A/N: Hiya! I was stuck on the second half of this chapter for the longest time, when I thought of a transition at like three in the morning last night. So here we have it, a long-overdue update. I have a couple questions for you guys, if you wouldn't mind answering, at the bottom of the chapter. As always, reviews are wonderful. Enjoy!
Edit: Hey, by the way - this story has reached novella status! I'm kinda proud of myself. ;) This should easily, easily end up novel length by the time I finish. Which, given the time in between updates, may be when I graduate college. Just kidding. Bear with me, here!
Donnie: Well, life isn't that simple. I mean, who cares if Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love.
Kitty Farmer: Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.
Donnie: Okay. But you're not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here, like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else.
― Donnie Darko (2001)
Day Seven
He's not quite sure what to expect when he opens his eyes to a semi-darkened room, wakes to the slight, rhythmic hum of a computer fan, but he decides that the sight of his wife leaning against the headboard with her knees drawn up and a laptop resting against her thighs is not so surprising.
She looks, perhaps, as if she hasn't slept for days. Her hair is in a messy bun situated at the base of her neck, and the bone-tired look in her glassed eyes from the night before hasn't faded a single bit. On the contrary, she's been staring at the screen for so long, the whites of her eyes are beginning to turn pink, just slightly. Slowly, Booth sits up in bed and glances over at the screen. He's far from surprised at what he sees.
Two windows are up, and she alternates between the two; she switches from reading through a specific article on some prestigious-looking medical journal to typing abbreviated notes, taking her time to be thorough with the information in as few words as possible. As if she could ever be anything but thorough.
Booth raises his arm and gives a tired gesture towards one half of the screen.
"What's that?"
Her voice is flat as she answers.
"These are common statistics for the diagnosis and treatment of desmoplastic small round cell tumors," she says. And after a brief pause, she adds, "And the general prognosis."
Booth considers this.
"Do I want to ask?"
She pauses and glances his way.
"You want to ask," she says, eyeing his tired expression carefully. "I doubt you'd like to hear the answer, though."
He says nothing, but bites his lip and nods grimly in her direction. She gently closes the laptop lid and places the computer by her bedside table before taking a deep breath and saying it aloud, quoting near verbatim.
"Out of approximately two-hundred cases diagnosed annually, about forty-four percent live for three years."
He can't quite meet her eyes.
"And what about the people who do make it three years?"
She can't quite meet his.
"Then there's the five year survival rate, which… is about fifteen percent."
He nods.
There's a moment, he thinks, somewhere along the line, when things can no longer phase you. When you just start to expect bad news to come your way, and when it does – okay. Words start to sit just outside your mind and understanding, making them easy to escape – however temporary the reprieve may be. Maybe he'll panic later. Maybe all the air will rush out of him and he'll feel that punch to the gut sometime in the middle of the day, and maybe he'll find the time to worry about it eventually, but for now, he's indestructible. There's nothing in his head right now save for simple facts, and in that moment, he can understand how his wife lived that way for so long.
Because weightless facts can't hurt you.
He reaches over to his wife and pulls her toward him, and in the sudden darkness of their bedroom, they sink back down to bed, arms around each other.
They close their eyes, breathe deeply and slowly and in perfect synchronization, and pretend to sleep.
"Dear Lord, on this Thanksgiving Day, we thank you for our food, our friends, our work and good fortune, our health..."
"You okay?" Booth asks, and the near-empty kitchen strains its ears to hear the answer.
Sweets nods his head.
"Yeah," he says, and after a pause he continues. "Yeah. I just... I just needed some time to get used to it. If you know what I mean. Although I'm not entirely sure if I'll ever really get used to it... I understand. And I think I'm okay."
Booth thinks, that makes one of them.
"Are you going to tell everyone? Tonight?"
And Sweets heaves a long, heavy sigh and seems to contemplate this for a moment. He bites his lip and nods his head and says, "Well, I don't want to. But... I guess I have to. So... yeah."
There is a slight pause before he continues.
"I guess there are a lot of things I'll have to do now that I don't really want to."
"... through Christ, our Lord, Amen."
The rest of the adult table, non-religious as most of them are, does not echo his prayer. Still, they nod their heads in acknowledgment and contented tolerance, and that's more than enough. Unfortunately, he's not quite finished yet.
"Thank you guys for coming again this year; as always, it's a pleasure to have you all. I'm truly thankful for each and every one of you, and I hope we'll continue to have more memories to be thankful for."
