A/N: This is for faithinbones, who is a writer. Just that. Always. No matter who reads, or what someone might say, or even if she herself doubts. Some things are just true, no matter what anyone thinks about it. Oh, and I wrote this in the only time I had, about three hours. It is edited to the best of my ability and thanks to dharmamonkey for helping me think of good memories to use. Sorry for any roughness! I'll try to fix mistakes as soon as I find them. Merry Christmas and happy day tomorrow, whatever you celebrate. M.

Tag for The Parts in the Sum of the Whole, and not just because it contains a wonderfully mathy word!

The last thing that either of them would have chosen to do that night was drink together. Their inhibitions had already been lowered, forcibly, that Friday night. First by Sweets who had goaded Booth into declaring himself—I'm that guy, Bones. I'm that guy. I know. — and saying all kinds of things he had been holding in for years. Why the hell had the kid forced him to go there now?! And then Brennan's inhibitions had been violently lowered by Booth's declaration. I don't have your kind of open heart. Brennan was forced to confront Booth's feelings for her (and he no longer dared hope, her own for him) before she was ready and they were both brought to tears. The truth was, she would probably never be ready on her own. In the course of their partnership, Booth had forced her into most of the situations where she considered, confronted, or shared her own emotions.

B&B

What a difference one minute makes. Across town, a woman ran a red light. The light at that intersection was a long one, a whole minute, and it was a well-known and infuriating delay to regular commuters. The woman was in a hurry, didn't intend to actually run a red light but pushed a yellow to beyond the limits of what a color could do. The yellow was pretty actually...blinky and blurry. As were the red and the green. And the blue. The blue flashing lights weren't traffic lights, Angela thought. Were they? She couldn't remember. What was blue for again? Were those sirens?

B&B

Booth's phone rang as he walked them to the truck, Brennan clutching his arm, as if she was the one who had just been shot down after declaring undying love, as if she was the one needing support. He didn't know what to do next. The phone in his pocket gave him something to do and he was relieved. Until he spoke to Hodgins.

B&B

At the hospital, they waited for a doctor or nurse or somebody to share information on Angela's condition. Her father had been contacted. Hodgins, in fact, was still listed as her emergency contact and medical proxy, so he had made that call. He hated the fucking phone. But he would make a hundred calls, if it meant she was all right. They had been making their way back to each other, he thought, ever since the night she thought she was pregnant, the night they were locked into the Jefforsonian with—who does Dr. B think she's kidding?—JFK's bones. He couldn't breathe. He sat, hunched forward on the hard waiting room chair, feeling like someone was sitting on his chest. He watched someone's hands shaking and realized they were his own, almost laughed at the feeling of dislocation, disconnection, and felt, vaguely, Booth's hand on his shoulder.

"Breathe, Hodgins. You won't do her any good if you pass out." Jack focused on his friend's voice, counted phone calls to help him end the panic attack. In no particular order, if Angela was okay, he would never again complain about making a call to her father, to the DMV, to the phone company. He wouldn't complain about calling his Aunt Muriel and being kept on the phone for hours listening to her complaints. He would happily call any tech support line and listen to all the options and choose one and be hung up on only to have to start again. He would call Bev, in Human Resources, to call in sick, and listen to her tinny, mangled Beethoven ring back tone while he waited for her to answer. He would call Zach an hour before Zach had a date and answer all of his questions. If he wasn't so scared, he would have smiled a little at that thought. He actually kind of liked Zach's questions.

B&B

Perhaps one minute would have mattered to the hundreds of people being treated for smoke inhalation that night too. Maybe if the smoke alarm had gone off one minute sooner, or if electrician had stayed one minute longer last month and seen the frayed wire. Maybe there wouldn't have been a fire in the club, and maybe hundreds of people wouldn't have ended up at the hospital with Angela, and maybe the hospital wouldn't have had to limit the waiting rooms to immediate family only, just to preserve space and sanity.

And so Brennan and Booth found themselves alone together again, worried and not likely to go to sleep anytime soon. They had only just gotten to Brennan's apartment when Hodgins called to say that Angela's surgery had been successful. She was in serious condition, but no longer critical, and they might be allowed back in the morning, at 8 o'clock, if they wanted a chance at seeing her. Hodgins was going to keep them updated.

