Title: Thanksgiving with Bones

Author: thepinkllama

Pairing: Brennan/Booth

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Booth takes Brennan home for Thanksgiving strictly as a partner, but fate, namely his mother, has other thing in mind.

Spoilers: Takes place after 3X08, but before 3X09.

The reality of what they had just done sat like a boulder in between them. A huge flaming boulder of doom, he thought ruefully. She just stared at him like he was some strange bone formation. Booth looked at her phone.

"You should probably answer that." Should give him enough time to collect his thoughts.

Brennan grabbed desperately at the phone and answered it with a breathless "Hello"

Way to keep 'em wondering Bones Booth thought with a twinge of amusement.

"Uh, are you okay sweetie?"

Angela's voice made Brennan blush profusely.

"Yes of course, why?"

"You sounded a little out of breath that's all."

"Oh, did you need something Angela?"

"Is that Angela?" Booth's attempt at a casual question failed miserably when his voice came just short of squeaking.

"Is that Booth? Is that why you're so breathless?" The lusty sound of Angela's voice practically oozed out of the phone.

"No! No, we were um, moving furniture."

Moving furniture? Booth mouthed

Brennan glared at him.

"Okay, well when you're done moving furniture you can come over to the lab, the Jeffersonian couldn't reach you so they called me. Apparently they have some bones that need to be authenticated for the Iron Age display as soon as possible."

"Okay, I'll be right over."

"Alright, bye."

Brennan set her phone slowly on the counter. Finally after a long moment of uncomfortable silence she looked up at Booth. He was staring intently at her.

"Now what?"

For the first time in her life there was no logical answer that sprang quickly to mind. They could ignore the fact that the kiss had happened at all, but that would only serve in driving a wedge between them as well as making their workplace extremely uncomfortable. They could acknowledge that it happened and just kind of go on from there but for some reason just "going from there" never really worked for her.

"I don't know." She said quietly.

Booth sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"I care about you Bones."

"But you don't think we will work as a couple. I understand." The little sliver of hurt slicing through her heart was best kept locked up.

"No, I don't know if we will work as a couple, some crazy part of me thinks we could be great together, but most of me just doesn't know. Maybe I'm just a little scared."

Brennan frowned at him.

"But you're never scared."

"I get scared plenty."

Brennan nodded and bit her nails, her head was shouting a million things at once and that feeling in her chest was slowly squeezing until she felt that she couldn't quite breathe.

"Logically, we're attracted to each other."

Booth was about to protest but maybe dealing with this unfathomable thing in between the two of them was the way to go.

"Yes."

"We're both adults so I think we should just, kind of," She paused, searching for the right words. "Get it over with."

"What?" He practically jumped out of his skin. "You mean, sleep together? You really think that would solve this?"

Brennan nodded, slowly becoming more accustomed to the idea.

"The human mind will naturally desire something more if it is unattainable or set in the light of the forbidden fruit, so if we just treat this logically without any emotional attachments we can easily go on after tonight and continue working together without any further complications."

Booth shook his head.

"No way, because in my experience sex and work don't mix, there are always complications."

"Because someone always wants more, am I right?"

Booth nodded slowly

"I guess"

"Well we both have no intention of taking this any further so there should be no problem."

Booth groped for an answer, some kind of argument, but the truth was that he wanted nothing more.

"So I guess we just, tonight?"
Brennan nodded and stepped forward. They stared at each other for a full ten seconds before Booth started snorting with laughter. Brennan crossed her arms and gave a frustrated sigh.

"Maybe we should alter the environment, there are many things that can serve as an aphrodisiac."

Booth cocked his head

"Can't you just say we should light a couple of candles, maybe play some music?"

The glare made him bite his tongue and turn towards the CD player. He flicked it on without a thought and was completely speechless when a weird groaning, croaking sound blasted out. He pressed stop and took the CD out.

"Tibetan Throat Singers" he read out loud.

Brennan snatched the CD from his hand.

"I was working on something."

