Chapter 9: Orange You Glad I Didn't Give You Away?

A little more writer's block however it was a breeze to write this chapter. I've been floored by the reviews. Keep them coming; they're the highlight of my day every day of the week.

Temperance Brennan breathed deeply, unsure of what to say.

"Does that hurt?" asked Max in concern, glancing at her forehead. She shook her head; the Vicadin was working, but she didn't feel woozy at all. Instead, she felt sharply awake, and seemed to perceive the world with an extra edge of clarity. She felt dizzy, but not because of the medicine, but rather a bizarre bubbling inside her chest.

Giddy, her mind supplied, but she sneezed in surprise at herself. She had hardly been giddy in her life. That wasn't her personality at all.

"Are you all right honey?" Max was watching her closely as she sat slowly up. "You look a little…lost."

"I…uh…" and to her consternation and mortification, her throat was thick and garbled with stuck tears. Max looked equally awkward. He moved forward as she drew away, but he simply lay his hand on her shoulder and sat next to her, moving his hand to her knee in as fatherly a manner as he knew how.

"It's a lot to take in," she smiled apologetically and as she did, a few tears spilled over onto her sharp cheekbones. She wasn't sure why she was crying; she wasn't unhappy – far from it in fact. Brennan wasn't altogether positive she wasn't going insane. This man, her partner, the one she stared at every day for the past five years of her life, had just confessed he was in love with her, when she knew for a fact it was the opposite. The way she regarded Booth - in his words - she had stared down death with him and stood over it countless times. She had gotten drunk with him – a concept she had never before dabbled in because she couldn't bear to relinquish control to whatever influences that would harm her. In high school and college, so many of her peers enjoyed drinking, but the one time Brennan had approached tipsy she reeled at the spinning world, and panicked at the poor judgments people were making around her. She had been scared and disoriented and had ended up walking home alone that night, however unsafe it may have been in retrospect.

But with Booth, she had never been afraid; not once. She would, and had, trust that man with her life. They had crossed so many lines, so many boundaries as her father had put it. She had let him into her home, even in the middle of the night and he came bearing Thai food as recompense. She had cared for him when he was injured and vice versa, they had kissed…once. She had seen him high over Christmas from a vaccine, and if she was honest enough to remember the incident without blushing, he had seen her high as well from an accidental inhalation. She had seen him naked. She had seen him in the hospital…twice. He had been blown up before her eyes on multiple occasions; he had been shot but so had she. Brennan swallowed. Whatever non-anthropological steps or lines Angela had devised when counseling relationships, Brennan was positive they had taken them all out of order and then added a few of their own.

Because deep down, if she was honest with herself, Brennan knew the final step that was never mentioned in any of Angela's rules: falling in love. But she and Booth had gone backwards through the rules. She had fallen in love with him long ago; she couldn't pinpoint the date, but she was veritably sure it had started when rescuing a baby and realizing she enjoyed having a family in the car. Or perhaps it had been when Booth had refuted her claim and looked her in the eyes and told her what making love was. Or perhaps it was the kiss under the mistletoe and he had brought her a Christmas tree for her family because he was veritably family anyway. Or maybe it was in the midst of some of the darkest years of her life: darker than even some of her adolescence. Perhaps he had snuck behind her borders between her father's trial, his own fake funeral, or in the wake of Zack's betrayal. Perhaps the first seed had been planted the day they had become friends as she sobbed brokenly into his neck, his own broken body shaking beneath her broken soul.

All she knew was that for sure, she had been in love with her partner, Special Agent Seeley Booth, for several years; probably a full blown love for two years or more. But as he had confessed into his beer bottle that he could tell she didn't love him, she could tell he didn't love her. At least not the way she loved him; so she had carefully wrapped her glass figurine of a heart and stowed it far, far away. She wrapped it in old rags of painful memories. She wrapped it in the darkest corners of her past and then put all of those places she never wanted to visit again into a box in the back of her mind. And put the box in a safe, inside a submarine, inside a titanium lead lined hull that escaped detection and sunk it. She sunk it so far and so darkly, that Booth couldn't possibly find it without rifling through all her ugly, sordid past. And partners, even friends, didn't visit those memories. Even Angela knew the line. Brennan wasn't even sure what had happened to Angela's mother, or who she even was.

