Based on spoilers of an upcoming episode where Booth and Bones are trapped together in an elevator, which should be fairly interesting (read: my excitement level = dangerously high).

Disclaimer: Bones is not mine, of course.

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There are certain things Bones fears. She's not too fond of spiders, and she hates washing dishes. She balks at questions of commitment, and social interactions are sort of like pulling teeth. But something she's really afraid of, and something Booth knows most of the story behind, is the dark.

So when the elevator in his apartment building jerks to an abrupt stop and the light flickers once, twice, then blinks out, he's across the space to her side in an instant, his hand on her elbow to steady her.

It's quiet enough that he can hear the soft hitch of fear in her breath.

"Bones, you okay?"

"Yes. I didn't fall when the elevator stopped."

Good, she sounds normal enough. He feels along the wall with his other hand and finds the panel of buttons. "I'm going to let you go for a second, okay?"

At another time, with the lights on, it would've been strange to hear him ask for permission to move his hand. But in the dark, when they can only make out dim perceptions of each other, they both understand why he asks.

He can just make out her nod. "Okay."

He lets her go and digs in his pants pocket for his phone. When he turns it on, the bright light from the screen illuminates the panel enough for him to make out the signs. He hits the emergency button and waits.

Nothing. He doesn't miss the way Bones' fingers clench into fists by her side.

When a few more minutes pass without an answer, he dials Cam's number and waits.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Camille, it's Seeley."

"Hey, what's up?"

"Stuck in an elevator in my apartment building, that's what's up. You know anything about the power going out?"

He can hear Cam turn and murmur something quickly behind her before returning. "Yeah, Angela says the power went out for the whole neighborhood around you. A generator blew in the blizzard. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. We'll look over the case or something."

'"We?'"

"Bones is here too." At Cam's chuckle, he says a bit irritably, "Yeah, don't worry about us. Just send some rescue workers this way if they happen to be making rounds for people trapped in elevators. You know, if you feel like it."

He can almost hear Cam smiling and rolling her eyes. "I'll try to get someone to get up there soon. In the mean time, stay calm."

"Yeah, okay. See you." He shuts the phone and reaches for Bones again. Alarm shoots through him at how absolutely rigid her posture is, her arm tensed under his hand.

"Bones?"

"I'm…okay," she answers.

"Good," he says, but he still moves closer to her in case she needs it. "We might be here for a while; the whole generator's out because of the blizzard."

"A while?"

"They'll get us out of here soon," he reassures her. "It won't take that long."

She takes a deep breath. "Okay. So…now what?"

Grinning, he produces the case files with a flourish and settles himself on the floor of the elevator, spreading the folders on the ground. "Now we catch a murderer, Bones, what else?"

After a moment, she takes a seat next to him, and they use their phones for light to read the pages. He's relieved to see that his theory's working; by absorbing herself in the case, Bones is distracted enough to relax. The facts have always calmed her, and he's glad to see that they're doing the same now.

For the next hour, they pore over the files, trading theories and suggestions. Bones finds a pen and scrawls her notes all over the papers, and he makes her laugh by engaging her in a tic-tac-toe game in the margins of a profile. They cross out a suspect and add another one to the list.

The battery symbol on his phone blinks orange, then red. He turns the screen slightly away from her so she can't see.

"The baker fits," Bones muses, aligning two pages so she can read facts from them both. "He has both motive and means. The rolling pin could be the murder weapon. Maybe he was angry that his wife was helping his son run away, and he killed her."

"What happened to sticking to the facts?" he teases. "I thought I was the one who was supposed to guess at what happened."

Bones grins. "But this theory is supported by the facts. It's an educated guess."

"Still a guess."

"Not so much of a guess as a theory, Booth. It's based on hard evidence, which puts it a step above pure conjecture."

Booth rolls his eyes and nudges her with his elbow. "Well, I still think it's that creepy guy who was stalking her. He was totally the type for it."

She sends him a wry glance. "Is your stomach telling you things again?"

"My gut is a perfectly reputable source, okay, Bones? It's never been wrong before."

