THE UNCONSIDERED FACTOR

Post "The Maggot in the Meathead"

"I miss you."

That's how it began. Booth never could figure out why all the years he'd known her, even loved her, why when she did that certain thing with her voice he developed butterflies in his stomach. He thought it would be different now. Time had passed. He was with Hannah. He'd closed the chapter in his life that was consumed with her.

"Booth… did you hear me?"

He swallowed, breathed in deeply and tried to gather his thoughts. It was 3 am in the morning. He and Hannah had gone to bed relatively early. He'd turned his cell phone ringer off since early morning wake up calls seemed to be becoming a pattern. He wanted her to get some real sleep this first night at his place. The sound of the vibration on his nightstand woke him up. At first he thought he was dreaming. Then he opened his eyes and focused on the screen. It had to be an emergency if Bones was calling this late, but he didn't expect this. Slowly, he slid out of bed, tiptoed out of the room, and closed the door. When he was safely in the living room, he responded in a whisper.

"Bones, what's wrong? Why are you calling so late?" He'd chosen to disregard her first statement in an attempt to keep his world from spinning out of control.

"I know you heard me. I miss you." She knew she had no right at this point to say it, but she couldn't help it. She needed him to know.

"What are you talking about? We see each other every day."

"No Booth, it's not the same. You're not you anymore, at least not with me." It hadn't exactly come out the way she'd heard it in her mind, but she knew on some level he'd know what she meant.

"What are you saying, Bones?"

"I don't know exactly."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Booth sat down on the couch and waited.

"I guess I'm trying to figure it out. I just know that I feel like you've left me all over again."

"Well, to use your terminology that would just be illogical, because I'm obviously here in DC… with you."

"Yes, you're here, but not with me, Booth. That's what I'm trying to get a grasp on."

"Bones, you're talking nonsense to me here. Stop speaking in tongues and just say what's on your mind."

"Ok…it's what I said. You're not with me. You're with Hannah."

"Now I'm confused. Hannah is my girlfriend. Of course, I'm with her. But that doesn't mean we've changed."

"Yes, we have. And I guess I just didn't consider that possibility. More importantly, I didn't think I would feel this way about it."

"What way, Bones?" He shouldn't have asked. He was walking into a minefield without any armor or strategy but something in him had to know.

"I don't know. It's hard for me to explain it. It's just that I feel I've done something horribly wrong."

You did he thought as he felt a twinge of the pain he had worked hard to numb come back in a wave, but he remained silent and waited.

"When you said you needed to move on, I somehow didn't think it would change our dynamic. I didn't think you spending time with another woman romantically would impact what we have. Now, she's here and I think I'm jealous. Not because of the time you're not with me, but because I want to be her. I didn't consider that factor." She paused and sighed. "The fact is I keep trying to be happy for you, but I keep getting this pain in my chest that won't go away."

The phone fell silent as Booth worked on registering what she was saying, and then tried to come up with a response.

"I'm still here for you. We're still friends. We're still working together. That's what you wanted, right?"

"Yes, but I also want what we used to be – connected, solid. I want to spend all of our time together. I want to smile when I hear your voice in the morning waking me up for a case. I want to know I can knock on your door at anytime to talk about anything. I want to not go through a day without speaking to you several times about things that have nothing to do with a dead body. Hannah has changed that."

"No Bones, you changed that. I changed when you said no. I had to so I could survive. After waiting for six years for you to open your eyes and see me, your rejection damn near killed me."

"I don't know if I made the right decision anymore. I was trying to protect you from me. But instead of protecting you, I might have hurt both of us. All I know is that when I was there tonight and Cam and Angela said they had people they loved that they needed to go home to, I realized that I didn't want to go anywhere because you are my home. "

Booth froze. She couldn't play with him like this. He'd done what she asked. He'd stopped trying to pressure her, accepted her position and moved on to someone who could love him the way she always said she couldn't. He'd tell her they were over. He'd tell her he found someone else and this thing that had always been between them was done.

"I miss you, too." It came out of his mouth before he could stop it. All he heard was a rush of air release from her lungs.

"Why did you tell me?"

Booth leaned his head back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. He thought he'd shaken this. With a woman like Hannah by his side, he'd been sure he could get Bones out of his system and build a life without her. But then last night as she walked out of his apartment leaving him and Hannah alone, he realized he was having a really hard time watching her go.

Booth sighed. "I don't know. I just needed you to know."

THE END