Brennan made up the couch for Booth, but when she was finished, she didn't make a move to go to her own bed. He stood in front of her, still in dress pants, but otherwise, in his undershirt and socks only. His face looked tired, the faint lines around his mouth and eyes deeper than usual. But his eyes were wholly Booth's. Deep brown and serious, kind despite the spark of anger that always lay close to the surface, even when dormant. She thought about what he had said, that he loved her. She thought about the times he had stayed on her couch, how easy that had gotten lately, and wondered if that would stop, if now things would be strange. She thought that things had gotten so complicated. This was why she avoided emotional entanglements. This awful sinking feeling in her body, guilt and shame and—

As if he knew, or maybe he had his own reasons, Booth reached out and pulled her to him. The feeling of hugging him, of absolute safety when of course there was no such thing as absolute personal safety, was so familiar and overwhelming that Brennan was as close to tears as she had been yet during this whole damn putrid day. Days didn't decay, of course, but if ever a day had been rotten, it was this one. Although, while the hug felt familiar, the lack of barrier, of clothing, between them, was new. Her face pressed against his neck and collarbone, but instead of resting against smooth broadcloth, she felt ribbed cotton and smooth skin, a little sweaty. She shifted her face just a little to feel the smoothness. His smell surrounded her, made her long to get closer, to shiver: hot male sweat and starch and soap and deodorant and whatever that smell that was purely Booth. She pushed her face against him, closer. While she was better able to control her mind, her thoughts, than anyone she had ever known, her body had always been more disobedient. And it was always worse with Booth, for some reason. That's why she tried to keep her distance. This thought prompted her to step away from him, but Booth was moving back even as she unwrapped her arms where they had wound around his waist without permission.

"Neither of us is going to sleep yet, Bones. I need a drink." She watched him walk to her kitchen, his hand rubbing his face and pinching the bridge of his nose to relieve tension. She could hear the opening and closing of cupboards, the muted clink of glass on granite, and wondered about her friend, whether Angela was scared. Surely she was under anesthetic by now.

"What are you having, Booth?"

Booth's head appeared around the door. "Scotch. Want some?"

At her sharp nod, he turned and she heard the same sounds repeating. And as if time had folded and allowed her to walk straight from one instant to the next—something not nearly as farfetched as many current scientific theories—she found herself curled up on one end of Booth's makeshift bed, quilt and blankets under her and cashmere throw over her. Booth had his legs stretched out on the coffee table, no blanket, slouched down low, drink propped up on his stomach. He had brought the bottle of scotch with him and it stood on the coffee table between them. And as if to confirm her time folding theory, his words next sent them both skipping across the surface of memory, from moment to moment, fold to fold, taking turns speaking, deep into the night.

B&B

"Hodgins said that Angela was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that even a minute one way or another, and it wouldn't have happened." Booth said. His head was tipped back and his eyes were shut.

Brennan winced as the alcohol burned down her throat, the heat penetrating pleasantly, despite the burn. She wasn't sorry for the discomfort. Maybe she deserved it. Now she made a face at the unusually self-flagellating thought. This wasn't helping Angela.

"Sometimes I wonder about Carly."

Booth turned his head toward her, not lifting it from its comfortable rest against her couch cushions, however. "What? Who?"

"Carly. You remember, the woman who made the mac and cheese, owned the restaurant you couldn't get into?"

"Oh, yeah. Sure. Thanks for reminding me. What about her?"

"Well, maybe a minute would have made a difference for her. Perhaps if she had time to fight back, or walk away, or call out, or any number of possible interventions, she might have lived. I think that sometimes, about the people who die, whose death's we investigate. Careful Lionel is another one."

"Why Carly? Why Careful Lionel?"

"I don't know. Carly...maybe because I knew her? Maybe because we might have been friends? Anthropologically speaking, we identify more strongly with people we feel we know, even if it is just a passing or recent acquaintance. We are more likely to agree, to vote the same way, to take advice. I do not exist outside of the anthropological constraints that bind us all, Booth."

Booth saw that as the fight-picking response that it was and didn't answer. For long minutes, the only sound was the clink of ice in his glass, and the sound of new rain on the glass door.

B&B

"When Angela first came to the Jeffersonian, I was sorry, sometimes, that I had hired her. She was always so persistent about having fun, about going out, about wearing certain clothing, about doing 'girl' things-"

Her voice didn't break, but seemed small. Booth reached out and squeezed her hand, but let go quickly, not wanting to make her uncomfortable. She turned and looked at him, smiled a little. Smiled for the first time in what seemed like days.

