A/N: For Jenn.

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"Bones and I are just partners," I had told Perotta.

I told her that because I knew how it would otherwise go. Women were charmed by me, interested in my humor and my smile and my body, wanted to get to know me better…and then they saw me with Bones. Then the knowing look came over their faces, and the interest was gone.

It felt good to be desired, and I missed it.

So I told Perotta we were just partners, and she looked like she almost believed me.

A few nights later, my head still pounding from my concussion, my hand still aching, my body still protesting every movement, I was told I wasn't allowed to sleep. With sleep off the table, I recognized only one viable alternative to making the night bearable.

Bones verbally balked as her body willingly followed me, and I lead her onto the ice, watching her delightful unsteadiness and huge grins accompanying the unfamiliar movements. She didn't usually like doing things she wasn't good at, but she had nothing to prove to me tonight, and she knew that because she was my "just partner." The one who didn't always understand the complexities of human emotion, but somehow inspired the most intense ones inside of me anyhow. So she abandoned her self-consciousness, and embraced the newness.

I took her hand, and on some level I had known that the grip of her fingers on mine would be the very best medicine. The pain in my body was a mere pinprick, unable to compete with the healing power of her smiles and her words and her touch.

She told me she only wanted to work with me. She told me I was made of 'good stuff.'

I pushed her faster across the ice, dizzied and drugged by a simple moment, trying to make her feel it too.

I hadn't lied to Agent Perotta. Bones and I were "just partners."

But partners meant something different to Bones and me, than it did to the rest of the world. Something that all the kinds of relationships in all the world couldn't compete with.

I had given in briefly, because it felt good to be desired.

But it felt better to be loved.