A/N: I'm glad you guys liked the last chapter! See, nothing to be afraid of. With that said, I haven't entirely emptied out my bag of tricks... hence the last few chapters of this fic. A fic that just got a chapter longer than I expected, by the way, because this chapter kind of wrote itself without my planning or consent. That tends to happen to me though, so I've learned to just roll with it. Like I've said in the past... sometimes your Muse takes you on a detour, and you just have to kick back and enjoy the view. Let me know what you think. :)

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am

But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true, I was made for you...

- The Story, Brandi Carlile

Booth's apartment was dimly lit when Brennan let herself in with her key, opening and shutting the door quietly even though it was hardly past nine. The night felt longer, and it seemed later to her than it actually was. She had that giddy slipping-in feeling that teenagers get when they creep into their parents' house at two in the morning, wild and buzzing and exhausted all at once. In high school she had never experienced that feeling—having had neither friends nor a parent's home to sneak into—but if she had known it then, she would see the similarity.

When she rounded the corner from the entry into the living room, she was surprised to see Booth sitting on his own couch, loosening his tie. She hadn't seen his car parked in the street below, but maybe she just hadn't been paying attention. She had so many strange, almost giddy thoughts bouncing around the inside of her head, she was surprised she had made it home at all. It was like being on a caffeine rush, the bubbling overflow of emotion that she finally identified as sheer joy. That was it, that had defined her night—joy.

She stepped hesitantly into the room, unsure if Booth would be in a foul mood about her leaving him all alone with his higher-ups. He had not argued or been upset with her when she sent him the text earlier, but it was difficult to ascertain the tone behind a text message. When she thought about it, she wasn't even that good at ascertaining the meaning of tonal cues when she was talking face-to-face with someone, so the realm of emotive texting was far beyond her.

"Hey," she said, announcing her presence. He looked up and gave her an exhausted smile, tie still in hand. From the look on his face, she gathered it had been a very, very long night. Since he did not appear angry, she padded soundlessly across the wood floor—having left her shoes at the front door, something she did habitually and the only person to ever do so in Booth's house—and landed lightly on the couch next to him, folding her legs up underneath her and leaning into his chest. He groaned and rearranged himself so that he could comfortably wrap his arms around her, breathing her in.

"You look happy," he said, having taken note of her smile and something else—something about her that wasn't easily verbalized, but easily seen. Maybe her step, or the way she carried herself, or the easy contentment of her features. She closed her eyes and hmmed.

"I am," she said. "You look tired, how was dinner?"

"Exhausting," he replied, letting his tie fly to the opposite end of the couch. It landed on the arm, then gravity took over and it slid down to the floor. Oh well, he'd pick it up later. He had barely made it through the door before he'd kicked his shoes off, and the black suit jacket was lying limp over the back of one of the dinette chairs. If he hadn't been so drained, physically and mentally, he would have taken all the articles to his bedroom and disposed of them accordingly. Instead he let them land where they might, and would deal with them in the morning.

"What happened? What did it end up being about?" she asked. The reason for the dinner had never been explained to Booth, only that his presence was required, which had lead to a week of poor sleep for the both of them—he spent most nights staring at the ceiling, wondering if he was about to be fired for one too many misconducts, and she just didn't sleep well knowing he wasn't. It was like contagious insomnia.

"Well, when I first got there, they acted like it was just dinner, you know?" he explained, lazily running his fingers up and down the length of her back as he talked. "Everybody got drinks, the food came, and nobody talked about anything important. It was all like, football and politics, just table talk. Meanwhile I feel like I'm on the chopping block and I'm just waiting for the ax to come down, I actually had to excuse myself at one point 'cause I thought I was going to barf."

"That sounds unpleasant," Brennan sympathized. He nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "So anyway, we literally get through the salads, through the steaks, and the waitress is asking us if we want dessert before Dicasa, Cullen's boss, looks over at me and says he just wants a coffee, we won't be there much longer. So now I'm thinking, wow, I'm really getting fired, this was my Last Supper, you know?"

"You're comparing your job dismissal to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ?" Brennan asked. Booth looked scandalized.

"What? No! I'm just… it's just a figure of speech, Bones," he defended.

"I see," she said. "So, did they fire you?"

"You don't sound that worried about it," he said, brows furrowed.

"Well, ideally I would prefer to keep working cases with you," she said. "But it's not as if I would never see you again if you lost your job at the FBI. We're not just partners anymore. I would simply have to contend with seeing you less often throughout the day than I'm accustomed to. It would be a minor annoyance, but certainly not the end of the world."

