Weary, Bone Deep (Bones/Torchwood) PG-13
From the What the Ficathon! My very first Bones story ever!
Weary, Bone Deep
A Bones/Torchwood crossover
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Sometimes it takes an encounter with a stranger to break the walls down.
Disclaimer: Hanson and Fox own Bones. Russell T. Davis and the BBC own Torchwood.
Rating: PG-13 for innuendo
Setting/Spoilers: The end of season 3 for Bones and season 2 of Torchwood. Spoilers for all the revelations therein.
Characters: Temperance Brennan and Jack Harkness, team Bones. A little Bones/Harkness action in a way that isn't at all about that slash.
Words: 2,295
Notes: For bessemerprocess in the What the Ficathon. Prompts were for Bones and Torchwood.
Link to the ficathon comm: [ Angela Montenegro never took her eyes off the couple on the raised platform in the center of the lab. "Someone's going to get lucky." ]
Story under the cut
~~~
"What's going on?"
Angela Montenegro never took her eyes off the couple on the raised platform in the center of the lab. "Someone's going to get lucky."
At her side, Jack Hodgins rolled his eyes. "You can't know that," he said for the third time.
Cam Saroyan looked between her two employees. "I was only gone for a minute," she protested mildly.
"Doesn't matter," Angela replied, sounding too smug by half. "This guy is good."
Hodgins muttered under his breath, but Cam tuned him out to examine the scene before her. Temperance Brennan was on one side of the metal examination table, going over the old Welsh skeleton brought in that very morning, and on the other side of the table stood the British Home Office man, or whatever he was, with an old-time military overcoat and a smile just too enthusiastic to be allowed.
Then, as Cam watched, something odd happened.
Brennan blushed at something the man said.
Temperance Brennan blushed.
The next instant, Brennan's chin was up and she was smiling back at the man, her eyes wide and her head tilted slightly and she was flirting with this strange man from Wales and Cam wasn't sure if she'd accidentally walked into Opposite Land at some point.
Angela, who had been watching Brennan as closely as Cam, was nodding sagely. "Oh yeah," she said in a low voice. "He's totally in."
Suddenly, Hodgins went still. "Huh," he said. Cam followed his gaze across the lab, and saw...
"Oh man," Angela whispered.
"Impending cock-blockage," Hodgins added, as Seeley Booth strode across the floor, intent on the papers in his hands. The man was headed directly for the examination area where Captain Jack Harkness still flirted with Brennan.
Booth came to a halt at the bottom of the platform, fumbling with his security card. As he swiped for entry, his gaze lifted to where Brennan was smiling at the Captain.
"Or impending homicide," Cam said, pushing off the wall when she saw the expression on Booth's face, the sudden tenseness of his shoulders.
"Hey!" Booth shouted, startling everyone in the room into stillness. Brennan and the Captain both looked up from the body at the same time. "You son of a bitch!"
To Cam's everlasting surprise, a wide grin split the Captain's face. "Booth, what the hell are you doing here?" the man demanded, coming round the table, hand outstretched.
Booth bounded up the steps, taking the Captain’s hand in his and shaking it hard. "It's good to see you, Harkness!"
The Captain slapped Booth on the back. "I never thought I'd see you here in DC!"
"Yeah, they made me Special Agent," Booth said, trying (and failing) to sound humble. He tossed his papers on a desk. "What are you doing here?"
The Captain nodded in the direction of the bone table. "I brought over someone we found out near Llanfihangel-nant-bran, all very historical and anthropological," he said. He turned back to Brennan, who had been watching the encounter (probably viewed as some typical archaic male greeting ritual, Cam mused) with a raised eyebrow.
"So you've met Bones here?" Booth said, giving Brennan a wide smile as she glared at him.
"I was trying to get her to take me out for dinner in exchange for bringing her a puzzle like this." Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his feet. He looked at ease, but there was something around his eyes that left Cam wondering exactly how much, if anything, Captain Harkness missed in the interaction between Brennan and Booth.
"How about that Thai place on Grant?" Booth suggested. "When me and Bones were there last week, they had this fish thing that's just great. It'll melt your face, but yeah. Wow."
