A Holiday Challenge

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones. I make no profit.

Note: There's a reason that Booth and Brennan are the franchise. Actually, there are many reasons that Booth and Brennan are the franchise. But after the way the mid-season break left poor Hodgins and Angela, I felt compelled to write the Bonesology 12 Days of Christmas Challenge for them instead of for the stars. I'm not positive that I'm in compliance with the rule about no continuing stories, however. My first two ficlets, while functionally stand-alones, are definitely slipping into the same universe in the aftermath of the same episode. If I've broken a rule, I apologize and want to emphasize that no offense is intended.

So here goes…

Ficlet is set after The Doom in the Boom (Season 11). Spoilers for anything before that; no canon compliance for anything after.

Day 1: Mistletoe

The mistletoe turned out to be a better idea than Angela had expected it to be when she offered the general manager of the rehabilitation center a flirty smile and a small bribe to convince him to let her use it as a decoration.

She had hung it above Hodgins' bed the moment he'd been moved from the hospital to the rehab facility. She hadn't needed it as an excuse to kiss him as many times as she could during her daily visits. But she had hoped that it would remind Hodgins that she was always thinking of him even when she couldn't be by his side.

Hodgins had been uncharacteristically quiet since the doctors had told him that he was paralyzed from the waist down. There hadn't been a word of complaint, and she'd found herself wishing that he would complain. She wished that he would scream or cry or wallow in darkly sarcastic commentary about the unfairness of the world. Past experience had led her to expect as much from her naturally demonstrative husband. Past experience was currently worthless.

At the lab at the Jeffersonian, they could catch a killer with very little: a single bone, a few drops of blood, a chip of paint, or (her husband's favorite) a swarm of maggots. They couldn't catch a killer with nothing.

Hodgins was giving her the emotional equivalent of nothing, and that left her at a loss as to what to say to help him.

She'd said the obvious things, of course, and she'd said them over and over.

I love you. You know that. We're in this together and you're going to have everything you need. This sucks, I'm not going to lie about that, but it won't always feel this bad. I promise. You still have a wife who is so happy to be married to you. You still have a son who thinks you can do anything. You still have a career that fulfills you and challenges you. You still have friends who couldn't love you any more if you were their own flesh and blood.

Remember the time they locked us in the lab for that weird JFK thing? You told me you loved me. You told me you would help me however you can, that we could move in together, that we could get married. You told me you were my guy. You were right. You were always my guy. You will always be my guy. And I'm your girl, and I will help you however I can.

And he rasped out a "thank you" or an "I love you" in a flat, tired voice.

She never failed to remind him that she particularly loved his voice. Like hot tea and honey, she told him, and not for the first time.

She grasped his hand and asked if he felt their lives vibrating together the way he'd said that he could the day she'd given birth to Michael Vincent.

She promised him that she would stay with him all night, that he could feel safe going to sleep because she would be there when he woke up. She remembered when that promise had been enough to comfort him because his nightmares hadn't been real.

He told her to go home and get some rest in her own bed and see to their son.

She refused, and told him that Michael Vincent was just fine with Booth and Brennan, who owed them about a year's worth of babysitting after all the times they'd taken Christine and Hank.

The hospital had been good about ignoring little things like "visiting hours" and letting Angela spend most of her waking moments and some of her sleeping ones by her husband's side.

The rehabilitation facility afforded her no such flexibility. Visiting hours were strictly enforced.

Hence the mistletoe, along with the photographs and other mementos of home that she'd set on the windowsill not far from Hodgins' bed.

If all the mistletoe had done was prompt Hodgins' look of mild amusement when she purported to be shocked each time she saw it, it would have been worth the effort.

If all the mistletoe had done was give Brennan and Cam and Hodgins' other female visitors an excuse to kiss his cheek each time they visited without seeming overly pitying, it would have been worth the effort.

If all the mistletoe had done was get the nurses and physical therapists into the habit of blowing kisses to Hodgins and thinking of him as one of their particular favorite patients, it would have been worth the effort.

But the mistletoe, magic plant that it was, went her one better.

Soon after Hodgins began his rehabilitation in earnest, Wendell Bray asked if he could accompany Angela on her daily trek from the lab to the rehab facility. Angela wondered for a moment if she ought to tell Wendell no. Wendell and Hodgins had always been friends, and her brief romantic entanglement with Wendell had been over for years, but under the circumstances Hodgins might not want to be confronted with a man who had been the subject of one of her nude paintings. Hodgins had, after all, openly told Wendell that he had once planned his murder in great detail.

Then Angela determined that if Hodgins had a problem with Wendell, Hodgins could damn well express it- along with anything else he might be feeling. And so she told Wendell that she would be happy to have him join her for visiting hours, and that Hodgins could never have too many well-wishers.

"Look," she said, feigning surprise as they entered Hodgins' room. "Mistletoe." She kissed her husband warmly on the lips and felt his perfunctory return of the kiss.

Wendell grinned sharkily as he loped around to the other side of Hodgins' bed and gave Hodgins a kiss on the forehead.

"Knock it off!" Hodgins objected with an undertone of annoyance- and a genuine startled laugh. Angela didn't think she'd heard Hodgins laugh since before the accident.

"Sorry," said Wendell, not sounding sorry at all. "Not risking the bad luck."

"That only applies to women," said Hodgins. "Get your stupid superstitions straight."

