slashthedrabble angst challenge by Minorgraces

 

Summary:  Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
 

Spoilers: Multiple drabbles, spoilers posted in individual summaries.

 

Notes: For slashthedrabble

 


Win
In Nominé Patris
Watching the Wheels
Twenty Questions
Not Okay

Like I'd Shop At Hallmark
Instruction
Family Values


 





 

Author: Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 309
Warnings: Light BDSM
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see more of this if I did.
For slashthedrabble David Bowie lyrics challenge. The lyrics to Win can be found here.


Win

Me, I'm fresh on your pages
Secret thinker sometimes listening aloud
Life lies dumb on its heroes
Wear your wound with honor, make someone proud
Someone like you should not be allowed
To start any fires


Rendered mute by his coal-black stare, for once my tongue is still and I’m held hostage by my thoughts. Wide, bone-dense wrists strain at vintage silk; that narrow echo of false Steve McQueen cool tethers him to the stainless steel railing in the deserted lab and to the depths of his desire.

Perfect teeth clench and grind, lips strain pale but he doesn’t speak to me, won’t speak to me because he thinks words are my province.

”You’re so full of shit,” he said, pulling hard on the mouth of his beer bottle and staring up at me under lowered lids. “Do you have any idea how impossible it is for an entire society to be in on that delusional conspiracy crap you spout?”

“You gotta go 20,000 leagues beneath the obvious. That’s the impossibility, Booth, digging deep when you have no depths to plumb.”

It was out of his mouth before he could pull it back and sanitize the thought for his protection.

“You have no fucking idea how deep I am.”


He’s out to prove that now, having set only a single guideline for this secret truce behind enemy lines: our own twisted no gag rule. And so he grinds his jaw and spits through porcelain enamel just to show me the depth of his resistance. Not even the bite of thin gold filigree (wound so tightly beneath the head of his cock that it has swollen to a ripe indigo blood boil upon which his shimmering St. Christopher medal rides) will move him to speak.

For once we are bound by silence and by a conspiracy of two.

 

 

Author: Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 600
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see this on screen if I did.
For slashthedrabble angst challenge. x-posted to bones_slash


In Nominé Patris

He’s loose enough to talk about being an altar boy now, tracing the rim of his near-empty glass with a spatulate fingertip. Leans back against the leather banquette and smirks at me, ready for a fight.

“Don’t give me any shit about being Catholic,” he warns, eyes narrowed to slits. “Or any of your ‘religion is the opiate of the people’ crap.”

Open my face like a new prayer book, innocent and fresh. “Nah. That’d be like trying to teach a dog to play the piano. Just wastes my time and annoys the dog.”

And Booth is a big dog, all taut muscle and bared teeth and danger. He’s been like this from the minute he swung his narrow hips into the booth and opened his arms like a crucified thief, consuming his side of the table. He plays it like he’s at Wong Foo’s, striding in and owning the place, but I know he’d never try this game under Sid’s watchful eye.

Not that Sid doesn’t already know, connoisseur of appetites that he is. Booth probably thinks he’s doing him a favor by coming here, by giving him one less secret to keep.

Emboldened by the tight space and dim light I lean forward and feel the damp fabric between my shoulders peel away from my skin. Clench my jaw against an unbidden shiver as sweat curls down my spine and creeps into the cleft of my ass.

“I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because I have offended Thee my God. . .”

Booth’s eyes widen as I slap a fifty on the table and lift myself out of range, head for the door. I don’t look back. Don’t have to. It’s not even a quarter of a block before a massive hand lifts me by the armpit and steers me into an alley between two brownstones.

He towers over me, pushes hard enough to crack my head against the brick wall. Whiff of Crown Royal on his breath makes my eyes sting, but I don’t flinch because no matter what else he might be, he’s still a fed, and I’ll be damned if any one of those clowns will ever make me blink.

“You’ve got a smart mouth, Hodgins.”

No flinching.

“Yeah, I do. And if you think it’s going around your cock you’re mistaken.”