At Cam's side, Hodgins chuckled. "Marking the territory, point to Booth." Angela elbowed him in the ribs.
"I wasn't sure how fast I can get done," Brennan said slowly. She looked between Booth and the Captain, and there was uncertainty on her face.
Jack angled his face at Brennan, but kept his body as if he were still speaking to Booth. "If you're up for it, I am." His words were innocent enough, but a quick flash of a grin left no doubt as to his true meaning.
Brennan straightened up, that stubborn look on her face. "Then I am too," she declared.
"Great!" Jack glanced at Booth. "You want come with us? Always room for one more."
Angela choked.
"No thanks," Booth said easily, as if he had just heard the words and not the innuendo but honestly, no man was that dense. "Parker's baseball team is having a welcoming dinner for the parents. I'm doomed to hot dogs and jell-o salad tonight."
Jack let out an exaggerated shudder. "I'm not sure even I could survive that. Maybe next time I'm in town?"
"You're on," Booth said, shaking Jack's hand once again. "See you tomorrow, Bones?"
"We have that meeting at nine."
"Then I'll see you at five to nine." With a wink and a grin, Booth turned and walked off the platform. As he passed Cam, Angela and Hodgins standing by the wall, he gave them a funny look, but kept going.
"Did he..." Hodgins breathed when Booth was safely away.
"Uh huh," Angela whimpered.
"Ask Booth out on the date with him and Brennan?" Hodgins kept on.
"Oh, he certainly did," Cam breathed.
On the platform, Brennan was stripping off her gloves and getting ready to leave. The Captain had his total attention on the woman, hanging on her every word and action with what appeared sincere interest.
"That would be so hot," Angela said dreamily. When Hodgins sputtered, she turned on him. "What? You'd totally be into a guy with two chicks."
"That's different!"
"How? What if it was me and Brennan?"
The changing expression on Hodgins' face was almost comical. Angela rolled her eyes and stalked off, leaving Hodgins to trail along, protesting the whole time.
Cam was left to watch Brennan lock up the skeleton for the night, and eventually take Captain Harkness to her office, then out the doors on the way out of the building.
There was certainly more to Captain Jack Harkness than met the eye.
~~~
Temperance clawed her way up from sleep, eyes opening into soft darkness as the nightmare tried to drag her back into the copper-scented black.
She sat up on the bed, only dimly aware of the other person. She paid no mind to the man reading in her bed, paid no attention to the soft bedside light or the distant street noises outside. Part of her was still in the nightmare with Zack, his ruined hands buried elbow deep in Booth's bleeding body.
She flung the covers back and stumbled out of bed, grabbing her robe and pulling it on automatically as she walked to the window, pushing back the curtains to stare down at the Washington night.
She hadn't dreamed of Zack in weeks, and now it was as if no time had passed at all.
There was no way of telling how long she stood by the window, head pressed against the cool glass, staring down at nothing as the familiar betrayal and uncertainty and loss swarmed through her head. She'd once tried to quantify what she felt, tried to make it logical and put it into lines and orderly rows, but her unconscious self defied categorization.
What happened with Zack wasn't logical. It wasn't right and Temperance had no way of digging herself free of the shame and guilt.
Even though it wasn't her fault.
Even though she hadn’t done anything.
Which might in itself be the problem.
A hand appeared at her side, holding out a glass of water. She took it blindly and drank, trying to wash the imagined taste of blood from her mouth.
"Do you want me to put some coffee on?" Jack asked, very careful to stay just far enough away not to touch her. "Or do you think you'll be able to get back to sleep?"
Temperance looked at the clock. Three in the morning. She'd have to be up in three hours in any event, and she knew from past experiences that she wasn't going to sleep again that night. "Some coffee might be nice," she said.
Jack nodded and went to retrieve his shirt. She noted that he'd already put on his pants before he had fetched the water, and she approved of the method behind his actions.
Anything to avoid thinking about her nightmare.
She followed him into the kitchen, watched as he rooted around in the unfamiliar room. He only opened a few wrong drawers before he had the coffee brewing and cups ready on the counter.
