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voyagingfox · 2 years ago

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forget myself and dance like she's watching

word count: 2,254 words

summary: jack needs to tell them. it's his biggest secret, he thinks, but they're all close enough that they should know because they're friends. he doesn't like to admit it but it's true. they're friends and that can only make it harder for them all

author's note: this doesn't really have any warnings but booth is a little confused about different identities without being explicitly transphobic or bigoted!

this fic has been cross-posted on ao3

It wasn’t that Jack was particularly ashamed of it because he wasn’t. He didn’t get ashamed of anything. He knew who he was and he was not ashamed because Jack Hodgins didn’t really get ashamed of anything. He wouldn’t. He just hadn’t told anyone because it wasn’t any of their business. It was his own business and he liked it when no one bothered him about his private life - there were so many things he’d been keeping secret for his entire time working at the Jeffersonian. Then he thought maybe it was their business, then he decided that he should tell them, then he decided that he would.

He hummed to himself and thought about how Zack always asked about the women he took home and then he thought about how he’d always lied to him about what happened after they left the bar. He thought about Angela and how when she had come out to them no one made a big deal of it but then he thought about how Angela was different, so extremely different, and so he scratched it out of his mind. He thought about Brennan and whether or not she’d try to analyse other cultures and how they were similar to him and how he’d tell her to be quiet.

"What’s up, bug man?" He didn’t remember when Angela had started calling him that, didn’t even remember if he’d ever told her to stop, but he minded less and less as the days rolled by and he knew she was going to drop it soon and start calling him something else, something equally as annoying. "Gonna answer me or just sit there tearing your hair out?"

He dropped his hand from where it was fiddling with his curls at the front of his face, pulling them long then letting go to let them scrunch up again. He liked having long hair, he’d always had, screaming and begging his mom to let him keep it long without ever trimming it but always ending up in the hairdresser’s chair anyway. "I need to get a haircut."

"Come on, that’s not all that is going through your mind right now." She could read him like a book.

He shook his head with a scowl, "I'll tell you later. I'll tell everyone. It’s something that- Something that I really want to tell you." He pushed himself out of his seat and shuffled away, he didn’t want to see Angela's confused expression and be drawn into explaining everything to her before anyone else, have her slip up before he was ready and she’d end up telling everyone, and into the bathroom. He wiped his hands on his jeans and stared at himself, he just stared at himself.

He needed to shave but he couldn’t bring himself to do so, he never did really, just in case it made his chin look too smooth, made everyone see him as who he wasn’t. His eyes were glimmering back at him and he bit his lip, he started wearing coloured contacts after someone made fun of him in middle school. He drummed his fingers against the counter before pushing them under the tap, letting the water rush over them and clawing his nails into his hands until the skin was red and raw. He wiped his hands on his jeans and leaned forward again.

"Don't chicken out now, Jack." He slapped his hands against the counter and took a deep, heavy, breath. He was going to do this whether he liked it or not. He tried to think more about if he really wanted to come out, he tried to think about why, and he decided that he had to because they were his friends - as much as he hated to admit it - and they deserved to know more about him rather than the sliver of information he would give them every so often.

"What are we not 'chickening out' of?" Zack's voice came from behind him, toilet flushing and Zack making his way to the sink next to Jack to run his hands under the hot water - Zack always had his system, he always took exactly twenty-five seconds to wash his hands and he never used the automatic hand dryers.

"All in due course, genius." He left quickly. He didn’t even look at Zack - he’d once thought Zack was just like him but then Zack kept asking about women and so Jack dropped the thought. Zack couldn’t be anything like him.

Wong Fu's had almost no one in it which relieved him; he couldn't bear if anyone else overheard them talking, he couldn’t bear anyone other than his fellow scientists knowing his secret and suddenly his head was already spinning with just them. He was the first one to arrive and he slipped into their booth - the one that Agent Booth had assigned to them and forced them into every time but Jack wasn’t going to tell him that sometimes he came in alone and sat at the bar - and drummed his fingers along the edge of the table and his knee bounced up and down, up and down, and up and down. Sid came up to him and placed a mug in front of him, filled to the brim with coffee - black, no sugar, just how he liked it but he didn’t think he’d told Sid that.

"I'm trans." It fell out of his lips before he could even think about saying ‘thank you’ and a wave of air was drawn out of him and he must have visibly deflated because he felt so much more empty afterwards, "Oh god, I've been bottling that up all day, how is the first person I tell is Sid of all people?" He dropped his face into his hands.

"Thanks."

"You know what I mean." He waved a hand at Sid.

Sid shrugged, "I don’t care, dude, by the way. Be careful, though, you know what some people around here are like. You're telling your friends tonight, is that it?"

"Colleagues," he corrected but both he and Sid knew it wasn’t really the truth and they ended up chuckling. Jack took a sip of the coffee, tapping his nails on the ceramic. He couldn’t stop tapping on everything just in case he could skip telling them and just have them know without changing a thing. He sighed, "Thanks. For the-" he gestured to the coffee and then gestured into the air- “And for… you know, yeah.”

