Change of Time
By: TamsinBailey
A/N: Sorry folks. I finally realized this site was eating the asterisks I was using to show point of view shifts. I fixed the problem in this, and all previous chapters. Things should flow a little better now.
Chapter 10
In the darkness, the bedroom celling seemed to glow. Hung in ethereal light below the moon, Jack's brain quoted. He squeezed his eyes shut and told it to shut up.
He'd been staring at the stupid celling for days. Nights. Whatever. Memorizing the dead spider, and the crack that looked like a pig's head. Tonight, something inside was trying to grind forward. Hours and minutes and the slow drift of continents jelling.
"Sodium thiopental," he whispered to dimly visible bedroom ceiling. Beside him, a pillow groaned. He gave it a poke.
"Oh my god, the NIH and Sodium thiopental!" he told it, sitting up. The pillow made a sincere swipe for his nuts, but didn't calculate for movement. Grazing his thigh as he arced a flea-like parabola out of bed. Gone.
"Fuck puppies," spake the pillow.
Angela resisted for a full ten minutes, trying to burrow back into sleep. Then she threw the pillow across the room and went downstairs.
"Hodgins, seriously, what the fuck?" Jack, now mercifully wearing his undies, looked up from the computer, his face bathed in it's cool blue glow. Angela winced. No one looked good by computer light at two in the morning. Least of all her pasty pale, clearly-a-crazy-person husband.
"Lethal injection," he told her.
"Jack," she said back slowly, "if you don't start making sense sometime within the next 10 seconds, I'm going to drown you like a kitten."
Hodgins blinked, and focused. "Really?"
"Yes," she said, then smiled pretty. Hodgins laughed, a little nervous, but no longer lost.
"Yeah. So. Lethal injection, usually done with a three drug cocktail, right? Sodium thiopental to induce rapid coma, Pancuronium bromide to paralyze, and Potassium chloride to stop the heart."
"Okay," Angela agreed heavily. Locating a chair and knuckling under to the inevitability of a conversation about the death penalty at 2:18 a.m.
"Well, in 2009 Ohio started using a single dose method, using - "
"Sodium thiopental," Angela filled in, feeling something try to spark down her backbone.
"Bingo. Followed closely but Washington State. Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee; the list goes on. All based on a study of the drugs effectiveness conducted by, guess who," he pointed towards the NIH logo emblazoned across the top of the screen.
"Hodgins, did you just discover a clue?" Angela asked, and Jack grinned. Overpowering the dark circles under his eyes for the first time in days. Shaking off something bottomless, something that had begun to frighten her.
"Yeah," he said, "I think I did."
"Well," Angela stood, holding out a hand to her hansom husband, "I think we should go boff our brains out until it's a reasonable hour. Then we should call Booth."
"Yeah?" Jack asked in an entirely different tone, letting her pull him up.
()
"Zero order what?" Booth whispered fiercely into the dark. From the sighing and pillow shuffling on the other side of the bed, he'd put too much into the fierce. Booth soothed an apologetic hand over Catherine's shoulder, trying to make sense of whatever Hodgins thought couldn't wait until a decent hour.
"Kinetics," Hodgins said, with that little amp in his voice that came when he was excited. "It means a drug's decrease in concentration is linear, instead of geometric. Which means a drug with ZoK will be extremely long lasting in the body. Which makes it good for killing people real dead."
"Hodgins," Booth finally asked, rubbing at the bone ridges above his eyes in tempo with his heartbeat. "Is this actually important?"
"It's interesting," Hodgins said, "but I'll give you the condensed version. All you need to know is: if Alexanders works at the NIH campus, then he has access to Sodium thiopental."
"Still not enough for a probable cause," Booth said.
"Since when do we worry about warrants?" Hodgins asked. "I thought we were more about rushing in, guns blazing."
"Since Caroline went all ninja on our ass," Booth said, and from the silence on Hodgins end, that was explanation enough.
"Well, now you know," Hodgins told him, sounding suddenly strained. Or distracted. In the background, someone giggled, and Booth realized that the guy was most definitely not in the lab. Booth snapped his phone closed before he could get an earful of whatever was going on.
