A/N: I've been a busy bee over the past few days with updates! It feels so good to get all this writing done... until this week I haven't had the time to just sit and write non-stop for hours the way I like to. Over the past few weeks the updates I have made I've written during broken up periods between other activities that took precedence. It feels great to just sit and write and look at the clock and realize that two or three hours have flown by without me even realizing it. :)

About this story in particular... boy has it gotten longer than I thought it would be. Originally I foresaw it being a 10-12 chapter project, much shorter than The Foster Child in the Forensic Anthropologist, but here we are on Chapter 15 and I've got at least 4 or 5 more before I see this thing being finished. I guess it's going to be just as long as Foster Child after all! Judging by the awesome feedback y'all have been giving, though, I don't think you'll mind.

I thought there would be more to this chapter, but I ultimately decided to split it into two different chapters, since the parts had two distinct moods/themes and they work better separately than together. You'll see what I mean when you read the next chapter, I guess. Anyway, enough rambling... enjoy!

And silently within
With hands touching skin
The shock breaks my disease
And I can breathe

And all of your weight
All you dream
Falls on me,
It falls on me
And your beautiful sky
The light you bring
Falls on me
It falls on me...

- Falls on Me, Fuel

Brennan leaned back into Booth's chest, his arms wrapped around her upper body. She rested her head on his shoulder so that she could set his chin on top of it, fitting all of the pieces of the puzzle together perfectly. She couldn't remember in her life crying so profusely, for so long, with somebody else. There had been many moments alone, in her empty house or in the lab when she had lost her composure, but she had never had a meltdown of such magnitude in the presence of another person.

She sighed—she genuinely felt exhausted by the experience, as if the tears had taken all of her energy. Like all she could do was lay there and breathe with him. She was alright with that.

Eventually she regained enough energy to make words, sentences, thoughts. She began to talk, and so did he. They told their life stories in a way that was both intimate and peculiarly distant—as if they had not known each other for four years, as if the details that made them who they were had gone missing. She went on for a while, filling in the gaps—he knew much of her story, much more of hers than she knew of his anyway. At points he asked questions or made comments, but mostly he let her talk. The things that hurt her, that made her who she was—she wasn't afraid of him knowing anymore, of judging her by them as others had. This, she knew, was the safe zone. Not Sweets's office, not the diner, but wherever his arms were.

When she stopped, he started. She could both hear and feel him speak, his words rumbling from his chest beneath her like the humming engine of a car. He filled in his own gaps, much larger than hers had been—what she knew primarily was that his father had been a raging alcoholic, but what that had meant for Booth growing up was left mostly to the imagination. After a while he stopped and she was surprised to find that he was not out of tears, and neither was she. It was a peculiar response—he cried, she cried. She knew the anthropological basis for empathetic emotional responses, but the application of such responses was startling nonetheless. He held onto her like she was a stuffed dog, and she nestled into him like a baby bird seeking comfort in its nest.

He found that confiding in her was much different than confiding in Sweets. He felt, with Sweets staring at him from across the table, reducing his life to notes on a pad of paper, that he was being scrutinized, judged, that by judging the past Sweets was in fact judging him. He felt defensive, almost assaulted—like he had to fight back.

With her it was different. Throughout most of his recount she did not, in fact, even look in his direction. They both stared out the window on the opposite wall as they took turns talking and listening, saving one another from the excruciating spotlight of eye contact. Occasionally she turned her head and looked at him, or he to her, but it was short-lived and often during the gaps between the words. As if to make sure the other was still there.

With her he did not feel criticized or attacked, or the need to defend himself and his father. She did not judge, or wheedle, or push or insist or read between the lines. It was not, in fact, in her nature to read between lines at all, so he knew there was no danger of that. She would take what he said at face value, and understand that it was all he wanted from her. She would not dig at him for an underlying psychological significance to the words he chose or the faces he made. The visual aspect was moot—there was only the auditory, and tactile. She would hear him, and feel him, and that was all they needed. All they wanted.

They talked throughout the afternoon, watching the sun dip across the window and beyond the neighboring building, the sky darkening to black. They watched the streetlamps come on, the windows across the way darken with sleep. If they were hungry, or tired, or stiff, they didn't feel it. He felt her, and she felt him, and they felt themselves empty out onto the floor, and that was all that mattered anyway. They patched their lives together, story after story, until there was little left to tell. They pumped out every last drop until they ran the well dry. They were dry, and emptied, with nothing left but the breath between them.

"Booth?" she said after a significant moment of silence between them, where they had listened to their ebb and flow like a night tide. She still watched the dark window, and he looked down at the profile of her face, waiting for her to speak.

"When you had to move back to your father's house, after your mother…" she trailed off, wanting very badly to phrase it in a sensitive way but not sure how to.

"Was hospitalized," he offered for her.

"Yes," she said, relieved. "After that, why didn't your grandfather fight for custody of you and Jared? Why did he let you go back to that?" Booth sighed, and Brennan's own body rose and fell slightly with the action of his chest.

"To tell you the truth," Booth said, "I don't really know. I think he felt like when he lost mom, he lost us too. I think… I think he thought that after what we had to deal with, with mom getting sick, that we'd been worse off with him than with dad."

"But that's not true," Brennan said, turning her upper body so that she could better face him. "Your father abused you, physically and emotionally. How could be possibly believe you were better off in an abusive environment than with him?" Booth could see the absolute sincerity in her expression when she spoke, the true bewilderment in it.