"My facts are more reputable than any body part," she sniffs, turning over a page. "The stalker was out of town."

"He said he was out of town."

"He had receipts."

"Under his brother's credit card. That doesn't seem even remotely suspicious to you?"

"No, actually, I – "

Booth's phone shuts off abruptly, chiming its 'dead battery' warning. Both of them freeze, and he glances over at her anxiously. There's still enough light from her phone that he can see her face clearly, and he doesn't miss her wide eyes.

"You okay?" he asks softly.

Annoyance crosses her features, and he can see her visibly recompose herself. "Yeah, I'm fine." Clearing her throat, she checks the battery on her phone – getting low too, he sees with a sense of dread curling in his gut – and shakes her head. "I'm fine."

"Let's keep working then," he says lightly, shifting just a bit closer to her.

Hodgins calls with an update half an hour later, and Cam tells them the rescue workers are swamped with all the damage from the blizzard. They're working systematically down the streets, but they're still some distance away from Booth's building.

Great. They can deal with that. That's all well and good, right up until Bones' phone begins to chirp warnings that the battery's running low. Then the tension runs all along her body again, and she stares at the pages forcefully, refusing to acknowledge the piercing chimes. Booth feels his stomach tighten at the thought of darkness swamping them, at the thought of Bones facing it. He wonders just how bad her nightmares are these days, and if she still has them at all.

He doesn't need light to read her fear when her phone dies completely, plunging them into darkness.

"Bones?" he ventures, reaching out for her. He touches her hand and is surprised when she grips his fingers tightly with her own, almost painfully.

"I'm fine," she manages, but both her tone and that crushing hold she has on him belie her words.

"Okay," he says slowly, wondering what the hell he can do for her to make this better. "Do you need…" He cuts off because he knows how much she hates people assuming she's weak, even when she is scared. How can he offer her something – anything – without sounding condescending?

"Fine," she breathes. "I'm fine."

After a moment of consideration, he turns the situation on its head. "Okay, that's good. Because you know what? I'm afraid of the dark."

It startles an incredulous laugh out of her. "What?"

"Yeah, I know, big hunky FBI guy, scared of the dark. Who would've guessed?"

"You aren't scared of the dark," she counters slowly.

"Yeah, I am." He squeezes her hand. "So, do you mind if I hold onto you for a little bit? It helps."

He holds his breath in the silence, hoping she'll take the opening he's given her. When her own breath comes out soft and shaking, he knows he's won.

"Okay," she murmurs. "If it helps you." Her strange emphasis on you makes him smile.

Relieved, he tucks her under the crook of his arm, pulling her close up against his side. She's trembling ever-so-slightly and trying to hide it, so he pretends not to notice. Instead, he laces the fingers of his free hand through hers and shifts so he's facing her more, his back to the elevator wall.

"Are you okay?" she asks transparently. "Am I helping?"

She's definitely pushing it. He smiles into the darkness and answers, "Yeah, you're great."

"Maybe," she says unsteadily, after another silence, "it'd be better if we talked. That helps."

His smile widens, and he says, "Sure, Bones. We can talk. How's Max?"

"Good," she replies. "He's in Maui, for real this time. He sent me receipts."

"Is he having fun?"

"He mentioned a woman."

The thought of Bones' father romancing a woman in Maui makes Booth grin. "That's great. Have you seen her?"

He feels her shake her head against his shoulder. "He says it isn't serious yet, but he's hopeful."

"Good. Great. Maybe he'll come back to D.C. with her."

"That would be nice," Bones agrees. "He deserves someone who loves him."

"He does."

The conversation dies, promptly and unexpectedly. Booth can feel Bones tensing up against him again, subtly shifting closer to him. Her breathing is loud in the silence of the elevator car, loud and irregular.

A long few minutes stretch between them as her breath shortens. He squeezes her hand and rubs his other hand up and down her arm, trying to find something to say to make it better.

"I'm sorry," she says finally, almost gasping. She's shaking noticeably against him now. "It's just – could you say something?"

