AN: Sorry this took a while to get up. It's really long. Plus, I'm so very, very, very busy lately. I'll deal with reviews next installment, but thanks to all that gave them!
Disclaimer: I forgot about this before, so here goes. If I owned Bones, it would be two hours long – one hour for cases, fifteen minutes for Zack, fourteen minutes for BB interactions, one minute for Cam to say something slightly charming, and a half hour for Hodgela. Plus, once a month, DB and TJ Thyne would have to perform an episode without any shirts on.
Some Time Underground Gives Second Chances
Hodgins felt that he handled the whole Angela situation well. Really well. Considering the fact that she had basically pulverized his heart with her stylish boho-chic heels, he thought he was acting admirably. Yeah, he never stayed in the same room alone with her anymore. But other than that, he was behaving normally. He pulled off jokes, like the Godfather thing, when she was sitting literally three feet away from him. He did his job as well as always. He was determined to prove to her that he could handle her rejection and they could still work together. If he showed her that, maybe he'd have another shot. Convince her that they could make it work at work.
He blew it, of course. He got caught in an embarrassing moment, and he got flustered. And she called him out. He knew, at that moment, that she knew. She knew she hurt him, and that he was only acting like he was ok to get her back. So that was the end of this whole thing with her. Meaning, as far as he was concerned, it was Scotch time.
He ran down to the basement to catch Brennan before she left. And then everything was black.
He woke up to dark and pain and panic. His brain wasn't working. His brain always worked. And his legs were throbbing.
The Grave Digger. The Grave Digger had buried him. He was alive in his own grave.
He tried so hard to think, put his PhD brain to the test, but he couldn't think with his legs shooting pain through him on an irregular basis. Of course Brennan, whose legs were just fine and whose brain was working at its usual admirable pace, had a solution for that. A solution that scared the hell out of him.
It occurred to Hodgins that he might die, and Brennan might live because of the extra air. He was happy for her. She had a brother. Hodgins didn't have any family. No one to miss him, except Brennan and Zack. Booth and Cam, too, probably. Goodman, once he heard. Fred, the guy who opened his gate, and Fred's wife Jan.
And Angela. He should probably write a note or something, for Angela. So that whole "King of the Lab" bit wouldn't be the last thing she remembered of him.
It took him about twenty seconds to write the note, and it wasn't exactly brilliant. Then again, how many of the victims he'd seen had a chance to say goodbye? Did they all have Angela's they would've written notes to, if they'd known? Jesus. Near-death was turning him into a friggin' sap.
As he clenched onto either side of his seat, he decided to think about something good. Like Angela. Angela working. Angela smiling. Kissing Angela. Loving Angela. He'd never told Angela he loved her. He'd never told anyone he loved her.
He spit out the cloth.
"I'm nuts about Angela. Over the moon. Stupid in love. That's why I bought her that – that crazy expensive perfume. Man gives you a bottle of perfume like that, it says – it says 'I love you.'"
He didn't care that Brennan was staring at him like she was going to cry. He didn't care that he was already crying. He didn't care how much he was going to regret this conversation if they survived this.
"There. I said it out loud."
He stuffed the cloth back in his mouth, grabbed the handholds, and nodded tensely. He screamed like hell as the knife ripped through his skin. And then he was out. Again.
Honestly, Angela had never thought she'd be much use at the Jeffersonian. An artist among scientists? What good would she do? She'd been wrong, of course. In her time there, she'd help solve hundreds of cases, and helped just as many people by catching the perp.
But now ... now Brennan and Hodgins were buried alive, and she was totally and completely useless. Eight million dollars. She would have sold everything she owned, taken all the money from her account, auctioned off the Angelator, and still she couldn't imagine eight million dollars. She refused to imagine what would happen without it. She'd heard Zack and Cam talking about one of the kids puncturing himself with a pen or something, trying to help the other live. All that blood in the basement, all of it belonging to Hodgins'. Under all his crap, Hodgins was the white knight type at heart. If he thought his injuries were too much, he might ... God, she needed him to practical scientist Hodgins that found a way to make more air, and not the Hodgins that ... God, she needed him to be practical.
"Hodgins sends me lots of notes ... We don't need evidence, we need millions of dollars."
After storming off from Cam, she dried her tears in her office. Crying wasn't helping anybody. Not that she could help anyway. Maybe she could run to Hodgins' place and take something. Zack said Hodgins had serious cash. Why hadn't she known that? She'd known he was rich, sure, but third-largest cooperation rich? Besides, she didn't even know where he lived.
The clock on the wall was unforgiving. For every second it counted down, Angela freaked out more. Losing her best friend was horrible. Losing Hodgins, though, was almost worse. She knew Brennan. She spent time with Brennan. If Brennan died, she'd know exactly how Angela felt about her. Hodgins ... Hodgins was Kirk all over again, but, again, worse. Hodgins had no idea she'd ever seen him as more than a friend. Hodgins had no idea that the reason she pushed him away was the way he made her crazy. About him. The last memory Hodgins had of her was her telling him not to be so weird. If she saw him again – when she saw him again – she was going to tell him that weird was the new sexy.
