Title: Forever Feels Like Home (Sitting All Alone Inside Your Head)
Author: Anna (bite_or_avoid)
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,065

Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, you know the deal. Title courtesy of the Stone Sour song Through Glass
Spoilers: Season 5 Sneak Peek, 5x06 sides, plus all those damn teasing promos. Can this show come back before I go insane?

Six weeks is a long time when you still wake up thinking you're married to someone.

It's even longer when you have nothing to do but sit on your ass collecting medical leave, even though you're absolutely fine, in top notch form really, and all you're waiting for is a twelve-year-old to tell your boss that your brain is in perfect working order, thank-you-very-much, and sign a damn form. (That's not all you're waiting for, and you know it, but your feelings about that particular issue aren't quite as clear-cut.)

So, you play nice. You don't ditch any appointments with said twelve-year-old, hedge questions you can't answer (or don't want to), then take your frustrations out on some innocent gym equipment. You see your kid more than you have in the last six months, savor your time with him nearly every day. You stare at your phone at exactly 4pm, waiting. At exactly 4:30, it finally rings, every day without fail, and when you hear the familiar voice you think of a wife and not a partner reaching out to you from across the distance. You haven't stopped thinking of her that way, have only stopped telling her. Because there's nothing wrong with you, other than that one little thing, and it wouldn't do any good to have her worrying. Or telling Angela, who would tell Hodgins, who would tell everyone, and then Sweets would know, and then the therapy sessions would be even more intolerable. So what if you spend your days (and nights. Definitely your nights.) imagining the slide of her soft flesh against your own, reliving the taste you only remember mixed in with peppermint gum and mistletoe and puckish lawyers and some strange dream world where the two of you aren't really you, but somehow still are. All that stuff? That's just gonna have to stay between you and the old noggin'.

***

Six weeks is a long time, and you're bored through most of it. You realize how much of your time, your non-FBI-payroll time, revolves around her. Funny how you never noticed that before. How drinks with the guys and hoops with your GA sponsor and dinners with women have been making rarer appearances in your life, replaced instead by pie and quiet conversation and Bones.

You think it should bother you. But it doesn't.

The days stretch on endlessly without the routine you've come to depend on. You find yourself reliving moments, ones that really happened and ones that only happened in your head. The one you keep coming back to though, is this:

Who are you?

They're not the best three words you could have picked, but they're not the worst either. (Those'll come later, fully equipped with the lamest retraction in history.)

She gasps and recoils, the look on her face rousing an ache in your heart that rivals the one in your head.

You struggle with a way to explain that of course you know who she is, down to the depths of your soul, but you're just not sure who she is to you.

You wage a little internal war with yourself and pick a Brennan. Pick the life you want this to be.

"You were in my dream," you say. "But it wasn't… we weren't… I missed you."

She launches herself into your arms, nearly pulling out the IV tubing. You hold onto her as tightly as she's holding onto you.

"I could never forget you, Bren."

She's crying too hard to correct the mistake. It's only when you ask her why she's not wearing her wedding ring that you realize you picked wrong.

***

You find your way. Tell her about the dream, and she doesn't laugh the way you assumed she would. She insists on discussing it in front of Sweets though, and that's almost as bad as if she had laughed. The Boy Wonder rationalizes it exactly the way she'd want; says that it was simply a manifestation of your comatose brain processing Bones reading parts of her new book to you. That explanation confuses you even more though. Because now, all you want is to ask her why she wrote that stuff in the first place. And your heart, or your mind, or maybe both aren't really buying it either, because you keep forgetting that she's Bones. The whole first week, you keep slipping.

You grab her ass while she stands in your kitchen making coffee.

You wipe away the donut powder lingering on her lips with your tongue.

You reach out to press your hands into the warmth of her belly, seeking connection with the tiny life that only exists to you.

She corrects you. Gently, patiently, drawing your name out in a hesitant reprimand. Actually, she handles the whole crazy thing a lot better than you would have expected. Much better than you do, in fact.

That kind of bugs you a little. If you didn't know just how proficient she is at compartmentalizing, you'd probably think this was having no effect on her at all. But it is, you know it is, so you tell her that the whole fantasy-world thing is out of your system.

It's the only time you've ever lied to her.

When she tells you about the dig in Guatemala, insisting she has no intention of going, you see the need to get away in her eyes. You tell her to go, that you're too old for a babysitter. You're on mandatory medical leave anyway, so she won't be missing out on anything. You use your charm smile, talking her into it. She smiles back, and for a moment you get the feeling that even though she needs to go, she doesn't entirely want to.

She goes anyway.

***

You're not supposed to be driving yet, else you'd be picking her up at the airport. But you go out on a limb and assume that her first stop back will be her office, not her apartment, so you take a cab there.

Your gut doesn't steer you wrong.

You wander in and there she is, sighing in frustration over a stack of papers. The air leaves your lungs in a giant whoosh.

