A Day Like Today

Author : sunnycouger

Disclaimer : Bones doesn't belong to me, I just borrow the characters sometimes to allow me to enjoy some Hodgela goodness. A Day Like Today doesn't belong to me either, that's Tom McRae's good work so alas, I cannot take the credit. There really is no point sueing me, I own nothing bar a laptop and a cat. As the laptop is old, and the cat does nothing but eat and sleep, I'm not sure it would be worth your while.

Rating: K+ - just because there is a brief reference to a disturbing case in it.

Summary: Hodgins and Angela talk in her office after he discovers that she's considering leaving the Jeffersonian.

Author's Notes: Set during the season 1 eppy 'A Boy In A Bush". Just a little add on because I was a bit disappointed when Jack didn't go and try and talk to Angela on her own after Brennan let it slip about Angela considering leaving. Little things like that annoy me with my favourite couples, so I made up a couple of scenes to make me feel better about his lack of action in the episode. This is my first Bones fic, so I hope you all like it.

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I can't get today,
Out of my mind.
Need to say, need to call
To love someone beautiful.
A day like today
Has stained my eyes.
-Tom McRae - A Day Like Today-

Jack Hodgins saw Angela Montenegro head towards the door of the Jeffersonian and thought about chasing after her but seeing her duck away when she saw him changed his mind. He had intended to apologise for the way he had acted with her earlier, or at least explain a bit better about his situation but...well, talking about that sort of stuff had never really been his strong point. He had never intended to upset her, and when Brennan had told him that Angela was thinking about leaving it had made it worse. There was something unnerving about Angela being off with him.

His explanation to her and Booth from earlier hadn't exactly been overly warm on his part and although he was confident that the air was clear now, and he was sure that she wouldn't say anything about his family to anyone, he still felt uneasy about the whole thing with her. He didn't really mind what Booth thought about him, but with Angela it was different, and it was starting to get to him.

He sighed as he sat down at his microscope and leant his head towards it. They tended to bounce off each other from the start - which was surprising. He had often found it difficult to converse with non science people, so getting along with a stereotypical artist was surprising, especially when the relationship was platonic where you couldn't get by with simply buying nice flowers, a nice piece of jewellery or whispering sweet, empty words in bed. She wasn't that sort of girl and that was why he was carrying around a weight in the pit of his stomach.

He had a right to be angry, and concerned that everyone knew his history, he reasoned. He had a right to warn them off it. He had the right to protect himself, after all, how open were any of them at the end of the day? He knew everything about Zach (helped by the kid's insistence on detailing almost everything that ever happened to him admittedly) but he knew nothing about Booth, and he only knew the small stuff about Angela. He knew she was a brilliant artist, he knew there was nothing she couldn't do with a computer, he knew she had travelled extensively, he knew that she liked people...all people. He knew that she had lousy taste in men and almost seemed to go out her way to find a bigger loser than the last, but out with that? Not a whole lot. Did he really know anymore about her than she had known about him and he wasn't getting all pissy about the whole thing, was he? Admittedly, it was a pretty massive detail that he had omitted but still...an omission was still an omission.

He groaned, that didn't even sound convincing in his own head, never mind how it would sound if he tried to verbalise it to her.

"Hodgins, do me a favour," he looked up to see Dr Temperance Brennan rushing past him with a file in her hands. "I need to go out with Booth, but can you run this file into Angela's office and ask her if it would be possible to get a 3D imaging off that little information and how long it would take. I would ask her myself, but...well, I think if I ask her then it will look like I'm making an excuse not to go to this stupid thing tonight..."

"Whoa, you actually want to go to this?"

Brennan sighed. "No, but I want Angela to go and have fun, so, I'm going to make sure she does. Hopefully. I'll be back in a couple of hours. Tell her not to leave without me."

"Um...you know she and I..."

"What?" Brennan asked as Booth called at her from the doors. "What about you and her?"

He thought about saying that things were a bit strained but thought better of it and instead forced a smile on his face. "Nothing, just...I'll let her know."