"You have to leave?" Catherine mumbled into her pillow. Booth smiled.
"No. Just an update."
"It's three-fifty a.m."
"Yeah, well, squints; they get excited, they think everyone else should be too." He spooned into her; she grumbled, but pressed her spine into him. A beautiful, unknowable cat. He gathered her hair aside and kissed the hard point behind her ear.
"G'way, to early."
"Never too early," he kissed the turn of her jaw, sliding a hand down her belly, fingertips just below the elastic of her PJ pants. She whined, squashing her face into the pillow and jerking his hand back out. Lacing her fingers through his and pressing their joined hands to her own chest.
Booth sighed sadly. To early apparently really did mean to early.
"What's wrong?" she asked, voice matching the bedrooms hush, not trying to turn over. In her grasp, his split knuckle stung.
He pressed his forehead into the curve of her neck and said: "Nothing."
At four-forty three he gave up. Extricating himself from Catherine's entanglement, and headed for the gym. Lats and traps and push. Until his teeth were skimmed out in a snarl. Until something finally gave way and he crashed to his knees. Squat bar clanging on the stops, and the soccer mom's glaring.
"Awright?" the towel guy asked, vee-tapered and acned. Booth made it to his feet, hands braced on his knees as be blew for air, sweat plocking onto the mat.
"Yeah," he wheezed, holding up a warding hand. "I'm good."
"Sure," the infant said, "just take a minute."
Booth torqued around to crane up at him. "Hey, you know, I've been doing this a helluva of a lot longer than you."
"Sure," towel guy said again, smiling with perfect teeth. "I could tell."
Later, he inched his way through Gate 1 of the Washington Navy Yard, armed with nothing more deadly than a DMV photo of Daniel John Alexanders. Watching the soldier-straight set of Marine Captain Toby Hadley's shoulders as she looked at it. The hard square of her jaw when she handed it back.
He drove to the Hoover, and listened to Charlie tell him there were cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die absolutely no connections between Alexanders, and any of the victims.
He climbed the stairs to Cullen's office with an update of no progress, and stood silent as the man looked steadily at the wall.
He returned to his office, and found Angela standing in front of the door.
"Hey there studly. Did you know that we have a lunch date?" She asked, leaning against the door jam, wearing something that probably should have looked really terrible, but somehow didn't. He thought about the last six hours, and said, "No we don't."
"Oh, yes, we do," she said, looking sharper and not budging.
He crossed his arms, and breathed sharply out his nose. "Look, Angela. I'm busy. I've got about eight tons of stuff to go over, and I'm not having what you'd call a good day. So why don't you just tell me what this is about."
Angela's eyebrows went right up to the ceiling. Her high heels made slow clicks towards him, and when she got close, his collar got a size too tight. Inside the confessional, he might have admitted that his shorts did, too.
"Lunch, Booth. Now. Before I do something drastic."
"Okay, okay." He darted a glance around the bullpen, picking up the peripheral flick of heads turning their way. "Just, lets go. Alright?"
They walked over to the Diner in silence, and Booth waited until they had food in front of them before pushing. "All right, Angela. Here we are, having lunch. Food and everything." Which was, of course, when she started looking worried.
He popped a french fry in his mouth. "Don't even think of backing out of whatever this is, because if you do, I'll tell Cam about how you played hooky."
"It's not school, Booth. We can leave museum grounds for lunch." She gave him a little narrow eyed look, but it got her over whatever hump she was stuck on. Yippie skippy for him.
"It's about Brennan."
He carefully loaded a fry with ketchup. "Uh huh."
Angela chewed on her lip for a second, then took the plunge. "You know, before you came, she didn't have any friends. Not really."
"She had you," he said, but she waved it away.
"She always will, but what we are talking about here is the fact that Brennan can't make friends. She doesn't know how."
"What they hell are you talking about, Angela? People are always after Bones. She's famous, she's beautiful, and she's rich." He stabbed a fry in her direction, not bothering to keep the circling frustration out of his voice. "None of which she's shy about telling people."
