Voices Carry

[j_hodgins]

continued from here

No use in running
It's always the same
You can count on the panic
It's the faces that change...

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[former_ranger]

Booth laughed softly when he felt the soft crinkle of Jack's curls rest on his shoulder. The sun covered them both with heat and light and Jack's exhaustion was catching. It wasn't as if Seeley was tired though, he'd slept all night. Dreamless and complete for a change. So he simply let Jack rest on his shoulder and arm and took the opportunity to look around the room while he waited for the coffee to finish perking.

Booth couldn't see the furniture under the sheets, but he assumed it was all like the pieces that Jack had uncovered. Perhaps a little weathered, maybe a scar here and there, but heavy and durable and lushly, comfortably upholstered. Every single piece.

His eyes moved over the pictures on the walls. Faces in photographs he couldn't make out and framed paintings that seemed to have been picked for the colors and the way they accented the sunlight rather than the content.

When Booth figured that more than twelve minutes had passed, he carefully slipped out from under Jack's head. He pushed the other man down, pulled his legs up on the couch and made sure Jack's head was on a pillow. One soft brush of his thumb over the warm skin just above Jack's beard, one curl of his fingers through Jack's hair and Seeley stood. He walked soundlessly back into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of coffee.

Then he set off to explore this summer house. Learn the hallways and look in the rooms and find more questions that might lead to some answers for the girl they'd found in the maze.

[j_hodgins]

And the truth that you'll find will always be
The truth you hide...

Jack's skin prickled and rose in tight furrows of gooseflesh, dragging him out of a restless REM reality.

Nothing's ever goona be okay... have you ever ... will you...

With his breath coming short and hard he bounced up from the couch as if yanked by an unseen hand. Heart hammering in his throat, he squinted and tried to gain focus; the sun had moved far west to the front of the house, leaving the sunroom shady and chilled. It looked to be about eleven, and Booth was nowhere to be seen.

Coffee. He was making coffee and I was, what? he thought. Fuck, how could I lose five hours?

Fully awake and thrust into the frantic speed of the oversleeper, Jack took the back stairs two at a time to get back to his room. His skin was tight with salt and he felt like shit, but he passed on a shower and grabbed jeans and a sweater from his bag, clean socks and the extra pair of shitkickers he liked to wear at the lab and dressed as quickly as he could.

The maze.

"Fuck, not the maze," he swore aloud. "Goddamn."

With a fast look into Booth's room, Jack sprinted down the corridor, back down the stairs that led to the kitchen.

When he came to the landing, he paused and peered down the lower stairway to the servants' quarters. As quickly as it had overtaken him, the need to find Booth eased, transformed.

Carefully, quietly, Jack stepped down into the sublevel where the live-in staff slept and spent their off hours. Four tiny bedrooms, no bigger than cells, and a small, clean bathroom with an ancient tub and a pull chain toilet.

He hadn't been in Lucille's room in years, but he didn't have to give it any thought as he curled his fingers around the doorknob.

Sick sorrow juiced him like a hit of some rancid drug, turning his knees to jello and crushing his chest with the sudden rush of memory.

They'd never made love in her room, nor his.

He'd never sat on her bed or touched the clothing in her closet or the trinkets on her dresser.

She'd never allowed him in her room, but when she wasn't working Jack would steal down and open the door and just ... breathe.

Tears welled and he fought them, hard, useless as they were. As he pushed the door opened the room blurred in a wash of blue and white and he could do nothing but stand, rooted to the spot.

[former_ranger]

Booth had existed in a silent bubble for hours. Wandering from room to room, looking at each photograph, sifting through the contents of desks. He stopped in his room once as he passed it, pulled on a t-shirt. He stopped once in the kitchen to fill his cup and once again in the sunroom to check on Jack.

When he felt he had a handle on the layout, he started again from the front door. As if he'd just come in. He moved quietly and efficiently. Skimming and scanning and cataloging. He found himself looking for Jack's face in too many photos, in too many relatives. His fingers stroked over the ivory keys of an old piano, touching one key just long enough to know that the salt air had made it hopelessly out of tune. He looked for the servant's passageways, knowing that a house this big and a family this prominent would have seperate pathways for the help. Just so they never came into accidental contact with the guests. With the family.

He wondered how terribly scandelous it would have been for Jack to have his friendship with Lucille exposed.

Even now. Today.

Booth heard the sound of footsteps in the house. First running, then slowing and he tracked the quiet noise to find Jack, awake. Standing in a doorway of a room that was smaller than the bathroom in Seeley's bedroom. Tears ran from Jack's eyes and Seeley realized that this had to have been Lucille's.

His hand moved to the back of Jack's neck and Booth looked over Jack's shoulder.

"When was the last time she lived here? Last summer? Fall? Is there anything left of hers in this room?"