Jack could see it in the way Booth looked at Brennan; of course he knew the feeling.
Of course.
Whatever ease he'd allowed himself to feel coiled inaward, taut and hard. Jack drained the last of his beer and pushed the thought out of his mind, but it was replaced instead by something he'd heard, a poem or a song, something about the heart's metallurgy, something about the inability to silver to gold, no matter how desperately you want it...
He lifted himself from the couch and padded behind Booth into the kitchen, following the scrumptious aroma of the late-season stew.
"It's got to be something that happenned in the intervening years of our friendship," Jack said. "Lucille was warm and funny and smart; smart enough to be seen and not heard, which is your primary asset when working for rich families. Whatever she overheard or saw she would have taken to her grave because that's what good servants do."
The words were bitter on his tongue.
"Good servants," he muttered, levering himself up on the kitchen counter. "Nothing teaches you to keep your mouth shut like losing a parent to the secret police."
Seeley grabbed another beer from the fridge, opened it with a twist of his wrist, tossed the cap into the trash and took a drink before setting it on the counter. He picked up a towel covered bowl from the top of the stove, flicked off the material and dusted a thick, wooden cutting board with flour. He scooped the dough out of the bowl and started flattening it with automatic movements, his mind busy with the information that Jack was slowly feeding him.
"What would someone in your family have done that is worth killing for? And when did you guys pin-point this murder? Last summer? Fall?"
It was an impossibility for Jack to do anything but watch Booth's elegant, flour-covered hands work the bread dough. Not that anything Booth would do could suprise Jack; hell, he'd seen him swing from moment to moment, watched his face and body shift like mercury in less than a heartbeat, so why should something as simple as bread making come as a shock?
Think, idiot.
"Judging from the rate of decomp she died in autumn." Jack tugged a mouthful of beer and watched the muscles flex and release in Booth's forearms as he shaped the putty into thin sheets. "Man, what hasn't anyone in my family done? Pick a sin, baby. Damn sure a Hodgins is guilty of it."
"Not that I doubt you, Hodgins. Don't think that for a moment."
Seeley cut the dough at right angles and started rolling up triangles. He stopped once to take another drink and caught himself wishing for something more than beer, something stronger, but this was not the time, not the night. Not now. Not here.
"No doubt at all. Been around too long, seen too much. But your family has the money to buy themselves out of anything. Why kill to keep it under wraps?"
He tossed the croissants on a pan and put them in the warming oven.
Typically at this point in a conversation Jack would hit hard and fast, launching a tirade about the disgust he feels for his forbears, but he holds back. Seeley needs something tangible -- an event, a specific moment in time -- exactly what Jack doesn't have.
What he has is an appetite whet by the sight of someone baking, by the mouth-watering scent of a home-cooked meal, stoked by two quick beers on a very empty stomach.
"Starving," he sighed.
That's truer than Jack wants to admit about the entirety of his life lately. So the impulse to confess -- the strange, nearly incombatible need to spill out every thought to Booth for some goddamn reason -- stays under control.
"Had to be totally impulsive, because you are right. The world is their carpet, Booth, and all manner of shit is beneath it that you and god's army will never, ever find. I can't help thinking whovever killed Lucille didn't intend to."
Seeley met Jack's eyes for a moment. And there was too much there. Too many questions. Too much information. Too easy to read his own desires into the appetite that he had only caught glimpses of in rare moments.
Seeley eyes flickered away as he leaned against the counter, waited for the bread to finish baking. He'd washed his hands, but there was still floured fingerprints on his bottle of beer and Seeley wiped them away with a dishtowel while he thought about families and lies ... and people too rich to care.
He doesn't often feel the urge to run, but Jack finds himself tensing and near flight. It takes a deep breath to check the impulse, tamp down the irrationality of it, chalk it up to exhaustion. He looked away from Booth's scrutiny, scrubbing his fingertips over closed eyes.
"We were dear friends," he sighed, staring at the rows of corduroy stretched over his knees. "We would sit in that maze and talk any time we got the chance. For hours, when we could.