Brennan walked off with a nod of the head, his unease not seemingly registered. He could have smiled, she was brilliant but man, was she lacking in perception sometimes. He grabbed the file and headed down towards Angela's office, thinking he would just dump it and leave a note.

He rapped the door for appearances more than anything because he knew that she wasn't in, and even when she was in, he generally never chapped before entering the room. It was just one of the things they didn't do - he didn't chap, and she didn't wait until he was finished analysing something if she wanted to talk. They just appeared and nothing was ever said against it. It had always been that way with them. But, after the way things had been earlier, he felt that knocking was a bit more appropriate. Just in case.

He took the folder and walked in, almost smiling as he crossed the threshold. He loved this office. With the sterility of the lab all around and you could walk in here and it was warm. Open. Hopeful. A bit like the woman who had decorated it.

He turned to look at the walls where some of Angela's paintings hung. He could never openly look at them when she was in here as she always seemed uneasy when anyone from the lab paid them too much attention. He never quite got it as she wasn't shy about her other works, or things she created but for some reason the original pieces she did in here were something she never felt totally confident in showing to others. As the office was empty just now though, he knew he had to take the opportunity to appreciate her work. He moved from the impressive larger canvases where she had been working with oils, to smaller pieces done with mixed mediums of pastels and water-colours, to smaller still pieces, half natural, half digital drawing. It was amazing the things she could do with her hands...and for a second he imagined what it would be like to see the world like that, to be able to see something and naturally convey it to anyone.

He moved along and he came across a haphazard section of the wall, covered in lots of pages which appeared to have been torn from sketchpads, and any other small pieces of paper she had to hand. He couldn't stop the smile on his face as he looked at these small sketches which contained all the people that could be found around the Jeffersonian on any given day. There were individual scientists peering into microscopes, there were security guards, students, visitors, people reading... He saw his own bushy head looking out at him as he shared a laugh with Zach, he saw Brennan and Booth looking at each other conspiratorially, he saw lab techs squinting into test-tubes and people he had never even seen before doing various things. People having coffee, laughing, smiling, living...it was amazing. Photographers would have been proud to have captured some of those reactions, yet she had not only captured individual looks and expressions, but she had done it by drawing. Each of them were in amazing detail and he had to wonder when she had the time to draw them.

He stared at the pictures for a few moments, imagining her sitting and watching them from this office as she tried to clear her head from the latest case of the day. He moved his head slightly and saw, over in the corner, spread out on the floor a load of other pictures. He took a sharp intake of breath as he realised what these were - the sketches of the dead. He looked down at the sprawled out drawings, never really realising how many cases they had worked on together. It wasn't that he was cold, or unfeeling, but sometimes one skeletal remains felt the same as any other and although particulates changed from case to case, he was far more likely to remember the bug infestation during a particular case, as opposed to what the victim's face and life was. He knelt down on the floor where he saw pictures of old men, women, children and families. Each face was delicately captured, almost all of them wore a smile as though they were posing for a professional artist and each one had their name and age scrawled at the bottom. He ran his hand over the papers, trying to tell how many were there, and wondering why he couldn't remember all of them as well as he should.

He shook his head and headed over towards her desk where he would leave the file. Thinking about stuff like that was not productive. He lifted his hand and went to drop the file down, but the eyes of the small boy they had been working on stared up at him and caught him by surprise. No wonder Angela was feeling it if she kept herself surrounded by stuff like this - how were you supposed to switch off? He looked down and saw the sheet of paper in Angela's handwriting laying on top of the boy's picture. He knew he should have just sat the file down and left but he couldn't help himself. He sat the file down and lifted the sheet of paper that was split with two columns saying Reasons to Stay and Reasons to Go. He looked at the 'stay' list, all of them were there, although, he noted with a rueful smile that his own name had been crossed out, and re-added, then crossed out again. She had listed the lab, her friends, the diversity of the job, the access to computer equipment all down. She had even added some guy she found hot who worked in the Antiquity department. He smiled before turning to the 'go' list. 'Drawing dead people', 'suffocating', 'idiotic, selfish entomologists' were the three that stood out. He frowned at the paper - how the hell do you make both lists?