Booth lifted his hands in surrender and rooted around in her cabinets for matches or a lighter.

Brennan watched his every move as he lit the decorative candles she had as well as setting out some of the emergency candles she kept stashed in her drawer. Nerves clawed at her stomach and she took a hesitant step towards her bedroom. There was a dark blue negligee in the very bottom of her drawer, a black lace contraption that made her feel powerful and sexy and it came with matching thigh length stockings, and a white lace bra and panty set she hadn't gotten a chance to wear. Brennan disappeared into her room and pulled on the red negligee. She'd worn it with Sully and because that brought up sad memories she ripped it off and threw it across the room. She glanced at the black lingerie set and quickly reached for the white lace bra and panties. She looked at herself in the mirror and frowned. She looked stupid. She pulled her hair out of the ponytail and fluffed it, sprayed on a spurt of perfume and walked out anyway.

Booth looked up when heard her open the door. Skin that looked and felt as smooth as porcelain glowed from the candlelight and was cupped by white lace. She'd let her hair down and it framed her face in soft waves. He stood and held his arms out to her, not quite believing anything was real.

"You look beautiful."

"You don't have to romanticize Booth."

He leaned close,

"It's fact."

He slid his hands gently up and down her waist. She felt firm, smooth, and warm. He smelled the perfume she wore and touched his lips to hers. She responded hesitantly. Booth scooped her up to carry her to the bedroom.

"No!" Booth paused and looked down at her.

"The couch is better."

Booth was surprised at the hurt slicing through his chest.

He set her down and pulled his shirt over his head. He saw her ogling his chest and smiled.

"Hot for me yet?"

She rolled her eyes and Booth laughed as he sat down beside her. They stared at each other.

"This is really awkward."

"It'll be worse if we stop now."

"What kind of screwed up logic is that?"

Brennan stood up indignantly

"You are so hard to get along with."

"Yeah well it's not like you're Miss freakin' Congeniality."

She sighed exasperatedly and plopped down next to him.

"This is obviously not going to work."

Booth glared at her.

"Yeah, you want to know why?"

"Not at all."

"Because I want more than just sex."

Brennan leaped up from the couch and gaped accusingly at him.

"What! No, we had an agreement."

"Fuck the agreement." Booth growled and yanked her into his lap.

"I love you, and I care about what have together, there's no way I'm going to cheapen it with stupid sex."

Brennan was still sputtering over the "I love you" part.

The room was suddenly quite and Brennan felt fear skittering in her chest, but underneath the fear lay warmth she was wary to lose.

"Booth, this isn't good."

"You're telling me." He pressed a kiss to her forehead and hugged her close, crushing her to his chest.

"Oww… Booth you're squishing me."

Booth released her and stared at the woman in his arms.

"I know this is going to complicate things and maybe totally screw up everything but I need to be with you Temperance. There's nothing I want more."

Brennan stared at him. Seconds turned into minutes and the silence became a heavy blanket.

"Don't call me Temperance."

"It's your name."

"I like Bones, it's… Special, to me." She finished.

Booth felt hope glimmer in his chest. Fuck that, it was an all out marching band with girls in tutu's tossing batons.

"I think that something like this, the relationship we have come to share doesn't come around every century, and I don't want to lose that."

Booth couldn't help the grin that split his face.

"Do you love me?"

"No."

It was almost comical the way his face fell.

" Booth."

She touched her lips gently to his.

"I didn't let myself fall in love with you because I knew it would only serve to complicate things."

"Oh."

"But nothing's stopping me now."

"Oh." This time it was said with a smile.

Booth kicked his shoes off and carried her to her bed.

A/N: I am so ashamed, I totally ditched this story, but I have a good explanation, really. See there was this, um… What I mean was… See my muse and I got into an argument… So there was this thing with a smut story. All right I really have no good excuse so I only ask that you forgive me for delaying so long with the ending. I didn't want to add smut because the last time I wrote smut I completely drained any semblance of creativity for weeks. SERIOUSLY. Pshh… I'll still write smut, just not for this story.