A/N - Hi, everybody. First of all thank you so much for all the reviews, favorites, and followings. I am feeling the love.

This piece is based on "The Girl in the Sand". That's season 2 for those of you who don't have a ridiculously good memory for trivial details. (And yet I still can't remember where I left my damn phone even though I put it down not even two minutes ago. Go figure.)

Here's a funny thing. I'm usually really good at coming up with titles for my stories. Better than I am at actually writing the story. But not this time. This story refuses to tell me what it wants to be called. Who was it who said that writer's block is when your imaginary friends aren't speaking to you? So my husband suggested I hold a little contest. Read the story, and if a title springs to mind, leave me a review or send me a PM. The inventor of the winning title will get to give me a Bones prompt which will become the next chapter of this little one-shot series. You'll need to have an account on this site to participate because I can't reply to guest reviews. There will be a few ground rules for the kinds of prompts I will accept, but we'll get to that once we have a winner. I will make a decision in two weeks or when I have more than twenty suggestions.

Now read on.

She screamed herself awake, but the nightmare didn't end. She was in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, and outside the window were the lights of a strange city. It was all too much like the images that had jarred her from sleep. Lost, abandoned, moving from one place to another, nowhere to call home. A sob of terror rose in her throat before she could choke it back. She needed to be back in her own apartment, surrounded by her own possessions, tangible evidence of the life she had built for herself – a stable, secure life.

Movement in the bed next to her almost made her scream again in fright. Then a familiar, calloused hand touched her shoulder, and a familiar voice said, "It's all right. It's just me. What's wrong?"

Booth. Her partner, her friend, her anchor. She practically attacked him, throwing her arms around his neck. He let out his breath in a soft whoosh as her head collided with his chest, but he accepted her in to his arms without hesitations. His stubbly cheek tickled her forehead, and he stroked her tangled hair and whispered in her ear, "It's okay. I got you. You're okay."

She breathed in his scent, finally remembering where she was. They'd come to Las Vegas to identify a body, but a simple identification had quickly turned in to a multiple homicide investigation and then a dangerous undercover mission in to the shadowy world of ultimate fighting. That was why he was in bed with her. Posing as Tony and Roxy, an engaged couple looking for an adventure, they'd gotten a hotel room together and then spent the evening awkwardly trying to get comfortable without crossing the invisible line down the middle of the bed, a stark contrast to the way they'd been acting in public today. But now both the awkwardness and the false romance was gone. He held her unconditionally, as a friend, a protector, a shelter from the storm.

Slowly she relaxed, her terror fading. "I'm sorry," she whispered, though she didn't let go of him yet.

"It's okay," he said, his hand making slow circles between her shoulders. "You were scared. I understand."

"But it was just a dream. I wasn't in any real danger."

"Doesn't matter. I will happily protect you from nightmares as well as real live monsters. I have enough night terrors of my own to know how real they can feel."

They stayed like that for another minute. Then she gently disentangled from his arms and went in to the bathroom. She gulped water straight from the faucet and splashed some on her face. When she came back out, he was still sitting up on the bed, watching her. "I'm okay now, Booth," she told him. "You can go back to sleep."

For a moment, she thought he was going to push her to talk about it the way Peter always had. That was the main reason she hadn't had a serious relationship since she and Peter broke up two years ago. Men could never just let her deal with her problems in her own way. They always wanted to help her, to fix her. It was suffocating. Was Booth going to be like that now? Was he going to start treating her like a fragile child? She tensed, hoping desperately that her moment of vulnerability hadn't ruined their partnership for good.

But Booth just nodded and laid back down on his side of the bed. Breathing a small sigh of relief, she too crawled back under the blankets. But when she closed her eyes, the images were still there. Not quite as vivid, but still too close for comfort. She considered giving up on sleep and spending the rest of the night writing. She often did her best chapters on nights like this, but tomorrow she and Booth were going in to a dangerous situation, and she needed to be alert. "Booth?" she whispered.

"Yeah?"

"What do you do when you have nightmares? I mean, how do you fall asleep again?"

"Well, sometimes I listen to quiet music."

She was up out of bed in an instant and digging through her suitcase until she found her iPod. Crawling back in to bed for a second time, she offered Booth one of the earbuds. He accepted with a smile, and she turned on a soft, bluesy playlist.

They lay in the dark and listened to love songs and lullabies, occasionally whispering comments about their favorite lyrics, or chuckling at an unexpected overlap in their tastes.

At some point their hands crept over that invisible line and their fingers intertwined. At some point they slept, their heads laying close together, and the music wove through their dreams, creating a fortress of peace and safety that no nightmare could breach.

Hope you liked it. Even if you don't have any title suggestions, leave a review. It makes my day.