For the bugs_n_slime ficathon
Angie at Dawn (Just Like Nicky Hopkins)
by lostakasha
Jack/Angela
PG-13
Not mine.
Beta by sweptawaybayou.
Feedback is cherished. Thank you.
Don't get the title reference? Google is your friend.
Prompt: The people with money and guns will do what they want and everyone else will pay until the whole world blows up or burns out or whatever. - Anne Fleming (The Middle Of Infinity)
Summary: Takes place immediately after Two Aliens in a Spaceship. Angela goes home with Jack.
Angie at Dawn (Just Like Nicky Hopkins)
Three hours and thirty minutes into a new day. Three hours and thirty minutes out of the worst day of Angela’s life, and he’s still animated: furious, fighting exhaustion, still making fucking sense, and it’s beginning to wear her down.
Splayed out on Jack’s bed in a pair of his flannel pajama bottoms and a worn-to-tissue tee with the ghost of the Black Panther Party emblem on the front, she’s dozing to the rolling beats of his speech pattern. She feigns interest when he pauses, expecting her reply: a pat on the elbow, a quick nod, yeah, uh-huh, right.
Giving in to his insistence that they sleep at his place made sense. Familiarity. Lots of room. A promise to sleep as long as she’d be by his side when he woke.
Now if he’d actually sleep…
“Neo-hierarchical… Kant… this is what you don’t ever hear… act like there’s a simple causal relationship, man? Bullshit. Control ....and we pay, baby. You and me. Until the whole world blows up or burns out… Am I keeping you up?”
“No,” she lies, and kicks her foot from beneath the covers. Cotton-soft, nearly threadbare sheets catch the scent of him and god knows what or who else. Patchouli oil and dying roses, Chandrika soap, the slightest tang of seaweed, and there are mermaids pulling her through abalone chambers, silvery and pearlescent, tempting, conspiring, whispering…
Heaven awaits my miss pearly gates…she’s not what Houston’s used to but she’s mine all mine…
“I’m here,” she gasps, sitting up fast. “Hodgins, you’ve got to try to relax.”
His eyes are too wide, too luminous; they sparkle with something she’s afraid to examine closely. Terror, perhaps, or something worse: emptiness. She swallows past the sudden constriction of her throat and looks anyway.
“Am I that bad?”
“Yes.” She underscores the admission with the sweep of her fingertips on his cheekbone. “I know it’s not easy, but you’ve got to try to rest.”
“I’m trying. I can’t shut my brain off.”
“Then let’s try for calming it down a notch or two. What do you usually do when you can’t stop thinking? Chanting might help.”
Jack snorts and cackles. There’s not a trace of acceptance or mirth in either sound.
“I’ve been chanting, baby. Getting real tired of ohshitdon’twannadie, ohshitdon’twannadie. Or the ever popular ohfuckmeI’mgonnadie, ohfuckmeI’m…”
She closes his lips between thumb and forefinger. They pulse beneath her touch, chewed raw and swollen. Hot. Wincing, she loosens the pinch and pulls away.
“Funny. What else?”
“A 25% THC strain of skunk works. There should be some left in the Hills Bros can…”
“Hills? You, the champion of shade grown liquid tar? You brew wastewater?”
Jack blinks. “No… we… I… no. It was a joke. It’s in the pantry under the counter. If there’s none in there, go down to the basement and…”
“On top of the chemical clusterfuck in your bloodstream? No.”
“I never stop thinking, Angela.”
“You never go blank? Never have a moment where there’s nothing but joy?” The words are barely in the air but she regrets them already. Here it comes, dumbass, and you have nobody to blame but yourself.
When he answers there’s no sly glance, no hopeful puppy eyes, no expression she’s expecting. Flat affect, Brennan would call it; the complete absence of emotion.
“Not lately.”
He turns his head away but she’s seen enough to know he’s not joking.
“I’m tired,” he says, and the gravel in his voice makes the assertion seem true. She presses a kiss to the narrow stretch of sideburn at the hinge of his jaw and scoots her shoulder close to his. The gesture is so sisterly that it surprises her a little. After all, this is still Hodgins: Hodgins of the unstoppable libido, with the constantly coiling Kundalini, the freaky twist of mystic master meets geekzilla. He’s still a poet, a shaman of the weird, and he’s in there, somewhere.