It’s not dark enough that I don’t see his face flush then drain of color. Open palms slam me against the wall for good measure because that’s how they do it in the movies or he thinks that’s what McQueen would do.

So I slam back and push my elbows out to break his stance, reach up, grab a handful of his hair and close the gap between us. Take his mouth and bite more than kiss because that’s part of the game; it has to be rough and raw and this is complete and utter bullshit. Resist the crack of teeth against teeth; remember who I am and what I’ve wanted for all these months and kiss him for real, hot and wet and deep.

Break and swallow traces of blood and whiskey and salt that make my cock stiff and my breath catch in my throat. Push him back, hard, and he looks tasered, rocking back on his heels and cutting me with black, black eyes.

“Fucking feds in dark alleys is against my religion,” I tell him, knocking against his shoulder as I push past. “You want me? You’re gonna have to come to my church.”

 

 

Author: Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: R
Word Count: 200
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see this on screen if I did.
For slashthedrabble humor challenge.



Watching the Wheels

Perched on the edge of the sofa, Booth grazes my belt buckle with long fingers, frowning at the figure cast in pewter. Rubs his thumb over the curved relief, purses his lips.

I can actually see him thinking. Angela noticed the same phenomenon early on; she originally dubbed it the hamster wheel special but over time we’ve shortened it to “Seeley-wheelie.”

“Didn’t think you were superstitious,” he says, taking the beer I offer with a nod.

“Because I’m not.” Stand over him, take a mouthful of my own beer.

“Laughing Buddha, right? Rub his belly for luck?” He lets his hand drop and pretends to decode the Sam Adams label.

I bite back snark because it’s been a horrendously long day, my ass is dragging, and he’s enjoying playing Special Agent I’m Not Really Here To Fuck You, Just Drink Your Beer.

I wish he’d leave and let me go to bed. Alone.

“Hotei was a monk who taught that we find salvation in the now. In what we do today.”

Booth looks up at me, all Seeley-wheelie. Even I know when I’m beat.

“What the hell. Come upstairs and I’ll let you rub my balls for luck.”

 

 

Author: Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: R
Word Count: 600
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see this onscreen if I did.
Lyrics: From Ship of Fools by the Grateful Dead.

For slashthedrabble hurt/comfort challenge. Sequel to In Nomine Patris

Set after Two Bodies In The Lab. Booth is recovering from his injuries, and Jack pays a uncomfortable call.


Twenty Questions

My arrival on his doorstep doesn’t surprise him as much as I thought it might, and he lets me in without protest. Might be the pain meds, but he doesn’t seem stoned.

“You always ring people’s doorbells at one thirty in the morning?”

Give him the once over and hand him my entry fee, a bottle of Herradura. “Still fully clad at this hour? Is that a Ranger thing? We’re always dressed and ready or something?”

“That’s three. You got seventeen more, so use them wisely,” Booth mutters. Virulent streaks of violet and stone bruise yellow mottle his wrist where ruptures still knit, and he struggles to crack the bottle seal. He blinks when I take the bottle back, aim myself for where I think the kitchen might be.

The Dead pours from the stereo, dope-soaked and mournful and strangely Booth-like. If his taste in music is any indication, at least he knows who he is.

Saw your first ship sink and drown
from rocking of the boat
and all that could not sink or swim
was just left there to float. . .


He knows. Doesn’t like it much, nor me particularly, but that doesn’t stop him from standing a little too close to me as I pour the drinks. The heat from his healing bruises is close enough to feel through my sleeve.

“How are you feeling?” Since this is my first visit since his release from the hospital it seems like the thing to ask.

“Like shit. You?”

I won't leave you drifting down
but whoa it makes me wild
with thirty years upon my head
to have you call me child.


The agave nectar slides hot and smooth down my throat, warms deep but not quite enough. Set the glass down on the counter a little too hard, catch his eyes as I move past. This little visit is clearly not the best idea I’ve ever had.

“Take it easy, man.”

Don’t know if he’s groaning because it hurts him to move or what, but my name tumbles out and I think he might’ve tried to reach for the hem of my jacket.