"Would you keep working murder cases without me?" he asked. She shook her head.

"No."

"Really?"

"Definitely not," she said. "As much as I enjoy solving murders, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing the job with anyone but you. In the past when I've had to work with other agents on cases—Perotta, Sulley—it just wasn't the same."

"Even ol' Sulley didn't measure up, huh?" Booth asked. She shook her head and pecked his cheek affectionately.

"Nope," she said. "He didn't. Why do you think I didn't get on that boat?" Booth nodded wisely, pulling her closer and finding her lips.

"Well, just so you know, I didn't get fired," he said when he pulled away. She grinned.

"That's a relief," she said. "So why did they ask you to dinner?"

"Well," he said, "after the coffee came, Cullen told me that he and Dicasa had been reviewing my work as a Special Agent, and that they were really impressed. They want to promote me."

"To what?" she asked, not really surprised. It was no secret that Booth was good at his job—objectively he was a good agent with a high success rate and a natural ability to work with people.

"They want me to be the Supervisor of the Organized Crime Section," he said. "They said when the position opened up, they remembered my work on Kirby's case, uncovering all that mess, and they wanted me for the job. I guess I have your dad to thank for that, huh?"

"I guess so," she said. "Did you take the position?"

"Well, they gave me time to think it over," he said. "They just want to know by next week, my decision."

"Do you think you'll accept it?" she asked. He shrugged.

"Eh, I dunno," he said, in a dismissive tone that suggested he had already made his decision.

"It would be a definite step up," Brennan pointed out. "More respect within the social stratification of the Bureau, higher pay, and they'd probably get you a better chair." She smiled and he realized she was actually employing sarcasm, effectively. He laughed.

"Oh, well, the chair seals the deal," he said, letting his laugher fade into a sigh. "I don't think I'm going to take the offer. I like being a Special Agent, I like being out in the field doing my thing, you know? If they bump me up to Supervisor, I'm just going to be doing a lot of paperwork. There's a reason they give those guys the nice chairs; they're in them all the time." Brennan listened as he spoke, watching him softly. She knew how much he loved his job—it was one of the things that made him who he was, that he identified himself by. Taking that from him would be like taking a part of who he was, and she understood that. It would be like making her a publishing editor for an Anthropology journal—sure, it would be in her field, but it wasn't what she loved about it. She wouldn't feel like an anthropologist anymore, just like sitting at a desk would take the 'agent' out of Booth.

"I understand," she said, and he smiled because he knew she really did.

"So you don't care if I'm just a Special Agent for the rest of my life?" Booth asked.

"Well rationally, you can't be a Special Agent forever. Eventually you won't be able to handle the physical requirements of the job, and you'll be forced into a supervisory position that's less physically demanding, leaving the field work to the younger, stronger agents that will come after you." Booth frowned, making a grouchy noise.

"Gee, thanks Bones," he said. "Way to make me feel old."

"Well, given your excellent physical condition, I imagine it will be quite a few years before that happens," she said, laying a hand on his chest and feeling it rise and fall underneath her.

"Thanks," he said. "That is, unless I'm stuck in therapy for the rest of my life. Then I'll never get back in the field."

"Any idea when Sweets is going to clear you to return to work?" she asked.

"Soon, actually," Booth said. "Last time I saw him, he said he thought we'd be done by the end of the month. He won't give me a real time-table though, you know how he is. It depends on your progress. I'm afraid the Bureau's gonna cut off my paid leave soon if he doesn't hurry up and clear me."

"Well, you can always come live with me if you get evicted from your apartment," Brennan offered, and Booth grinned.

"Gee, thanks," he said, mussing her hair and earning a playful scowl. "And I could wear an apron and have dinner on the table for you when you get home from work, too."

"That would be nice," she said, trying to feign seriousness and failing miserably.

"What do I look like, June Cleaver?" he asked, and Brennan made a face.

"I don't know what that means," she said.

"Oh come on Bones, don't tell me you've never seen Leave it to Beaver? You know, Beaver Cleaver, his brother Wally, his parents Ward and June… they're like, the archetypical American family in the nineteen fifties."

"Never seen it," she said. He rolled his eyes.

"You're an alien," he said. "You know that? An alien."

"I am not!"