Isn’t he?
“You’re still here,” she tells him as she rests her head on his shoulder and pats his chest. “You’ll get through this.”
She can feel his breath in her hair, the pressure of a kiss. Answer enough, she thinks.
Hoping to lead by example, Angela pretends to sleep. She keeps still and listens to the wind-whipped rain pounding the windows, waiting for thunder and lightning that never comes.
A dozen years after becoming Angela Montenegro she’d nearly forgotten that she was named after a New Orleans jazz bar and one of her mother’s favorite blues singers. Nearly, until Jack and Brennan were sent to their living graves and she paced in her cage and vowed that if they were saved she would open her ungenerous heart to them and tell them her real name.
“It doesn’t matter,” she murmurs.
Jack stirs beneath her. “What?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
~~
The distance between yesterday and this day is unbridgeable. Everything Jack thought he knew and everything and everyone he wanted is different. Have all the lights in his world been snapped on or snuffed? He can’t really tell. That, or the drugs are wearing off and he’s ready to give in and face whatever horrific monster lurks in his dreams.
Dying would have been so much easier than this, he thinks.
A twinge of pain shoots through his shin as he shifts and drags his useless leg over the side of the bed.
Jack crabs out of the bedroom and down the hallway, levering himself past empty rooms and locked doors and so many shadows in the dark. The service elevator at the corridor’s end is still functional; he turns the key, pulls the gate open and hobbles in, then presses the button for the basement floor.
Twenty-three rooms and he lives in six of them: a bedroom, a guest room, a darkroom, the kitchen, the living room, and the music room. He inches through the carved double doors and stops to watch the sky lighten in the east. Indigo rises on the other side of the wide old windows, pushed aloft by a sliver of pale blue and the promise of his first day above ground.
What do you usually do when you can’t stop thinking?
The piano bench scrapes tiny flecks of varnish from rills worn in the wood floor since childhood; the crutches clatter behind him as he slides onto the seat and lifts the lid over the keys.
Three things never fail him: science, sex, or music.
So Jack plays.
~~
”You’re my sweet little secret machine, Rainey. Those gears in your head never stop grinding.”
“Dad, it’s Angela now. You promised.”
“Promises are made to be broken. You’ll always be my sweet Lorraine.”
She stands by the Steinway until she’s invited to sit; the bony-assed piano player hits the chords clumsily, but the words are unmistakable.
“Angie, when will those clouds all disappear?
Angie, Angie…
Where will it lead us from here?”
The room swims as she bolts upright, trembling. The dream clings despite her awareness that she’s not back in Texas and it’s not her birthday - and her charge is not in the bed with her. She stumbles from beneath the covers and checks the bathroom. There’s no sign of him, and somebody’s blasting the Rolling Stones from a room somewhere downstairs.
She follows the sound down the wide staircase and past the living room, realizing as the melody gets louder and clearer that it’s not a recording. Jagger’s voice vanishes into a dim echo from her troubled sleep. What remains is a familiar glissando, a mournfully beautiful progression of chords and notes, a song she knows by heart.
Jack bends over the keys, entranced.
Angie, ain’t it good to be alive?
The last note fades around her as Jack straightens and turns.
“There’s one you’ve never heard,” he says wryly.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispers. “Play it again.”
“It’s trite. Everyone you’ve ever dated’s sung it to you.”
She sits next to him and hits an A. “You’re not singing.”
That gets a small smile.
“Can’t beat Mick singing it to you on your birthday.”
Lorraine Irma Gibbons has secrets. So does Angela Montenegro, and this is one she’s never shared. Jack is smiling wider now, despite heavy lidded eyes ringed by dark circles. Her heart flips and lands in her throat.
“I never told you that. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess. Sixteen?”
The sun pushes ribbons of crimson and peach over the horizon. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. If they make it through this day they’ll live forever.
“Eighteen. And he was a lousy piano player. C’mon,” she coaxes, resting her head on his shoulder. “From the top.”