"Brennan is my best friend. And Hodgins ... Hodgins ..."
Her friend? No. Her boyfriend? Unfortunately not. The guy she liked that liked her back whose heart she broke by trying to protect her own? Yup. That was it.
Screw it. If she got a second chance, she wasn't going to let herself have regrets.
And then, finally, Zack was shouting out coordinates, and they were boarding a helicopter. She shredded about five random business cards from her pocket into dust on the flight there. Damn her legs and fingers for shaking that way.
Angela had never seen anything more beautiful than that cloud of dust spiraling from beneath the cliff. Cam, Zack, and half the team left before she shook the shock and sprinted down the hill, but only Booth beat her to that spot.
"Jack ... C'mon ..."
As much as her stomach unknotted at the sight of Brennan, the shaking only stopped when she saw the top of a shaggy head of curls.
She had no idea what he said to her. She could only see the intensity in his eyes when he said it. Hodgins was staring right at her again. She hadn't lost him. She was so giddy she kissed him, right on cracked and dirt-streaked lips, before deciding that she should probably wait until he'd taken a few breaths of fresh air, and wasn't lying on a pile of blown-up mud, before she started making out with him.
It occurred to her, as she smoothed back those curls, touching his face over and over again to prove that he was still alive, that he was the first man to leave and actually come back.
When Hodgins woke up, his brain was working. And it didn't stop working from the moment he helped hot-wire the cell phone to the moment before the explosion. He only allowed himself to feel three times in the next few hours. Once when he got pissed off at the Grave Digger. Once when he hugged Brennan. And once, just before he brought the wires together, when he thought of Angela.
Then he was aboveground, and Angela was there. He had no idea, really, what exactly he tried to say to her. It didn't matter, because she kissed him, soil-covered and all.
The trip to the hospital was a blur of euphoria – fresh air, blue skies, and lots and lots being alive and above ground. Then he was in a sterilized white room, an IV in his arm and large bandage on his leg. Finally, he could stop and analyze the situation. He had just been buried alive by someone who was still out there. His options were to stay in this room, go home, or sneak over to the Jeffersonian. Staying in this room meant seeing images of the inside of the car playing in his head over and over until the doctors let his friends in. He wasn't ready to deal with people. Especially Angela. Going home meant going to an empty house, with nothing to do but remember.
Hodgins waited until his nurse was busy at the front desk before jacking the pair of crutches she's left by the door and swinging his way around the waiting room where Brennan, Zack, and Angela were all sitting, down the elevator, through the lobby, and out to the bus station.
He'd been working on the bumper sticker for nearly an hour in the darkened lab when Angela showed up, clutching one of the fuzziest cutesy stuffed bears he'd ever seen in his life. She looked torn between pissed off and sympathetic. "I went to visit you at the hospital. I brought this."
"They let me go home." Ah. Smooth.
Angela, as always, wasn't buying his bullshit. "No, they didn't. You left without being discharged. You stole crutches, which I had to pay for."
He mumbled something about drugs, mostly hoping she'd give up and go. He needed to work. He needed to keep his brain busy.
"Could you look at me?" Clearly, she wasn't going anywhere. Hodgins looked at her defiantly. She stared back in her patented I-know-what's-best-for-you-sweetie sort of way. "You were buried alive. You were operated on without an anesthetic. You were pumped full of drugs. You really should be lying down."
Hodgins hadn't wanted to talk to Angela. He had wanted to be alone. And this was why. He could feel himself breaking down even as spoke to her. "He's out there, Angela. He buries people alive. I have to catch him. If I can figure out the exact alloy of aluminum, then maybe I could – maybe we could ... Plus the bit of – of bumper sticker that Brennan found in my leg ..."
"We're going to catch him, okay? I promise you. We'll start tomorrow. All of us, together."
"I can't sleep." If he was going to break down, he might as well go the whole way. She already thought he was weird, anyway. And maybe if she understood, she'd just let him stay and work this.
Angela crinkled her brow at him. "I thought they gave you something for that."
He took a deep breath. "No. I mean, I'm afraid. That when I close my eyes ... when I open them, I'll be back in that car. Buried. Running out of air."
He could see her processing as felt a tear run down to his beard. Well, he'd already lost his dignity to her. He could just blame it on the drugs later.
"Okay. Then you should come home with me."
Never before had Hodgins been that shocked about something, including the time that packaging girl had picked Angela to go on a date with. His voice cracked as he asked, in a surge of brilliance, "What?"
She nodded. "When you open your eyes, I'll be there."