There are murmurs of happy agreement all around the table.
"Now, uh," Booth continues. "I have to pass it over to Sweets for a second. He's got something to say."
And all of those still-smiling faces turn towards the psychologist who suddenly looks like he's been caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
"Hey, um... just had to say that I..." He takes a deep breath, steels his features – and suddenly can't bring himself to say it. "...forgot to bake this year. So I don't have the pie. I'm sorry about that. That's my announcement."
He plasters on a fake smile for good measure, but the rest of the table looks entirely unconvinced. And moderately concerned.
He opens his mouth to speak again, or perhaps to just ramble, when a timer goes off in the kitchen, on the other side of the wall. Sweets is up from his seat in half a second, turning and walking away with a quick, "I got it," thrown over his shoulder.
Once away from all of those eyes, he lifts a tray of food from the oven rack and sets it carefully on the stove top. And then he steps to the side and just leans against the counter with his forearms, picturing an awful train wreck in his mind's eye. He's not sure which situation he'd prefer.
He doesn't have time to make a decision on that one, though, because after a minute, Brennan ducks right into the kitchen and takes a spot next to him. They stand in silence for a few seconds until Sweets wrenches his gaze from some random spot on the marble countertop and glances her way. She's looking at him with a soft look in her eyes and a slight, halfhearted smile; it's a look his very own mother used to give him when she was alive. Pair that with the gentle hand she places on his forearm without a word, and he's got nothing but resolution that this is something he has to do.
Like a Band-Aid, he supposes.
He smiles back at her and turns to pick up the tray of food, the handles having cooled enough for him to touch it without getting burned.
He turns and leads the way back.
He sets the tray down on the table and sits down next to Brennan, feeling a million sets of eyes on him as he does.
He can't avoid them forever.
"Sorry," he says, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. He doesn't look at anyone, but rather a spot on the table cloth that's just slightly lighter than the rest of it. "That wasn't my announcement."
They knew that already, of course.
"Sorry to… dampen the day, I guess, but… the real announcement is, uh…"
"Are you leaving the FBI again?" someone asks, and without looking, he places the voice as Angela's. He shakes his head.
"No," he answers, but then he thinks about that. "No, I don't – I don't think so. I don't want to. But I mean – I kinda…"
He takes a deep breath and rips the Band-Aid off in one smooth sentence; and in the end, his skin is clean.
"I kind of have cancer. So, uh… yeah, that's… yeah."
And he smiles. A bittersweet upturn of his lips that's indicative of freedom, in spite of the clatter of a fork on someone's plate and the few murmurs of shock and worry around the table. He looks up and doesn't want to see the looks in everyone's eyes, but he does.
He supposes he'd have the same look of anxiety about him if it were him receiving the news. But then – he already did. But he's past it; he's calm, now, and perfectly at ease.
"What?" it's Cam, now, who's looking levelled and upset, and Sweets wishes he could just will away everyone's worry and concern and sympathy, but he can't. He can only listen and answer when she asks, "What do you mean? What kind of cancer?"
He answers simply, "It's called a desmoplastic small round cell tumor. Situated in my abdominal cavity. But hey, it's – it's fine. I'll be fine."
He's a liar, but it doesn't bother him in the slightest.
Hodgins speaks up, his voice unsteady as he asks, "Do you know that for sure?"
"Well, no… but…" he nods his head with fake confidence and hopes it gets across. "I'll be fine."
A nervous sort of silence settles over the table. And the next voice anyone hears is Brennan's, asking softly, "Are you okay?"
And he smiles.
"Yeah," he says. "I'm fine."
A/N: Okay! So there's the chapter. Hopefully things will pick up from here - if I can keep from taking like four months with every update. A note: this story, and I think all of my other stories, are also posted on AO3, if you prefer that website. My username is Joanne_Barcia, if you'd prefer to read on that platform. Might change my penname here, at some point, I don't know, haha.
Okay, so, questions for you guys:
1. I meant to ask this when I last updated Immortals, but could someone just summarize the whole conspiracy arc? Especially the end of it, because I didn't watch 10x02. I meant to, but I didn't, haha. So I have no idea how the arc ended, and that info is kinda important for that story and possibly others. If someone could fill me in, that would be great!
2. Quick survey question: headcanon bisexual Sweets or nah? I'm debating with myself.
Alrighty, so thanks for reading/putting up with me! You guys are the best!