~~fin~~
by lostakasha
Jack/Angela
PG-13
Not mine.
Beta by sweptawaybayou.
Feedback is cherished. Thank you.
Don't get the title reference? Google is your friend.
Prompt: The people with money and guns will do what they want and everyone else will pay until the whole world blows up or burns out or whatever. - Anne Fleming (The Middle Of Infinity)
Summary: Takes place immediately after Two Aliens in a Spaceship. Angela goes home with Jack.
Angie at Dawn (Just Like Nicky Hopkins)
Three hours and thirty minutes into a new day. Three hours and thirty minutes out of the worst day of Angela’s life, and he’s still animated: furious, fighting exhaustion, still making fucking sense, and it’s beginning to wear her down.
Splayed out on Jack’s bed in a pair of his flannel pajama bottoms and a worn-to-tissue tee with the ghost of the Black Panther Party emblem on the front, she’s dozing to the rolling beats of his speech pattern. She feigns interest when he pauses, expecting her reply: a pat on the elbow, a quick nod, yeah, uh-huh, right.
Giving in to his insistence that they sleep at his place made sense. Familiarity. Lots of room. A promise to sleep as long as she’d be by his side when he woke.
Now if he’d actually sleep…
“Neo-hierarchical… Kant… this is what you don’t ever hear… act like there’s a simple causal relationship, man? Bullshit. Control ....and we pay, baby. You and me. Until the whole world blows up or burns out… Am I keeping you up?”
“No,” she lies, and kicks her foot from beneath the covers. Cotton-soft, nearly threadbare sheets catch the scent of him and god knows what or who else. Patchouli oil and dying roses, Chandrika soap, the slightest tang of seaweed, and there are mermaids pulling her through abalone chambers, silvery and pearlescent, tempting, conspiring, whispering…
Heaven awaits my miss pearly gates…she’s not what Houston’s used to but she’s mine all mine…
“I’m here,” she gasps, sitting up fast. “Hodgins, you’ve got to try to relax.”
His eyes are too wide, too luminous; they sparkle with something she’s afraid to examine closely. Terror, perhaps, or something worse: emptiness. She swallows past the sudden constriction of her throat and looks anyway.
“Am I that bad?”
“Yes.” She underscores the admission with the sweep of her fingertips on his cheekbone. “I know it’s not easy, but you’ve got to try to rest.”
“I’m trying. I can’t shut my brain off.”
“Then let’s try for calming it down a notch or two. What do you usually do when you can’t stop thinking? Chanting might help.”
Jack snorts and cackles. There’s not a trace of acceptance or mirth in either sound.
“I’ve been chanting, baby. Getting real tired of ohshitdon’twannadie, ohshitdon’twannadie. Or the ever popular ohfuckmeI’mgonnadie, ohfuckmeI’m…”
She closes his lips between thumb and forefinger. They pulse beneath her touch, chewed raw and swollen. Hot. Wincing, she loosens the pinch and pulls away.
“Funny. What else?”
“A 25% THC strain of skunk works. There should be some left in the Hills Bros can…”
“Hills? You, the champion of shade grown liquid tar? You brew wastewater?”
Jack blinks. “No… we… I… no. It was a joke. It’s in the pantry under the counter. If there’s none in there, go down to the basement and…”
“On top of the chemical clusterfuck in your bloodstream? No.”
“I never stop thinking, Angela.”
“You never go blank? Never have a moment where there’s nothing but joy?” The words are barely in the air but she regrets them already. Here it comes, dumbass, and you have nobody to blame but yourself.
When he answers there’s no sly glance, no hopeful puppy eyes, no expression she’s expecting. Flat affect, Brennan would call it; the complete absence of emotion.
“Not lately.”
He turns his head away but she’s seen enough to know he’s not joking.
“I’m tired,” he says, and the gravel in his voice makes the assertion seem true. She presses a kiss to the narrow stretch of sideburn at the hinge of his jaw and scoots her shoulder close to his. The gesture is so sisterly that it surprises her a little. After all, this is still Hodgins: Hodgins of the unstoppable libido, with the constantly coiling Kundalini, the freaky twist of mystic master meets geekzilla. He’s still a poet, a shaman of the weird, and he’s in there, somewhere.
