership so strong, so strong even that she didn't really mind him being that annoying alpha male around her anymore. He thought she didn't notice that he was basically marking her with all those little touches, but she didn't mind. She knew she could count on him to protect her and she would do the same for him.

Yes, come to think of it Booth might be her type. She snorted, because typically he was the one she couldn't have. He was involved with Cam and even though she didn't like it she would respect it. Besides, he was already part of a family, be it a broken one. She knew how much he cared for his little son and even though she didn't want children herself she could appreciate his love for the kid.

Saddened by the thought that the only man she would consider accepting love from at this point in her life was so very far away from her she got up from the bed and got dressed. Sleep far from her now, she decided to take a midnight walk to clear her head, maybe go to the diner to grab a cup of coffee.