It had been a week and Brennan was still acting weird.

Sure, they'd had sex, quite a few times, since she'd returned, and she'd seemed happy, if subdued, to be back at home and at the Jeffersonian. They'd been to three funerals that week though. So subdued wasn't out of the box.

It had been hard, meeting Finn and Daisy's families. Wendell's neighborhood. Hanging their framed photographs alongside Vincent's at the Jeffersonian. Booth couldn't help but feel responsible as each of their caskets had been lowered into the ground.

It had been a crazy week for everyone.

Still, there were little things that bugged him.

Brennan and he hadn't really talked. About Pelant. About being on the road. About them.

And every time he asked about her, she found a way to talk about Christine.

She'd had a nightmare she wouldn't tell him about. Whimpering and thrashing around. And when he woke her, she'd look petrified and asked: "Did I talk in my sleep?"

She'd dyed her hair back to its natural colour for Wendell's funeral, but she'd put blonde highlights through it. When Booth had asked, she'd told him glibly that she wanted a 'new winter look' so he figured that she'd gotten the idea from Angela.

And then there was Sweets.

He'd not mentioned how he felt about Bones again. He didn't mention the shooting. Or the road trip. He'd stood at the back through most of the funerals with tears in his eyes that never reached his cheeks, except when he'd spoken to Daisy's mother.

He'd done the shrinky stuff on the case straight after Pelant's and spent time with Booth without looking guilty or resentful. He just looked...sad.

He'd blushed on Thursday, though, when Booth had bumped into him at the diner. He'd been eating a lentil burger.

That was Bones' order.

"You going vego, Sweets?" he'd asked.

"I haven't been too keen on meat lately. I think one too close a look at Pelant's handiwork turned me off it." He shrugged. "Thank God serial killers never work with fries."

Booth had laughed, but hadn't joined him at the table.

So, things had been strained. And the McNamara case was already causing trouble.

But tonight, things were going to get back to normal. Better than normal.

Booth drummed his fingers on the ring box on the table.

He had reservations at De Spatzi's, a trendy Italian place. It had linen tablecloths and napkins and imported European sparkling wines and those little breadstick baskets.

Booth came out of his man cave into the living room where Christine and Brennan were wrestling on the floor.

"I booked a sitter tonight." Booth said.

"Oh, are we going somewhere?" Brennan looked up, slightly dazed.

"Yep. I think you'll wanna look a bit fancy." Booth grinned.

"Can't Christine come with us?"

"No, Bones. It's Date Night." He mimed dancing.

She smiled. "Where are we going?"

He wiggled his eyebrows. "De Spatzi's."

Brennan's face fell. "No, Booth."

"What, you don't like De Spatzi's? Everybody loves De Spatzi's." Booth blustered.

"You're going to propose." Brennan said simply.

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do, Booth, and you have to stop!"

Booth's eyes were suddenly bright with pain. "I thought, this time, you wanted me to?"

"I like what we have. I can do what we have. You and Christine and I, we're a family." Brennan said. "But don't ask me to marry you."

"You love him, is that it? Sweets." Booth said, slamming the ring box down on the coffee table. "One week with him and you throw all this away."

"I don't want to throw anything away, I just don't want things to change!"

Booth scowled. "But they've already changed, haven't they Bones?"

She looked up at him with tears shining in her eyes. "Yes. They have. You didn't tell me about Pelant. You didn't trust me to keep a secret, or to face the danger with you. You lost faith in us. "

Booth looked sideswiped, wondering if it was true.

He shook it off. "That's not what this is about. This is about Sweets. What really happened on the road between you two?"

Brennan stood up and faced him.

He didn't like what he saw in her eyes.

"Who do you go to now, when you have a problem, Booth? Is it me?" Brennan asked, as though she were presenting evidence.

No, it's Max or Cam. Booth answered in his head.

He faltered.

"Who do you go to when you have a problem?" he asked, his voice soft and genuinely curious.

Brennan swallowed. "Angela or Sweets."

He scratched at his head, aggravated. "When did this happen to us?"

"You've been pulling away from me ever since Christine was born. You don't treat me like a competent adult. You don't trust me. And now, I don't trust you." she said sadly.

"But you know, Pelant..."

"...it's not about Pelant, Booth! It's not about Sweets! It's about you and I!"

She ground her heel into the floor. "We're family, Booth. I love you, the same way I love Christine or Max. I always will. What we have now, it isn't perfect, and I can't pretend it is. But it works. And it's good for Christine."

He paced, processing. "So you want to be with me, but you don't want to get married?"

"Yes."

Deep down, he'd known when he bought the ring that the proposal was a kind of test.

Booth scanned Brennan's face. He said softly: "The problem is, Bones, I don't want to be with a woman who doesn't want to marry me."

Tears ran down her face.

"Thomas Jefferson said that you can't expect a man to wear the coat that fit him as a child. I can't just rewind three years and put our relationship back the way it used to be. And neither can you."