"Most domestics don't dare break down that wall between their true selves and the lives of their charges," he said, speaking to his knees. "When they do it never ends well because when all's said and done they work for you. There's a line you can't cross."
He looked up to see Booth watching him, and it brought a deep flush of heat from mid-chest, sweeping toward his face. Jack ducked his head down, examining the label on the empty bottle of Bass warming in his hands.
"There's a line you shouldn't cross," he admitted, reminding himself that it is true, still. Now. "There are too many differences that can't be bridged, sometimes."
Suddenly, Jack wasn't sure who he was talking about.
"Race. Class. Station," he clarified, clearing his throat. "But we ignored all of it, and it worked. She's one of the best people I've ever known."
He jumped down from the counter and turned his back to Booth to get another beer.
"We were close enough that I'd know if she was murdered, evidence or no fucking evidence."
Seeley's internal timer went off before he could form a reply, before he had to. He turned and pulled out the tray from the oven. Flicked the switch to off and opened a cabinet. He pulled out two deep, wide bowls and two plates. He dug out spoons and a butter knife from a drawer. He turned the heat off the crock pot and set the lid on the counter. A dip with the ladle, a stir, a mix, and he filled both bowls. Quick motions of his fingers and the croissants were in a small basket with a butter dish.
Seeley tucked his beer in the crook of his elbow, picked up his plate and the wicker basket. His head tilted to the living room.
"Let's eat."
After setting everything down on the coffee table, Booth turned on the television. The sound was muted, but he didn't need to hear the inane commentary of the announcers to keep an eye on the score. Hockey playoffs and even if it wasn't his team, it was a suitable distraction. From exactly what ... Seeley wasn't ready to examine.
Jack had never been the type of person to take over in another person's home, much less their kitchen. Careful and considerate, he treads a series of very fine social lines.
He wanted to reach for plates, help out, reach out the way friends will when they dine together, but he didn't. Instead, he willed himself to be a guest, transient and apart from Booth. The distance tightened his gut and did nothing to quell his nerves but he knew it was the right thing to do.
Necessary.
Remember, he thought,remember the reason you're here. This is an investigation, and the setting doesn't matter. Stick to the reason.
As he sat next to Booth on the sofa, he wished to Christ for a more formal setting, athiesm be damned.
He leaned into the cavernous bowl of stew and let the scent fill him, let the weight of the silver spoon in his hand ease him, and tasted the stew.
"This is fucking amazing," he whispered. "Who taught you to cook?"
Seeley took a bite of the stew, examining the flavors with his tongue and teeth and taste buds. Like he always did with his food, whether he cooked it or not. Finding each spice and each ingredient. Labeling them, catagorizing them. Indexes in his head, imaginary cabinets full of recipes. Some yellowed with age, some stained with memories. Some spattered with blood.
"My mother, first. Being in the kitchen with her was the only time I could find her alone and if you weren't helping out, you'd better get out.
"The army, second. MREs are nothing but base food. You can eat them, but when you're stuck out in the desert and that's all you've got, you learn to improvise. You have to. I got pretty good at making meals out of packs."
Another bite and Seeley closed his eyes. For a second he wasn't in his living room, he wasn't in his house. He wasn't in the great United States of America. He was in the sand again, under a sky that he couldn't stop looking at. Stars and black, the smell of smoke from burning oil wells so strong that it seemed he'd never get it off his skin. Never get it out of his nose or off his lips.
Seeley glanced over and watched Jack eat his stew. Seeley's fingers tightened on the knife he held in his hand and butter dripped. It ran down the palm of his hand to his wrist. Warm, melted tears.
The simple, quiet question filled him, threading cold spools of anguish through the warmth in his belly brought by the wonderful meal. Jack's breath stilled in his chest and he held it for the barest fleeting second and let it go.
Menace. Pain. Desperation.
He felt it as if it was his own, felt the weight of galaxies on his back but held his gaze on the bowl of comfort food. Let the crackling fire respond, spitting and sparking, consuming oxygen, ravenous and begging to be fed.