“Hodgins… you fucking show up here in the middle of the fucking night for a shot? What’s that about?”

The stretched-out collar of his sweatshirt shifts, revealing a blossom of thundercloud-dark flesh that seeps up the side of his neck from the greenstick fractures of his clavicle. The sight of it dries the spit in my mouth and makes my dick pulse and thicken, and I can’t tear my eyes away.

“Just wanted to see if you were okay,” and it’s true enough.

This time his fingers connect, crab against my forearm and pinch my jacket sleeve and he squints as he pulls at the cloth.

“Of course I’m not okay,” he hisses, leaning down to close the space between us. “I’m not okay, you are not okay, and neither is this.”

He tastes like cactus needles and beer, laced with something corrosive. Profoundly medicinal. Oxycodone, probably, chased with a dose of soma or something like it. Lean deeper, swab out the first layer of the kiss, blend our distinct flavors into something more sweet than bitter until he turns his face away to draw a ragged breath.

“This can never be okay, understand?”

Link my thumb under the neck of his shirt. Obsidian eyes regard me from beneath lowered lids, but he doesn’t turn back to face me until I pull the fabric tight across his throat.

“That’s four. You’ve got sixteen left,” I tell him. “Use them wisely.”

 

 

Title: Not Okay
Author:
Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: R
Word Count: 700
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see this onscreen if I did.

For chrisleeoctaves because I'm bored silly and she is such a wonderful enabler. I know you'd rather Buffy/Angel, but I must exorcise these demons from mah haid. Tomorrow's another day! Hmm... maybe we can have somebody reading some hot B/A and getting very happy over at creamofchrislee. *thinks real hard*

Sequel to Twenty Questions Set after Two Bodies In The Lab. Later that evening. . .



Not Okay
Because Booth has deemed whatever this is between us to be not okay, he shuns any attempt at affection. It’s as if he’s seen only prison porn, or thinks cops fuck without actually touching each other.

He fights to relax as we sit together on the sofa, my arm looped around his shoulder. Try to guide him closer to me, and he groans and resists, so I lean against him. After a long moment I reach for a sip of tequila and Booth’s heavy hand claps the back of my skull and directs my head toward his lap.

It’s a clever variant on the perp shove he tried on me in the alley. Injury gives me the advantage this time and it’s a snap to slide from beneath his arm, grab his wrist and sink my teeth into the soft flesh covering the underside of his forearm.

“Shit! What the fuck did you do that for?”

“Don’t ever push me. You want something, say so. Want me to go down on you, tell me. Unless you’re part agriophara cinerosa, I can’t read your mind.”

“I’m not agoraphobic. Just….”

Feeling like some kind of Fed Whisperer, I lean in close, follow the jagged trail of a brick red cut over his left eyebrow with my fingertips. Study the pattern of faded scuffs on his cheekbone and learn his chipped pavement skin with my mouth and eyelashes. And wait.

Please.”

That’s the worst thing I can do: make him speak. He wants whatever we do to occur in silence even though he understands, as all trained assassins do, that sounds made by bodies in motion tell more than words can say. They pinpoint location and intent, and scar the world with the force of our most brutal desires, betraying lust and greed and yearning to those who’ve learned to listen.

The scrape of fingernails on worn denim. The clatter of a copper button against tempered glass. Metal teeth gnashing as zippers rip and part. The sigh of leather upholstery contracting beneath lower extremities lifted by instinct and the sudden rush of cool air on passion-fed skin.

Not the least of these are the sounds of our slackened tongues twisting to life and carving cursive declarations of want along the ridges of our tastebuds, lips, and cheeks.

Booth pulls back, scalded by the echoes our mouths make in the tiny living room. Chest heaving from exertion or arousal or pain, he looks at me, big hands light on my thighs.

“This is all I can do,” he whispers, as if I know what he means.

Leaning back, head rolling against the back of the couch, exhaustion draining his face of color. His cock, sprung from his jeans, ruddy and straight against the hem of his sweatshirt, tells another story. His eyes change shape, lenses adjusting to the light or my presence, I’m not sure which.

