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"Did you finish taking the dental X-rays?"
"Yes, Dr. Brennan," you confirmed, pushing your glasses further up your nose. The neon orange frames drew attention to your eyes. Your hands were bare of the white latex gloves that your supervisor wore, due to you having just reentered the lab after your lunch break. "And sent them to Angela."
The brunette anthropologist glanced up at you with approval and then cast her eyes back down to the skeleton on the backlit examination table. "Good job," she praised quietly, brushing the glove-covered pad of her finger delicately along a skull fracture on the back of the parietal.
You stood a little bit taller in pride. You had worked very hard to claw your way up to the Jeffersonian. Currently in grad school, you worked underneath Dr. Brennan, alongside her colleagues. Sometimes, if you were lucky, she would even trust you enough to send you into the field with Booth, acting as his field anthropologist. When this happened, you kept your eyes peeled for evidence and potential crime scenes. Talking to suspects wasn't your preferred pastime, but you did it anyway when you were asked. The last thing you wanted to do was allow anyone to think you weren't one hundred percent invested in your very prestigious internship.
"Cam wants to see you in the autopsy bay when you're next available. She has an assignment for you and Zach." Brennan informed, passing on the message. Her heart wasn't very in it, because her passion and attention was dedicated to observing the miniscule details of the cranium you had both already checked thoroughly.
And, just like that, your back slouched again. "Is there anything else you need me for first?" You asked a little bit hopefully.
It wasn't that you had a problem with Cam or Zach. Cam was quick to let you know that, no matter who you worked for, you were to adhere to her rules unless you had a very good reason not to. That out of the way, she stepped back and acted more like an equal than a superior, only stepping back into that role in a way that was more akin to mentorship than bossiness. Zach had a little bit of a harder time keeping his words from being boastful or from reminding you that he was the doctor and you weren't, but he had never once said something to you that you believed was meant hurtfully.
No, you liked Cam and Zach. You enjoyed being around them. … In fact, you liked Zach a little bit too much, so you wouldn't have complained to have some time to prepare yourself to work with him again.
"No," your boss answered nonchalantly, not noticing that you'd wanted her to come up with something else that needed to be done. "Until Angela finds a match from the dentals and receives the victim's medical records to cross-check with the remains, you are of no further use to me."
Another thing you had learned at the Jeffersonian was to keep a thick skin, and to keep in mind that tone accounted for a lot more than words. Booth had taught you that lesson. If Brennan or Zach didn't sound annoyed, then odds were, they weren't annoyed… just a little unaware of how they could come across.
You swallowed and nodded. "Yes, Dr. Brennan," you said obediently, turning around and reaching for your hair, the bright F/C streaks dyed through reflecting in the glass wall-to-ceiling window by the doorframe on your way out of the bone room. To the autopsy bay it was.
Underneath your lab coat, you also caught a glimpse of the Star Trek quote. You really did love the lab. As long as you didn't compromise the evidence, you could wear as much fandom merchandise as you liked. Which helped you to make friends with Hodgins, who liked to blow things up, so it was always fun to be included.
"There we go, Rainbow," Cam called, seeing you approach in her periphery without looking up. The pathologist had been calling you Rainbow since the third cycle of unnatural hair dye. She was at her autopsy station, doing some biopsy on one of the internal organs that hadn't been rendered useless by decomp. "Hey, Zacharoni, your date's here."
You didn't need big-framed glasses to make your eyes pop. "Date?!" You squeaked, your rather impressive vocabulary disappearing out the window with nothing but a kiss goodbye and a screech of tires.
Since when were you dating? Since when were you dating Zach? You were sure you would've noticed something like that happening. Sure, you wore glasses, but your vision wasn't that bad.
"Yeah," Cam said with a slight smirk of her lips. You turned her wide eyes on her and tried to scowl when you saw her expression, but your face was too red and it was all you could do to keep your mouth from smiling nervously on top of turning pink. "Hodgins found some particulates that match a crime scene just on our side of the Maryland border, and Zach here needs a ride."
Right, Zach didn't have his driver's license. He usually had Hodgins or someone else who worked at the lab chauffeur him around. Speaking of the devil, the cute anthropologist-slash-engineer-slash-chemist entered the autopsy bay, coming through the same door you had. You knew it was him before he had even walked around into your line of view. Your luck wouldn't have permitted it to be anyone else, not even for a moment.
"I have Polaroid cameras, a GPS guide, and Hodgins' exact range of coordinates memorized." Zach said to Cam before he so much as acknowledged you, and then politely turned to face you. He had always done that – been polite. Any impoliteness was unintentional, and he always apologized once someone informed him of it. "Are you going to drive?"
Zach was a very intelligent man, but he was also not the most physically intimidating. Why on earth you seemed to forget how to move your tongue around him was beyond you, but it was infuriating sometimes. Instead of answering, you just nodded, the light pink blood rush still in your face.
"How are you with left turns?" Zach asked, eyeing you suspiciously. You had never driven him before. As nervous as you were, as many insects as you could feel batting their wings in your stomach, you couldn't help but feel a little bit elated. An afternoon in a confined space, alone with your crush. A high schooler's dream. "Because most car accidents happen while making left turns."
Cam sent you a vaguely apologetic gaze before she shook her head and pressed a syringe down into the evidence she was handling, preparing to run a tox screen. Her sympathies didn't last for very long.
