We can talk like we're in love or talk like we're above it

We can talk and talk until we talk ourselves out of it.

– Elvis Costello, Talking in the Dark

"Thank you for coming today." Sweets smiled as he took a seat across from Booth and Brennan late the following day.

"It's not like we had a choice, Sweets." Booth grumbled.

"Booth and I have discussed this and we both agree that this unnecessary."

"Dr. Brennan, with all due respect I'm the one who determines if this is necessary or not."

Booth sighed and pulled himself up in his chair, "Alright, what do you want to know?"

"How are things?"

"Things are fine. We solved our first case back in record time, this second is taking a little longer but that's not because of me and Bones. Bones and I are the same as we've always been."

"The only thing different between now and when we left is that now Booth has a girlfriend." Brennan stated matter-of-factly.

"Thanks Bones." Booth spoke out of the side of his mouth.

"You've been back in town for less than two months and you have a girlfriend. I never left and I haven't met anyone worth dating." Sweets shook his head in disbelief.

"Oh, he didn't meet her here." Brennan pulled out the magazine she had shown Booth and Angela the previous day, "See, he met her in Afghanistan."

Booth watched Sweets study the picture and waited for his evaluation of it.

Sweets looked up, "Dude…"

Hiding a smirk, Booth thought of the woman he'd left in his bed that morning and cleared his throat, "She's not my girlfriend."

"Then why does Dr. Brennan think she is?"

"I don't know – you'd have to ask her."

Both men focused their attention on Dr. Brennan, "I assume that a woman who has come to DC twice in the last 3 weeks to have sex with Booth is his girlfriend." Brennan explained only to Sweets, ignoring Booth's gaze boring down on her.

Booth also chose to only explain things to Sweets, "Look, this thing between me and Charlie isn't a thing, I mean it's a thing it just isn't a thing. You know what I mean?"

Sweets rested his index fingers in a point on his lips, "Mm hmm, I most definitely know what you mean."

"I-I don't know what you mean." Brennan stated quietly.

Sweets shot Booth an uncomfortable look, hoping the agent would explain things but Booth's face had turned to stone – he wasn't going to say a word. Sweets squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them when he started to explain, "What Agent Booth means is that while he is in fact…spending…time… with this woman it's not a…full-fledged or what may be construed as a traditional relationship."

When Brennan understood, or at least thought she understood, she smiled, "So, it's just sex? That makes sense, I suppose."

B&B

"Can I say something?" Charlotte asked Booth later that night as they ate at Marrakesh, a Moroccan restaurant on the other side of town.

"Could I stop you?" Booth asked with a smile and a raised eyebrow.

She grinned and tossed her hair back, "Nope."

"Then say away."

"I've noticed that you seemed a lot more relaxed in a war zone than you are here, in the city you live in. Do you feel that?"

Booth knew exactly what she meant and he responded slowly, "Yeah, I do."

Charlotte found that response sufficient and went back to her meal.

"You're not going to ask why?"

"I figure that if you wanted to tell me you would. So…"

"I appreciate that – I think." He glanced over at her, "I saw the magazine and the pictures."

She scrunched her face up and bit her lip, "Seel, if I had known you were going to be in it I would have told you before it hit the stands but Lou just gave them 20 or so pics and they chose what they wanted. And since I talked about Sam the most they used that one because he wasn't in any others."

Booth saw a flare of remembrance on her face, Sam Bowers was the first they lost. "Yeah, he was gone what? Two weeks later?"

"22 years old. Never saw it coming." She shook her head, his death had been hard on Charlotte mainly because she had witnessed it firsthand.

"None of us did."

"Thanks for making me stay." A few nights after the incident was the first time Booth went to her tent in the middle of the night to check on her and after, he just kept going back.

Booth smiled, "Hey, the first thing you told me when I picked you up at the landing strip was that you were there to tell the story and to tell it right. If you had run away then you wouldn't have been able to do either."

"So, you were just using your masculine wiles to make sure I did my job?"

He leaned toward her and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, "You know that wasn't my intention for stopping by that first time."

She grinned, "I know but it was very effective."

B&B

Brennan poured herself a glass of wine and settled herself at her dining room table, laptop at the ready. She had every intention of writing a few new chapters for Kathy and Andy, but for some reason her thoughts were turning to a more real couple…Booth and Charlotte.

To anyone who would listen, Brennan insisted that jealousy was a useless emotion, and something she herself never indulged in. But in the semi-darkness of her quiet apartment, she could be truly honest with herself. She was blindingly jealous of Charlotte Townsend. And the one thing that bothered Brennan most about that fact was that she had genuinely liked the woman and could see clearly what Booth saw as well. She was beautiful, confident, and intelligent. Booth had told Brennan once that she was his standard, but Charlotte…she was an entirely different set of standards altogether.

Sighing, Brennan snapped her laptop shut and moved to the kitchen to put her glass away. Instead of wallowing in her unease, she was going to push it aside for now and move forward. She didn't know what she wanted exactly, but she knew that it centered on Booth…and since he belonged to another woman she was determined to respect that, no matter the cost to herself.