He obeys instantly, growing more and more concerned as she curls closer to him. "Sure, Bones, uh…have you seen that new restaurant near the Jeffersonian? Looks great, doesn't it? I saw an ad somewhere for it – don't remember where – and it looks good. They've got authentic Chinese food, and I thought we could get lunch there some time. It's a buffet, so we can stuff ourselves silly, and they've got a vegetarian course too. It's perfect."

"Perfect," she repeats, her voice steadier.

"I'll take you for lunch there tomorrow," he promises her. "Okay?"

"Okay." She takes another breath, and he squeezes her hand again.

"I used to have this dog," he says quickly, before the silence can descend. "An awesome dog. I didn't have a lot of…care growing up, you know? So this dog was like my dad. We did a lot of things together, and I called him Pa. Of course, my real dad wasn't too big on this random mutt crowding up the living room, but who's going to argue with eighty pounds of pure muscle?"

He pauses for a moment, to let her answer. And just as he expected, she says, "It's impossible for an organism to be composed of pure muscle."

He's relieved at the way her voice has steadied slightly, and at the way her tight grip on his shirt and his hand eases. "Yeah, well, this dog was a monster," he replies. "My dad couldn't have gotten rid of him if he'd tried, and believe me, he tried."

"And Jared?"

Booth chuckles quietly. "Jared hates animals. Guess we were polar opposites even then."

He tells her a little more about his dog, and then about some office stories of working for the FBI, then things about Parker. She smiles and questions him when he tells her about Parker getting into a science program at his school, and he makes her promise she'll drop by someday, because Park would be totally psyched if she showed up. He tells her about Rebecca's new boyfriend who's apparently some university professor with a million PhDs and an ego to match. As he talks, she slowly relaxes against him, her breath evening out.

He trails off eventually because she's asleep on his shoulder. Or at least, he thinks she's asleep, so when she starts talking softly, he jerks in surprise.

"I wrote to you," she says, her voice small again.

Turning his head slightly toward her, he pauses. "What?"

"When we were under there," she continues. "In the car. I wrote to you."

There's no doubt in his mind as to what car she's referring to. His arms tighten reflexively around her, and he wonders why on earth she's bringing the subject up when he's trying so damn hard to keep it at bay.

"We don't have to talk about it," he says gently.

"I want to," she answers firmly. "I want to talk about it to someone."

He hesitates, then asks, "Didn't you see a shrink afterwards? With Hodgins?"

"She didn't help." Bones sniffs and says, "Psychology is a soft science."

Booth laughs. "Of course it is."

They settle into a brief silence before Bones speaks again. "Anyway, I wrote to you. Hodgins and I, we wrote letters just in case…you know."

In case they died. In case Booth and the squint squad had come too late, in case the Gravedigger won. Even now, even with Bones nestled safely in his arms, Booth still shivers at the thought of losing her.

"I know," he says quietly.

"Well, we wrote letters. A letter. It wasn't long – we didn't have much paper, and there wasn't much light – but when we were down there, it was important. Hodgins already knew who he was writing to, I could tell. But I sat there for a while, thinking about who would read mine. And the only person I could think of was you."

He swallows, because he wants so badly to take her away from this dark place, to a place where she'll stop shaking and telling him these things that make him remember those awful, terrifying hours racing against the clock.

"What did you write?" he asks finally, wanting to break the silence.

She shrugs against him and answers slowly, "I wrote about how…important you were to me. How I considered you my best friend even though we'd only been partners for less than two years. Also, I anticipated that you'd feel unnecessarily guilty for my death, so I told you not to blame yourself."

This is all sounding too final for him, too much like it might have been if he'd really been even half an hour too late. So, to try to pull the conversation to a close, he asks, "So what happened to the letter?"

"I put it in my pocket," she answers. "When we planned to blow out the windshield and escape, I figured that if you found my body, you would still get the note that way."

His mind conjures up a sudden, horrible image of digging a limp Bones out of the gravel and finding the note in her pocket. That crinkled piece of paper holding her last words to him, reminding him again with solid finality that he'd been too late. He has to swallow past the sudden nausea that makes his fists clench. "And…after I found you?"