"Hey. Looking for something?"

He jumped up at the sound of the voice behind him. "Angela, hi! I was just..."

"Just...?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. He noticed that she was holding a large dress bag which she dropped over the back of a chair as she questioned him.

"Brennan, she asked me to drop off a file..." he stammered. He knew his voice was higher pitched than normal and that she would be able to see through it instantly, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it at the moment.

She nodded her head, seemingly not caring that he was holding the paper in his hand. "That's great, thanks."

He watched as she dropped her purse and walked over towards the couch. "Angela..."

She turned her head towards him. "Yeah?"

"You're still pissed at me, right?"

She offered him a small smile. "I'm just having a bad couple of days. It's just today...day's like today are...they're just hard. It's nothing though. Just a bad day. I'm not mad at you."

She flashed him a smile, which would have worked if he didn't know her the way that he knew her. He had seen enough genuine smiles from her to know when she was faking one. "You know, for such a beautiful woman, you really are a terrible liar."

"So says the guy snooping at my desk and pretending he was delivering a file."

He flashed her a grin. "Guilty, although I wasn't really snooping. I was just curious about why you would be thinking about leaving. Apparently I made both lists..."

She laughed as she reached out and took the piece of paper from him. "Well, what can I say. You make an impact, Hodgins."

"Evidently. And not always a good one."

"You were a jerk today," she conceded with a sigh as he sank down on the couch beside her. "But, I can understand it. Everyone has stuff they don't want to deal with. It's my own fault for thinking that your interpersonal skills were much more developed than Brennan and Zach's. I think the longer someone peers into a microscope, the more they lose the ability to interact with normal people on an everyday basis."

"Hey, I resent that - Zach and Brennan are like zombies about everything. I at least react."

"Badly. You react badly," she said as she gave him a look, almost daring him to deny it. "But, I guess that's why I like you. I find it easier to get mad at you than I do the other two. Getting mad at Zach makes me feel like my mother, and getting mad at Brennan is like arguing with the wall. Very unsatisfying."

"Well, I do live to satisfy," he smirked at her which got a real smile in response. "Seriously though, I'm sorry about today. I'm just...uncomfortable with that whole...deal, you know? I never wanted it, I'm not interested in it. I just..."

"You just want to be Jack Hodgins, bug, slime and dirt guy, right?"

"Right," he smiled, relieved that she understood. "This...this is me here, not the whole other thing which I don't have a whole lot of interest in. I like this me better. Most of the time anyway."

"I get that," she said with a nod. "I get that. And I'm sorry ...you know, for making a big deal out of it. Not my intention...well, not entirely my intention," she conceded with a sly smile. "I wouldn't have mentioned anything if I had known it would upset you though."

He looked at her as they sat in silence for a minute. Her pretty brown eyes were turned upwards towards the ceiling. "You aren't really leaving, are you?"

" I don't know," she shrugged. "I just..."

"You just want to be Angela Montenegro, artist and computer genius?"

She laughed then and lowered her gaze to meet his. "I want to stop being Angela Montenegro, sketch artist of the dead. I don't want to draw dead children for a living. I sometimes feel like I'm suffocating here, you know?"

She looked at him, almost silently pleading for him to understand. He could understand that really easily, feeling suffocated with your surroundings, feeling your soul shrink as everything out with your control piled on top of you. He gave her a nod and she responded with a relieved sigh, almost happy that he understood what she was feeling.

"I just...people are supposed to smile when they see a drawing, they aren't supposed to dread it. It's kinda soul destroying when your latest masterpiece is a six year old boy who was crushed and sexually abused before you drew him, you know? I just...wish for the happy ending, at least once. Just once, I want us to deliver the happy ending for someone."

He looked at her as she spoke. He had no idea what to say to her to make her feel better and he didn't want to say empty words to her. She needed more than that and he wanted to be able to say the things she needed to hear, but he didn't know how to say it. He knew he could try and explain that she did so much more than that but he knew that she wasn't really in a position to listen to it now. She needed to vent, to get it all out her system. She didn't need someone who had no idea what it felt like pretending that they did. He lay his head on the back of the couch and looked at her, whose head mirrored his own.

