A/N: Next week's installment of Little Pieces may be delayed a few days, depending on whether I have internet access on my vacation. Thanks to everybody who reviewed the first chapter of this story and/or the last chapter of LP. And many thanks to my wonderful beta, EternalDestiny304.

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"Hot chocolate?"

Brennan looked up from the last dregs of coffee she'd been nursing on the park bench.

The coffee cart vendor held out a steaming drink. "On the house."

Surprised, she took the cup. "Thank you." The scientist warmed her hands around the paper circumference and held his gaze, waiting for an explanation.

He shuffled his feet. "Kinda lousy day to be outside."

"You are outside."

"Not for much longer." The vendor grimaced as another blast of wind rattled his wares and sent several cardboard sleeves flying far beyond his reach.

Brennan was as bad at reading social subtext as her partner was at reading human remains for basic forensic evidence, but years of patient tutoring had broadened her knowledge base enough that she realized something was being asked of her, albeit silently.

"I'm waiting for somebody."

The man crammed his hands into the wide pockets of his dingy apron. "Is this the same somebody you used to have coffee with like five times a week?"

It was an intrusive question, she reflected, buying herself time by taking a careful sip, but the observation was valid given how frequently she and Booth had visited this cart over the years.

"Yes."

He nodded, obviously pleased with his correct hypothesis. "You guys haven't been around for ages. What happened? Did Joe up the block steal you away? He's had his license taken away twice, you know. Doesn't sanitize his equipment properly."

She'd seen the two vendors conversing on occasion and assumed they were casual friends. It was hard to tell whether he was now joking or genuinely concerned about both the competition and her well-being.

The man abruptly sat down beside her and held out his hand. "Francis Malone."

She shook his hand uncertainly. "Dr. Temperance Brennan."

"Five years you've been buying coffee from me and I'm only just now learning your name." He shook his head. "Call me nosy, Dr. Brennan, but I like to get to know my customers just a little bit better than that. Helps keep me, and them, coming back every day, you know what I mean?"

Brennan considered this while chewing on a sugary fragment in her drink, a marshmallow, presumably. "Yes. Interacting with your clientele could be considered vital to your trade. If people feel an emotional connection to you, albeit one based entirely on superficial conversation, they are more likely to buy coffee from you rather than Joe."

"People'd quit visiting his cart so much if they knew he tops off his coffee grounds with rat shit," Malone said with a grin. He apparently read expressions much better than she did and preempted her question. "Kidding. Joe's a good guy. His pastries are second-rate, but I like him anyway. Just don't tell him I said that, okay?"

"I don't habitually converse with him," Brennan replied, amused in spite of her desire to be left alone to think. "Booth and I were out of the country for seven months. That's why we hadn't visited your stand. " She didn't know why she chose to share this information with him and made a mental note to relay some of this dialogue to Angela in hopes of clarification.

"Ah." Malone clasped his hands in front of him and looked sideways at her. "But now you're back again. Waiting. Is he late?"

She placed the cup on the ground and withdrew the plane ticket from the pocket of her coat. Wordlessly, she handed it to him.

Malone perused the electronic printout interestedly. "Indonesia to D.C. June 17th, 1:20 pm." He glanced at his watch and over at her again. "Your plane got in early. I wouldn't worry yet."

"No." Brennan realized his misinterpretation. "Though the date and time are correct, the ticket has been voided." She pointed to the cancellation. "We returned several months earlier than anticipated due to work circumstances. However, our relationship since our return has made social interaction over coffee somewhat … strained."

He was silent, eyeing a couple as they hurried past to see if they would stop and purchase anything. They didn't. For some reason, Brennan felt compelled to continue explaining.

"He is angry," she said slowly. "In part, I am to blame as was the romantic relationship he moved onto after I hurt him, but I also believe his experiences in Afghanistan may have contributed to his emotional retreat from the friendship he used to share with me."

"You miss him." Malone didn't take his eyes off his cart.

"Yes." She blinked back unexpected tears. "I am not skilled at connecting. There is a certain imperviousness about me that makes people feel I am distant. Uncaring. It makes forging romantic relationships based on emotional intimacy, rather than just sex, quite imposing."

