Oh, hello muse. Dunno what got me today.

Probably lack of sleep. Anyway, another one-shot for you. :)

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"Bones, you're not going into that quicksand!" Booth hissed to his partner, his face inches away from hers.

"I'd hardly call that quicksand, Booth." Temperance Brennan turned around trying to get rid of him, almost bumping on the autopsy table while moving. "I can't let someone else try to dig out the bones. You know how fumbling the FBI forensic team can be. I'm not going to risk my bones."

"And I'm not going to let you risk your life! Dammit, Bones!" He dropped his hands and looked at her concerned. "What if you drown in there, uh?"

"This is ridiculous." Brennan grimaced and pushed him away with her hand. "You've certainly been watching way too many fiction movies." She snorted. "The likeability of a person 'drowning' in quicksand is near to none. And that only happens when the person is near the shore of a beach and gets stuck in the sand. Other than that, you just have to stay still and you'll float. There's no reason to be concerned."

"So do you think that person didn't get there by accident?" Booth asked.

"Definitely not." Brennan chuckled amused at his thought. "I can't believe you actually thought someone could drown in the sand and years later another person would found just, you know…" She tilted her head a little bit. "…the bones of the hand out of the sand, as if the person died trying to get out of there."

"It's not impossible." He furrowed and followed her as she walked towards her office. "You said it's not impossible."

"It's not impossible when it's near the beach, which isn't our case." She ignored him and kept walking.

"Still, Bones, I don't know if it's completely secure to let you dig there… what if there's some kind of venous insect?" He continued.

Brennan rolled her eyes. "I'm serious here, Booth, if you keep making excuses for me not going to that dig, I'm going to kick you out of my office."

"I'm sorry for being concerned about my partner's security." He rose up his hands offended. "Damn, why do you have to be so stubborn?"

"I am not stubborn." She shot him a glare telling him to shut up.

"Oh, but you totally are."

"I am not."

"You so are." He let out an ironic laugh. "If you weren't, you'd hear me and not go into that quicksand."

"I hate when you act like that." She muttered.

"Like what?"

Oops. She didn't think he'd heard her.

"All alpha male." She rolled her eyes.

"You're my partner, Bones. It's my duty to care about you."

"You have someone else to care about now." He didn't miss the bitterness in her voice. "Now, if you excuse me, Booth, I have a lot of work to do."

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Meanwhile, Hannah Burley watched the two partners' discussion from a fair distance.

"Are they always like that?" She asked Angela, who was standing right next to her, a smile playing on her face, feeling glad that something at least was coming back to normal.

"Like what?" Angela said, not taking her eyes off Brennan's office.

"Fighting." Hannah frowned. "I don't know how they handle being partners for so long if they are always fighting like that."

"Oh, that?" Angela let out an ironic laugh. "No, Sweetie, they are not fighting. They don't fight. They bicker."

"It looked pretty intense." The blonde knitted her eyebrows together.

Angela finally turned around to look at the journalist. Then she opened a wry smile.

"You really don't have any idea in the middle of what you got yourself into, do you?" She asked, almost feeling sorry for the other woman.

"What do you mean?" Hannah asked confused.

"I'm sorry, honey, but if you still haven't figured it out yet, it's not my place to enlighten you." Angela pursed her lips. "But it won't take you much longer, I guess. I heard you're a great journalist."

"One of the best." Hannah added cockily.

"Then I bet you'll find out very soon."

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"You never told me about your scars." Hannah said later that night when they were lying in bed. It was a warm night and he was shirtless, displaying a lot of his scars. "You have so many." She said, drawing them with her finger.

"I'm proud of my scars." He said simply. "They are the proof that I lived. They are the proof that I survived. The proof that I was able to protect someone I love."

"Tell me their stories." She asked softly.

"You're sure you want to hear them all?" He looked at her. "There are so many."

"Uh-hum." She nodded. "I want to learn more about you."

"Okay." He sat and pointed to one near his ribcage. "This one, I got about six years ago. Bones and I were working on a case and someone started to threaten her. We had just started working together, and I went to her house to keep an eye on her. We started listening to some music when I decided to grab a drink, which was definitely a sign of God, because who knows what would have happened it if had been her. They put a bomb in her refrigerator, it exploded when I opened it. If I didn't reach to the shelf on the side of it to grab a glass, I probably wouldn't have survived."

"Jesus, Seeley…"

"Oh, that's not all." He said, suddenly excited to tell the rest of the story. "I was at the hospital, got broken ribs and a lot of stitches, and I thought I was leaving Bones secure with a FBI guy I knew. It was when I realized he was the bad guy. He had taken her…" His eyes suddenly became darker. "He had taken her and he would kill her… So I got Hodgins and we drove to the place we thought he'd taken her."

