Wishing is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake. Series of Unfortunate Events
.***.
If it hadn't been in that awkward time between finding out that Zack – socially stunted, intelligent, rational Zack – was a murderer and everyone coming back to the Jeffersonian (Sweets thought this comeback really started with the Finger in the Nest case, when Booth and Brennan got back from the UK) then maybe his birthday would have been different. But it was in that awkward time. And it was one of the worst birthdays Lance Sweets could remember.
He didn't even realize it was his birthday until after he had spilled hot water on his hand and stood over the sink, cursing as the irritated red skin stung under the cool stream. "I'm getting old, Pru." He said to his silky black tabby, Prudence, who sat on the lip of the sink and watched him douse his burn. The cat blinked at him slowly and he turned away hurriedly, trying to forget that this time last year he was talking on the phone with his parents.
They had died right after his birthday, one right after the other, and he'd thought the pain in his heart had faded months ago. Working with the FBI and being busy twenty-seven hours a day helped speed the grieving process along. But the memory of the early-morning telephone call he received annually, wishing him a very happy birthday, brought a sudden wetness to his eyes. Because of the pain, he lied to himself, filling Pru's dish and patting her head before heading out, burnt hand stuffed into his pocket, determined to forget the naked affection he'd heard in his parent's voice a year ago today.
If he was to forget about his birthday, the best place to do it was at the Jeffersonian. As a recently accused murderer, a person who, as he was reminded constantly, wasn't really a part of the team at all, something as meaningless as a birthday could pass by unnoticed. Particularly if he didn't tell anyone.
"Morning, Sweetie." Angela said, smiling warmly at him as he walked into the lab, just to make sure there was no hot case he'd missed. He used to think that 'Sweetie' was just another play on his surname (which had certainly not helped him navigate the terrors of high school) before he realized that the artist called everyone from Booth to Hodgins 'Sweetie.'
"Hello, Angela." He said, flashing her a quick smile. He held open the door for Hodgins, coming in behind him, and waved as Angela sped away from him, heading in the direction of Cam's office.
"That looks painful."
Sweets nearly jumped out of his skin. He didn't know that Hodgins was still standing there, and he laughed a little at his over-reaction, looking at his hand. "Yeah. My cat spilled the hot water this morning."
"A likely story." Hodgins said, smiling, eyebrows raising suggestively. He laughed when Sweets blushed, which had been the whole point. "C'mon. I got some stuff for burns around here somewhere." Hodgins took off, just expecting Sweets to follow. "There's so many experiments around here…I mean…there used to be…"
They stopped at one of the outer rooms and Hodgins rummaged in one of the compartments for only a few moments before he found the First Aid Kit.
The silence was too much. Sweets never liked to let silence linger for too long. Too many emotions could be bottled up there. "Dr. Hodgins, if there's anything you want to talk with me about…."
"Thanks, kid, but I think I'll go find a grown-up doctor if I want to talk about my emotional baggage." Hodgins muttered, digging through the kit. He didn't catch Sweets's wince - would anyone ever see him as anything other than a child, a nuisance? But he carefully schooled his features by the time Hodgins looked up.
"Here." Hodgins said, flicking out a hand to grab Sweets's wrist. An innocuous gesture to be sure, just a way of steadying the hand he would be putting the soothing cream and antiseptic on. What he didn't expect was Sweets's sudden reaction. For that matter, neither did Sweets.
"Don't," Sweets growled, jerking his hand away protectively, half-forgotten memories of broken fingers and large, cruel hands mixing with the safe fluorescent lights and surprised, open face of Hodgins.
"Dude, I was just going to…" Hodgins began awkwardly, shifting his weight. "It's not like I was going to break your hand."
Sweets's laugh was forced, too high even to his own ears, but short enough to help alleviate the tension a little bit. "Duh. I know. Umm….yeah. I gotta go." He was already backing away, neck and cheeks blazing red with embarrassment. Freaking out over so harmless a situation? What was he, eight? Must be the whole birthday/dead parents/angst thing. And he so didn't need this if he was attempting to seem like an adult.
"What about the cream?" Hodgins asked, confusion and concern rising up his throat like bile. For a moment, that open, embarrassed, young face reminded him of another young guy, one who used to participate in the very experiments that made burn cream a necessity.
"It's not that bad." Sweets assured him, backing out. But the entomologist knew he was lying. As the shrink turned, Hodgins literally caught him red handed.
.***.
"Sweets!"
