Title: The Innocence in the Lie
Author: pomegranate_md
Rating: K
Word Count: 2700
Characters/Pairings: Hodgins, Zack; mentions of Wendell/Angela and Hodgins/Angela
Spoilers: Through S5 finale
Summary: What we do know sometimes hurts more than what we don't.
X
Hodgins realizes, all too inconveniently, that he might not be ready for this. Emotionally, he doesn't know how stable he is, whether or not he'll be able to bite back the long-repressed tears, whether or not this whole mess with Angela and Wendell will surface in the rising tide of every word that passes between them. He's terrified, and terror is something that he cannot show: upbeat, laughing, jovial Hodgins he is, without an ounce of terror coloring his snark or science.
"How long do you expect the visit to be, Dr. Hodgins?" The man behind the sterile white coat stared, blankly questioning, behind the glass partition.
"How long can I stay?"
"Up to half an hour."
To say the least, it's not optimal—but it's not terrible, either.
Hodgins follows the man through the labyrinthine corridors, anticipation bubbling in his chest as he wishes this visit could have been someplace more pleasant. A reunion at the beach, in the mountains, over a burger, over a skeleton—what difference does it make? As long as it's not here, he's fine; which means, in all likelihood, that he'll never be fine.
"Half an hour." And the man is gone.
Now Hodgins knows he's not ready for this, but he can't turn back with those eyes shooting directly at him. So he shuffles, suppressing the sighs and squirms, until he's managed to place himself in the cold metal chair.
It's been far too long and they both know it.
"I miss you," he finally stumbles out.
A pause—a stifled explosion of silence.
"I've missed you as well." And for the first time in a long time, Zack wants to smile.
XX
The second time he drives to the hospital, it's only a day later and the remnants of yesterday's conversation still run fresh in his head—the pleasantries, the usual math problem to solve, the details of the current case. Before long the single half hour had flown out the window and that faceless doctor was almost forced to drag him from the table, with Zack following his trail beyond the door.
So it only makes sense that he has to return to finish the conversation.
Hodgins replies automatically to that same doctor who leads him down those same hallways; in some ways he hopes the path won't become familiar but he already feels himself recognizing particular irregularities in the otherwise nondescript walls. It's by the large vertical crack on the right where they stop.
"Hodgins," Zack says inquiringly. "Why did you come on two consecutive days?"
"Did you want me not to?"
"No, no, that's not it at all. I've simply observed that regular visits tend to occur once a week."
"Well then," Hodgins says with a forced chuckle in his voice. "That explains it." And before Zack could ask, he adds, "We're not normal. You should have seen the intern turnover at the Jeffersonian; at first, nobody lasted longer than one case."
"Were they incompetent?"
"They weren't you, if that's what you're asking." Hodgins waits for him to respond but only receives a slight tilt of the head as recognition—nevertheless, it's enough. "Some of them thought we were a little…odd."
"How so?"
He wants to say: We alienated them.
He wants to say: Our drama fused with our work and our work with our drama.
He needs to say: Your ghost is everywhere. You hang among the rafters in the tall ceiling, breathing your story into the ears of the interns and they're spooked by your mere legacy, your standings in our hearts despite everything in the world—they can't live up to it, not with our judgment and your invisible shrine dousing the walls with deadly reflections of their doubt.
"They never really told us anything specifically." It's safer this way, not to spill his heart on the table.
In the back of his mind, Hodgins wonders if Zack can read past the lie.
In the corner of his eye, he sees the doctor through the window in the door with a finger tapping on the face of his watch.
The silence returns, pristine and thick with whatever they imagine is slipping through the vacuum.
"Angela's dating one of the interns," Hodgins blurts out suddenly.
Calculatingly Zack takes in this bit of news. "And…this bothers you?"
"Yes, Zack! Yes, it bothers me!" Their eyes lock for a solid moment before Zack pulls his focus away to examine the bland surroundings, or peel his sight inwards to do whatever Zack does when he's quiet—a mystery that many would love to solve. "What are you thinking about?"
Hodgins is met with a frown creased with the sudden halt of thought. "Excuse me?"
And only then does he realize that perhaps nobody has ever asked him that. No one's ever wanted to know unless it was urgent—when hands were blown to pieces and hearts shattered to lie with silver skeletons. "What are you thinking about?" he repeats.
"I know you are in pain," Zack begins slowly, logically, in his comfort zone, "and…I…don't have sufficient background knowledge of my own to…be of any assistance." He swallows a visible lump. "I am useless in here." Yet still he keeps the stoic face, the even voice, every familiarity that ties him to the innocent past.