“I can’t hold you. I can’t lean on you,” he says, squeezing my knee with his good hand as if to add punctuation.

It doesn’t surprise me.

What surprises me is that I actually swallow back the acid that rises in my mouth and temper my reaction. He’s behaving exactly as I expected but that hardly makes it palatable.

“I didn’t ask for that.”

His eyes roll hard and his mouth curves up in a bitter imitation of a smile.

“Are all you goddamn squints like this? Jesus Christ.”

“I haven’t done this with any of them, so I can’t exactly say.”

Booth winces, adjusts his back against the cushion. “I can’t hold you because I can’t take your weight. I can’t lean on you because my ribs are, I don’t know. Broken? And the head thing? My motor skills aren’t so great, or maybe you just didn’t notice that in the heat of the fucking moment.”

It’s my turn to be speechless.

Until I cover his hand with mine, hold his look. The crimson creeping up my neck and beneath my beard should be a clear enough apology, but it’s not.

“Booth, I … I’m sorry, man. Heat of the moment, right?”

He laughs, and I wonder who’s training whom.

“Just shut up,” he says. “Please.”

So I do.

 

 

 

Title: Like I'd Shop At Hallmark
Author: Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: R
Word Count: 470
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see this onscreen if I did.
For slashthedrabble romance challenge. Season 1, Post- The Soldier On The Grave



Like I'd Shop At Hallmark

His paper-white pallor leads me to think showing up unannounced with fried seafood and Harpoon was an inspired mistake. Sepia crescents beneath his eyes make him look leaner, beyond tired. My greeting is addressed to the contents of the bag.

“Strips or bellies?”

“Strips. And scallops, fries and slaw.”

“Good choice,” he says and it really doesn’t take too many occasions of watching him eat in public to tell me he’d never eat a whole fried clam, much less a bowlful of steamers. Most of his appetites are as straight as his ties.

Vintage cars. Classic rock. Steak and potatoes. Sunday Mass.

Most of them.

He sets the sack on the kitchen counter, treats it like evidence. He’s still staring at every fold and crease when I lever myself up on the counter next to him and proffer a beer.

“So you and Brennan went to that kid’s funeral today.” That gets a sidelong glance, at least.

“It was a funeral, all right? Don’t start with your anti-war crap tonight, okay? I’m in no mood to talk about Iraq, or anything else.”

“Eye-rack? You sound like you should have a talk show on Fox. It’s pronounced. . .”

If his face was white at the door it’s ghostly as he turns and grabs a fistful of my shirt. Just as quickly he lets go, smoothes out the fabric, leaves his hand in the middle of my chest. And still won’t make eye contact.

“Why do you do this?”

“Do what, piss you off?”

Feel the heat from his face as he leans in, eyes lowered so he doesn’t have to see me. That makes me more than a little furious, but once I feel his breath on my cheek the fury dissolves, and I think that’s what I hate most about this arrangement.

What I’m learning about myself.

I’ve learned the fastest way to get shoved against the refrigerator with his knee pressing my balls to my throat is to explain that Brennan is essentially correct about the reanimation of Jesus, and that what Booth does every Sunday – and, presumably, on the mornings after we fuck because he needs to atone – is to engage in zombie worship.

And I have learned to accept his denial as part of this devil’s bargain.

“No,” he says, bunching the material on my shirt again. “Keep coming back.”

Consider my answer carefully.

There will be no hearts and flowers for us. No declarations of anything but remorse from Booth, and no declarations of any kind from me because romance is the one conspiracy that I’ve never believed in. I believe in desire. In the human need to control and be controlled.

But not in love.

Never in love.

“I’m just in it for the pretty, baby.” I tell him, and wait for what comes next.

 

 

Title: Instruction
Author: Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 500
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see more of this if I did.
Thanks ever so to sweptawaybayou for the beta.

This was written as a birthday prezzie for alizarin_nyc! Hope you like it! Also cross posted to slashthedrabble.


Instruction

Booth doesn’t speak in the car.