The doors opened and his friends walked in and Sid narrowed his eyes at them before humming and walking behind the desk, already knowing exactly what everyone needed, especially what Jack needed but he’d had that sussed since the second he’d walked in. Angela waved, using her whole arm to wave at Jack from the door who sent a tight-lipped smile her way, and slipped in beside him, touching shoulders with him and wiggling her eyebrows at him.

"So, I figured it out with a little help from Zack, here," she stage-whispered, nodding at Zack where he had shuffled into the other side of Jack, who suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe without them realising how different he really was, and then he realised that Angela hadn’t stopped talking, "You've got a secret lady love you've gotten past just sex with, haven’t you?" She waved her hands into the air, “Finally!”

It wasn't really a question. Her mind was made up but soon he’d break them all. Sid came with a few plates in his hands and set them down in front of Brennan and Booth, Jack took notice of how he looked at him and suddenly that same gust of air blew out of him and he was looking at the table, at his fingers digging into the mug, at his gnawed off nails begging to be chewed but he was so desperately trying to stop. He just needed to suck it up and tell them all.

He took another sip of his coffee and every word evaporated from his mind, nothing came out even as he tried to open his mouth and force it out. They were all staring because of course they knew something was up, he wasn’t the best at keeping secrets and he never had been. Even with Sid's liquid courage, even with the knowledge that they would be nothing but supportive, even when he usually had no problem saying everything from the top of his head, he just couldn’t get the words to claw up his throat. He choked on them and tears sprung to his eyes but he didn't let them fall because he couldn't. He didn’t cry.

He took another deep breath and started tapping his fingers on his mug again, and again, and again, and then he just looked at his friends faces - he didn’t really consider Booth a friend rather than their FBI pet, the agent that managed to sneak into their lives somehow and become a constant bug glued to their sides, but he did seem to be sticking around so he also had to know. He looked at how Booth seemed as disinterested in anything Jack had to say as usual, how Brennan was listening, she always listened, but couldn’t help pick at her food like always before realising that Sid, in fact, was always right, then at Zack who was bursting at the seams to ask how Jack was so good with women, and then at Angela who expected more than he was going to give.

He sighed. "I'm…" There wasn’t an easy way to spit it out, "Look, I really don’t want this to be a big deal and that’s why I didn’t tell any of you but I really need to get it off my chest-" he felt the need to laugh at his own comment but he managed to restrain himself, just about- "and so, what i'm trying to say is, so it isn’t someone I’m dating, and I hope you don’t see me any differently, but basically-"

Brennan rolled her eyes and cut him off, "It’s improbable that anything you say is going to make us dislike you, although I'm not entirely sure Booth likes you very much in the first place, and so you should just say whatever it is and all will be well." She took a spoonful of her soup and hummed through a full mouth, "Probably."

"I'm trans."

It was out. He'd whispered it, sure, but they'd all heard, they’d all heard his confession. He didn’t look at any of them, he couldn’t, not until an arm snuck around his shoulders and Angela pulled him close, "God, is that all? I was starting to worry that you were some kind of serial killer!" She was joking but it felt like she was sucking every little morsel of air out of his lungs at the same time.

"What does, uh, that mean? Like you want to be a woman?" Brennan smacked Booth on the chest with the back of her palm and he sent a confused expression toward her. He frowned and kept eating but his confused expression stayed fixed and his eyes kept flicking between Jack, Brennan, and his plate.

"No! No… I'm a man, a guy, a dude. It’s just that, when I was born and for too many years after that, people didn’t really think so. I didn’t really think so either until I was, like, fifteen but now here we are."

"Here you are!" Angela cheered, arms still wrapped around him, "And you are so coming with me to Pride next year. A shame you can’t be on my float, though."

"I'll be on the one next to you, though, Miss Montenegro." He could see Sid eyeing them from the bar, cleaning a glass over and over again while food sat behind him ready to be served but Jack was grateful for him letting them have their moment together.

"What?" Booth asked.

"Well, at the Pride parade that happens in the city in June, they sometimes have floats and I believe they are referring to the fact that there is a specific transgender one and a bisexual one that typically come down the street one after another."

"Genius is right but I don’t know if I’ll be on the trans one, can’t decide yet." He let out another breath, "Ouch, woah, that hurt to reveal so casually, woah."

Brennan leaned into Booth, whispering into his ear. He shot up, "You’re gay too?"

Jack shrugged and took another sip of his coffee, barely managing to push Angela off of his arm. he was out of the closet and there wasn’t going to be any taking it back any time soon. Not that he wanted to. Not now, at least. He wasn’t going to regret this, he hoped. They didn’t see him as anything less or anything more than himself, Jack Hodgins who liked bugs and rocks. They just happened to know who Jack Hodgins really was a little better too and there was no harm in that.

Especially when, a few months later, Zack would tell him that he'd been a little confused about his own identity and Jack would tease the hell out of him but help him anyway because he loved being proven right and maybe Zack was a little - a lot - more like him than originally thought. And that was all okay too.

They were all just getting to know each other that little bit better.

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