"If we hadn't crashed through the wall in that club, found the skeletonized remains of those two individuals running away, we might have had a whole girl's night out. Maybe Angela would have spent the night at my apartment. She would have insisted that we make pancakes the next morning in the shape of hearts or our initials. She would have wanted to eat them in front of the television, but since I didn't have one, she would make us spread a blanket on the floor and listen to 80's music, or take them to the park. She would have insisted we tell each other stories in the night before falling asleep."

Booth waited for more and then finally prodded her. "And…?"

Brennan drained the last drops of her drink and looked sadly into the glass. "Nothing. Just that. Maybe that would have happened."

B&B

"One minute would have meant your death when the Gravedigger left you to die on the decommissioned naval boat."

"Ship, Bones. Ship. You can remember the most ridiculously complicated scientific terminology but you still call anything on the water a 'boat'."

"Fine. Ship, Booth. You would have died on that ship."

They had been talking an hour now and three scotches in, Booth was definitely feeling it. Bones had gotten up at some point and changed into unlikely flannel pajamas and turned off a lot of lights but not ready to sleep yet, she still sipped occasionally at her glass. He dropped his own glass, empty now, on the coffee table next to him. He wanted to be sober to go to the hospital tomorrow. He leaned back and rubbed his face again, then turned to lock eyes with her. "But I didn't, Bones."

Her voice was low. "But you did. In a way. Once."

He knew she was referring to his faked death. "Bones—"

She cut him off. "One minute then would have been interesting. Where to put it? When Pam Nunan first came into the office? If she had talked one minute more, would you have seen that she was mentally ill?"

He said, "I would want to have seen her in the back of that bar, one minute sooner. I would have arrested her, she wouldn't have died. I wouldn't have been shot and I could have heard you sing all the way through."

She looked over at him, curious at his intensity. "You wanted to hear me sing that badly?"

"I did. I do, especially since I did get to hear you sing part of it. You were really good, Bones." Genuine approval and praise.

She boasted. "I am very good. I don't...want to sing that song any more though. Maybe I can sing you something else."

Booth shifted so that his back was against his arm of the couch and folded his arms. "Okay. I'm ready."

"Booth! I can't just sing on command."

"Why not? Chicken?" He made chicken noises which made Brennan laugh which he had intended but then she made chicken noises back which sounded more like a dying frog which he told her and then he had to apologize so that she would consider singing for him.

"Please, Bones. Pah-leeeeease?" He batted his eyelashes and leaned toward her.

"Fine. I will sing Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." She announced.

"You will?" At her expression, he added, "Great! Perfect. I can't wait. … Now?"

Now she looked a little shy. Damn, it happened so rarely but he really couldn't resist her when she looked shy. "If you want."

"I do, Bones, I do." He leaned back again, hoping he hadn't scared her off of doing this. He really did have dreams of her voice, of her singing. Not all of them ended badly either.

It was the strangest, slowest, sweetest rendition of the song ever, and her voice, Bones' voice, as if tuned only for him, tore right through him.

When she was done, he crawled over to her on the couch, everything that happened today or any other day just faded into the background. He put his arms around her and for once she didn't object or hesitate, just curled into him and let him hold her. Let him stroke her hair and press a kiss into her hair.

B&B

The text that came at 3 am from Hodgins said, "Saw Angela. She's going to be okay. I believe that now. Come in the morning."

They were tired, knew they should get some sleep, but weren't...ready, just yet.

"Do you have any instances, in our partnership, that you think one minute would have changed, Booth?"

"Well, two came to mind. I'm not even sure why these two, because I'm sure a minute would have changed lots of things."

"What are they?"

"Well, first, after your father's trial. You left early, waited outside and I went out to wait with you. You let me hug you, in a way that you didn't back then—"

"Unlike now. I fear I have become too dependant on your hugs, Boo—"

"Shh! My turn." Booth softened his rebuke with a smile. "Anyway, I always wondered, if we had had a minute more on the steps together, if I would have told you how scared you made me that day, how proud I was of you, how fucking proud I was to be your partner. I don't know if I would have changed anything, but I never said it. Wanted to say it." His uncharacteristic use of profanity, his feelings, shocked Brennan a little. His eyes were shining and hot on hers and this time she reached out to him, squeezed his hand. Didn't let go.