"Dude, don't say that."
"I'm merely stating a logical conclusion," he says with a barely-there sigh. "I cannot actively help with investigations and…" Gradually the words drift off into nothing.
"And what, Zack?"
Before anyone can utter another word, the doctor's hand is on his shoulder and guiding him toward the split wall.
"Can you come back tomorrow?" Zack calls just as the door clicks behind their retreating feet.
XXX
The third time, just the next day like Zack asked, Hodgins arrives with a bag in his hand and his smile orbiting around his face. Briefly, as he turned onto the iconic exit, he wondered what Brennan and Cam and Angela and all of them were muttering as soon as his feet disappeared into his car. On the hour, always on the hour, he's there, dropping bugs, slime, and particulates to slide to the parking lot.
He's noticed the increasing number of curious glances that tail behind him, and he's countered them with silence. It's not weird, it's not weird, it's not weird—think it enough, and they believe it by default, as long as Sweets isn't around; lately, he's gotten lucky.
"The usual?" the doctor sighs with an obvious eye on Hodgins' bag. "And what is that?"
"Nothing lethal, I assure you." Add the smile and the sarcasm ambles by almost undetected, but the doc knows better than to say anything.
He barely keeps up with the doctor this time, whose footfalls echo more and more until the noise is rattling that crack in the wall to the point of splitting the facility in two.
"You know the drill, Dr. Hodgins."
But Zack isn't at his usual perch when Hodgins glances around the room—is this some sort of cruel prank? Should he have believed the off aura that this doctor has been emanating from the start? As quickly as the paranoia creep up does it begin to ebb, but he still remains just as nervous.
"Uh, Zack?"
"I'm over here." And he is: sprawled haphazardly on the tile floor with the leg of his chair mere inches from his fingertips. "They allowed you in with that bag?" he says, craning his neck at an awkward angle.
"It's just food." Hodgins slides down beside him and pours the contents onto the ground. "What they serve you can't be even close to edible."
"It is usually quite unsatisfactory."
"Look—" Splashing onto Hodgins' face is a look typically reserved for particulates, conspiracies, and Angela. "Sour Patch Kids, strawberry Nerds…five jars of Nutella." He watches as Zack's eyes grow ten times larger than they should be able to.
"Oh my…thank you."
"I figured since I was coming back I'd at least bring you something more than a math problem," he sighs, watching intently as Zack opens one of the five jars and punches a hole in the gold film—his scarred finger resurfaces covered in the hazelnut spread. "So why are you on the ground?"
"Mere change of scenery." Quickly his tongue flits up to catch the tail of what's wrapped around his finger before the rest of it falls in and a tiny sigh of contentedness escapes his lips. "Also, those chairs are cold."
"Want me to go get you a spoon, dude?"
"No. This is fine. They wouldn't let me have one anyway. I've done very dubious things with items much less suspicious." It's not that he's having trouble with the setup; but there's something discomfiting to his friend about seeing a genius resorting to this.
"Like Sweets' ID card," Hodgins says as he lies fully beside him, hands under his head to make him seem more relaxed than he ever could be.
"Yes."
Silence for the longest time, at least past the half hour mark—the only sounds that permeate the large room are those of Zack making quick work of the Nutella, scoop by scoop, and the minute signs of happiness that Hodgins can only pick up because of time. Then there's only the wind of their breaths moving through the air and he wishes he never has to leave him behind.
"Why'd you let your hair grow out?" But he wanted to say: I like this better. It reminds me of back then, back before you went to Iraq and before got sucked away from us.
"There isn't anybody to impress in here, besides my psychiatrists, and they're not going to be persuaded by a haircut." He glances at Hodgins, whose hand he's just realized is two inches from his head. "Uh—"
"This is nice." He meets his gaze, running his fingers through Zack's messy brown hair. Just like at the hospital. Just like the last moments when everything was still fine.
Squinting and perplexed, Zack's eyes follow the path of his hand. "Why…is this nice?"
"Not sure."
Without warning, Zack's fingers latch around one of Hodgins' tight curls, clumsy and unsure and eventually retracting completely. "I cannot say that I understand the fascination."
"My hair's too short, man. No fun. Or at least that's what Angela said once."
Clang—late, the doctor bursts in the room in his normal fashion, dramatically subtle, and peers around before finding the two on the ground.