"But you were all injured…"

"Yeah, but I couldn't leave Bones in his hands… it… it was my fault. I trusted him." He said, feeling the guilty all over again. "When we got there, he was about to shoot her and feed her to the dogs." He felt his heart sinking. "But I was faster and shot him first. Thankfully her worst injury was a wound on the forehead."

Hannah just stared at him surprised. She'd never know they'd actually had been to life/death situations like that.

"And this one…" He pointed at a straight and long scar near his knee. "I was kidnapped by one of the suspects of another case. They wanted me to tell him what I knew, but I wouldn't, so they started torturing me."

"Seeley… you… you don't need to tell me if you don't want…"

"It's okay. Like I said, I'm proud of them. They mean that I survived." He shrugged. "So, I was kidnapped and Bones was the only one who realized something wrong had happened. But it had been only some hours since I disappeared, and you can't consider someone is missing unless they are gone for at least 24 hours. So, she decided to find me herself. But soon she realized it would be very hard, so she asked the last person she wanted to see at the moment for help: her father. But she did, because she knew he was her only chance to get to me." He sighed, realizing how much she'd really done to save him and feeling his heart tightening. "They found me right when they were giving up getting information out of me and they saved me."

"That was really brave of Temperance."

"Bones is the strongest woman I know." He said before he could stop himself.

"What about this one?" She pointed at the gunshot scar he had on his right shoulder.

His face became pale.

"We were working on a case… one of the suspects had a psychological disorder." He said looking at nothing. "Somehow, she ended up obsessed with me, she thought I was in love with her. Bones was with me all the time, so in her crazy mind she thought that killing her she would have the way clear for herself." He swallowed. "Bones was singing…" He smiled at the memory. "Oh, Hannah, you have to hear her singing someday, we made fun of her when she told us she could sing, but she's really great."

Hannah didn't miss the sparkle in his eyes as he talked about his partner. No… that couldn't be it… could it?

"So, she was singing there, and everyone was happy and having a great time when Pam Nunan, that's the crazy lady, showed up and aimed the gun at Bones." His eyes went dark again, he felt sick just thinking about what would have happened it Pam had hit her original target.

"And you stepped in the way and took the bullet to save her." Hannah nodded understanding. It all started making sense.

"Yeah, I couldn't let Bones get shot." He said like it was obvious. "I couldn't. She's my partner."

"But you have a son." Hannah pointed out. "Didn't you think about him when you took that bullet? Seeley… you… you could have died."

Booth looked at her blankly. The truth was, the moment he saw Pam aiming at Brennan, all he could think was his partner getting shot, and just the thought of her hurt drove him crazy. He didn't have to think twice before stepping in front of her.

"So could she." He said dryly.

"Oh God." Hannah said as realization hit her.

"What's wrong?" He asked confused.

"I get it now." She closed her eyes and shook her head, almost laughing at how stupid and blind she'd been.

"Get what?"

"What Angela was trying to tell me today." She looked at him, wanting to feel angry, but somehow, she couldn't. "You love her."

"Angela?" He furrowed his eyebrows.

"Temperance."

Booth didn't say anything, but he had "busted" written all over his face.

"I don't know how I didn't see it before." She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and snorted sadly. "It's so obvious. But you are so different… and you fight all the time-"

"We don't fight. We bicker." He couldn't help correcting her.

"Everything makes sense now." She said ignoring the interruption. "The way she worries about you, the way she got excited telling me what would be the perfect gift for you. Her concerns about me hurting you…" Then suddenly something hit her. "God, Seeley, why the hell aren't you two together?"

"It's a long and complicated story, Hannah. It doesn't matter now." He said. "I've moved on. I'm with you now."

"You didn't." She quivered away from him. "Seeley… you have her written all over your body."

"What?"

"Those scars… they tell your story." She pointed at the scars he'd just told her about. "They tell the story of everything you'd been through together. How you fought and survived because of each other. And the way you just talked about her?" She smiled sadly. "You've never talked about me that way."

"Hannah… I love you." He reached out for her, but the words sounded false even to his own ears.

Crap.

He was doing such a good job moving on. Why didn't she have to ask him about the scars?

It just opened wounds that were starting to heal.

"I'm sorry, Seeley, but I can't be the rebound girl." She said sincerely. "What we had… it's been good, but it's clear to me that you still haven't forgotten her. And honestly? I don't think she's forgotten you either."

"She doesn't love me, Hannah."

"Then I have to think you're blind." She rolled out of the bed. "I'm going to sleep at Parker's room."

"Hannah?" He called out for her, knowing it wouldn't be fair to stop her. Knowing it wouldn't be fair to keep fooling himself. She turned around to look at him. "I'm sorry."

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So, what do you think?

It still bothers me that Hannah knows nothing about the truth of B&B.

I know 'what goes on between them is just theirs', but seriously, I think Booth just didn't tell her because he knows she'll put two and two together and realized what really goes on between them.