"No offense, Dr. Brennan." He finally looked over at her and there was understanding on his weathered face. "You don't seem all that impervious to me."

Brennan looked down at her feet. "I would like to believe I've changed."

"I'm not sure you were ever as impervious as you think," Malone observed. "Take it from a guy whose stock and trade is people. You said it yourself—if I don't connect, I don't sell coffee. I think you want to believe you're impervious, to protect yourself. Just like he wants to believe he's still angry about whatever happened, to avoid taking another chance and getting burned again."

All day long she'd been avoiding strong emotions. His words sent a gust of hope rustling through her, scattering her calm façade like the leaves being pushed around the park by the wind.

"We made an agreement. It was very foolish." Brennan flushed at the absurdity and laughed to cover her embarrassment. "Very foolish. I don't know why I even agreed. We wrote down individual notations on pieces of paper and burned them."

Malone didn't laugh. He picked up her empty cup and discarded it in the garbage can beside the bench. "What was on the papers?"

"The dates of when we thought we might be able to be together again, like we used to be, but differently." She paused, hating the comingled fear, shame and secret anticipation taking up residence in her head. "He referred to it as magic but no such thing exists. Essentially, we entrusted any prospect of a future romance between us to coincidence."

He looked again at the ticket he still held in his hand. "You wrote down your original return date. Today."

"When we first departed, we agreed to meet back in one year's time at your coffee cart. It was something I looked forward to while overseas," she explained sheepishly, pulling out her phone and making a show of checking her messages. Angela, demanding answers immediately. Russ. An invitation to a conference—

"Dr. Brennan?"

Irritated by his refusal to go away in spite of the visible signs of annoyance she was sure she was correctly projecting, she looked up at him. "What?"

"I think he was also looking forward to that meeting."

Brennan was affronted by his wholly uninformed conjecture. "You have no way of knowing that."

Silently, Malone pointed.

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

His lungs screamed curses in several different languages at him, joining the chorus of his agonized knees. All of it was drowned out as Booth pulled up to the edge of the park and realized that he'd been wrong. Magic existed. It was sitting right in front of him, in the guise of a preternaturally beautiful plainclothes scientist who had written down the same thing.

"Bones!"

Brennan looked over from the bench—their bench, right next to their cart—and stared straight at him.

He stood there dumbly, chest heaving, heart warning him that next time he jumpstarted it that way without warning, he was looking at a permanent strike.

For a long moment, she sat there just looking at him. Then the corner of her lips tugged upwards, slowly supplanting uncertainty with a small, shy grin that was equal parts amazement and relief. Booth felt a matching smile take over his own face except that small didn't describe it. He was probably a candidate for the world's sappiest guy right at that point, grinning so widely from ear to ear he might as well have been a Jack o' Lantern. A candle inside him burst into flame as she got up and started towards him.

She didn't hurry. Each step was purposeful but measured, her gaze never wavering from his until she stopped directly in front of him. Typically, she didn't pull any punches, not even to say she was glad to see him.

"You should know I'll probably always be somewhat impervious."

He accepted her honesty and was grateful for it, even when it poured cold water on his immediate romantic fantasies.

"I'll probably always be a little angry," Booth admitted reluctantly. He owed her that much candor, at least.

The light in her eyes dimmed and he realized she'd misunderstood him.

"No, Bones, that's not what—don't look like that." He grabbed her hand. She didn't return the gesture, but neither did she reject it. "I wasn't talking about you or Hannah." Booth paused to try and get things straight in his head.

Brennan waited, the wind whipping her hair into tangles that partially obscured her face. He was aware of the measure of trust she was placing in him by not walking away.

"Bones, some part of me will always be angry at something. That's what I meant. It's not specific to a person, necessarily. I'm not proud of it, but that's kind of my personality. It … it's part of what makes me so good at hunting down criminals." He wanted her to understand. He needed her to understand. The thought that she might not left him feeling hollowed out. Empty. "Does that make any sense?"

"Yes."

