A/N: Thanks to SSJL and adangeli for the beta help!

Temperance Brennan was alone in the lab one evening, leaning over a Limbo skeleton, when she heard the familiar swipe of an ID card and the corresponding chirp of the platform's security system.

"Hey, Bones," her partner called out as he jogged up the stairs, "How's about some dinner, huh?"

She looked up from the skeleton with a scowl. There he was, all six feet of boyishly handsome Seeley Booth, grinning at her.

"Not hungry," she said coldly, although she was.

"C'mon," he wheedled, "I'm starving, and there's no one I'd rather chow down with than my old pal Bones." He gave her a playful punch in the arm. She straightened up and brushed past him to observe the skeleton from the other side of the table.

He was not deterred. "What's your pleasure? Indian? Italian? Thai?" He knew she had a hard time resisting Thai food, and he waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Booth, as I indicated, I am not interested in dinner at this time." Her stomach gave a traitorous growl, which he heard, and she resisted the urge to stomp her foot in frustration.

"You're obviously hungry. When's the last time you ate anything?"

"Don't remember," she said, although she did. The lie was inconsequential, but it felt good nonetheless.

"The skinny dude will still be here in the morning," he pointed out, indicating the skeleton, "Or, for that matter, he'll be here an hour from now if you want to come back to the lab after dinner."

"This individual is female," she snipped at him. "I am undertaking the study of interrogation techniques, the least you could do is learn some rudimentary skeletal analysis."

He let out a long whistle. "What's gotten into you?"

"I have no idea what you're referring to."

"Aw, come on, are you still mad that I left you with a stalled-out Audi in the middle of a traffic jam?" He waved a hand dismissively. "That was for your own good."

"For your information, I was perfectly capable of returning the car to the dealership from which you borrowed it. Although," she said thoughtfully, "when I thanked the salesman for the opportunity to teach myself how to drive a manual transmission, he began to cry." She shook her head. "It seemed to be a completely incongruous response."

Booth chuckled. The sticker price of that car was $147,000, and Bones had treated it like the 1982 Toyota he'd driven in high school.

"Don't worry about the car salesman," he assured her. "Have dinner with me instead."

She furrowed her brow. "No."

"What the hell?" he whined. "What are you so upset about?"

She gave a frustrated sigh and brushed a stray hair off her forehead with the back of a gloved hand. Without meeting his eye, she said, "Booth, this is illogical and irrational of me, but I am currently experiencing an emotion I can describe only as jealousy, and I simply do not want to be around you right now."

He was stunned, and more than a little bit flattered. He puffed out his chest and raised an eyebrow. "Jealous, eh, Bones?"

"You see?" she shrilled. "This is exactly the reaction I was expecting from you, and I specifically wanted to avoid inflating your ego." She spun around and headed for her office.

"Hey," he said, chasing after her. She was moving fast, but he caught a hold of her shoulders before she could get off the platform. He turned her around gently and asked, "Who are you jealous of?"

She was looking everywhere but at him. "Strawberry Lust," she finally muttered.

"The stripper?" he asked in disbelief. Brilliant, self-sufficient, rational, feminist Bones – jealous of a lapdancer?

"Yes, I am feeling jealous of Ms. Lust," she reiterated, hating the feel of the words in her mouth.

"Bones, you are a beautiful woman…" he began, a bit condescendingly, but she cut him off.

"You were sexually stimulated by her."

Booth let go of Bones' shoulders as if she'd just burned him. He'd been hugely embarrassed about getting a hard-on during an investigation, and the fact that she knew about it and now wanted to discuss it further had him wishing the floor would open up and send him straight to hell. But he could plainly see the insecurity in her face, and he felt like a heel for making her doubt herself like this.

He jammed his hands in his pockets, looked at her plaintive eyes, and took a deep breath. He was determined to get through this without blushing.

"Yes, I was sexually stimulated by her," he said, quietly but evenly. He shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a guy. It's her job."

Brennan stood mute, looking balefully up at him.

"You said yourself that she was very arousing," he offered, a little defensively.

She just blinked. He was going to have to give her more than this.

Hooboy.

"I find you very… stimulating too, Bones."

Her eyes narrowed. "Sexually stimulating?" she asked, to clarify.

"Yeah," he whispered. He cleared his throat and said loudly, "Yes."

She thought about this a moment, but then she looked suspicious. "You may just be saying that to make me feel better."

"Jeez, cut me some slack, will ya?" he groaned.

"Booth, I have often observed you lying to spare someone's feelings when you have determined that the consequences of the untruth are less significant than the discomfort being experienced by the other individual."

He leaned in to emphasize his point. "I'm not just saying it to make you feel better," he said through gritted teeth.

"I need more data than that," she said, lifting her head with that lofty scientist look that made him want to strangle something. "How frequently do you experience these sensations?"

"I don't know," he floundered. Constantly, you infuriating woman.

"We should conduct an experiment," she announced. "I would like you to inform me each time you find me arousing. That way, I will be able to determine whether you truly believe that I am sexually alluring or whether you're telling a white little lie."

