"Can I sleep at your place tonight?"
Was she serious? From the corner of his eye, Jack Hodgins stole a glance at the woman next to him. She looked serious—serious and scared. He tore his eyes from the images on the screen to look at her fully. She met his eyes earnestly, unblinking, and he wondered if she knew what she was getting into. He still didn't sleep much, and when he did, it was because he'd fallen asleep on the couch watching TV. Most of the time he woke up gasping for air and trying to claw his way up from the ground. She'd been there that first night—god, she'd been perfect that night—but what would she think if she saw him like this now? Would she think he should be over it? Every part of his mind wanted to tell her no, that it wasn't a good idea.
But he couldn't. He had watched her watching those movies with that dread and fear in her eyes, had felt how cold her hands had been when she grabbed his arm earlier. He wasn't going to say no to this woman. She had been there for him that night, and now he was going to try to be there for her tonight. He owed it to her.
Plus, you know, she was asking if she sleep over at his place. What man in his right mind was going to turn down a request like that from Angela Montenegro? He simply nodded, not entirely sure what the proper response should be, and rose from his seat. She followed his lead, and, as they left the office, he felt her take his hand again, twining her fingers through his.
"Hang on, sorry, give me a second." As they approached his place, Jack hurried to get there before Angela could. "It's kind of messy..." He hadn't exactly felt like cleaning the past few days, so, despite that fact that scientists were supposedly tidy individuals, his place was...kind of a disaster area. All he could really do was grab most of the clothes and clutter off of the floor and shove it into a closet, then spin around just in time to see Angela stepping through the doorway. "Hey..." He greeted her awkwardly, running his fingers through his hair to try to calm down a little.
She smiled almost shyly. "Hey." With no further invitation or speech, she went over to sit on the couch, tucking her impossibly-long legs gracefully under her. The air was strangely thick between them—neither of them seemed to know what should happen next. Jack settled for sitting next to her on the couch and, after a moment's hesitation, slipped his arm around her shoulders. She didn't move away, so Jack relaxed and rested his head against the back of the couch. Suddenly, in one fluid motion, Angela was leaning into him with her head pressed against his neck. Her shoulders lifted, fell, almost as though she were crying.
"Ange, hey, it's okay..." He wasn't sure how to comfort a crying woman if, indeed, she was. Maybe he wasn't expected to, but just in case, he rubbed gentle circles on her back. "Why are you crying?" he asked in a soft whisper. She sniffled softly, and shook her head.
"I don't know," she replied, her voice muffled and distorted both by her tears and by the fact that her head was buried in his shoulder. "The screams, Jack. That girl was screaming, god, everyone was screaming and it was all on tape and I had to watch so much of it." She'd started to tremble a little now—probably more to do with her body heating up than with fear, but it still shouldn't be happening. He turned toward her in order to hold her more fully, as tightly as he wanted to. "I didn't think I could take any more of it, and then you walked in, and...I needed you today, Hodgins, and you were there and I can't believe you would do that." She pulled back enough to sit up straight, and wiped her eyes, almost shyly. "And thinking about the fact that I almost lost you, Jack...I can't...I mean...we almost lost you. We almost lost you, and then what would I have done today?" Nice cover, Hodgins thought to himself, but let it slide. Instead, he reached up to brush away an errant tear, then cupped her cheek.
"I'm here," he said simply. "Okay? And that case is over, so just...don't think about it anymore." He grinned at her. "If you want, I know a coupla ways to distract you."
Angela laughed—not usually a favorable response to such a proposition, but...he loved Angela's laugh. "Thanks, Hodgins, but I'm not really..."
"No, yeah, I know." Hodgins returned her grin and looked at his watch. "The night is...fairly young, if not steadily approaching middle-age—what should we do?"
Angela looked somewhat uncomfortable, and gave a little shrug. "I'm sorry, Hodgins...I'm not going to be very good company tonight. I'm really...those tapes really got to me. I'd rather just go to sleep, so I guess just hand me a blanket or something and I'll pass out right here."
