Disclaimer: I do not own Bones or any of its characters. Or "Collide," by Howie Day, from which I took the quoted line.

Author's Note: And here I was all not going to write anything for a while because of the copious amounts of posting I've done recently. Yeah, that worked. Blame it on Howie. Also, I'm not a big fan of the title.

Special thanks to A.Boleyn.

EstreyaStar, Erkith, i die without you, alwaysf0rg0tt3n, canadianagurl, Revia, avaleighfitzgerald, paganmelly, Harri B, and Silent Cobra, my thanks as always. silentsister, thank you for the high praise; I hope I continue to live up to it.

She doesn't think about him all the time. She thinks about him more often than she would admit to herself, let alone anyone else, but it's not all the time.

She doesn't always think about him when it might be expected, like when she sees wedding announcements in the newspaper or hears love songs on the radio, but then again, sometimes she does. Sometimes she'll catch herself humming along to an unabashedly romantic song, the kind that had never had anything to offer her, other than a tune to chase away the silence, and he will appear in her thoughts. She remembers not the first time it happened, but the most startling, as the boy on the radio sang "I found I'm scared to know I'm always on your mind." Of course it was presumptuous and self-aggrandizing to imagine that he thought of her that much, but her heart had beat erratically for more than a moment after.

On more than one occasion she has seen a man in a dark suit in the distance and thought it was him, if only for an instant. By now she knows his form well enough to be able to recognize him a long way off, the way he walks and runs, the way he holds himself when he is angry and tense, muscles bunched taut and ready to explode into whatever action the situation requires, or the way he flows when he is relaxed and happy. She knows, oh, she knows the confident saunter when he's sure that he'll get what he wants; it infuriates her to think how often he does get what he wants from her.

Sometimes when she's reading case files or typing reports she hears his voice so clearly that she has to look up to make sure he hasn't walked in. She knows his voice, knows that he doesn't call her that silly name to annoy her, at least not anymore. It's become so familiar that his non-use of that name means something important, and makes her pay attention. As if she needs to pay any more attention to him.

She knows that she says things now that she never said before she met him, even aside from the technical language of criminal investigation. But hearing about the FBI brings him to mind, sometimes to the detriment of her blood pressure. Whenever someone from the agency is involved in a dangerous situation, her pulse races until she makes sure it isn't him. She can't begin to imagine what might happen if one day she didn't get that confirmation and hear his voice, sometimes mocking, sometimes weary, sometimes inexplicably gentle, tell her that she shouldn't worry so much.

When she sees guns, she thinks about him. It seems incredibly morbid, but all of their arguments about her fitness for carrying a firearm have connected him with handguns in her mind. He would find it amusing, she was sure, and would make some remark about how both were very dangerous in the wrong hands. He would manage to inject the maximum amount of innuendo possible into the statement, and she would be hard put not to blush.

There are a distressing number of things about him that threaten to induce that reaction in her. His complete assurance in his own abilities. That swagger. All of his smiles, from the one of pure joy when he talks to his son, to the lascivious one that comes when he flirts with her best friend. But more than that, she thinks of the little things that seem so unique to him. She knows they cannot be things only he does, but she notices when he does them. The way he loosens his tie at the end of a long day. His perfect ease around her, even at the times when she feels less than comfortable around him. The hard edge in his voice when he's arguing, with her or anyone else. The inscrutable expression when he thinks she doesn't know he's watching her. She hasn't yet discerned the meaning of that expression, but it obviously has some deep meaning.

Most illogically of all, she sometimes thinks of him for no particular reason. In the midst of her daily routine she will remember something he said, or a way he'd look, completely apropos of nothing. The sudden intrusion sometimes passes unchecked, but sometimes she'll wonder when and why he has become so present in her head. She does not address the question of whether or not she minds thinking of him so much.

She wonders, fleetingly, if he thinks of her half as much as she thinks of him.

And then assures herself once again that she does not think of him all the time. She certainly doesn't think of him while she's sleeping.

Then, she dreams of him.