"It doesn't do well to dwell on the past," Zack murmurs to Hodgins in a hurry, stuffing a rumpled slip of paper into his fist just as the doctor is prying them apart. "Tomorrow?" he adds, louder.
"Definitely."
The door pulls shut and the doctor inspects him closely. "I didn't want to come between you two at the half hour mark, all right? But don't get used to the extra time, Dr. Hodgins."
XXXX
Hodgins—
I never killed anyone. Dr. Sweets knows, but don't tell anybody else.
The drive seems longer now the more times Hodgins goes over that note in his head: jumbled around to the point of absurdity, it's only a mush of syllables by the time he reaches the gate. He knows he should have talked to Sweets, shook it out of him why he still never let him know, or even hint at it, or anything to polish up the image of Zack in his mind. Nothing makes sense anymore.
But amid that knotting sense of uncertainty is a bubble of relief. He doesn't know whether he should be happy or not, more content with the truth or the lie.
This time he doesn't even hear the doctor ramble on time limits and food restrictions; just the muffled salad of Zack's relative innocence, and it burns his ears. "Do you understand, Dr. Hodgins?" A numb nod appeases him.
The door clangs behind him, leaving an echo that bounces in the space between them. Neither of them says anything, though they want to; neither of them can break eye contact, though they couldn't think of any reason why they would want to.
Zack is nervously standing on his usual side of the table, trying to pinch the inevitable grimace off his face.
"Why?" It's the only word Hodgins can form right now.
"I'm sorry." And his face crumples worse than when he was outed, but no tears drip past his eyelids; it's more pain than anything, and with a deep breath he's able to smooth out his composure again, but the sight won't stop blinking through Hodgins' vision. Technicolor—a rainbow of Zacks pulsating like the residue of a camera flash. "I was thinking—"
"Were you?" Hodgins watches Zack swallow the obvious lump in his throat and immediately regrets his remark.
A long silence passes and more and more lumps, rocks, boulders get shoved down Zack's esophagus, one at a time, until nothing less than a quarry is rumbling around in his stomach. Even the light clicking of the clock on the other side of the wall seems like a violent eruption.
"I guess," Zack sighs quietly, "now it would have been almost better if it hadn't been a lie at all."
He wants to look at him and say: A lie is better than murder, better here than in prison for god's sake.
He wants to vault across the few steps separating them and rattle him by the shoulders, pleading more than anything to explain it all away, to make it better.
He wants to blink and send them all back to his failed wedding, so when after Zack gets back they can save him before he needs saving.
But he can't do any of this, not now, so he simply stares, tries to shake his head, but it's a jerky motion like his head's been rusted on by the weight of the thoughts dripping down his spine. He barely notices when Zack shuffles to him, curiously inspecting Hodgins' introverted gaze with his eyes still bundled up with guilt. Uneasiness. So much guilt.
"I'm…glad you come to see me," he murmurs. "Really, I—"
"Why can't we tell them?" Hodgins interrupts again. "At least at the Jeffersonian. We don't have to tell Caroline. No, just…do you know what the truth would do?" It would relieve the unspoken burden, flood light and even the slightest ounce of hope into a group that once doubted each other's intentions. It would make all the difference in the world.
But Hodgins can't force that past his lips; it runs on loop in his head, leaving him gaping silently at Zack until his feet surrender and carry him past the door. He doesn't look back. He knows he'll see a pair of sad eyes that can shake him to his very core.
XXXXX
Time passes as it always has. Bodies come and go from the lab. The intern's face changes every case, and every case Hodgins wishes the rotation would stop. Though today, the feeling isn't at its peak—Mr. Nigel-Murray is awkwardly spewing facts over the corpse and dodging Cam's eye rolls, and somewhere in that British accent Hodgins can see Zack's shadow. The next week he prays for Zack's quiet nature to possess Daisy before everyone goes on a murderous rampage. Wendell disappears from Angela's life as Hodgins reenters it. Clark and Vaziri's normalcy has Hodgins replaying Zack's solo from the golden age of innocence.
And before long, it's been three months since they've spoken, and Hodgins hates himself for it. Laying beside Angela in their hotel in Paris, every detail of that last visit sears itself into his eyelids and jolts him awake. That last "I'm sorry," that last excruciating grimace is enough to make his stomach churn.
He keeps Zack's note, the anti-confession, in the side table drawer; the pencil is smudged in the paths his thumb has taken in these three months, trying to rub all the meaning, absorb it all, make sense of something that refuses to be sensible.
I never killed anyone—except yourself, Hodgins thinks to himself, but you never bled where anyone could see.