"Yes you are! That's why you don't know anything about pop culture, it's because you're not one of us. I think secretly you're a scaly green monster masquerading as a disarmingly sexy earthling…" He sat up suddenly and turned them both over, so that she was now underneath him, and began to tickle her sides mercilessly. It was something very few people knew about Temperance Brennan—she was one of the most ticklish people on the planet. Tears of laughter sprang up in her eyes as she howled and begged him to stop, thrashing and squirming but unable to release herself from his hostage.

"Say uncle!" he shouted over her pleas, and she gave him a perplexed look as she tried in vain to knock his hands away from her sides.

"What?" she asked, gasping for air.

"Say uncle," he repeated, letting his fingers scuttle up her sides to her armpits, then up around her neck and back down again.

"Why?" she asked, bringing her shoulders up to her ears in an attempt to shield her neck.

"Just do it!" he shouted, intensifying his attack.

"Fine, uncle! Uncle, uncle, uncle!" she shouted, and was relieved when Booth stopped tickling her and sat up, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at his previously captive prey. She continued to laugh nervously, in the uncontrollable way one does when tickled to their breaking point, and took relieved gulps of air.

"That," she said between breaths, "was not fair."

"Hey, I can't help that I'm not ticklish," Booth said smugly. She gave him a look of wicked contemplation.

"You just wait," she said, sitting up in her seat and running her fingers through her hair, untangling it. "You're going to wake up one morning with a blow-up clown lying in bed next to you instead of me."

"Hey, that's not funny," he said, tone suddenly serious, pointing a finger at her.

"Really?" she smirked. "Because I think I would find it extremely amusing."

"That's not very nice," he said, leaning back against the couch and draping an arm around her, pulling her into his side. She gave him a wary look.

"You're not going to tickle me again, are you?" she asked.

"Nah," he said, letting her rest her head on his shoulder where it had grown accustomed to being. "I wouldn't want you to get too pissed and decide to vaporize me with your alien powers."

"You're just afraid I'm not bluffing about the clown," she said with a smirk.

"Yeah, that too." He leaned in and kissed her temple. "So what happened with Jamal? Where'd you find him?"

Brennan launched into the story, explaining everything from the sneak attack at the gas pump to her heart-to-heart with Talia, and the invitation for dinner on Sunday. Booth watched her eyes light up and her hands dance in front of her as she talked—when she really got into a story, her hands did just as much talking as her mouth did—and the happiness exuding from her was palpable. When she finished the story, her hands rested in her lap and she looked down at her upturned palms, like she held the world there.

"How does it happen like that?" she asked, looking over and up slightly at Booth, who still had his arm around her.

"Like what?" he asked.

"I never thought I would see him again, but after a completely random series of unrelated events, there he was. If it had been any other day, if I had gone any other way home, if I had been five minutes earlier or later, I might have never seen him again."

"It's called fate, Bones," Booth said, squeezing her shoulder gently. "There are no accidents—everything happens for a reason."

"That's not true," she argued. "Every act in the universe stands alone, and while some people may follow a chain of events that eventually culminates in some 'fated' climax and call it an act of the supernatural, rationally speaking the idea of predestination doesn't exist. After all, it only takes one slight adjustment to change the entire course of a so-called 'fate'."

"That's what makes it fate, though," Booth explained. "Because it only takes one little thing to change the entire outcome, because it can so easily be altered by the most inconsequential, meaningless happening… that's what makes it more than just a, a sequence of unrelated events. That's what makes it more than a coincidence. That's what makes it fate."

"So you really believe that?" Brennan asked. "You really believe there's some incomprehensible, interwoven chain of events that spans the entire history of existence, that accounts for every action, for every individual, for every cause and effect that ever came to be?" He looked at her for a moment, really looked at her, before answering.

"Every moment we ever had, as individuals, as partners, as human beings, lead to this one," he said. "Every action of our parents, of our grandparents, of every person who ever lived before us, was a part of the chain. Every word they said, every move they made, every legacy they left behind, is all part of this. You, me, everything about this moment, in this place, at this time—" he gestured around them, at the room and the world at large. "—could never have happened unless everything that happened before us, happened exactly the way it did, when it did. If one thing had changed, this might have never existed." His voice was quiet but commanding, and stirred something deep in her. She felt each word like a current, like the words had their own energy, their own medium.

"I… never thought about it that way before," she admitted, taken by the poignancy and depth of his words, his ideas, and the possibilities behind them.

"Now you have," Booth said. "And this—this moment when you think about it, when you feel it—could be the moment that changes everything. You just never know."