Isn’t he?
“You’re still here,” she tells him as she rests her head on his shoulder and pats his chest. “You’ll get through this.”
She can feel his breath in her hair, the pressure of a kiss. Answer enough, she thinks.
Hoping to lead by example, Angela pretends to sleep. She keeps still and listens to the wind-whipped rain pounding the windows, waiting for thunder and lightning that never comes.
A dozen years after becoming Angela Montenegro she’d nearly forgotten that she was named after a New Orleans jazz bar and one of her mother’s favorite blues singers. Nearly, until Jack and Brennan were sent to their living graves and she paced in her cage and vowed that if they were saved she would open her ungenerous heart to them and tell them her real name.
“It doesn’t matter,” she murmurs.
Jack stirs beneath her. “What?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
~~
The distance between yesterday and this day is unbridgeable. Everything Jack thought he knew and everything and everyone he wanted is different. Have all the lights in his world been snapped on or snuffed? He can’t really tell. That, or the drugs are wearing off and he’s ready to give in and face whatever horrific monster lurks in his dreams.
Dying would have been so much easier than this, he thinks.
A twinge of pain shoots through his shin as he shifts and drags his useless leg over the side of the bed.
Jack crabs out of the bedroom and down the hallway, levering himself past empty rooms and locked doors and so many shadows in the dark. The service elevator at the corridor’s end is still functional; he turns the key, pulls the gate open and hobbles in, then presses the button for the basement floor.
Twenty-three rooms and he lives in six of them: a bedroom, a guest room, a darkroom, the kitchen, the living room, and the music room. He inches through the carved double doors and stops to watch the sky lighten in the east. Indigo rises on the other side of the wide old windows, pushed aloft by a sliver of pale blue and the promise of his first day above ground.
What do you usually do when you can’t stop thinking?
The piano bench scrapes tiny flecks of varnish from rills worn in the wood floor since childhood; the crutches clatter behind him as he slides onto the seat and lifts the lid over the keys.
Three things never fail him: science, sex, or music.
So Jack plays.
~~
”You’re my sweet little secret machine, Rainey. Those gears in your head never stop grinding.”
“Dad, it’s Angela now. You promised.”
“Promises are made to be broken. You’ll always be my sweet Lorraine.”
She stands by the Steinway until she’s invited to sit; the bony-assed piano player hits the chords clumsily, but the words are unmistakable.
“Angie, when will those clouds all disappear?
Angie, Angie…
Where will it lead us from here?”
The room swims as she bolts upright, trembling. The dream clings despite her awareness that she’s not back in Texas and it’s not her birthday - and her charge is not in the bed with her. She stumbles from beneath the covers and checks the bathroom. There’s no sign of him, and somebody’s blasting the Rolling Stones from a room somewhere downstairs.
She follows the sound down the wide staircase and past the living room, realizing as the melody gets louder and clearer that it’s not a recording. Jagger’s voice vanishes into a dim echo from her troubled sleep. What remains is a familiar glissando, a mournfully beautiful progression of chords and notes, a song she knows by heart.
Jack bends over the keys, entranced.
Angie, ain’t it good to be alive?
The last note fades around her as Jack straightens and turns.
“There’s one you’ve never heard,” he says wryly.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispers. “Play it again.”
“It’s trite. Everyone you’ve ever dated’s sung it to you.”
She sits next to him and hits an A. “You’re not singing.”
That gets a small smile.
“Can’t beat Mick singing it to you on your birthday.”
Lorraine Irma Gibbons has secrets. So does Angela Montenegro, and this is one she’s never shared. Jack is smiling wider now, despite heavy lidded eyes ringed by dark circles. Her heart flips and lands in her throat.
“I never told you that. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess. Sixteen?”
The sun pushes ribbons of crimson and peach over the horizon. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. If they make it through this day they’ll live forever.
“Eighteen. And he was a lousy piano player. C’mon,” she coaxes, resting her head on his shoulder. “From the top.”
~~fin~~