She shrugs. "I threw it away. It wasn't applicable anymore."

"And why are you telling me this?" he asks her slowly. "Why now?"

Another shrug and a quiet sigh. "It feels real again all of a sudden. I know it's irrational – we're only in an elevator after all, and it's nothing life-threatening – but I wanted you to know. I'm…glad you're here."

He imagines Bones stuck in the elevator alone in the dark with no one to hold her or talk to her to make sure memories of a buried car and limited air don't come back to her. Squeezing her arm, he answers honestly, "I'm glad I'm here too."

After a second of hesitation, he buries his nose in her hair, inhaling her scent. Some part of him realizes that this is taking advantage of Bones in her weak moment; another part revels in their closeness and knows he'll likely never have this again. So he breathes in everything that's Bones, everything that makes her the woman she is. There's a hint of strawberry shampoo, the faint trace of antiseptic from the lab, and a deeper smell that's just Bones. It's the same scent that lingers in his SUV long after she's gone, the traces of her he can sometimes smell on his coat from all the times he draped it around her shoulders on a cold night.

"Do you still…" He pauses for a moment as she shifts under his arm and waits until she settles again before continuing. "Do you still get nightmares, Bones?"

She tenses again, but it's not as bad as before. "Sometimes," she says carefully. "But I'm fine."

He finds himself telling her, "I still get nightmares too sometimes. About losing you, I mean. I get this awful dream, one where I'm digging the gravel away, and I hit the top of the car. We get the car out with this huge crane, and I look at the clock – still twenty minutes left. I can't tell you how relieved I am. But when I scrape the dust off the windows, there's no one inside." He lets out a quiet, shaky breath. "It's empty. And then we run out of time, and you're gone. Just like that."

She squeezes his hand firmly. "I'm right here, Booth. That didn't happen."

He nods. "I know." Leaning his head back against the elevator wall, he forces a laugh. "I don't even know why I told you that."

"I don't know why we're talking about this either," she mutters, pillowing her cheek on his chest.

"Maybe," he muses after a couple of heartbeats, "because we need to remind ourselves that there are worse things than this."

"Than being stuck in an elevator?" she repeats with a quiet laugh. "Yes, being buried alive is certainly worse than that."

"Not just being buried alive," he says softly. "Losing the people you love. That's the worst of it."

He misses his slip completely, so he's surprised when Bones stiffens against him. "What?"

He backtracks over his words, stumbles over love, and realizes his mistake.

…Or is it really a mistake? They're stuck in an elevator where they can do nothing but talk, where Bones couldn't run if she tried, and suddenly, he can't think of a better time for this.

"Yeah," he repeats, more strongly this time. "Nothing's worse than losing the people you love."

He can hear her breath hitch. "Booth…in a partner way, right?"

"No," he corrects, "in that fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred-year way." She tenses up hard against his side, and her grip around his hand is the loosest it's been in an hour. He's willing to bet that if she wasn't afraid of losing him in the darkness, she would be halfway across the elevator by now.

"You don't love me," she says bluntly. "You said – you said you loved Hannah."

He takes in her words for a moment, rolling them around in his head, before answering honestly, "Listen, Bones. You can love a lot of people in this world. But there's only one person you love the most, and for me, that's you."

There's nothing but the sound of their quite breaths for a few long moments, and he wonders if she can hear his heart thudding a quick staccato against his chest.

"That's not right," she says finally. "You can only love one person, Booth. What you're suggesting is polygamy."

He almost laughs. "No, Bones, it isn't. There's love and there's love, you know?"

"No, I don't."

He tries a different tactic. "So you're saying that if I love Hannah, then I can't love you?"

"That's right."

"Then if I love Hannah, I can't love Parker?"

That shuts her up for a moment, and he smiles in the darkness. But, like anything, it doesn't hold her down for long – about ten seconds, to be exact.

"That's not the same," she argues. "The love you have for a child is different from the love you have for a lover."

"Aha!" he exclaims. "So we agree that there are different types of love."

"Well – yes –"

"Then what if I told you that the love I had for Hannah was a different type of love? That I loved her in a friend sort of way?"