Hodgins shook his head, laughed softly. "What, I can sleep in your bed after being buried alive, but now you're shy? I can't promise not to take advantage of you while you're asleep and vulnerable, but I'll try." Angela lowered her eyes with a gentle laugh—and Hodgins could almost swear that she was blushing. He grinned, inexplicably proud that he could make her smile even tonight, and caressed her cheek again. "What say, Montenegro?"
Angela raised her eyes to meet his again, and tossed some of her hair out of her eyes. "Okay," she agreed, with yet another of her brilliant smiles. It was almost hard to believe that she had been crying just a few moments ago—or would be, if her eyes weren't red and somewhat puffy. "As long as you'll try." Hodgins rose to his feet and extended his hand, which Angela accepted, then led her to his room. He was a bit nervous of how she'd react to it. A few weeks ago, he'd taken his curtains down and cleared out almost all of the things that he used to keep in the room. The larger he could make the room feel, the better he could sleep. He caught her dark eyes taking everything in, but she said nothing as she sat on one edge of the bed.
"Do you want to borrow something to sleep in?" he asked, moving towards his closet. The question was primarily concerned with her comfort, of course, because he knew that he hated sleeping in his work clothes, so why wouldn't she? However, there was also a good bit of his own selfishness mixed in with those motivations—he certainly wouldn't mind seeing her in nothing but one of his shirts.
"Sure, um...thanks," she answered, combing her fingers through her hair. He noticed that her eyes fell on the lamp on his bedside table—he'd taken the shade off of it, for more light. "Jack...are you sleeping okay?"
Hodgins busied himself with digging through drawers to find a shirt, but knew she wouldn't let the subject drop. He supposed he could stall, but he really wasn't very good at that. Dammit, why could she see through him like this? After far from enough time, he found a shirt that should be almost long enough, and handed it to her. Now she expected an answer, and there was no way that he could lie to her—not with her sitting there on his bed like that, looking up at him with her insanely-beautiful eyes.
"No. I'm not," he answered bluntly. She was far from surprised, and nodded.
"Are you getting help from anyone?" she pressed. Her words were gentle, but still they irked him. Did she always have to be butting into all of this?
"No. I'm not," he replied, with the same inflection as before though somewhat more brusquely. She looked a little hurt, but Jack turned to go change as well. As the bathroom door closed behind him, he silently chastised himself. She was concerned, she cared. He should be happy about that and not snap at her. But at the same time, what right did she have to poke around him all the time? Who would he go get help from—a shrink or something? Sure, right. He placed exactly zero faith in psychologists. The only person who really knew what he'd gone through was Dr. Brennan, and she wasn't exactly a touchy-feely person either.
He pushed the thoughts from his mind and brushed his teeth, a little harder than he should have, but by the time he went back into his room, his temper had cooled a little. Angela was sitting cross-legged on his bed now with her hands folded in her lap. She had pulled her hair back into a loose, low ponytail and was tracing the stitches in the quilt with one fingernail. She looked up when she heard him come in, and their eyes met.
"I'm sorry for bringing that up," she murmured. "I mean, I guess it's not really any of my business."
Jack shrugged and moved to the other side of the bed, sliding under the covers. "Hey, don't worry about it. I get it." There was an uncomfortable pause—someone was supposed to be saying something, but he couldn't figure out who or what it was. So he improvised. "So are you going to sit there all night, or are you going to join me?"
Angela laughed softly, then slid off the bed (treating him to a quick glimpse of her panties in the process) to pull down the covers on 'her' side. When she joined him under the blanket, before he really knew what was happening, she had aligned her body with his and rested her head incredibly close to his on the pillow. "I'm just sort of...worried about you," she mumbled softly, and when he turned to look at her questioningly, she placed one soft hand on his cheek and caressed his beard with her thumb. "I don't want to think about you laying here awake, night after night." Her eyes didn't exactly fill with tears, but she looked so incredibly sad. He pressed his hand against hers, stilling her thumb.
