Spoilers: Written mostly because Brennan's mind befuddles my own meager one. Review?

Disclaimer: Eh. Anyone know the name of the bar that they go to, now? I really don't see what was wrong with Wong Foo's and the diner, though...

Author's Note: I love having friends who can drive! (That means you, Ben, even though you won't read this. Love you to death!) Anywho. Partially for BlueTigress, who requested Brennan's thoughts on the same matter as Booth's. And partially because I started writing it and went, "Hey, this'd work as a second chapter."

Brennan hated rationalising.

Well, that wasn't the whole truth. She hated having to rationalise. She hated that every emotion she felt was filtered and compartmentalised to the point that made her wonder if she was actually capable of feeling anything.

All her teenage life had been spent shoving feelings to the back of her mind not because she was in too much pain, but because the pain made her doubt herself in circles.

She would feel the pain, allow herself the indulgence, then chastise herself for being melodramatic. She'd made excuses for it, telling herself that she was just tired, just hormonal, just anything but legitimately hurt. And she never truly knew whether that was truth; whether she had the right to be upset or not.

It was like circular logic, only contradictory. Brennan still didn't know whether there was a term for that. She supposed it was simply contradiction in the definitional sense: One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.

Not that it mattered.

Defining her thought processes only really added to the problem.

The self doubt had soon turned into impulse, though, and it was rather funny that the root of all this was not, in fact, compartmentalisation by necessity. Her ability – or perhaps instinct – to compartmentalise was the effect, not the cause of her problems.

And she knew she had a few of them.

She'd been pretty good at ignoring them, too, before she had met Booth: the man who was currently sitting at the bar next to her, sipping his drink silently, remnants of a smile from their earlier conversation still touching the corners of his lips.

And she loved that she could incite that, that she could not only make him laugh, but make him smile. Their whole relationship, from the very beginning, had been unlike any other she'd ever had. If she were honest, she would admit that in the beginning, she had wanted him.

The first time they had worked together, before they had become partners, she had been attracted to him in a purely sexual sense. She'd ignored it professionally – they were working on a case, after all – and each time he made a comment, she'd allowed her dislike of him to overtake the need of attraction.

Then she'd begun to learn how he worked, perhaps appreciate it, and the results had been incredible. Their closure rate was higher than that of almost any other department, of almost any other partnership.

No chance for what ifs, anymore, and it didn't matter that they could have been fantastic together. They worked together, and that was the reality;for once in her life, the theory didn't matter.

So she had made it clear that it couldn't happen. At least, she'd made it clear to herself, because just as she'd begun to realise how impossible things were, Booth had seemed to realise that they weren't. He'd pushed.

And she'd let him.

The real withdrawal had come with Cam's brush with death. Abrupt and defensive, and she'd known that it was pointless to argue with Booth because in that moment, she knew that whatever she felt for him, he felt for her. That line had been confirmation, and the confirmation had been a surprising comfort, had given her a place to begin and a place to end.

Between the two of them, they could be whatever they wanted to be: colleagues, partners, friends, family. But they could never be lovers. They could love each other – and she knew that Booth loved her – but she wondered whether that was ever enough.

She didn't know if she could love him, if she should, but she wanted to.

She felt Booth's hand on her shoulder and looked up from her drink. The traces of the smile still there, and she wondered how she'd missed something so obvious.

She smiled back and yes, it was enough.