You feel like you've been holding your breath for six weeks, and she is your first gasp of oxygen.

You can't tell her that though. It would be very un-partnerly.

"Nose back to the grindstone, huh Bones?"

She looks up, and you're completely lost in the way she looks at you, the way her mouth stretches wide into that grin, that special grin she saves just for you, and you can' t help but think of cool sheets, and warm flesh, and soft lips.

The words from the hospital are on your tongue once more.

"I missed you."

You know which Brennan she is, this time.

She's the Brennan you want.

Her arms wind around your neck, and she's still smiling. You hold onto to her as tightly as she's holding onto you.

"I missed you too, Booth."

***

You tell her (and yourself, and anyone else that will listen) that you're 110%, but that's not strictly the case. You're slow adjusting to things that used to be second nature, and it puts you on edge. Her pointing it out doesn't help matters any.

Fake psychics saying that the two of you are profoundly linked doesn't help either.

You're not really on balanced footing, and that's probably why you screw something so important up so horribly.

They come out in a rush, the three worst words you could have said, and before you even know what you've done you're taking them back.

You're definitely not 110%. You know that because Seeley Booth is not a coward in any reality.

***

The cases come and go, and you fall back into a familiar rhythm. You're quicker to adjust, until it's mostly all second nature again, and the urge to call her Bren recedes into some closed-off corner of your mind. The two of you are back to being partners, friends, crime-fighting duo extraordinaire. The life that you're living, real life, is the life that you want. Almost.

But every morning when you open your eyes, suspended momentarily in that place between sleep and reality, you expect her beside you.

You still think of her as yours. (And you're hers. Of course you're hers.)

So, maybe that psychic was a real psychic after all. And not just because of the human remains.

***

If you thought six weeks was a long time, six months is damn nearly forever.

She's not digging for bones in some cave thousands of miles away; she's digging for them right here in D.C. with you by her side. Everything is back to normal now, and that should be enough. But the image of what you could be, of what you should be, is forever imprinted on your mind. So, normal is not enough. And, on some level, you're still lying.

Bones is none the wiser though. She even dated your new boss for a while. You're really glad that ended before you did something to get yourself canned.

In November, when the air turns cold and you turn another year older, you sit in her apartment half-lapsed into a food-induced coma. She's been laughing at something you said, and you're just thinking about how this birthday is much better than last year's, when she slides a box across your lap.

"What's this?"

She rolls her eyes.

"What does it took like?"

"It looks like a present."

"Nice detective work, Agent Booth."

"Smart-ass."

"Have you been looking at my ass again?"

Your jaw drops a little, and she smirks.

"What?" she asks innocently. Then, nudging the box again, "Open it."

You're touched, astounded, but—

"Bones, it's too much. You got me season passes to the Caps! And you cooked. That already makes it the best birthday ever."

"This is different. It's more… personal."

"You made me your mac'n'cheese. That's as personal as it gets."

Her bravado is gone, and she bites her lip nervously.

"Please?"

It's a rare enough show of vulnerability that you'd do anything she asked in that moment. Who are you kidding; you'd do anything she asked anyway. You smile warmly and lift up the lid. Then you gape, disbelieving at what she has chosen to give you.

"It's a manuscript."

"Yes."

"But Bones, you never—"

"It's not a Kathy Reichs novel." The words tumble from her in a rush. "This is what I was writing when you… I deleted it before you woke up. In Guatemala, I succumbed to an irrational need to replicate the work."

You stare at her, dumbfounded.

"I'm not sure this will ever be published, but I wanted you to read it. I thought it could help you understand your dream. I believe you still struggle with it sometimes, and so—"

You laugh. It's a strange, quiet sound, and it startles you as much as it startles her. Sitting there, your belly full, your skin warm, Bones babbling anxiously while giving you a piece of herself, you realize that the only thing wrong with you, the only thing that's been wrong with you this whole time is that you've waited this long.

She looks hurt, and you're quick to reassure her.

"You still don't get it, do you Bones?" You reach up, fingers twirling a strand of hair loose around her face. "I understand my dream. I've always understood it."

Her eyes are wide, uncertain. That crystalline blue, it makes you think of…

…Iceland. Cold to the touch, but all volcano underneath.

She's been burning you for years.

"Then why has it been so difficult for you?"

Your finger comes to rest beneath her chin. You're 110% now, and you know exactly how to do this.

"Because it's you, Bones. I dreamt about you."

Six eternal, agonizing seconds, and she's kissing you.

She presses her lips against your own, tentatively at first, and then with more urgency. Your mouth opens against her softness, and her tongue darts inside. That sharp, direct, obstinate tongue that utters the undiluted truth without hesitation tangles with yours, and no dream, no matter how realistic, could ever do this justice.

You know, without question, which Brennan she is.

She's the Brennan you want.

And she's yours. At last, she's yours.

Fin.