"No, Booth," Angela said with that drawl people got when they're about to point out how you're dumber than a box of rocks. "Those are not friends. Those are people who want something from her. I'm talking about the people who givith without out taketh-ing, and make sure to take your shoes off when you're drunk."
"Fine." He shoved another fry into a puddle of ketchup. Anything to keep from having to look at her. "Are those the same people who defend your honor and don't talk about you behind your back?" Then he dropped the fry, because some pointy bit of Angela's shoe was suddenly resting very gently on his, ah, area.
"I trust your attention is now focused?" she asked, malice bright and cheerful. He nodded.
"Good. Now, something is going on between you two. I don't know what, and as much as it pains me to say, I don't need to know. All I wanted to say is; if you drop her like a high school asshole, you'll suffer for it."
In his seat, Booth contemplated whether he should laugh, or just start crying. He tried to shift away from the stiletto currently pressing into his junk, but she followed. "Angela," he said in his most reasonable voice "I'm not abandoning Bones because of Catherine."
"You know, Booth," she finally said after a long, stink-eyed pause. "I almost believe you."
"I'm not going anywhere Ange. Besides, she's got you. Your not exactly nothing."
"No," she agreed, and miraculously put her fucking foot back on the floor, "but I chose Brennan, not the other way around. How many people are going to do that?"
He cleared his throat, weirdly stuck between wanting to run away and being incredibly fascinated. "You think Bones chose me?"
Angela gave him one last look, complex and not necessarily fond. After she left, he sat, thinking. Watching his french fries congeal, waving off the waitress each time she asked him if he wanted more water, some coffee, any pie to day, hon?
He intercepted Luz Marquez outside her fourth-grade classroom. Darkened and abandoned by the children that must be a constant reminder of her own lost daughter. He watched her look at Daniel Alexander's photo, and wondered if the reminder was pleasure, or pain.
She shook her head, and handed it back. He tucked it into a pocket, checking another box off Caroline's list. Pleasure, he decided, and pain. Both, at once.
()
This time, she got to the restaurant first. Letting the Maitre d' slip the coat off her shoulders, following him over to a bar stool. Feeling the butterfly brush of eyes skimming across the satin of her dress.
Once upon a time, that would have made her angry. A few years before that, she would have used it as evidence of her self worth. Today it just was, an atmospheric pressure that swirled around her, neither loved nor hated.
She smiled into the mirror mounted behind the liquor bottles, enjoying the balance. Hard fought and well earned. Not to be screwed with. She caught sight of him as soon as he came through the door. The rumple of his overcoat, and the tentative twisting as he scanned for her.
"Hey, babe," his greeting was both breath in her hair, and a rumble through her back. It made the bubble of anticipation that lived in her stomach wobble, and she tipped her head back into the shallow bowl of his shoulder, smelling soap and aftershave.
Sitting in the tall bar stool, their heads were nearly level, and she could feel the freshly shaved-off whiskers poking. In the mirror, fatigue clung to him. Showing in a way he'd probably mask if they were face to face.
"Hello," she told him, and the crinkling of his smile almost made her believe the tiredness had been her imagination. It did make her twist around and nod to the short man that was now aggrievedly hovering behind his shoulder. "You made the Maitre d' angry."
He rolled his eyes a little, implying that real men ignored Maitre d's on general principle, but he surrendered his coat and even attempted meekness as they were lead to a table.
She smiled. He wasn't very good at meek.
"How was your day?" she asked once they had been left alone, and it should have been an easy question. It should not have required that little second of preparation he gave himself by lingering over the menu. She let him have it.
"Oh," he said, an easy shrug and an easy smile. Water, backs, ducks; all similar things. "You know, the usual. Help the good, foil the bad."
She laughed, and asked if he'd managed to fit in helping any little old ladies across the street. Why not? The anticipation pulsed quicksilver down her nerves, but he was still funny, and sweet, and right now he was focusing all his startling attention on her. Right now still felt good. Later could happen later.
()
Later, he realized it had been a set up.