When we round the circular driveway in the back of the house he kills the ignition, slides out from behind the wheel without looking at me and waits, arms locked across his chest. Follows me to the door, spreading gravel with every step, and trails me into the house and up the spiral staircase into the kitchen, all without an invitation or welcome.

I head for the glass-front cabinet and pull down a bottle of Wild Turkey, grab two short glasses from the shelf. I need to cover my surprise more than I need to take a double shot, so I act the host and pour him a drink. Hand it to him as though the palm of my right hand isn’t shredded and bloody. As though the knees of my jeans aren’t torn out and my thighs aren’t blossoming indigo from blunt force trauma.

As if it’s perfectly normal for him to be standing in my fucking kitchen in the middle of the afternoon.

He drains the glass, comes around beside me and pours another. Hands it to me.

“I don’t remember asking you to come in.” Set down the glass, leave him to stare at the empty space. Shrug out of my jacket, make an attempt to wash my hands, loosen the tiny flecks of asphalt embedded just above my wrist. “Is this the part where you tell me that I’m to keep to my specimen collecting and stay out of your way like a good little squint?”

Granite fingers dig into my biceps, the heat from his chest pours through the perfectly starched button down shirt he's wearing and radiates through my t-shirt. Cold as wet tissue, soaked through with dread sweat, gooseflesh springs up on every part of my skin as he leans, hard and heavy, into my back. His mouth brushes the side of my ear, and his voice seeps in, ominous and low.

“When I tell you to stop, you do. Understand?”

Hot water spray sends particles of dirt and a scatter pattern of crimson over the sparkling stainless steel sink. Feigning interest in the wound, wincing only from the feel of his body, wide and hot and threatening, and from the press of his cock against my spine.

“Are we talking when I’m trying to dodge bullets during supposedly routine field work, or when you’re fucking me?”

Fingers loosen, then tighten once more and he sags into me, dead weight. Pins me against the sink, trapped from waist to dick against cabinetry on one side, by solid hips, thighs and muscle on the other.

“Stop it,” he rasps, and his threat dissolves into a plea. “Just…stop.”

When he doesn’t move, I know he wants this. And so do I, though his timing could be better. I relax, let my stance and the way I lean back telegraph what he needs to know.

Feel the curve of a smile against my cheek.

“See how easy that was?” Booth purrs. “Command, followed by response.”

 

 

Author: Minorgraces
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Jack Hodgins/Seeley Booth
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 300
Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see this onscreen if I did.
Thank you to sweptawaybayou for the beta.
For slashthedrabble family challenge.



Family Values

“I can’t do this. I have a kid.”

The whispered non-sequitur hits me harder than the fierce slamming of his cock and the press of his fingertips deep in the soft tissue at my waist. He keeps thrusting, keeps me balanced on my shoulders as his declaration settles in the blackness around us.

Breaking the silence doesn’t slow him in the least, and why should it? He pistons into me as if I know his thoughts aren’t enough to stop him. As if he could fuck me deaf.

It’s enough to turn every muscle in my body to steel. Barbed wire strings me from jaw to ankle, teeth to toes and I shove back, our physical differences suddenly moot.

Kick my heels hard into his shoulders, push him out of me and he lands on his ass in the middle of the living room floor. His stunned cattle bellow and guttural question hang in the air, unanswered.

He’s said enough for one night.

I stand on worthless legs, an upended whiskey glass beneath one heel about to shatter and slice flesh and tendon. A self-inflicted bloody wound would be poetic justice; I just kick it away and listen as it rolls in the dark Booth so gallantly insists upon.

No candlelight softens our truth. No music accompanies the rasp of skin against skin or absorbs our whispered curses and fevered gasping. No words are exchanged until he can’t keep them in and tries to make me complicit in his shame.

“Fine. Get out.”

It’s dark enough that he can’t see my death grip on the banister as I try to haul myself upstairs to my bedroom, to anywhere above him, beyond him, beyond this. Dark enough to mask the damage while I find a way to hide it from myself.

 

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