When The Sun Rises

Summary: A little muse from Booth's POV.

Rating: Hmm… T, I think!

Disclaimer: Did I forget to mention I own Fox? Technically they're all mine and I can do anything I want with Booth!

Spoilers: Set after Two Bodies in the Lab.

A/N: My shortest fic ever. But I had to write it, because I like to imagine what goes on when the cameras stop rolling and the façade drops.

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I can't remember when she fell asleep. I remember watching a movie and when I turned to comment, she had burrowed her head into my arm and her breathing and slowed.

She should have been at home, in bed. I know I should wake her, encourage her to leave my side. But there is a certain selfishness that lingers and I don't want her to go. I like how her breath brushes my arm and she murmurs in her sleep. I like how she has chocolate pudding on her chin and she never bothered to wipe it away.

Her features are so relaxed in sleep. She doesn't frown and she doesn't analyse. Sleep is Temperance Brennan's release from the world that tortures her brilliant mind. I brush her hair away from her eye, watching in fascination at how her chin tilts, angling her lovely face towards mine.

Her weight hurts my arm, but I can't move. If I move, she'll wake and the spell will be broken. She looks so ethereal, I am afraid to let it end. Bones is vulnerable in her sleep, and a perverted part of my mind likes how she leans on me and takes solace in my presence.

I feel macho – which doesn't happen often when she's around. She's too feisty and independent to ever need me. But her subconscious reaches out and she does. Even if it is only for a short time.

Her lips part and she sighs. I realise I am caressing her temple, and I jerk away, staring at my fingers as though they've been burnt. As though I have been caught red handed. My eyes snap back to her face. I am afraid she's woken, saw my affection and is now preparing to sever my arm to ensure it never happens again.

But she sleeps on, oblivious.

Her fingers dance across the covers and she burrows her nose in my arm, inhaling. I hate to imagine that she likes it, but the belief is there, rooted deeply in my ego. I have to believe Bones wants me. I can't bear that my feelings are completely one sided.

I wonder what she dreams of. I hope the images that flash behind her lovely eyes are not that of bodies, bones or the Jeffersonian. I hope she sees pretty things that she would never, ever admit to liking. Maybe waterfalls and flowering meadows. Maybe even me.

Her eyelashes flutter, fanned against her cheeks and she sighs, a hum catching her throat.

I think of her date and how she 'rescheduled'. There is a greater implication behind her actions and I struggle to fathom what it could mean. Today our relationship has shifted. She hugged me. I held her. She needed me. This time, I don't think of my masculinity. I think of Bones, fragile and afraid and my fist tightens, my knuckles hurt.

I think of Kenton and how he nearly killed her. I wish my bullet had impacted his heart. Or his brain.

My protectiveness, and the fierceness of it, frightens the hell out of me. I'm not meant to feel for Bones, what I feel. I'm not meant to imagine being her hero. She doesn't need a hero.

Well, she did tonight.

Bones moves again and her lips brush my skin. I suppress a moan, craving her heat. Craving her.

Bones carries a lot of stress when she is awake. I cannot understand how her head doesn't ache at the end of the day, when the motor finally stops running and the scientific jargon runs out. I can't imagine how she does what she does. She amazes me. She's intelligent beyond comprehension, yet she is so desperately naïve that I want to be the man who enlightens her to the things in life that don't revolve around skeletons.

She doesn't watch movies, read trashy magazines or play games. She's honestly direct. Bones would, if she weren't so intimidating in her intelligence, be the perfect woman. She wouldn't screw with my mind because she wouldn't know how. There were be no codes to decipher, no riddles to understand.

I contemplate my own thoughts, analysing like she does so often. I smile to myself, wondering at just how much she influences me.

Doctor Temperance Brennan.

Truly in a league of her own.

I pick up the remote, turn the television off, plunging us into darkness. I listen for a long time to how she breathes and allow my thoughts to linger dangerously on how she smells of honeysuckle and vanilla. I shuffle under the covers, pressing my lips to her hair, wondering at how illicit my secret kiss is.

By morning, when the sun rises above the horizon and Washington, D.C wakes again, Bones will revert to the strong, independent, no nonsense woman I know and have even started to feel for.

For now, she leans on me and finds refuge and comfort in my presence. I let her. Because for a few more hours, I can lie awake, listening to her breathing. And in that moment, it's all I want anyway.