"Angela, look around you. Look at what you do. You help catch the bad guys. That is the happy ending for a lot of people."

"If it's the happy ending then why does it feel so bad?"

"Because, sometimes the happy ending is letting someone get closure, or protecting someone else from being hurt. And that's what we do. It sucks sometimes, but..." he shrugged his shoulders as he trailed off. He could have slapped himself upside the head for his lack of conviction and skill at knowing what to say.

"Shrugged shoulders? That's my answer? It's a good job you don't want to be a boss, you would be terrible at inspiring your workforce," she smirked.

He laughed, pleased to see her smile. "I come in here, apologetic and comforting and all I get for my troubles is insulted? I take back what I said, I hope you do leave now."

She laughed fully then and rubbed the back of her neck with her hand and sighed. "Who else is going to pull you up for your crap, or bring you coffee first thing on a Saturday morning? You know you'd miss me, Hodgins."

He looked at her and smiled. He would miss her. A lot. "Maybe. Sometimes."

She kept her gaze on him and didn't say anything. They just looked at each other for a few seconds before both of them seemed to realise what they were doing and simultaneously began to feel uncomfortable. He sat up straight on the couch as Angela quickly stood up and looked at him. "Thank you."

"For what? Snooping, or...?"

"For just...just, thank you. For listening."

He got up and ran his hand through his hair. "Your welcome, then. You can feel free to scrub the 'idiotic, selfish entomologist' off the list anytime then," he joked in an effort to lessen the tension that had suddenly appeared in the room for some reason.

"I'll consider it," she laughed.

He opened his mouth to say something but shrugged it off. He had no idea what he was thinking, but it quickly left him as he headed towards the door. He could see she still wasn't right, but he also knew that there wasn't a whole lot more he could do about it. "Have a good time tonight, Angela."

"Of course," she smiled, weakly. "Alcohol, music, loads of stuffy suits...just what a girl needs to unwind."

He laughed and walked out the door. He turned back as he left to see her sitting back down on the couch and he shouted in at her. "Angela - this place? This place wouldn't be the same without you in it. You're good for us. You warm this place up."

She raised her head and he saw tears in her eyes. He gave her a smile and walked away, leaving her there. He wished that he could say the right things to make her stay, but as smart and as talented as he was, and as charming as he could be, he knew it needed more than that this time.

He would watch later as Angela came out to meet the others, still not quite herself. Goodman, of all people, would be the one to snap her out of it. He could only watch on as she hugged the archaeologist and only felt a slight pang of annoyance that it hadn't been him that had warranted the appreciation. He went up to his microscope ready to analyse the "evidence" Booth had provided him with as a cover story as he heard the click of heels on the floor behind him and he knew that it was Angela. He turned round and before he had a chance to even say anything in greeting she leant down and hugged him. He was taken aback by the reaction and the proximity of her, but he brought his hands up to her back anyway, trying hard not to notice her perfume, or the way her skin felt beside his. She leant close to his ear and whispered 'thank you, Jack' before kissing his cheek gently and pulling away with a smile. She gave him a small wave, mouthed thanks again before running off down the steps to the waiting limo they were supposed to have already left in.

He watched her disappear again and slowly exhaled the breath that he realised he had been holding since she grabbed him. He watched the empty door for a second, simultaneously trying to work out if it had really happened and mentally willing her to come back and do it again. Snapping out of it he shook his head and rubbed his hand through his hair. Okay, that wasn't really something he should be thinking about...she was his friend, that was it. Pushing some of the thoughts that had started to invade his mind to the one side he tried to concentrate on the sample in front of him but couldn't stop from laughing slightly as he looked down and saw a piece of paper that she had left behind. "You're off my list, so it's your fault if I stay now."

He looked at her handwriting and grinned as he folded the note and shoved it into his lab coat's pocket before turning back to the microscope. He could think of worse things to get the blame of around here.

-the end-