Jack placed his bowl on the table and stood. Walked over to the log holder, grabbed a few pieces of wood, opened the curtain and tossed them on the pile. Blue-orange flames licked and curled beneath the intrusion, and Jack watched it catch and brighten, then took his place on the couch next to his host.
The infinite blackness in Seeley's eyes could show him nothing but a dare, or everything in the world.
So he stared into them, as would have with Lucille. It was against every instinct, but he kept his hands loose in his lap, to himself.
"No," he said softly. "Not like you mean. And..."
He swallowed and sat back, not letting his eyes leave Booth's.
"I understand that I can never understand," he said, "but I have blood on my hands. I'm soaking in it. It's my legacy."
If he was strong enough not to reach over and trace the pale rivulet of butter that fled like blood from a rip in Booth's palm, stong enough not to reach and sweep the salty remnants over the indigo ink embedded in the tender flesh of his wrist and bring it back to his mouth just to taste him. If he could recognize traces of the blood he shed, of the lives he ended, of the lovers he touched...
If he was strong enough to resist, Jack knew he'd be strong enough to find the answers to questions he'd never dared voice. If he could think past the hammering of his pulse in his ears...
What the hell am I doing? What the fuck is wrong with me?
There was more than he could bear to see in the shadows carved in Booth's face, but Jack didn't turn away.
Seeley absentmindedly wiped his hand with a napkin, bit into the soft, flaky croissant and took a drink from his beer.
He leaned back and watched as Jack got up, fed the fire and returned. Seeley could feel the tension pour from the scientist, the anguish. And a kind of heat that intrigued Booth. Attracted him like a magnet. Desire. Need.
Beautiful blue eyes. Soft lips that were wet from teeth and tongue. Seeley found himself wondering what tastes he would find in Jack's mouth. Or on the skin of his body.
"That's exactly what I mean, Hodgins." Booth tipped up the bottle, took another swallow.
"Who in your family is capable of actual, physical murder?"
The laugh bubbled up, unbidden, breaking Jack's tense concentration.
He shook his head and reached for his bowl.
"There's a list. And it's about as long as you'd think," he said, turning the attention he wanted to give to Booth to the matter of eating dinner. Answering the question.
"A good start would be my maternal family. You know, the wannabees and poseurs. My mother's family is less...principled than my father's."
Jack smiled and turned his attention to the sheen of butter on Seeley's lower lip and the tiny crumb of flaky pastry that clung to the curve of his mouth. With an audible swallow, he stared into the bowl as though it held the secrets of the universe.
"My mother is the youngest of seven. Her maiden name is Lindgren. Lindgren Energy," he sighed, scraping the last of the liquid from his dish with a morsel of bread. "Right there's enough merderous intent to keep you busy for weeks."
"So now we simply need to figure out what Lucille might have seen or overheard or ... participated in?"
Booth threw that last part out there to guage Jack's reaction. To perhaps pull the other man out of these depressive memories and spark something that would help.
"Who would've been out on the coast in autumn? Is there a log we can check? People we should be talking to?"
Seeley twirled his empty bottle of beer on the coffee table between his fingers.
Of course.
Whatever ease he'd allowed himself to feel coiled inaward, taut and hard. Jack drained the last of his beer and pushed the thought out of his mind, but it was replaced instead by something he'd heard, a poem or a song, something about the heart's metallurgy, something about the inability to silver to gold, no matter how desperately you want it...
He lifted himself from the couch and padded behind Booth into the kitchen, following the scrumptious aroma of the late-season stew.
"It's got to be something that happenned in the intervening years of our friendship," Jack said. "Lucille was warm and funny and smart; smart enough to be seen and not heard, which is your primary asset when working for rich families. Whatever she overheard or saw she would have taken to her grave because that's what good servants do."
The words were bitter on his tongue.
"Good servants," he muttered, levering himself up on the kitchen counter. "Nothing teaches you to keep your mouth shut like losing a parent to the secret police."