"You were reading," she said after a few minutes.
"Yeah, I was." No dissembling, no wondering what she was talking about. He just knew, and that was reassuring in an oddly disturbing way. He wasn't faking ignorance when he already knew the answer.
Temperance liked that. She was tired of fake people.
"I don't sleep," he said. His hip rested against the counter, his suspenders hanging down, his shirt untucked. She wondered how old he was. "And that book was interesting."
"What book was it?" The coffee smell seeped into her brain, drawing her more firmly into wakefulness.
"One of yours," Jack said, smiling a little. "The first one. It's interesting."
"It is," Temperance agreed. She knew she was supposed to follow social norms and to disagree, to say oh, it wasn't that great or something equally false, but she didn't care. Not tonight. "Why don't you sleep?"
"Don't need to," Jack said. He placed one hand on the counter, palm flat. "How long have you been having nightmares?"
She started to ask him how he knew this one wasn't her first, but her own mind pieced the parts together. She'd gotten up from the bed and put on her robe as an extension of the dream, with the practiced ease of repetition.
Too much repetition.
The coffee maker made its burbling sound to indicate a full pot. Jack stirred himself to pour out two cups. He handed one to her without a word.
She sipped. Very dark, very strong, and enough to jolt her to full waking.
Eventually, the silence prompted her to speak. "Aren't you going to ask me what I dreamed about? People normally do things like that." She thought, anyway. She didn't know and wasn't sure if that was a thing she could ask Booth about.
Jack paused in pouring himself another cup of coffee to shrug. "It's none of my business." He set the pot back on the burner. "What a person dreams about... well, that's their own lookout."
He spoke strangely, in an American accent with odd turns of phrase. Temperance had found his speech patterns fascinating all throughout dinner. "Is that why you don't dream?"
As the words came out of her mouth, Jack looked down, and she wondered if she had stepped over a social line.
"That's a long story," he said when he glanced up. There was no annoyance on his face, just resignation. "But..." He sighed. "I lost two of my people a few months ago. It's..." He let out a dry cough. "Two more nightmares in the mess."
He looked so alone, so apart, and Temperance didn't want him to feel like that. So she reached across the space between them and put her hand on his arm, and something on his face softened at the touch and that was okay.
"I lost someone a few months ago, too," she said hesitantly. The words weren't a lie. She'd lost Zack to himself, to what he'd thought, to what he'd believed, and it hurt as much as if he'd died in that exposition in the lab.
Jack blinked, eyes steady on hers, and when she didn't protest, he closed the distance between them and laid a soft kiss on her lips, then another, and another.
It was one way to drive the nightmares away, in any event.
~~~
Angela bounded into Brennan's office at eight the next morning, armed with two double espresso mochas, and wasn't at all surprised to see Brenn already at her desk.
"So?" Angela demanded, dropping into the chair across the desk.
Brennan looked up from her stack of paperwork. "So?" she echoed.
Angela pushed the drink across the desk to her friend. "So, how was last night?"
Brennan looked down again, but not before Angela caught the way her friend blushed.
"Ha!"
"What 'ha'?" Brennan asked. "I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to!" Angela sat back in her chair. "So. Did you ask him how he knows Booth?"
"There was a conference in New York," Brennan said. She pulled the mocha towards her and took a sip. "Ang, there have to be about eight hundred calories in this cup."
"I'll bet you worked them all off last night," Angela said with a wave of her hand. "See? You're not denying it."
"You're dangerous when you're caffeinated," Brennan said, but she was smiling again.
"I know." Angela put her feet up on the desk. "Now, tell Auntie Angela all about your evening."
"It was... nice," Brennan said, sipping at her drink. "Jack was... interesting."
"Two heavy pauses in as many sentences," Angela said approvingly. "How 'interesting' was he?"
"Very." Brennan picked at the cup lid for a moment, her gaze far-away. "It was nice to talk to someone who... understood things."
Angela raised an eyebrow at that mysterious statement. Brennan hadn't been in a mood to talk about much of anything, ever since Zack... well, since Zack.