"Ange..." He didn't know what to say. He could crack a joke, suggest that she sleep with him all the time, but that didn't seem right. "Thank you, for caring." He held her gaze and moved his head just a bit closer to hers, to press his forehead lightly against hers. Her expression changed slowly from sadness to peace, and a very faint smile turned the corners of her lips. Her lips. He knew that she had kissed him right after he'd been yanked up out of the ground, but things were still a little fuzzy from that whole day. He did remember kissing her on their date, though—that was most definitely not fuzzy. Her lips—hell, all of her—had been soft and warm, tasting slightly sweet but wholly indescribable.
He wondered what she would do if he kissed her again, now. Things had been a little tense between them—they were both unsure of where they stood, though definitely less unsure than they'd been in the past. Maybe it was a bad idea, he decided. Maybe they were already in too intimate a setting, and a kiss would just make things too much for her. She'd had a rough day, just wanted to sleep. He shouldn't start something like that—she might think he expected something more, when really he just wanted to feel her lips again. For now, anyway.
Just when he'd decided against kissing her, however, Angela closed the already-minuscule distance between them and pressed her lips against his. Hodgins didn't react for a moment, and obviously Angela mistook his shock for impassivity, and began to pull back. He couldn't let that happen. He unfroze, and slid his hand up around her neck to hold her in place. His fingers twined through her thick hair even as his tongue gently parted her lips. There were small noises escaping from one of them, but he was damned if he was going to take the time to try to figure out who.
Before he really knew what was happening, Angela had moved closer, was straddling him, and his hands were on her hips. Her heated touch was a welcome respite from the usual coldness of the sheets and the glare from his lamp, but it was somehow even more than that. Knowing that this was Angela, the woman that just a few weeks ago he'd feared he'd never see again, and that she had initiated this made him feel far less foolish. She shifted a bit, and brushed against the evidence of his flat-out Need for her. In that instant, the atmosphere changed yet again. She stopped and sat up—though, promisingly, she didn't move off of him. Her expression was apologetic, while at the same time frustrated.
"Jack," she began falteringly. He closed his eyes for a moment, then reached to press one finger against her lips.
"Don't worry about it, Ange," he said quickly. "This is, um, my fault. I mean, I didn't expect anything—it's not why I asked you to sleep in my bed." He removed his finger, but traced her jawline before letting it fall to the mattress. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This whole night was stupid.
"Jack," Angela began again, but stronger this time and with a hint of amusement in her voice. She leaned forward, bracing herself with her hands on either side of his head, and kissed him lightly. He opened his eyes again, and found that her cheeks were flushed pink. "I can still hear those kids screaming. When I close my eyes I can still see that...whatever we saw on the tape before we left." She kissed him again, a bit more intensely but with nowhere near the passion they'd shared a moment ago. "I...want to, just not now. Not...tonight."
The confession both shocked and pleased Hodgins, and he really couldn't do anything but grin at her. Finally, he reached up and slid his hands down the smooth pale skin of her arms, before knocking her elbows out of place so she came tumbling back down to him. He wrapped his arms around her before she could protest, and turned them over to press her against the mattress, still grinning all the while. "You have no idea how glad I am to hear that," he replied, between pressing kisses roughly to her lips. "But okay. Go to sleep now. I'll be here to protect you from ghost or mist or crazy cameramen, whatever. He rolled onto his side, with his head propped up on one hand, and touched her cheek lightly with his other hand. Angela raised two fingers to his lips with a smile.
"Only if you sleep too," she murmured, and he knew that she was half-serious, half-teasing. "I'll be here, all night, remember?" Her eyes were deep and serious, and he could really only nod. Deeming this an acceptable response, Angela nestled just a little bit closer with a sleepy sigh. Hodgins let his head slip down onto the mattress and rested an arm in the curve of her waist.
He slept that night.