"Friends don't sleep with each other," she points out, a frown in her voice. "You were generally much more friendly with Hannah than social norms allow between two people who aren't romantically involved."

He shifts slightly to keep his leg from falling asleep and answers, "Well, Bones, maybe I didn't know it was friendly love then. Maybe I was trying pretty damn hard to make it real."

He can almost see her brow furrow quizzically in the darkness. "Why would you lie to yourself like that?"

"Maybe," he says softly, "because even then, I knew I still loved you. Maybe because I knew if I went down that road again with you, it would end badly, and we'd both end up hurt in the end."

"Self-preservation."

"Something like that."

"And now?" she asks. "What changed?"

"What?"

"What changed?" she repeats. "You wouldn't be telling me this if things had stayed the same."

What changed? Well, he knows about her feelings, for one. Before, it was sort of a shot in the dark and then hoping to hit something similar in her heart. Now he knows she feels the same way about him that he does about her. And now that they're stuck in an enclosed space, it's actually an optimal situation to deal with whatever they have between them. Bones can't run, they both are forced to listen to each other, and he's somehow finding the courage seemingly from nowhere to say these things to her.

"Well," he says slowly, "for one thing, Hannah and I broke up, but you already know that. And that case with the doctor – what you said got me thinking. You said some stuff, Bones, that – let's face it – I'd never expected to hear from you in a million years. So now I'm thinking maybe, if we were both honest with each other and if we both really want to, it wouldn't be so improbable to try for a different outcome this time. It might even be right."

"Are you…asking?" she asks slowly, and he can hear hope and apprehension in her voice all at once.

He leans his head against the elevator wall and shuts his eyes. "Look, Bones, I know I haven't been much of a friend these past few months. I haven't even been much of a partner. But I still love you. I never stopped. If that's…enough for you right now, then yes, I'm asking. If it's not, if you need me to do something first, then tell me. Tell me what I can do to fix this."

"You're going to ask me again," she says, just a bit unsteadily. "Trying for a different outcome when it repeatedly failed before – that's insane."

"Maybe I'm crazy," he agrees, squeezing her head. "And maybe, I just don't care." A cocky grin spreads across his face, and he imagines that she can see it.

A silence stretches between them, still but comfortable. He's said what he wanted to, what he could, and now it's up to her. In the end, it's always been up to her. He pushes, she gives, he pushes, she stops. She has always been the one to pull the breaks or let everything go, and that hasn't changed.

"No," she says finally, and, although there was always the very real possibility of rejection, he feels the crush of it all over again. No. His grip on her hand loosens, and he almost reflexively pulls away, but she grabs at him and says hurriedly, "I'm not…turning you down, Booth."

"You're not?" he says wryly, forcing any trace of hurt from his voice. "That's generally what no means."

"What I mean is, I'm not ready now." After a brief pause, she continues. "I want to, Booth. But not now. I just need some time to…adjust."

Time to adjust. He can give her that. Giving in to her has always been the easiest thing in the world.

"Okay," he agrees slowly. "Then, for now…"

"For now, could you just…keep doing this?" She squeezes his hand, and he understands what she means.

"I'm always here for you, Bones," he answers, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head. He's almost surprised at his own audacity. "You know that."

She shifts closer to him with a quiet sigh, wrapping an arm around his stomach. "Yes, I do."

They sit like that for a long while, and eventually, he hears her breath even out. She's asleep for real this time, and he smiles at the way she burrows even closer to him for warmth. Wrapping his coat around her, he runs daring fingers through her hair and kisses her head again.

God, he loves her.

One day, he thinks with a yawn. One day, all this dancing around that's been going on between them for seven years will end. One day, Bones will pop her heart into overdrive, and they'll cut the brakes for good, and toss out the emergency handbrake for good measure. One day, he'll kiss her, and she'll kiss him back.

When they pry the jammed elevator doors open, the rescue workers find them like that, Booth's arm around Bones and both of them leaning against each other in silent slumber. Their fingers are still tangled together.

He doesn't let her go. Not this time, and not ever again.