It seemed that this stranger had been good for Brennan, after all.
end fic
Weary, Bone Deep
A Bones/Torchwood crossover
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Sometimes it takes an encounter with a stranger to break the walls down.
Disclaimer: Hanson and Fox own Bones. Russell T. Davis and the BBC own Torchwood.
Rating: PG-13 for innuendo
Setting/Spoilers: The end of season 3 for Bones and season 2 of Torchwood. Spoilers for all the revelations therein.
Characters: Temperance Brennan and Jack Harkness, team Bones. A little Bones/Harkness action in a way that isn't at all about that slash.
Words: 2,295
Notes: For bessemerprocess in the What the Ficathon. Prompts were for Bones and Torchwood.
Link to the ficathon comm: [ Angela Montenegro never took her eyes off the couple on the raised platform in the center of the lab. "Someone's going to get lucky." ]
Story under the cut
~~~
"What's going on?"
Angela Montenegro never took her eyes off the couple on the raised platform in the center of the lab. "Someone's going to get lucky."
At her side, Jack Hodgins rolled his eyes. "You can't know that," he said for the third time.
Cam Saroyan looked between her two employees. "I was only gone for a minute," she protested mildly.
"Doesn't matter," Angela replied, sounding too smug by half. "This guy is good."
Hodgins muttered under his breath, but Cam tuned him out to examine the scene before her. Temperance Brennan was on one side of the metal examination table, going over the old Welsh skeleton brought in that very morning, and on the other side of the table stood the British Home Office man, or whatever he was, with an old-time military overcoat and a smile just too enthusiastic to be allowed.
Then, as Cam watched, something odd happened.
Brennan blushed at something the man said.
Temperance Brennan blushed.
The next instant, Brennan's chin was up and she was smiling back at the man, her eyes wide and her head tilted slightly and she was flirting with this strange man from Wales and Cam wasn't sure if she'd accidentally walked into Opposite Land at some point.
Angela, who had been watching Brennan as closely as Cam, was nodding sagely. "Oh yeah," she said in a low voice. "He's totally in."
Suddenly, Hodgins went still. "Huh," he said. Cam followed his gaze across the lab, and saw...
"Oh man," Angela whispered.
"Impending cock-blockage," Hodgins added, as Seeley Booth strode across the floor, intent on the papers in his hands. The man was headed directly for the examination area where Captain Jack Harkness still flirted with Brennan.
Booth came to a halt at the bottom of the platform, fumbling with his security card. As he swiped for entry, his gaze lifted to where Brennan was smiling at the Captain.
"Or impending homicide," Cam said, pushing off the wall when she saw the expression on Booth's face, the sudden tenseness of his shoulders.
"Hey!" Booth shouted, startling everyone in the room into stillness. Brennan and the Captain both looked up from the body at the same time. "You son of a bitch!"
To Cam's everlasting surprise, a wide grin split the Captain's face. "Booth, what the hell are you doing here?" the man demanded, coming round the table, hand outstretched.
Booth bounded up the steps, taking the Captain’s hand in his and shaking it hard. "It's good to see you, Harkness!"
The Captain slapped Booth on the back. "I never thought I'd see you here in DC!"
"Yeah, they made me Special Agent," Booth said, trying (and failing) to sound humble. He tossed his papers on a desk. "What are you doing here?"
The Captain nodded in the direction of the bone table. "I brought over someone we found out near Llanfihangel-nant-bran, all very historical and anthropological," he said. He turned back to Brennan, who had been watching the encounter (probably viewed as some typical archaic male greeting ritual, Cam mused) with a raised eyebrow.
"So you've met Bones here?" Booth said, giving Brennan a wide smile as she glared at him.
"I was trying to get her to take me out for dinner in exchange for bringing her a puzzle like this." Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his feet. He looked at ease, but there was something around his eyes that left Cam wondering exactly how much, if anything, Captain Harkness missed in the interaction between Brennan and Booth.
"How about that Thai place on Grant?" Booth suggested. "When me and Bones were there last week, they had this fish thing that's just great. It'll melt your face, but yeah. Wow."