"What if it affects Angela because she's the only woman in the vicinity?" asked Wendell. "We can't risk that."

"You're making a stupid myth even stupider. I'm impressed," said Hodgins.

Wendell bowed in response, and the rest of the conversation was the most pleasant one she had seen any of Hodgins' friends manage. Even Booth and Brennan had been subjected to variations on the near-silent treatment Angela herself had gotten.

When Wendell stood up to leave halfway through visiting hours, he moved as if he might kiss Hodgins again, and Hodgins slapped him away before they wished each other well and Wendell promised to return soon.

"Stupid," Hodgins whispered when Wendell was gone. "So stupid."

"He made you laugh, and it's good to hear you laugh," said Angela. "Further proof that Brennan only hires geniuses to be her interns. Even if Wendell is supposed to be the normal one," she added, invoking Booth's usual descriptor for Wendell.

That was when she noticed that her husband was fighting to hold back tears.

"Was I wrong to let him come? Jack?" she asked frantically. "You don't have to see him again if it upsets you. I won't see him again if it upsets you. I'll walk out of the lab when he walks in." It was the kind of ridiculous offer she would never have expected to make before she'd nearly lost her husband and been beyond desperate to bring him back.

"No way, Angie. I'd never ask you to do that." Despite the wobble in his voice, he sounded more like himself than he had since before he'd collapsed and been rushed to the hospital unable to move his legs.

"You don't have to. You don't have to ask me for anything that you want right now." She considered that. "Okay, I lied. You have to ask me because I'm completely stumped trying to figure out what you need. You have to ask me, but you don't have to worry about whether I'll do it, because I'll do anything." He seemed to be hardening into his usual emotionless mask, and she carefully pulled out the word he had used so many times. "Even if it's stupid, I'll do it."

She'd guessed correctly. Tears shone in his eyes again.

"I've been stupid enough these past two weeks to last us both a lifetime," he said. "I don't need any help with that."

She cut her eyes quickly to the door to make certain that there weren't any lurking nurses who might shoo her away before climbing onto his bed and leaning gently against him. They hadn't been so physically close since before his hospitalization and it felt wonderful despite the circumstances.

"What on earth have you done that was stupid?" she asked, cupping his cheek with one hand. He leaned into her touch, and the small vulnerable gesture made her want to cry, too.

"How many years have we spent dealing with murder day in and day out?" he asked rhetorically.

She answered anyway because it was such a relief to have a real conversation with him. "Ten? Twelve?"

"How many of our victims were killed by bombs?"

She shrugged. She really had no idea, although several particularly gory incidents popped into her head. Her first bombing, when Brennan had asked her to hold an evidence bag and she hadn't been able to do it, came to mind first. Then there had been the Christmas that the poor man dressed as Santa Claus had been forced to blow himself up…

"Enough, right?" Hodgins answered for her. "We've been up close and personal with bombs."

"Sure," she agreed as neutrally as she could.

"I picked up that phone," said Hodgins with real loathing in his voice. "I pulled it off the body and held it in my hand and said something about how weird it was that the phone was connected to a wire. Aubrey knew as soon as I picked it up. Aubrey had time to throw himself over me."

"That's Aubrey's job. You were there to look at bugs and dirt and… things that aren't bombs. Aubrey is supposed to look at everything else so he can protect you and you can be completely focused on the maggots. That's why they started calling us squints over at the FBI. They handle the violence, we squint at stuff."

"I still know better, Angie! I should have. But I didn't, and I almost got both myself and Aubrey killed! And that wasn't enough. I took aspirin. Out of all the painkillers in the world, I took aspirin. Everyone knows that you don't take aspirin where there might be bleeding, but I was pouring it into my mouth right out of the bottle. I don't even know how much I took, but once that hematoma bumped my spinal cord… You may never never have the man you agreed to marry again."

He clapped his hand over her mouth to keep her from protesting that she had exactly the man she'd agreed to marry regardless of whether he ever walked or fathered a child again.

"My brain was the one thing I knew I brought with me to any relationship. Any job. Anything I wanted to do. Even if everyone hated me and thought I needed anger management. Even if I lost my money. Even if… I know I can be a jerk, Angela, but I never thought I was stupid."

"You aren't," she mumbled against his hand.

"And mostly I'm going to pay, but so are you and so is our son."

She kissed his hand before removing it from her mouth and kissing his lips, too. The kiss must have told him something that her words had not, because this time the kiss she got in return was desperate and pleading instead of detached and mechanical.

"Still my guy," she murmured when they broke apart. "Still my guy, who will be putting his brilliant brain to work on getting well enough to come home even if it's in a wheelchair."

"Yeah?" he asked, as if she hadn't said the words a thousand times in the last week. Not that it mattered. She'd be happy to say them a thousand more.

"Yeah," she said, using her fingers to brush away the tears that had fallen down his cheeks. His heart was back on his sleeve where it belonged.

She could work with this.

They could do this.

When one of the nurses came in to tell Angela that it was time to go and scold her for being on the bed, she was so flustered to be snapped out of the comforting daze into which she had slipped that she forgot to give Hodgins a final kiss goodbye.

She blew him a kiss from the door instead, and saw his eyes flicker above his bed to the mistletoe as she left.

The mistletoe would still be there tomorrow, and tomorrow would be better.

The End