All he wanted to do was get done with the piles of profiles he'd promised four different FBI departments, get lost in the cases, and then see if anyone at the Jeffersonian or another one of his psychologist friends wanted to go out for a couple of drinks, because if Sweets didn't drown his sorrows he was going to be seriously angsty.
But it seemed like this day had something else in store for him, and how could he say no to Booth? He smiled warily, because when Booth was rushing around the corridors like this it usually meant a pretty gruesome case. Or relationship problems. Usually with Dr. Brennan. "What's up, Agent Booth?"
Booth pulled up a foot in front of Sweets, excitement gleaming in his eyes. "We have the chance to nail this scumbag, Sweets. But I need your help."
Despite himself, Sweets felt a smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. Typical Booth. He was so wrapped up in his cases he forgot that some people he talked to had absolutely no idea what he was working on at any given moment. But he had learned to just go with it – he'd pick stuff up on the way. "What can I help you with?"
"The usual." Booth said, already moving away, trusting Sweets to follow him. "Watch the interrogation. Do your psychic thing."
"Psychologist and psychic are very different things." Sweets pointed out patiently. "But I will inform you of any unconscious physical manifestations of guilt that I catch in the accused, if that is what you are asking."
"I thought my way of asking was less…squinty." Booth muttered, half-smiling at the younger man. And Sweets thought that maybe this day wouldn't be so bad after all.
.***.
He was in the corridor leading to the interrogation room, Booth right by his side, when it happened.
Clyde Simmons, the guy coming down the hallway was in jail awaiting his trial. The FBI was running the show – a federal crime meant a federal case, and even lawyers would bend when Booth volunteered to be the one at interrogations. He was known for getting criminals to implicate themselves by firing well-worded questions. What most people didn't know is that Lance Sweets had no small part to play in this process: it was he who usually told Booth exactly which questions to ask.
Sweets was just about to duck into the small room he stayed in while Booth did his thing with the subject, and he had to admit that he wasn't really paying attention to the handcuffed criminal flanked on both sides by agents. He was thinking about the timbre of his father's comforting voice on the phone last year, wishing him a happy birthday and telling him, as he said every year, how proud he was of the man Lance Sweets had grown to be.
It was in that instant, with the memory of his father's words caught in his head and on his lips like a song that you could never forget, that the criminal chose to get the hell out of Dodge, or at least go down in a blaze of glory.
Leaping forward, quick and agile as a jungle cat, he slammed Sweets's head against the wall hard enough for him to see stars and then pulled him away, using his handcuffs to choke the air out of Sweets's body.
Definitely not the best birthday he'd ever had.
Sweets clawed desperately at the chains, eyes already tearing up with the pain and sudden, terrifying lack of oxygen. But a sensitive nerd who had whisked in and out of offices his whole life was no match for a hardened criminal, and after ten seconds…twenty…the lack of oxygen made his resistance even more pitiful.
Booth was talking, and Sweets tried to focus on the agent, watching his eyes as they stayed focused on Clyde Simmons (who, Sweets was now thinking, almost certainly killed those poor strangers). Maybe it took a behavioral psychologist, or maybe it took someone who knew Booth very well, to see the minute flicks of the man's expressive eyes, the tightening of his mouth, the way his hands didn't waver for an instant as he pointed the gun directly at Sweets.
Blood pounded in his ears, making it impossible for Sweets to hear what anyone was saying, though Booth's expression suggested that he was yelling, screaming at the guy. It didn't matter now. Forty-five seconds in, his vision was being clouded by blackness and he felt himself losing feeling in his legs. He wondered, if he fell unconscious and his body slackened, would Booth be able to get a shot off? He hoped so. Even if Booth hit him with the bullet, at least that death would be better than this excruciating agony he was in now…
And suddenly the weight behind him was gone, but the chain around his neck caused him to tumble with the now-dead felon, digging harder into his neck and disorienting him further. He could only move his limbs feebly, trying desperately to draw in oxygen and panicking when he found that he was like a fish without water. Even with the chain removed, he couldn't breathe.
There was an hand jerking him now, pulling him roughly from the dead embrace of a criminal. Booth's face was inches from his and still Sweets's mouth was open in a parody of a scream, eyes frantic, lips tinged a delicate, terrible blue.
A hard whack on his back, and suddenly his bruised and battered throat could find a way to suck in a little oxygen. He sat like that, on the floor a foot away from a dead man, for seconds, minutes, Booth crouched next to him, his hands hovering, concerned, in front of Sweets's throat.