"You heard him at the pier," Booth said, looking at the microfiber couch cushion so that he would not have to answer to her gaze. "I'm sorry, he kept saying it, over and over. He knows he let us down, and mom, too. He was supposed to protect us, all of us, and he couldn't. Every time I talk to him, on the phone or Thanksgiving or whatever, he says the same thing every time before I leave. I'm sorry."

"Do you forgive him?" Brennan asked.

"You forgave your father," Booth said. "He left you, but you forgave him. You just forgive the people you love, Temperance. Even when they hurt you."

"My father had to leave me," she argued. "Your grandfather didn't."

"But I think, in his mind, he thought he did," Booth said, trying both to explain it to her and to fully understand it himself. It was a question he had thought long and hard on over the years. "He thought he did, that we weren't his and he screwed up his one chance to help us, and mom, and after that… he loved us, the last thing he wanted was for us to get hurt. You know, even if I don't know anything else, I know that."

"What happened to you wasn't fair," Brennan said. Booth tightened his grip around her.

"What happened to you wasn't fair," he said. She shook her head.

"No," she said. "It wasn't, but I got my family back. When do you get your family back, Booth? When do you get to mend your relationship with your father? Bad things might have happened to me, but in the end…"

"Your family got its happy ending," Booth finished. "Your dad was acquitted, your brother is out of jail, and you got closure on your mom's murder. You got your family back."

"Yes," Brennan said, almost sadly. "We got our happy ending. But when do you get yours?"

"Well," Booth said, biting on the inside of his cheek as he deliberated over his words for a moment before he spoke. "I don't speak to my father, my brother's an alcoholic, my mom's dead, and my grandfather feels so damn guilty we can hardly have a conversation. But on the other hand, I have Parker. He's smart, funny, he cares about other people… he's a great kid. The whole reason I get up in the morning, you know?" Brennan smiled as she watched Booth talk about his son, his face lighting up just at the thought of him.

"That's true," she said. "Parker's a great kid."

"Yeah," he said. "And, you know, I have you, too. Between you and Parker, that's all I need. I figure, if I've got just two people in the world that mean as much to me as you and him, I'm one hell of a lucky guy. That's a happy enough ending for me." Booth's eyes crinkled in the corners as he smiled, and Brennan found it infectious.

"You know," she said, looking down at their feet next to one another at the end of the couch, "I realized something, when the Gravedigger took you."

"What's that?" he asked. She paused for a moment before answering.

"I knew I cared about you," she said. "Deeply. You're my partner, but you… well, you're my best friend. I spend more time with you than anyone else, I share more with you than anyone, even Angela. I am closer to you than anyone else in my life."

"It took me getting kidnapped for you to realize that?"

"No, I just told you, I already knew that much," she said. "But when she took you, when I thought I might lose you…" She turned over so that she was lying on her stomach, using her forearms to prop herself up on his chest. "Booth, I—"

"I love you," he said suddenly, cutting her off.

"I was about to say that!" she said, sounding slightly scandalized. He smiled.

"I know," he said. "But I always pictured me saying it first."

"That's not fair," she laughed, shaking her head and unable to not smile.

"All's fair in love and war," Booth quoted, feeling the L word glide effortlessly off his tongue as if he had been saying it for years. In his mind, he had been.

"I do," she said, staring him directly in the eye as if to emphasize a point. "I love you, Booth. I didn't think I did, but now I realize that I just didn't want to."

"You can't help loving someone, Bones," he said, his fingers laced over her back. "And besides, what's so bad about loving me?"

"Nothing's bad about it, it would just be much more convenient to not love you."

"Why's that?" he asked.

"Because we work a high-risk job where our lives are constantly on the line, because the romantic and work spheres generally don't overlap well, because there are strict enforcements that prohibit workplace relationships in situations like ours…"

"You've thought an awful lot about this, huh?" Booth half asked, half teased.

"I like to thoroughly evaluate a potential situation before taking action, yes," she said. "What's wrong with that?"

"You think too much," Booth said. "Some things you can't over-think, you just have to jump in and see where they take you."

"Like what?" she asked.

"Like this." In one quick movement he leaned in and bridged the gap between their faces, kissing her. It only lasted for a moment before he pulled back, unsure of how she would take it. She looked surprised, then smiled and shook her head.

"Do you have to hop the gun on everything?" she asked.

"Jump the gun," he corrected. "And yes, I like to go first."

"First is worst, second is best," Brennan teased, and Booth quirked his brows.

"Who taught you that?" he asked.

"Jamal," Brennan said, her eyes sad but her smile reminiscent. "How did it all go? First is worst, second is best…"

"Last is the one with the hairy chest," Booth finished. She gave him a funny look, and he laughed. "I have a seven year old, what do you expect?" They laughed together, and when it had subsided, she sighed contently and rested her head against his chest, wrapping her arms around him. Who knew this moment between them would come so effortlessly, so naturally? If it ever happened, she had expected something terribly awkward, or intense, or passionate. Never did she imagine they would transition so comfortably.

"He'll never forget you, you know," Booth said after a while.

"You think so?" she asked.

"Will you forget him?" he answered with a question, which usually irritated Brennan immensely but in this moment did not.

"No," she said quietly. "Never."

"There's your answer."