If his knees hadn't already been weak from his run, they would've wobbled then.

"Sweets would say your anger is equivalent to my emotional distancing." She pulled her hand free and tried to smooth back the strands occluding her vision. "It's your own type of imperviousness. We both require it to do our jobs effectively."

As often as Brennan overlooked things that were completely obvious to everybody, there were times when she just immediately got something that the rest of the world repeatedly missed. Like him.

For the last half-decade, he'd been carrying an ace pressed close to his chest. Now, finally laying his cards on the table, Booth no longer felt like he was gambling.

"I love you."

That little smile returned to her lips briefly before it morphed into a full-on Brennan smirk, teasing: I read people better than you think.

"In an attagirl kind of way?"

"More like in an 'I'm about to get a fine for public indecency'," he retorted, reaching for her.

She dodged him with a quick sidestep. "I will attempt to be less impervious in our romantic relationship, if you will agree to channel any lingering anger at me solely into catching bad guys."

Hearing the words "romantic relationship" from Brennan's lips and knowing they were finally associated with him made him want to kiss those lips. Badly.

"Deal." He took another step in her direction and she backed away, grinning.

"You realize this meeting is a coincidence."

"No." Booth snorted in derision. "You're way off on that one, Bones."

"You don't truly believe—"

"Oh, yeah, I believe," he interrupted, lunging forward and wrapping an arm around her waist. It was a possessive gesture that carried a certain amount of risk if Brennan wasn't quite yet ready, in spite of everything. She grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt and yanked him flush with her chest, eyes laughing even while they challenged his implied dominance.

Booth chuckled. "This is magic, Bones." He encompassed the back of her neck with one big hand and counted it as another miracle when she didn't knee him. "Don't even think about arguing."

Brennan traced idle patterns high on his chest. "You like arguing."

It was hard to tell whether she was aware of what she was doing to him but, given the not-so-innocent way she kept looking up at him from under her lashes, Booth took an educated guess: She knew she was making him crazy. And she was enjoying it.

He clamped his free hand over hers and pressed her palm flat to his chest. "Easy, Bones. You're giving 'hot under the collar' a whole new meaning."

She looked at him blankly. Booth chose to forgo the lesson on idioms for a change, fixating instead on her slightly parted, laughing lips.

"You know what's better than arguing?"

Brennan raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to answer his own question.

"Kissing." Booth freed her hand and lifted his to her cheek. "Kissing is way, way better than arguing."

She smiled at him, but a question lingered in her eyes as she tilted her head toward his. "So … we're together now?"

"I think we might be, Bones." Booth nudged a strand of hair out of the way and lowered his mouth until their lips touched softly. "I think we just might be, finally."

The kiss was long and short, slow and fast, aggressive and tender, all the dichotomies that made up their partnership at once present and reconciling as they kissed and whispered, laughed, bickered, and kissed again, their bodies pressed even closer together by the rising onslaught of the wind.

Francis Malone watched from his spot on the park bench. His wife, ever the romantic, would probably have said the couple was lost in their embrace. When they finally separated and walked away, his arm around her waist, her head leaning comfortably into his chest, their laughter drifted back to him. There was nothing lost about that sound, he mused to himself. If anything, it indicated the pair had finally found something long missing.

Malone got up and began closing down shop for the day, glancing back at the retreating couple every few minutes and smiling when he found their progress across the park impaired as they frequently stopped to refresh their memories of each other's lips.

The scientist swatted her partner for some reason or other. He retaliated by poking her in the ribs. She shouted and squirmed away, leading him on a chase that was abbreviated when neither could keep their hands off each other for less than a minute. They stood in front of a fountain and held each other, her coat serving double duty to protect them from the elements while his broad shoulders shielded her from the majority of the fountain's spray.

The vendor hummed to himself cheerfully, oblivious to the roar of thunder overhead. Whatever Dr. Brennan might say about his theories, he reflected, the windy afternoon had held more than a little bit of magic.

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A/N: That's how I had hoped the season would begin or end. Since it didn't, I wrote it into existence via my usual AU take on the things. Hope you liked it. =)