There was a long pause.

Booth furrowed his brow, and made himself look Brennan in the eye again.

"If you couldn't be with me, would you want to be with him?"

Brennan gave him a watery smile. If he was honest with himself, he was still a little bit surprised when she nodded.

"Really? You're in love with Sweets – are you sure?"

"Yes, Booth." She almost laughed.

He sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. "Then you'd better go tell him."

Booth couldn't quite smile as Brennan hugged him enthusiastically and bolted out the door.

Settling on the lounge, he picked up his daughter and rocked her, putting his face on her belly to hide his tears.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Brennan was breathless with red-rimmed eyes and flyaway hair when she knocked on the open door of Sweets' office. She looked manic.

He looked up from his pile of paperwork, and blinked a little.

"Dr Brennan, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?"

"Booth and I broke up." She said with a grin that didn't match the statement.

Sweets' face fell. "What happened? I thought you were patching it up?"

"He dumped me. He doesn't want to be with someone who doesn't want to marry him. And I don't want to marry someone that I love without trusting." Brennan laid it out like it was a simple equation.

"And you're...happy about this." Sweets stood up and crossed the room to her, trying to gauge her expression better.

Brennan nodded. "Aren't you?"

"No! The last thing I wanted was to tear apart a family, and a relationship that I put no small amount of effort into bringing about." Sweets complained.

Brennan stopped. "But don't you see? This wasn't about you. The problem started months before you and I went away together. Booth knows that. He sent me over here to you."

Sweets boggled. "Those are four statements I find very hard to believe."

Brennan was starting to look anxious. This was not at all how she thought this meeting would go.

"Are you saying you don't want to be with me?"

Sweets put his hands on Brennan's shoulders and ran them down the length of her arms until he was holding her hands.

"That's all I want. This last week has been a nightmare! Angela warned me off going near you, you know, so I've been trying to avoid you for her sake, while making it look like I wasn't avoiding you in front of Booth. It's been a freaking pantomime. And at the funerals..."

Brennan reached up and pulled him into a long kiss that effectively silenced him. Her palm, flat on his chest, could feel his heart-rate pick up as she leaned into him. He smiled into the kiss, allowing himself to be distracted when...

"Mmm...no, wait. We need to talk about this."

He pulled back from her and looked her eyes, a serious furrow in his own brow. "There's the age thing. Then there'll be the fallout from everyone at the Jeffersonian. Angela will kill me. If Booth and Max don't beat her to it. Then there's your living arrangements to consider. Did you talk to Booth at all about shared custody of Christine?" He paused to take a breath. "You're smiling. Why are you smiling? None of this is going to be easy." he said plaintively.

"I don't want my life to be easy." Brennan smiled up at him. "What I want is a partner to face it with. But you're right. There are some things we need to talk about." She took a deep breath, clearly nervous.

"When you asked me what I wanted, I should have told you – I want you. I want you never to wake up alone again. I want you to never feel like a freak, or ashamed of your past. I want you to be able to cry without emulating a grand mal seizure."

Sweets blushed, and dropped his gaze, clearly embarrassed. "Dr Brennan, that's not exactly the romantic speech every man longs to hear."

Brennan looked confused. "But I want to do those things for you because you do them for me. You comfort me and support me, you help me come to terms with my past. You see the growth in me and you praise me for it. You're thinking of me in the phraseology of your questions, when you take Christine for me, in every hand of cards." She gave him a small half-smile. "You're brave for me. You listen to me. You change for me."

Sweets had tears in his eyes now. "I love you, Temperance."

Brennan wrinkled her nose.

"Wait, you didn't think I was going to call you Dr Brennan forever?" he laughed.

"I don't see why not. I can't see myself acclimatising to calling you Lance."

Sweets frowned and tilted his head, feigning worry. "That's very Oedipalof you. Disturbing. We might need to have a session about that."

They both smiled, and linked their arms around each other's waists.

"You're the only man I truly trust."

"I know." He smiled down at her. "But I'm glad that you said it."

To some men, it would have sounded like Brennan was dodging saying, "I love you too." But Sweets knew what she'd said was so much better.

"Speaking of change, I noticed the blonde highlights." He gave her a wicked school-boy grin. "I definitely noticed."

"And I noticed your quinoa salad." Brennan said, looking pointedly at the tupperware container on his desk.

Sweets blushed. "What? I hear it's good for my health."

He picked Brennan up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, losing her fingers in his curls as he pushed her back towards his desk, kissing her neck.

"The door!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, right." He swung her back around, tumbling her against the walls of his office until she could reach out and push the offending walnut rectangle shut with one flailing hand.

"So, Dr Brennan, do you think I could take a look at your finances now?" Sweets panted, undressing her on his desk.

"That really depends." she smirked, "Have you still got that golf visor?"

THE END