But Booth had been methodically crossing those lines, unwrapping one ugly, tattered rag of a memory at a time. She was constantly trying to cover that shining glass heart with more pain; he had enough pain of his own, he would soon tire of hers. She suspected that Sweets knew; although she gave little credence to Psychology, she did have to admit he had a knack for profiling and understanding human emotions and responses that she completely lacked. When he had been upset after their case in the metal music scene at their discovery of his home life and the scars on his back, they had retrieved him for dinner with Dr. Gordon-Gordon. There she had shared something personal – not for Sweets she later realized - but to test Booth's resilience. However, the side effect she had not expected was Sweet's quick understanding of her vulnerability. For one, shining instant, she had held up an ugly piece of herself and that brilliant beacon of love she smothered so effectively had beamed out of her. Booth had looked at her and although she was sure he hadn't comprehended it consciously, she was sure, or she could pretend, that for that one shining instant, he loved her too.

Booth had also proved a surprise; he seemed to enjoy listening seriously to her past. He wanted all the pain she had buried her heart in, and she had been starting to panic. He knew her so well; there was no way he could miss such a bright love inside her welling from a broken hole she was always trying to hide. She was irritated her father could leave for half her life and pick up on her personality as if he had seen her every day for fifteen years. He had been correct; only a few more layers indeed. Shallow panting filled her ears and discomfited, she realized it was her own breath, coming too fast.

"Tempe," said her father, squeezing her leg. "Temperance." She turned scared eyes towards his seeking face. "You shouldn't feel pressured. Don't feel trapped by this. He'll survive; he's a strong man, Booth." She swallowed and tried to make sense of the nonsensical gibberish spewing from her father's mouth.

"But…what are you talking about?" He was infinitely patient.

"I mean, if you don't return Booth's-"

"I love him Dad!" she snapped, frustrated and furious. Then she saw the gleam in his eye. "Can't we have a normal conversation," she shouted, but dragged her voice to the appropriate level, "without you playing the con man? Without tricking me out of my head or confessions?" She stood up angrily and shoved pillows into his arms. "I don't want you here. I want Booth. Bring him back." She stalked angrily to her fridge, yanking it open and grabbing a beer for herself. "Oh yeah," she spat, "help yourself to the beer. And unlock my apartment why don't you?"

"Tempe, you're acting very out of character." Max sounded shocked. "You sound…you sound exactly like your mother. She always got that tone of voice when she was mad." Brennan's resolve wavered and she sighed as nostalgia sucker punched her in the abdomen.

"I remember," she half laughed, half angrily scoffed. She ran her fingers over her head, and folded her arms tightly across herself, feeling the glass heart inside filling brighter and brighter with light against her will. She instead grabbed her beer and put it to her lips.

"Are you still mad at me?" wheedled Max, standing and helping himself to another beer. Her angry icy blue glare met his own as he shrugged innocently with a charming smile, "You said help myself to your beer." She struggled to fight the smile tugging at her lips.

"I'm still mad," she twitched, her skin rippling over her bare shoulders. She felt suddenly drained and exhausted, although the inside of her still felt like something was growing inside of her; something with a life of its own, filling her empty hole she was always so scared was slowly consuming her. The stitches that had been made by Angela, Hodgins and Cam, even those ripped out by Zack, had still made little progress to her biggest wound. The one that was standing in front of her, and the twin of it that should have been standing next to him, barely turning sixty five and aging gracefully. Brennan swallowed, and was surprised to taste the thick, piercing taste of alcohol tickling down her throat. She reasoned that although one beer wouldn't hurt her, she should probably refrain considering she was also on narcotics.

"But not at Booth," guessed Max shrewdly.