An ambulance was called, SOP for this situation (and, later, Sweets would marvel that there was a Standard Operating Procedure for even this specific scenario) and they looked at Sweets's throat worriedly. The chain had left a bruise that would get darker before it faded completely a month from the incident. At a few places, the skin had even broken from where the chain chaffed as the two men fell to the ground. To these the EMTs could apply antiseptic and Band-Aids, but little else.
"I don't need a hospital." Sweets croaked, realizing too late that opening his mouth and letting out the harsh sound that was now his voice was probably the worst way to avoid an ambulance ride. But Booth must have seen something embarrassed and fearful in his eyes, and he waved the young paramedics away and wheedled his way out of filling out the official report, using Sweets as an excuse.
"I could have gotten back to my office just fine." Sweets pointed out, and Booth raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"You sound like you're on death's doorstep. And it wouldn't be your fault if you're a bit shaky. A man tried pretty damn hard to kill you today."
"He didn't." Sweets reminded the older man. "My father used to say 'all's well that ends well.'" Even this brief mention of his father made Sweets's eyes sting.
"Just lay off that throat, kid. You heard the doc. Try to avoid talking for the next couple of days."
They had reached Sweets's office, and Sweets put his thumb and index finger together in an O for A-OK, following the no-talking rule to a T. This is where he thought that he and Booth would part ways, and he was already revising his earlier decision to try to go out tonight. After the excitement of the day, he really wanted to spend his birthday with Pru and NCIS reruns.
Of course, though, life had to go and throw a kink into even those modest plans, because Theresa, a lovely nineteen-year-old intern who played secretary for four or five people in the Bureau, bustled forward at the moment with a card and potted plant. "Happy Birthday, Dr. Sweets!" She said, frowning slightly when she noticed the bruises, but Theresa, who had been raised in a stoic New England family, didn't intrude on other people's business, even if they were bruised and battered. "I noticed that you don't have much green in your office, and this little bonsai tree doesn't need much watering. I hope you like it." The girl, God bless her, bit her lip, looking worried that she'd overstepped her bounds.
"Thank you, Theresa." Sweets said, breaking the doctor's rule of not talking and not really caring. Theresa was the first person to comment on his birthday all day – how she even knew was anybody's guess – and Sweets was surprised and touched by her gesture. "The plant is beautiful."
And it was. It looked like a tiny tree, complete with branches and leaves, and Theresa had used tiny colored rocks to spell out the three Christian virtues of FAITH, HOPE, and CHARITY beneath it, leaving the fourth side for a smiley face.
With the tree and card in one hand, it was hard to give the girl a hug, but Sweets did, so overwhelmed he was by this unexpected gift. Theresa smiled as she broke away from Sweets, pushing her red hair back behind her ear. "See you tomorrow, Dr. Sweets, and have a really great birthday."
Sweets watched her until she turned down the next corridor, not even noticing the tears in his eyes until a hand clapped him on the shoulder. He jumped, startled at the unexpected touch, and sent the card and bonsai into the air.
"Jesus," Booth muttered, grabbing for the plant and catching it before it hit the ground. "You don't want to break that." He swiped the card from off the floor and handed it to Sweets, who took it without looking Booth in the eye.
"Okay," Booth said slowly, a smile in his voice, "I get not telling anyone about your birthday if you're turning, like, fifty-two. Who wants to be reminded that you're that old? But since you're turning…what? Thirteen?...I think we really ought to do something special."
Sweets gestured to his throat, and, thinking fast, made a few quick signs that he'd learned ages ago, when he was six and not speaking to anyone (and wasn't that a fun time to think about on your birthday?) He didn't know if Booth knew ASL, but…
Booth smiled and, laboriously, asked with his hands if Sweets wanted to go out for drinks. "No hard liquor, though. I don't know what the stuff can do for your throat and besides -"
"I know," Sweets croaked, "I'm not old enough to drink."
Booth grinned and nodded, eyes affixed to the bruises on Sweets's neck. "Those still look pretty bad, kid. You sure you're good to go?"
Truth? His throat felt like tiny pieces of glass had been embedded in it, and breathing was damn hard to do, and he knew that his neck must look like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but he was happy just to be doing what he'd wanted all day: going out for a couple of drinks on his birthday.
Booth led the way into his office, putting the tiny tree on the windowsill and talking aimlessly about inviting the Jeffersonian squints and finding a Batman birthday cake for the thirteen-year-old.
And, even though it had started out as a pretty bad day, and had only gotten worse, Sweets looked from Booth to the plant to the card, still clutched in his hand, and thought that, perhaps, this hadn't been such a bad day after all.
.***.
We heart Booth and Sweets int he straightest way possible.
Anyways, please review.