He rubbed a hand over his eyes. He was seriously regretting getting roped into this conversation. "A little white lie. Bones, I am not going to make an announcement every time I am turned on."

"That won't be necessary, Booth. Just the times you're turned on by me." He glared at her, and she backtracked – a little. "Perhaps we could devise some kind of code, such as a word or a gesture that you could use to indicate your arousal, but which would go undetected by other observers."

"What, I'm supposed to tug on my earlobe every time you give me a thrill?"

"That could work. Or you could say something like 'basketball,'" she suggested.

"I talk about basketball all the time anyway," he objected. He was actually negotiating this with her. He was such a masochist.

"Well, you could talk about some sport you don't normally talk about. Soccer, for instance."

"Soccer," he repeated dumbly.

"Yes," she said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "That way, every time you mention soccer, I'll have quantitative evidence that you think… I'm prettier than Ms. Lust."

God, it drove him crazy when her voice took on that little-lost-girl tone. It made him want to rip his shirt off and start beating his chest like he was in some fucking Me-Tarzan-You-Jane setup. He had killed people to protect her, used violence and manipulation to defend her, and it turned out that he was willing to humiliate himself for her, too.

Yet he had no choice. If he had to sacrifice his dignity on the altar of her self-esteem just so she'd think she was pretty, he damned well had to do it. Shit.

"Fine," he sighed, lifting his hands in surrender. "But I'm only going to do this for a few days."

She looked concerned. "Will that provide a large enough data set?"

"You have no idea," he muttered under his breath.

She seemed satisfied, and snapped off her gloves. "So, Thai for dinner?" she suggested.

"Lost my appetite," he growled, spinning on his heel and headed for the door.

The next morning, Booth called Brennan and invited her to a conciliatory breakfast. He picked her up at her apartment, and let out a quiet groan as he watched her make her way from the building to the car. She was wearing a dark red wraparound dress that always drove him to distraction. He had spent countless hours picturing how one tug on the ties over her left hip would cause the entire dress to fall open. She wore a light coat and knee-high brown leather boots, and her hair was pinned up with chopsticks on the top of her head. She looked stunning, and he had the distinct impression that she'd done it on purpose.

She climbed into the SUV and paused dramatically. She reached up to her hair, extracted the chopsticks, and gave him a practiced sultry look as she shook her hair out.

"Good morning," he said dryly.

She looked mystified. "You asked me to do that on the airplane."

He hit his turn signal and pulled into traffic. "Trying too hard, Bones. Trying too hard."

"Strawberry Lust was trying pretty hard," she sulked.

"Let's talk about something else," he said, rolling his eyes. "How's your dad doing?"

"How's Jared?" she shot back.

"You know what? Radio sounds good right about now," he said, and she switched on NPR.

By the time they got to the diner, they were squabbling cheerfully about the latest political turmoil on Capitol Hill. She ordered a vegetable egg-white omelet, and he splurged (as usual) on ham, eggs, and pancakes. Man food.

His phone rang halfway through breakfast. As he answered, and she instinctually gave him a pen from her purse and signaled for the check. He scribbled an address on a napkin and hung up.

"New case," he said, unnecessarily. "In Bethesda."

She nodded and took a hasty swig of her coffee, reaching for her bag with her other hand. They both stood, and he fished a few bills from his pocket. He glanced over at her and was amused when he saw the look on her face. She was fixated on his half-finished plate, the food that she'd wrinkled her nose at just fifteen minutes earlier. He watched as the tip of her tongue snaked out and teased her upper lip. In a flash, she reached for his discarded fork, a big bite of pancake still speared on the tines. She scooped the entire bite into her mouth and closed her eyes, savoring the hot butter and syrup.

He grinned at her childish delight, but his breath caught as he watched her slowly pull the fork from between her lips. Her cheeks hollowed as she teased the last bit of syrup from the silver, her lips and tongue working over every millimeter. His mouth went dry, his blood began to pound, and he felt himself begin to stiffen. She was making out with his damn fork – the fork that had been on his tongue less than a minute ago.

Her eyes opened, and she caught him staring at her.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.

"Soccer," he hissed.

Her eyes widened. "Now?"

Why had he agreed to this? This was embarrassing and un-subtle and definitely not his typical M.O. with women. He slapped the cash onto the table and was out the door in a flash.

Brennan chased after him. "Why? What did I do?" she called after him.

He whirled around and pointed a finger in her face. "Listen. I agreed to tell you when I'm… thinking about soccer, but I did not agree to discuss it with you. You wanted data, you get data. You can analyze it later."

He climbed into the SUV and slammed the door, for once not even attempting to open the passenger side door for her. She walked slowly around to the other side of the car. She acknowledged to herself that this was a big sacrifice for Booth. He was usually so squeamish about sex, but she'd guilted and bullied him into admitting to her, in real time, when he was sexually aroused – by her, no less. She should try not to pester him about it.

If she were being honest, it made her feel incredibly sexy to know that she could turn him on without even realizing it.