"Why would I be mad at Booth?" she asked blankly. She didn't let the joyful voice leaping inside of her answer with her utter bliss she was threatening to float into. She couldn't let him know. Not yet. She had to tamp this ridiculous heart down; she needed her control back. Except somehow Booth had become tangled up in her control. When he was recovering from his coma she had left the country in order to escape him and gain some piece of mind and piece herself together, smother her almost broken glass heart. The light inside had become so close to being extinguished those long four days he didn't wake up. Instead, she had gone berserk without his constant companionship. She had been unbearably lonely and her work was intangible; she had been unable to focus. Brennan had been shocked. She had never lost focus before.

"You're not angry that he didn't tell you?" Max asked carefully watching her face. They assumed Booth and Max's previous positions at the bar, facing each other as her fingers twisted around the neck of the bottle startlingly similar to the way his had done.

"I guessed," she confessed guiltily, "but I then I…borrowed his brain scans from the hospital." Her voice darkened and grew close to breaking. His false love had been a driving force that had forced her to flee the country.

"What did they say?" asked Max curiously.

"It was a false positive," she shrugged, attempting nonchalance but succeeding only in anguish. "Somewhere in his coma, he tricked…I tricked him into thinking he was in love with me."

"You did?" frowned Max.

"I…" her voice was a whisper as she ashamedly looked at her hands. Max got up to slice fruit. "I read him a book I was writing. In it, the characters I loosely," she emphasized the word, "based upon myself and my partner, they were married…expecting. They were…figments of my imagination," she ended, scoffing.

"Were they?" mumbled Max around a wedge of an orange; he smiled, the peel stuck between his teeth. Brennan giggled; he had achieved the desired effect. He chewed quickly and swallowed to pursue his point, forcing another sliced orange into her roving hands. She quickly began feeding on one to avoid speaking. "Or was this story just another layer in Tempe land?"

"Dad," she groaned, "could we just…not talk about this?" There was a silence as he shrugged.

"Sure honey. But I knew." She stared at him, agape.

"What! How? When? When did you…" He just shrugged again.

"I thought we weren't talking about this. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Dad!" He sighed.

"Hugh Kennedy. When Booth was kidnapped by Gallagher and you attacked the Bounty Hunter…I knew." Brennan swallowed heavily.

"Oh." Her voice was very small, and very scared.

"Are you going to tell him?" She took a deep breath.

"Now we're done," she informed him. She finished the last of her orange and rinsed her hands in the sink.

"Booth was a lot more chatty than you," Max observed.

"Yeah, well," said Brennan mulishly, "that's probably because he's not related to you."

Max chuckled. "Yet," he muttered under his breath.

"Hmm?" asked Brennan, rinsing both their empty bottles and recycling them. She hadn't heard him over the sound of the sink running. He shrugged.

"I said 'night.' You look tired. You should sleep." She nodded and smiled a small, tight smile.

"Okay. Um…thanks."

"For what sweetheart?" Max turned ingenuously around as he was walking away.

"For…not giving me away to Booth from the beginning. You knew I was awake the moment I hit the couch."

"You made an awful lot of noise," criticized Max.

"You two were discussing topics that I felt weren't appropriate without me there or my consent."

"Ah, honey, if only you knew what I said where I know you couldn't hear me." Her round blue eyes flew to the size of saucers.

"What?" she asked quickly. He chuckled.

"Only joking, of course." Max smiled smugly, "Mostly," he muttered again to himself.

"What?" she asked distractedly, gathering the pillows on the couch and straightening it. Max shrugged.

"I talk to myself, old habit."

"Must have been a bad one," she murmured, "robbing banks and all."

"Touché. Good night."

"Night Dad." Their consecutive doors closed simultaneously with a crash.

Alone in her bed, Temperance Brennan closed her eyes and her very favorite part of every day began. She breathed deeply and he was suddenly there next to her; here, in her world where the lab was both her world and beyond her world, he loved her for real. And tonight, she fell asleep in his arms, the fictional ones not quite sufficing and twinging her heartstrings now that she knew what the real ones felt like.