Reply
"What would someone in your family have done that is worth killing for? And when did you guys pin-point this murder? Last summer? Fall?"
Reply
Think, idiot.
"Judging from the rate of decomp she died in autumn." Jack tugged a mouthful of beer and watched the muscles flex and release in Booth's forearms as he shaped the putty into thin sheets. "Man, what hasn't anyone in my family done? Pick a sin, baby. Damn sure a Hodgins is guilty of it."
Reply
Seeley cut the dough at right angles and started rolling up triangles. He stopped once to take another drink and caught himself wishing for something more than beer, something stronger, but this was not the time, not the night. Not now. Not here.
"No doubt at all. Been around too long, seen too much. But your family has the money to buy themselves out of anything. Why kill to keep it under wraps?"
He tossed the croissants on a pan and put them in the warming oven.
"Twelve minutes. Hungry?"
Reply
What he has is an appetite whet by the sight of someone baking, by the mouth-watering scent of a home-cooked meal, stoked by two quick beers on a very empty stomach.
"Starving," he sighed.
That's truer than Jack wants to admit about the entirety of his life lately. So the impulse to confess -- the strange, nearly incombatible need to spill out every thought to Booth for some goddamn reason -- stays under control.
"Had to be totally impulsive, because you are right. The world is their carpet, Booth, and all manner of shit is beneath it that you and god's army will never, ever find. I can't help thinking whovever killed Lucille didn't intend to."
Reply
Seeley met Jack's eyes for a moment. And there was too much there. Too many questions. Too much information. Too easy to read his own desires into the appetite that he had only caught glimpses of in rare moments.
Seeley eyes flickered away as he leaned against the counter, waited for the bread to finish baking. He'd washed his hands, but there was still floured fingerprints on his bottle of beer and Seeley wiped them away with a dishtowel while he thought about families and lies ... and people too rich to care.
"How close were you and Lucille?"
Reply
"We were dear friends," he sighed, staring at the rows of corduroy stretched over his knees. "We would sit in that maze and talk any time we got the chance. For hours, when we could.
"Most domestics don't dare break down that wall between their true selves and the lives of their charges," he said, speaking to his knees. "When they do it never ends well because when all's said and done they work for you. There's a line you can't cross."
He looked up to see Booth watching him, and it brought a deep flush of heat from mid-chest, sweeping toward his face. Jack ducked his head down, examining the label on the empty bottle of Bass warming in his hands.
"There's a line you shouldn't cross," he admitted, reminding himself that it is true, still. Now. "There are too many differences that can't be bridged, sometimes."
Suddenly, Jack wasn't sure who he was talking about.
"Race. Class. Station," he clarified, clearing his throat. "But we ignored all of it, and it worked. She's one of the best people I've ever known."
He jumped down from the counter and turned his back to Booth to get another beer.
"We were close enough that I'd know if she was murdered, evidence or no fucking evidence."
Reply
Seeley tucked his beer in the crook of his elbow, picked up his plate and the wicker basket. His head tilted to the living room.
"Let's eat."
After setting everything down on the coffee table, Booth turned on the television. The sound was muted, but he didn't need to hear the inane commentary of the announcers to keep an eye on the score. Hockey playoffs and even if it wasn't his team, it was a suitable distraction. From exactly what ... Seeley wasn't ready to examine.
Reply
He wanted to reach for plates, help out, reach out the way friends will when they dine together, but he didn't. Instead, he willed himself to be a guest, transient and apart from Booth. The distance tightened his gut and did nothing to quell his nerves but he knew it was the right thing to do.
Necessary.
Remember, he thought,remember the reason you're here. This is an investigation, and the setting doesn't matter. Stick to the reason.
As he sat next to Booth on the sofa, he wished to Christ for a more formal setting, athiesm be damned.
He leaned into the cavernous bowl of stew and let the scent fill him, let the weight of the silver spoon in his hand ease him, and tasted the stew.
"This is fucking amazing," he whispered. "Who taught you to cook?"