That meant things, so many things ... Hodgins was simply not capable of wrapping his around what she was saying with that many pills in him. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Okay." Time to lighten the mood, somehow. "Y'know, I'm good for that crutch money."
Her laugh was almost like a release of nervous relief; his was watery and forced. Still, it was like some sort of barrier had come down between them. She reached out to him and put her hand onto his cheek, and he leaned into it. He felt something loosen itself inside of him. Finally, the images of a tiny, cramped car stopped playing in front of his eyes. They were all replaced by Angela.
Angela bought Hodgins a teddy bear at the hospital gift shop. She knew, of course, that he'd hate it. But she was far too giddy to care. She was sitting next to Brennan, her best friend's hand in her own, the bear propped up perkily in her lap, just down the hall from a perfectly healthy Hodgins, who she'd be able to see in a few minutes. There wasn't anything that she wasn't happy about at that moment.
A nurse approached, looking kind of sheepish. "You're waiting to see Dr. Hodgins, right?"
Angela sat up straight so fast the plush bear plopped to the floor in front of her. "Yeah. What's going on?"
The nurse sighed. "I went to check up on him, and he was gone. People at the desk saw him hobbling out of here forty-five minutes ago."
Zack's eyebrows drew together. "Hodgins left?"
The nurse nodded. "Yeah. I'm sorry. We didn't exactly think that a PhD with a bum leg and three friends in the lobby was a flight risk."
Brennan smiled at her. "It's all right. You can't stop Hodgins when he's determined." She looked over at Angela and Zack. "Where do you think he went?"
Angela snapped out of the trance she'd been in since the word "gone." She had waited for him all this time and he thought he was getting away? Nuh-uh. "Look, you two go home. Get some rest. I'm think I know where he is. I'll get him."
The nurse, looking even more sheepish, spoke up. "Um, there's one more thing."
Angela was pissed off the entire drive to the Jeffersonian. He left? He left? She kissed him, and he left her waiting in a smelly hospital lobby with a bill for a stolen pair of crutches. Didn't he know how worried she'd been? Didn't he know they needed to talk? Apparently not, sneaking off to sleep in the Jeffersonian like that. It was only logical. He couldn't get to his own house, not with his leg like it was, and she couldn't imagine him taking a cab all the way to Maryland. So he'd decided to stay at the Jeffersonian, and probably sleep on her couch. He didn't want to deal with her, so he just left. He left.
She went into the Jeffersonian, guns blazing. And was stopped in her tracks.
Hodgins wasn't sleeping. He was examining something through a microscope, and writing down observations with a shaking hand, all under a fairly small light. It hit Angela then that Hodgins was working his own case.
He had always looked taller than he was to her, his complete confidence adding a couple inches. Now he looked really, really small. Small and frightened. She could feel herself literally melting.
When he fell apart in front of her, she realized she was seeing something he'd probably never let anyone else see. She wouldn't even have seen it, after what she'd done, if he still weren't a little fuzzy from the drugs. She knew that if she was going to make them into something, take this second chance, she was going to have to do something just as bold. Which is when she invited him to stay. With her.
The car ride to her house was comfortably silent. All the windows were rolled down so Hodgins could breathe in the fresh air, which he did, often and with a little exaggeration to make Angela laugh. His fingers played against the rubber of his window, obviously relishing the clean touch of the night wind.
A few minutes after leaving the Jeffersonian, Hodgins breathed in a little too deeply and ended up coughing a bit, making them both laugh. As she chuckled, Angela put her hand on the vestibule between them. After what seemed like hours to her, Hodgins lightly wrapped his fingers around hers.
They didn't really talk when they reached her apartment. She pointed out a couple things, he admired a couple things. She found some sweatpants that looked like they wouldn't dwarf Hodgins, and left to change into something suitably adorable in her bathroom.
When she came back, she nearly had to turn right back around. Hodgins was standing by the window, which he'd opened a crack, in the sweatpants she'd given him and a T-shirt. It wasn't an inherently sexy sight, but it made her pulse race a little. Every instinct told her to run. That she was in too deep.
Instead, she crossed the room to stand next to him. He finally noticed her and turned, eyebrows raised. Angela reached out and cupped his face again. His eyes searched her face for a moment. Then his hands were pulling at the back of her neck, and his mouth was on hers.
The kisses were slow and soft. It was almost as if they were apologizing to each other, for whatever stupid things they had done before. They stopped after only a few minutes, but Angela's lips still buzzed a little bit. And she had some things to say to anyone who objected to kissing people with beards.
That night, Angela fell asleep in Hodgins arms, her own meeting at his back. Her head was buried in his chest, comforted by the feel of his deep breathing and the clean smell of him.
AN: Yeah, I assumed some things about 2x09 in there. We shall go with it. This is officially the longest chapter I've ever written for any fanfic, being well over 3000 words and almost six pages. I really hoped this works. I'm very tired and not entirely sure.
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