At Cam's side, Hodgins chuckled. "Marking the territory, point to Booth." Angela elbowed him in the ribs.
"I wasn't sure how fast I can get done," Brennan said slowly. She looked between Booth and the Captain, and there was uncertainty on her face.
Jack angled his face at Brennan, but kept his body as if he were still speaking to Booth. "If you're up for it, I am." His words were innocent enough, but a quick flash of a grin left no doubt as to his true meaning.
Brennan straightened up, that stubborn look on her face. "Then I am too," she declared.
"Great!" Jack glanced at Booth. "You want come with us? Always room for one more."
Angela choked.
"No thanks," Booth said easily, as if he had just heard the words and not the innuendo but honestly, no man was that dense. "Parker's baseball team is having a welcoming dinner for the parents. I'm doomed to hot dogs and jell-o salad tonight."
Jack let out an exaggerated shudder. "I'm not sure even I could survive that. Maybe next time I'm in town?"
"You're on," Booth said, shaking Jack's hand once again. "See you tomorrow, Bones?"
"We have that meeting at nine."
"Then I'll see you at five to nine." With a wink and a grin, Booth turned and walked off the platform. As he passed Cam, Angela and Hodgins standing by the wall, he gave them a funny look, but kept going.
"Did he..." Hodgins breathed when Booth was safely away.
"Uh huh," Angela whimpered.
"Ask Booth out on the date with him and Brennan?" Hodgins kept on.
"Oh, he certainly did," Cam breathed.
On the platform, Brennan was stripping off her gloves and getting ready to leave. The Captain had his total attention on the woman, hanging on her every word and action with what appeared sincere interest.
"That would be so hot," Angela said dreamily. When Hodgins sputtered, she turned on him. "What? You'd totally be into a guy with two chicks."
"That's different!"
"How? What if it was me and Brennan?"
The changing expression on Hodgins' face was almost comical. Angela rolled her eyes and stalked off, leaving Hodgins to trail along, protesting the whole time.
Cam was left to watch Brennan lock up the skeleton for the night, and eventually take Captain Harkness to her office, then out the doors on the way out of the building.
There was certainly more to Captain Jack Harkness than met the eye.
~~~
Temperance clawed her way up from sleep, eyes opening into soft darkness as the nightmare tried to drag her back into the copper-scented black.
She sat up on the bed, only dimly aware of the other person. She paid no mind to the man reading in her bed, paid no attention to the soft bedside light or the distant street noises outside. Part of her was still in the nightmare with Zack, his ruined hands buried elbow deep in Booth's bleeding body.
She flung the covers back and stumbled out of bed, grabbing her robe and pulling it on automatically as she walked to the window, pushing back the curtains to stare down at the Washington night.
She hadn't dreamed of Zack in weeks, and now it was as if no time had passed at all.
There was no way of telling how long she stood by the window, head pressed against the cool glass, staring down at nothing as the familiar betrayal and uncertainty and loss swarmed through her head. She'd once tried to quantify what she felt, tried to make it logical and put it into lines and orderly rows, but her unconscious self defied categorization.
What happened with Zack wasn't logical. It wasn't right and Temperance had no way of digging herself free of the shame and guilt.
Even though it wasn't her fault.
Even though she hadn’t done anything.
Which might in itself be the problem.
A hand appeared at her side, holding out a glass of water. She took it blindly and drank, trying to wash the imagined taste of blood from her mouth.
"Do you want me to put some coffee on?" Jack asked, very careful to stay just far enough away not to touch her. "Or do you think you'll be able to get back to sleep?"
Temperance looked at the clock. Three in the morning. She'd have to be up in three hours in any event, and she knew from past experiences that she wasn't going to sleep again that night. "Some coffee might be nice," she said.
Jack nodded and went to retrieve his shirt. She noted that he'd already put on his pants before he had fetched the water, and she approved of the method behind his actions.
Anything to avoid thinking about her nightmare.
She followed him into the kitchen, watched as he rooted around in the unfamiliar room. He only opened a few wrong drawers before he had the coffee brewing and cups ready on the counter.
