LJ comment fic prompt response. Amilyn wanted: "Brennan and (person of your choice) are trapped (in a storm, in a remote location, in an elevator, locked in somewhere) and, when it becomes clear they are not getting out/in touch with others/picked up by helicopter any time soon, Brennan mentions that she's been in labor for hours and the other person has to deliver the baby."
Hodgins knows something is wrong the minute the heavy door closes behind them. It wasn't supposed to do that.
Brennan is in front of him, he thinks maybe looking for the thing on the shelf that they'd come down here for, but she isn't looking around. She's just standing there, looking down. That is odd, but the least of his worries at the moment.
The Jeffersonian has rules for this kind of thing. Rare, high-value items have to be signed out by two people, one of which is to be a senior staff member. At no time could the item leave the premises without a waiver from the Board of Directors. Items could only be retrieved during regular business hours, to ensure proper oversight.
At the time Hodgins had thought, hey, two out of three ain't bad. They may be getting the thing after hours, but they were both senior and were considered extremely trustworthy. It's not like he couldn't just buy the damn thing if something happened to it. What could happen?
Why had he even thought that!
He takes a deep breath and turns around. He is calm – surely there is some sort of release mechanism built into the vault door in case something like this happened. Surely.
Yes! There it...isn't. That's the locking mechanism. Maybe if he...
Well, that isn't going to budge, is it?
Okay. All right. No need to worry. The others are still upstairs, all they have to do is wait for them to notice he and Brennan are missing and come looking.
God. They really should have left a note or something.
He turns back around to find Brennan standing in the same spot, in front of the shelf just...there.
"Dr. Brennan?"
Nothing.
"Dr. Brennan."
Her head snaps up and she half-turns, as well as she can, considering she's so pregnant that he's amazed she doesn't fall forward. How do women manage that? He is a scientist, but he's never understood how Angela had been so graceful and sexy, yet still carry around a huge...focus, Jack.
He brings his focus back to her face and finds that there's a weird look on it. "Are you okay?"
She starts to speak but her voice is hoarse, so she clears her throat and tries again. "Yes. Yes, I'm...What's wrong?"
Hodgins takes another deep breath. "Yeah, um, I think we're stuck."
"What?"
"We're stuck. The door won't open and I can't find an emergency release."
Her eyes are wide, she moves over to the door and starts running her hands over the mechanism, just as he had done before. "That's not possible. There should be something here."
Her hands are shaking, which is unusual, but he can't really blame her for it. They share a reason for not wanting to be here.
"I think you're supposed to be able to move that part manually," he points to a section of the door that levers the large lock into place. "But it won't."
She starts to pull hard on the lever, and he's doubtful that she's going to get anywhere. What the hell, though, she could take him on his best day, probably even now.
Suddenly Brennan stops on a sharp breath, and leans heavily on the door. "This can't happen. It's not going to happen. It's not," she says softly, as if talking to herself.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a tiny alarm goes off. There's something about how she's standing that's familiar.
Oh. Oh no. No no no. "Oh, please, please tell me you're not saying what I think you're saying."
She looks over at him, her forehead resting against the door, and her expression is so forlorn he actually stops breathing for a minute.
Then he's over at the door, pounding on it before he can form the thought to do it. "HELP!"
POUND POUND POUND.
"Hodgins."
POUND POUND POUND.
"Hodgins, stop."
POUND POUND POUND.
"Jack!"
He's breathing pretty heavily now. He's trying to tell himself that he is not in pain, he is not bleeding, that he cannot smell the pine tree air freshener hanging from the car's air vent.
"Hodgins, you need to try to calm yourself. Take shallow breaths."
They are not underground. They are not running out of air. They are not dying.
It just really, really feels like that.
He blinks, and finally sees Brennan sitting on the floor, up against the shelf with the thing that they were looking for. She looks flushed and determined and scared. It's enough to break through the images rushing around his head.
He gives himself a minute, and then nods. "Okay. Okay. I'm okay now."
She smiles faintly. "Excellent work, Dr. Hodgins."
He moves toward her, stepping carefully around the small puddle in the middle of the ever-shrinking room, and kneels in front of her. "Why didn't you say something before we came down here?"
She shakes her head. "I didn't think it was anything. I've had pains before, and it felt similar to those."
He understands. Angela had had the same problem before Michael was born.
Suddenly she tenses up again, reaches up to grab the shelf. Hodgins holds out his hands, tries to steady her. It feels terribly awkward.
She's whimpering and it's a horribly vulnerable sound that he's never heard from her before, not even when they were dying. He feels a whole different kind of helplessness.
He starts to babble. "You know, maybe this won't make you feel any better, but this can take a really long time. It kind of felt like forever when we did it. The others, they're going to figure out where we are real soon and Booth is going to come down here and shoot his way through that door. Well, maybe not shoot, that wouldn't be very safe, he'll, uh, bend the door back with his very manly biceps," What the hell? "And uh, swoop in here and take you right out before you know it. Then you'll go to the hospital and they'll have jello and comfortable beds and nurses who give you massages"-
"Hodgins."
She's looking at him now like he's gone fricking nuts. Which is not really that far from the truth, actually. "Yeah?"