As he shared his second memory, he played with her fingers for a minute and then threaded his with hers. They faced each other on the couch now, both in the middle, close together, legs touching, almost tangled together. "Also, if we had stayed in that hotel room in Vegas one minute more, I am not sure I could have resisted touching you. Things would have ended very differently." He didn't say more but Brennan suddenly couldn't look away from his mouth, the firm line of his jaw shadowed with stubble.

"Those...those are good examples." She stuttered and she never stuttered and that made her blush a little and she never blushed. Instead of smiling at her, though, Booth tilted his head in question. His eyes were dark and intent on hers, but then his gaze dropped to her mouth.

"Booth?"

He hadn't looked up yet but murmured, "hmmm?"

"All those minutes," she paused until he met her eyes again, "they could have happened."

His voice was hoarse with tiredness and desire. She shivered and his hands tightened on hers. "Cold?"

"No."

He smiled a little at her honesty. She repeated, "They could have happened."

"But they didn't."

"They could have. It is as if they did, now that we are talking about them. A little bit."

"Bones, that sounds like magic. And I know you don't believe in magic."

"Booth, if minutes that didn't happen feel like they did happen, maybe a minute that did happen could feel as if it didn't happen."

Now they were back on solid ground. Her talking, him having no clue what she was saying. "Huh?"

She reached behind her and turned out the last light. She must have left a light on in her bedroom, because there was a faint illumination from the back of the apartment, but otherwise, they were alone in the cool dark of her living room, huddled close together in the center of her couch. She repeated, "maybe we could take, have, a minute now. A minute that happens of course, but which tomorrow maybe didn't happen."

"Bones, I have no…"

She shifted so that her legs straddled him and then pulled at his legs,

"...idea…"

until they were on top of hers, straddling her now, and she scooted until their bodies were close, close together and he couldn't remember...

"...what you…"

Couldn't think because somehow he ended up kind of looming over her and her head bent back to look up at him and a thrill at what felt like her submission to him rippled through his body and his hands went around her back to clutch her to him when he felt her sweet breath on his neck, fast and hot…

"mean." He mumbled at last just before her open mouth grasped gently at his.

"Ohhhh." He moaned into her mouth and the sounds she made in answer made his body hum and roll against her.

One minute. Is that what she said? Did he have only one minute? He would make it fucking count.

In the end, neither of them knew how long they kissed, mouths sealed together, tongues exploring the texture and taste of each other, so long denied. They might not mention it later, but Brennan's fingers threaded hard into his hair, her thumbs stroked his cheeks. Booth's hands slipped under the loose flannel top and spanned her narrow waist, the skin smoother, silkier, hotter, more precious than any other woman's. His lips pressed hard against hers, trying to get so close that she wouldn't be able to leave him. And she didn't seem to want to leave him; he felt wanted and needed and desired in that long minute.

When they did break apart, her arms had wound under his arms and around his back, pressing herself to him, the only space between them now between their mouths, just a scant inch, breathing heavily. Booth groaned and leaned forward, unable to help himself. Brennan managed to not open her mouth to him again, but couldn't help but press her lips against his. They stayed like that for a long time.

Finally he shifted so he was stretched out along the back of the couch and she fit herself in the lee of his body, pulling the blanket up over them both. His arm held her to him and her hand rested on his, anchoring him. He leaned and kissed her cheek, nuzzled and kissed under her ear and on her neck, just long enough to satisfy but not so long she objected. And then he rested his head down behind her and her breathing slowed.

"Booth?"

"Hmmm?"

"You never know which minute is going to make a difference, do you?"

"They all make a difference, Bones."

"What do you mean?" She yawned and her words were slow.

"Well, each one makes a difference to someone, for something. It all just depends on what you are hoping for."

"So…" another yawn, a wriggle against him to get comfortable—her comfort, not his, Booth thought ruefully, considering that his body wasn't entirely recovered from all the kissing, and she finished, "so our minute, just now, maybe it made a difference?"

He was quiet, trying to think how to answer her, what would be best to say. Finally, he said, "It made a difference, Bones." He felt the press of her hand against his in acknowledgement, even as the rest of her body softened the rest of the way into sleep.

"Go to sleep, baby." And smiled when she didn't answer.