Reply
"My mother, first. Being in the kitchen with her was the only time I could find her alone and if you weren't helping out, you'd better get out.
"The army, second. MREs are nothing but base food. You can eat them, but when you're stuck out in the desert and that's all you've got, you learn to improvise. You have to. I got pretty good at making meals out of packs."
Another bite and Seeley closed his eyes. For a second he wasn't in his living room, he wasn't in his house. He wasn't in the great United States of America. He was in the sand again, under a sky that he couldn't stop looking at. Stars and black, the smell of smoke from burning oil wells so strong that it seemed he'd never get it off his skin. Never get it out of his nose or off his lips.
Seeley glanced over and watched Jack eat his stew. Seeley's fingers tightened on the knife he held in his hand and butter dripped. It ran down the palm of his hand to his wrist. Warm, melted tears.
"Ever killed anyone, Hodgins?"
Reply
Menace. Pain. Desperation.
He felt it as if it was his own, felt the weight of galaxies on his back but held his gaze on the bowl of comfort food. Let the crackling fire respond, spitting and sparking, consuming oxygen, ravenous and begging to be fed.
Jack placed his bowl on the table and stood. Walked over to the log holder, grabbed a few pieces of wood, opened the curtain and tossed them on the pile. Blue-orange flames licked and curled beneath the intrusion, and Jack watched it catch and brighten, then took his place on the couch next to his host.
The infinite blackness in Seeley's eyes could show him nothing but a dare, or everything in the world.
So he stared into them, as would have with Lucille. It was against every instinct, but he kept his hands loose in his lap, to himself.
"No," he said softly. "Not like you mean. And..."
He swallowed and sat back, not letting his eyes leave Booth's.
"I understand that I can never understand," he said, "but I have blood on my hands. I'm soaking in it. It's my legacy."
If he was strong enough not to reach over and trace the pale rivulet of butter that fled like blood from a rip in Booth's palm, stong enough not to reach and sweep the salty remnants over the indigo ink embedded in the tender flesh of his wrist and bring it back to his mouth just to taste him. If he could recognize traces of the blood he shed, of the lives he ended, of the lovers he touched...
If he was strong enough to resist, Jack knew he'd be strong enough to find the answers to questions he'd never dared voice. If he could think past the hammering of his pulse in his ears...
What the hell am I doing? What the fuck is wrong with me?
There was more than he could bear to see in the shadows carved in Booth's face, but Jack didn't turn away.
Reply
He leaned back and watched as Jack got up, fed the fire and returned. Seeley could feel the tension pour from the scientist, the anguish. And a kind of heat that intrigued Booth. Attracted him like a magnet. Desire. Need.
Beautiful blue eyes. Soft lips that were wet from teeth and tongue. Seeley found himself wondering what tastes he would find in Jack's mouth. Or on the skin of his body.
"That's exactly what I mean, Hodgins." Booth tipped up the bottle, took another swallow.
"Who in your family is capable of actual, physical murder?"
Reply
He shook his head and reached for his bowl.
"There's a list. And it's about as long as you'd think," he said, turning the attention he wanted to give to Booth to the matter of eating dinner. Answering the question.
"A good start would be my maternal family. You know, the wannabees and poseurs. My mother's family is less...principled than my father's."
Jack smiled and turned his attention to the sheen of butter on Seeley's lower lip and the tiny crumb of flaky pastry that clung to the curve of his mouth. With an audible swallow, he stared into the bowl as though it held the secrets of the universe.
"My mother is the youngest of seven. Her maiden name is Lindgren. Lindgren Energy," he sighed, scraping the last of the liquid from his dish with a morsel of bread. "Right there's enough merderous intent to keep you busy for weeks."
Reply
Booth threw that last part out there to guage Jack's reaction. To perhaps pull the other man out of these depressive memories and spark something that would help.
"Who would've been out on the coast in autumn? Is there a log we can check? People we should be talking to?"
Seeley twirled his empty bottle of beer on the coffee table between his fingers.
"Tell me what you're thinking, Hodgins."
Reply
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