"A slice of apple pie, please," Booth requested of the waiter. After solving another confusing case, Brennan and Booth settled into their ritual—a meal at the Royal Diner.

"Your fascination with fruit pie is still something that I cannot fully understand," Brennan commented as the waiter set off to retrieve the orders.

"You've just got to appreciate it- the burst of sweet apple, coated with crumbling crust, topped with pinches of brown sugar." He smiled contently after painting the picture in his mind. His mouth began to water just talking about his favorite food. "It's an American past time. Liking apple pie is like knowing that Michael Jackson was the King of Pop."

His partner's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "I don't know what that means.

"Besides, if fruit was meant to be cooked, then evolution would suggest that the sun's UV rays would have strengthened over time and cooked the fruit by nature."

"Nah, then what would we humans do?" Booth smiled again as he caught sight of the waiter marching over with his pie and Brennan's order of fries.

When they received the food, they dug in. After a few moments of crunching, Brennan started a new conversation. "So we haven't seen Jacob Broadsky lately."

Booth slightly choked on his food. He grabbed a napkin and cleared his throat before speaking. "Why are you bringing this up?"

She shrugged and munched on another ketchup-coated French fry. "I was curious to get your input. Ms. Wick was suggesting that perhaps he moved on with his life. I disagreed, but I do believe that he might have moved to a different area in, or perhaps out, of the country."

"No." Booth shook his head. "Broadsky's made this personal. There's no way he goes out without a bang." He set down his fork and leaned back in his chair.

Brennan dipped another fry into the ketchup and eyed his barely touched pie. "Are you full already?"

"I'm just not hungry anymore," he grumbled back, a little bitter at the unnecessary and dark subject when he was trying to enjoy a hard-earned slice of pie. He slackened his tie a bit and ran his fingers through his hair. Brennan had just voiced the silent anxieties that had been gnawing at him for the past two months. It had been too months, and not a peep, not a whispered threat from Washington D.C.'s notorious ex-sniper. Not a single specially made bullet had been seen, not a single sighting of Broadsky himself. It had been two months too long.

It wasn't that Booth had wanted to discover that another person had become a corpse by Broadsky's hand; it was simply the knowledge that the sniper was being patient so that he could take out his next desired target at the opportune moment. And from the threat that Booth received in his apartment room nearly two months ago, Booth knew that the next target would hit close to home.

"Do you want to take the pie to go?" Brennan's apologetic question snapped him back into the present. He instantly grew sorry for acting as if his lack of appetite was her fault.

"Yeah, I'm just a little tired," he half lied. He was tired, from the case, from the waiting, desperately tired of the waiting, but in truth he didn't want to pretend like any of this was Bones's fault. Booth's worrying for her personal safety could have been considered her doing, but she wouldn't realize that.

Booth looked up at the anthropologist, his heart melting at the sight of her. Although she came off as cold-hearted and insensitive, he knew that on many occasions she was simply innocent.

Dr. Temperance Brennan knew the length of an average femur, the capacity of an adult female's lungs, the signs of being a gymnast at a glance at a person's bones, but she failed to realize things, such as the reason behind all of Booth's antics. Well, at least until he confessed the reasons behind them: love.

To Booth she was not ignorant, but innocent. Growing up in undesirable homes, as well as constant abandonment, hardened her shell, making her what she referred to herself as—impervious.

Booth had unknowingly cracked and gently peeled away the shell that she cocooned herself into. And after six and a half years of shedding, they were finally embracing the love that they had been quietly kindling for so long.

Brennan caught her boyfriend, if that was what he was, staring at her. She smiled and looked back down at her fries. She wasn't used to be adorned this way. "Stop it."

"Stop what?" Booth questioned as he continued on staring. The smile of a content lunatic was glued to his face. It was the smile that a man madly in love wore.

"You look as if you had just received a lobotomy," she stated plainly, secretly not wanting him to stop for as long as they lived.

He chucked, and Brennan was happy that she was able to distract him away from the Broadsky issue, even if it was short-lived.

"My place or yours tonight?" she asked as the couple packed their left over food into styrofoam boxes.

"Yours," Booth answered as he grabbed her coat to help her put it on. She made a weak attempted scowl at being babied before sliding her arms into the sleeves. "I'm still enjoying waking up in a home that is full of pieces of you."

"That is illogical. I don't have pieces of myself in my apartment," she corrected his illogical thinking. "If I did, there would be a fairly good chance that I would not be alive."

He rolled his eyes but smiled at her always rational thinking. "It's an expression, Bones."

"Oh." She nodded, beginning to grasp the hidden meaning behind the literary device.

"I love you," he murmured as he watched her think it through.

She smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek before attempting to gather their food boxes. But before she could turn away, Booth caught her elbow and turned her towards him. He planted his mouth onto hers, and she kissed back happily. They were a couple stuck in the early-relationship love, after battling relationship conflicts for the past too many years. The ups and downs were out of order, but they were presently enjoying this very high up.

Their kiss deepened until a man sitting on a nearby stool, innocently trying to drink his tea, cleared his throat. Booth and Bones broke apart to see him pointedly read the newspaper, eyebrows raised in manner that told them to take their love elsewhere.

Brennan smiled at her partner who blissfully returned the gesture.

The two linked hands and walked out into the chilly night air that resided in East coast nights like these. Brennan huddled closer to Booth who blithely wrapped his arm around her small and firm frame.

But even as the two took a cab back to Brennan's apartment, something nagged unconsciously at the back of Booth's mind. Something wasn't right, it silently screamed. Things were too perfect. Broadsky doesn't abandon the hunt.

But for that night, his mind kept his sniper trained observations from rising to consciousness.

If he had only allowed himself to listen, perhaps he could have prevented Broadsky's future hunting souvenirs from meeting their premature fates.