"Please be quiet."
"Right." At least the contraction was over. "Dr. Brennan, what should I do? What do you need me to do?"
She slides down onto her side on the floor and closes her eyes. He realizes he still has his lab coat on, so he takes it off, folds it and puts it under her head.
It's a long time before she answers his question. "Just wait with me. Booth will be here soon. Everything is going to be fine."
Booth hadn't come, and everything was not going to be fine.
She'd thrown up a few minutes ago, so they'd moved to other side of the room, against the wall and away from the shelf with the thing that they were looking for.
It has been just under an hour, but her contractions are coming fast and appear to him to be really, really painful. At the moment she is on her hands and knees, and he is pretty sure she is crying.
Him, he'd been sitting there. Trying not to pass out.
Fuck it.
"Here." He moves in front of her, lifts her torso and puts her hands around his neck and her head on his shoulder. "I think this might help."
"Hodgins." Her breath is halting, voice hoarse. "This isn't how it was supposed to happen."
He winces. "I know. I'm really sorry about that."
"He's missing it." Hodgins doesn't have to ask whom she's talking about. "He's going to be so upset."
Hodgins rubs her back, keeps a hand at her hip, trying to support her weight. "No, he won't. I promise you, he'll see you and the baby, and he won't care."
She's crying again, although he's not sure about what. "We can do this, Dr. Brennan."
"You couldn't even find your car keys."
He laughs. He can't help it. "True. But you and me, we're two of the smartest people in North America. Between the two of us, we're going to knock it out of the park."
At least that's what he thinks Booth would say if he were here.
She nods jerkily against his shoulder. "I am the most respected and sought after," she stops, breaths, "forensic anthropologist in the world."
"Exactly, and becoming that had to have been harder than this, right? This is purely biological. Your body will do all of the work."
"It's biology." She tensing up again, bowing over. "I trust biology."
He's holding her up now, trying to help her ride the wave. "Just focus on that. It's biology. You can do the rest."
He repeats that, over and over, until she believes it.
She's lying on her back now, and he remembers how Angela told him it was painful for her that way, so he feels guilty. But he's new to delivering babies, and he's too afraid to try it any other way.
He's done what he can with what he has. They'd taken his lab coat and draped it across her legs for modesty (more for him than her, really; she's never struck him as someone who cared about modesty). Her pants are now under her body, meant to provide some small protection from the hard floor.
The vault itself is useless. There's nothing here they can use, for anything. Nothing here serves any practical purpose anymore. He doesn't have any pillows, or blankets, or boiled water. If there are any complications during the birth, there won't be anything he can do. They have nothing.
It's like they've taken a trip back to the dark ages, only then at least they would have had boiled water.
"Hodgins," Brennan says, sweaty, exhausted. "I need to push soon."
He figured that. "Okay. I think it's time." Like he knew anything at all. "At the next contraction, you should"-
And then it is the next contraction and she's bearing down. She's holding her legs, and he's doing his best to keep them steady, unable to do anything but wait and watch.
Another contraction and he can see something, maybe – it's hair! "Brennan, I can see her head. I can-this is fantastic. Just keep going."
There's some kind of noise going on in the background, but he's got tunnel vision, focused like he's only ever been when his own son was born.
"Good, good, that's good. You're doing great. Again." He's reaching down now, ready to hold the baby's head, and there's banging and Brennan is yelling and there, stunningly, is the baby's head.
"Oh my god. Brennan, her head is out. She's okay. Again, push again!" He's praying in his head, many things, but mainly: don't tear, don't tear, don't tear, don't bleed, don't bleed, don't bleed.
He thinks vaguely that he needs to help turn the baby so her shoulders can come through, and he does the best he can, but the baby is so tiny and it's all happening so fast.
Bright light spills into the room, and then there's a baby in his arms, screaming and angry and Brennan is holding out her arms, crying, and he hands the beautiful little thing to her.
Hodgins falls to a sit, and stays there, overwhelmed. Booth is by Brennan's side – when did he get here? – and he's talking to her or to Hodgins but he can't hear because blood is rushing through his ears. Cam rushes by with something in her hands and he's terrified – there's something wrong, he did something wrong –
Angela. She's in front of him, smiling. Reality returns, and he feels such great relief at the sight of her that he thinks he might cry himself. "Angela."
Her hand is on his face. "Jack."
And he knows that everything is fine.
He's sitting quietly in the hospital waiting room when Booth comes out of Brennan's room. Booth collapses into the chair beside him.
They stare at the wallpaper. It's got little ducks on it.
"I'm not even sure what to say," Booth starts.
Hodgins huffs a laugh. "Tell me about it."
Booth is smiling. "That was not how I expected things to go."
"No."
Then he leans forward, elbows on his knees and serious. "They're my family, Jack, and you"-
"I know, man. I've got you." Booth doesn't have to say it. They're both fathers.
He doesn't have to say it.
Booth clears his throat, brushes his hand against his cheek. Then he stands and makes his way back toward the room. A few steps away from the door, he stops and looks back. "Come on, the girls are waiting."
Hodgins follows.
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