"You were reading," she said after a few minutes.
"Yeah, I was." No dissembling, no wondering what she was talking about. He just knew, and that was reassuring in an oddly disturbing way. He wasn't faking ignorance when he already knew the answer.
Temperance liked that. She was tired of fake people.
"I don't sleep," he said. His hip rested against the counter, his suspenders hanging down, his shirt untucked. She wondered how old he was. "And that book was interesting."
"What book was it?" The coffee smell seeped into her brain, drawing her more firmly into wakefulness.
"One of yours," Jack said, smiling a little. "The first one. It's interesting."
"It is," Temperance agreed. She knew she was supposed to follow social norms and to disagree, to say oh, it wasn't that great or something equally false, but she didn't care. Not tonight. "Why don't you sleep?"
"Don't need to," Jack said. He placed one hand on the counter, palm flat. "How long have you been having nightmares?"
She started to ask him how he knew this one wasn't her first, but her own mind pieced the parts together. She'd gotten up from the bed and put on her robe as an extension of the dream, with the practiced ease of repetition.
Too much repetition.
The coffee maker made its burbling sound to indicate a full pot. Jack stirred himself to pour out two cups. He handed one to her without a word.
She sipped. Very dark, very strong, and enough to jolt her to full waking.
Eventually, the silence prompted her to speak. "Aren't you going to ask me what I dreamed about? People normally do things like that." She thought, anyway. She didn't know and wasn't sure if that was a thing she could ask Booth about.
Jack paused in pouring himself another cup of coffee to shrug. "It's none of my business." He set the pot back on the burner. "What a person dreams about... well, that's their own lookout."
He spoke strangely, in an American accent with odd turns of phrase. Temperance had found his speech patterns fascinating all throughout dinner. "Is that why you don't dream?"
As the words came out of her mouth, Jack looked down, and she wondered if she had stepped over a social line.
"That's a long story," he said when he glanced up. There was no annoyance on his face, just resignation. "But..." He sighed. "I lost two of my people a few months ago. It's..." He let out a dry cough. "Two more nightmares in the mess."
He looked so alone, so apart, and Temperance didn't want him to feel like that. So she reached across the space between them and put her hand on his arm, and something on his face softened at the touch and that was okay.
"I lost someone a few months ago, too," she said hesitantly. The words weren't a lie. She'd lost Zack to himself, to what he'd thought, to what he'd believed, and it hurt as much as if he'd died in that exposition in the lab.
Jack blinked, eyes steady on hers, and when she didn't protest, he closed the distance between them and laid a soft kiss on her lips, then another, and another.
It was one way to drive the nightmares away, in any event.
~~~
Angela bounded into Brennan's office at eight the next morning, armed with two double espresso mochas, and wasn't at all surprised to see Brenn already at her desk.
"So?" Angela demanded, dropping into the chair across the desk.
Brennan looked up from her stack of paperwork. "So?" she echoed.
Angela pushed the drink across the desk to her friend. "So, how was last night?"
Brennan looked down again, but not before Angela caught the way her friend blushed.
"Ha!"
"What 'ha'?" Brennan asked. "I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to!" Angela sat back in her chair. "So. Did you ask him how he knows Booth?"
"There was a conference in New York," Brennan said. She pulled the mocha towards her and took a sip. "Ang, there have to be about eight hundred calories in this cup."
"I'll bet you worked them all off last night," Angela said with a wave of her hand. "See? You're not denying it."
"You're dangerous when you're caffeinated," Brennan said, but she was smiling again.
"I know." Angela put her feet up on the desk. "Now, tell Auntie Angela all about your evening."
"It was... nice," Brennan said, sipping at her drink. "Jack was... interesting."
"Two heavy pauses in as many sentences," Angela said approvingly. "How 'interesting' was he?"
"Very." Brennan picked at the cup lid for a moment, her gaze far-away. "It was nice to talk to someone who... understood things."
Angela raised an eyebrow at that mysterious statement. Brennan hadn't been in a mood to talk about much of anything, ever since Zack... well, since Zack.
It seemed that this stranger had been good for Brennan, after all.
end fic