You pressed your fingernails into your palms and wished you'd worn the Star Wars shirt instead, with the test in golds and blacks, less obnoxious and a little bit more snugly-fit. "I'm good," you answered, giving him what you hoped was a reassuring smile.
You wouldn't have believed it if you were him. Zach's brows pinched and he looked skeptical.
Oh, of course, now you would know how to read expressions.
You got all the way out to the possible place and Zach took several photographs. You took samples of the little lake, the soil, the foliage, and even the asphalt rocks and gravel on the concrete. Try as you might, you couldn't find any blood stains in the parking lot, but so far, you hadn't had any proof suggesting that the murder would've involved a lot of bloodshed, anyway. You were going to stay optimistic.
Especially since Zach was carefully replacing the Polaroid camera into its thick padded casing and setting it down between his feet underneath the passenger's seat.
"Are you comfortable?" Zach asked you, turning his head to look right at you. You could feel his eyes on the side of your face. Your cheek started to itch self-consciously.
Am I comfortable? Well, I would be if I wasn't afraid of making a fool of myself. "Yeah," you answered shortly, shyly. Your talks with Zach were always mostly one-sided, thanks to your reluctance to talk. He had never really seemed to mind, as long as you got your full message across. Make conversation, you scolded yourself, and tried to think of something other than the current case that you and Zach would have in common. "How's Naomi?" You asked eventually, worrying as soon as you said it that that was the wrong thing to ask about.
Since you would've preferred to be said girlfriend, questioning how his on-again, off-again relationship with the paleontologist graduate was going seemed like a decision someone who worked for the Jeffersonian Institution should've been smart enough to know not to make.
"I wouldn't know. I haven't seen her since September," Zach answered, his voice open and contemplative. It was as though he was either sincerely considering how long it had been and wondering why, or he hadn't thought about it in so long that he had to actually work to remember the last time he'd spoken to her.
The longest they usually went without communicating in some way was less than two weeks. "Really?" You asked, louder than normal in your surprise, and then fixed your eyes back on the road, paying attention to your driving while you carted around the scientist already dissatisfied enough with automobiles.
"Really," Zach confirmed. He turned his head to squint thoughtfully at the sticker that permitted you parking in the Jeffersonian's garage. "Her exact words were 'your job is a really lucky woman.'"
You bit your lip. What did you say to that? Naomi should've known getting into it that Zach liked his education. It wasn't a secret, and it was really hard to imagine them becoming involved before they introduced themselves. Zach wasn't the kind of person who would go out, have fun, and lose his faculties to alcohol or other inhibitors. Naomi wasn't who you wanted to see Zach with, but could you really say 'congratulations you lost her?'
You opted not to. Seemed like something a bad friend would do. You'd rather be a good friend.
Zach, however, was not done. Getting him to speak to you, you had learned, was like opening a can of worms. A lot of things you said were useless or ineffective, like trying to open a can with a spoon. Others, like a can opener, popped his thoughts right open until the matter was done with and all of the awkwardness could be chased away quickly enough. Inquiring about his relationship was one of the latter.
"I don't understand," he stated plaintively, in a way asking you to clear it up for him. That was what you thought it was, anyway. "I thought women wanted their lovers to bring home money. I do that by working."
"Attention," you suggested, mumbling at the steering wheel, hardly able to believe you'd dug yourself into relationship counseling the guy you liked about his ex. "It's good, too."
Zach canted his head. "Attention," he repeated, appearing to sincerely weigh the suggestion to himself. "Do you feel as though you receive enough attention from me, Y/N?"
Shy or not, if you'd had something in your mouth, you'd have either choked or done a spit-take, no matter how much attention it got you. You could hardly believe what trail that had just done down.
"Enough," you answered briefly, blushing bright, hot red. "Your girlfriend… um, she should get more, though. Than me, I mean," you hurried to amend, wishing, not for the first time, that you had just shut your mouth and kept it closed. Great, now it sounded like you were critiquing his skills at being a boyfriend.
Zach pursed his lips. You happened to notice when you looked to the side mirror. You weren't looking at him, just past him to see out the window. Yeah, right. "If I give you more," he said slowly, deeply concentrating on the logistics of his plan. "Would that make you my girlfriend?"
You didn't know if you were a rebound or an experiment, but you wouldn't get to find out if you were either… or even possibly a reciprocated crush… if you shut it down where it was. Swallowing thickly with your heart pounding faster than it had when Booth had been shot at a few cases ago, you squeezed the steering wheel with your fists.
"Dunno," you managed to wrangle out of your throat, summoning up a bravery and confidence that you hadn't realized you had. It was like someone else was talking through your mouth when you bravely looked at Zach, taking just a couple of seconds from the street to smile hesitantly. "Try it."
"I'm leaving," you told Dr. Brennan, leaning into her office for just a moment to let her know that you weren't going to be at the lab any later.
She looked up suddenly, her eyes looking startled and her face confused. "But you usually stay until six," she said, a hint of concern hidden amongst her observation and subtle question.
You smiled excitedly, ducking your face down on impulse to hide your grin. "I have a date," you answered, flushing and raising your shoulders in a shrug. It seemed as strange to you as it did to her… but if Zach wanted to try it, then you were not going to tell him no.