He didn't talk about his childhood. Never sat down to swap stories 'bout the birthday he spent in the ER, or how the cops knew his parents place by heart. It just didn't happen, and eventually, speculation became legend. Some Roughneck swearing on a stack of bibles that Sarge had actually sprung fully formed from the forehead of the United States Army. Belly tight, and rifle at the ready.
Tonight just didn't feel dangerous, though. With her chin propped on a hand, and those eyes right on him. She asked about his first crush, and he answered.
Then Catherine leaned across the table, and pushed her fingers through his hair, trailing down to his jaw. "So, who was it who broke your heart?"
Suddenly, horrifyingly, he felt the harsh prick of tears. "Catherine," he started, but he had no idea how to finish, and she didn't make him.
"It's okay. You don't have to tell me, but Seeley, this thing we have, it doesn't have much momentum." She steeled herself for whatever was next. "You haven't allowed it much momentum." Even delivered kindly, it stung hard, mostly because it was undeniable true.
"I'm not asking for a ring, or even a drawer, but I need to know." She pressed her lips together, gathering courage around herself. "Are you ever going to love me? I mean really love me?"
He thought of her smile. The exact crook of it, and the way her eyelids would fluttering as he pushed inside her. The line of her throat as her head fell back in pleasure. Thought of how those things should already feel like a sweet ache in his chest; and how they did not. He answered the only way he could.
"No."
Her face crumpled, just for an instant, before she caught control. "Oh, you honest bastard," she whispered, looking out across the dining room to hide the tears. He swallowed hard against the lump in his own throat.
"I'm sorry. Catherine, I'm so sorry."
She sighed, looking back at him. "I know. That's what really sucks. You're a good guy, Seeley. The best kind of guy, and we could have gone on having a good time together, but I. . .I'm looking for something more."
"I'm wasting your time," he gave the harsher translation, but her eyes went a little softer, this one last time.
"No. You're not anybody's waste of time. I hope someday your difficult doctor friend can realize that." Which just made him choke up all over again. She sighed again, with more pain, and more resolve. She stood up, kissed him on the cheek, and was gone.
Eventually the Maitre d' glared him out into the parking lot. He walked to his truck, and found Sweets leaning against the quarter panel. It didn't feel surprising. It felt inevitable, and maybe, Booth acknowledged way far down, maybe just a little warm.
He hit the unlock button twice, and Sweets, with a flare of hope he didn't bother damping, climbed inside.
"Sweets," Booth said slowly, not sure how much he really cared, but feeling obligated to at least token protest, "what the hell are you doing here?"
"I had Agent Fornelle track the GPS in your phone," Sweets told him, taking the question as literally as possible. "He owed me, for talking to his daughter about safe sex so he didn't have to."
Booth snorted, unimpressed, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sweets quick little grin. It looked brave, and sad, and wistful, all at once. All the complicated things life could be.
"Catherine broke up with me," Booth told the windshield.
"I'm sorry," Sweets said.
"I love Bones," he added, because this still felt a little unreal. Like it was a dream, and there could never, ever be any consequences.
"I know," the other man said gently, and suddenly Booth knew how a twenty-three year old might have become a psychologist in the first place. How he might have spent the last few years grown into a really good one.
"Why'd you lie, Sweets?" he asked, softly. In his own seat, Sweets sighed heavily, but he didn't look away.
"I could see that you were going to tell her you loved her. After the brain tumor. I could tell."
For the first second he didn't understand. Then he did, and it made him feel something that treaded the thin line between gratefulness and a blue electric rage.
They made a triangle. He and Bones and Sweets. Weird, and annoying, really annoying, but still three balanced points. No one standing on the edges looking in. "You almost ruined my life because you were jealous?"
"We all get afraid, Booth. Run into walls and do stupid things. I've just proved to you that psychologists aren't immune."
He laughed, and wondered if he could stop. Stopped, and wondered if he was about to cry. Drug a hand down his face, and found it dry. "Jesus, Sweets."
"Will we be okay?" Sweets asked. Booth squeezed the steering wheel. Gripped it until his knuckles burned.
It was night. He was tired. He knew he was going to do it anyway.
A/N: Again, pretty proud of the Booth, Angela interaction. Whadda youse guys think?