(The Girl in the Gator)

This story is for JAG'ed Bones in the Casckett. I hope this is what you were looking for.

I don't own Bones.

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While their steaks were cooking on Gordon Wyatt's new outdoor grill, Gordon sat down next to his picnic table and stared at Booth. "Interesting."

That was one word that Booth did not want to hear at that moment. Gordon Wyatt had just put him thought the wringer about dropping or not dropping Howard Epps and he had hoped that the psychobabble bullshit was done. "What's interesting?" Not that he really wanted to know.

"Well, I've read your personnel file of course and I find this whole façade you present to the world to be quite interesting."

"Façade?" Booth didn't like the turn in the conversation at all. "What the hell is that?"

Amused, Gordon leaned back against his chair and gave the FBI Agent a broad smirk. "I do know that your IQ is 127, Agent Booth. I'm pretty sure you know what a façade is."

Silent, the Agent hoped that if he kept quiet Gordon would change the subject to something else.

"An IQ of 127 is considered Superior." Gordon was not going to change topics no matter how uncomfortable the Agent was. "That means that your IQ is at the 96.4 percentile, your IQ is higher than 96.4 percent of the general population."

Annoyed, Booth flipped open the hood of the grill, flipped the two steaks over and closed the lid. "So?"

"So, that means that you know what the word façade means." Gordon was very curious about Booth. His childhood had been filled with painful beatings and distrust and yet he appeared to be a fairly well adjusted adult male, well except for shooting at ice cream trucks. No doubt Booth was stable partly because of the love of his grandfather, Hank Booth. "Why do you pretend to be less intelligent than you really are?"

Frustrated with the line of questions, Booth turned to glare at the psychologist. "I don't."

"You do and I want to know why." Gordon calmly stared at the agent and waited. After a while, Gordon realized that Booth was going to stubbornly stand in front of him and say nothing. "It's a hiding mechanism a wall or a shield. I imagine when you were growing up it was easier to be as invisible as possible when it came to your father. It became a habit and now you hide your real self from everyone . . . family, friends, coworkers."

Silently speculating the motives behind Gordon's interest in him, Booth finally turned back to face the grill, lifted the hood, peeked at the meat and closed the hood. "You know when you're considered average or a little below average, when you're just a regular guy you're not a threat to anyone. If people think they're smarter than you are they tell you things because they think you don't understand. People are fools."

"I find that fascinating." And Gordon really did. He'd seen personal shields of all kinds and the ones that fascinated him the most were the ones where the user pretended to be stupid. From personal experience, those people were actually quite intelligent and they used their 'wall of stupid' to their advantage. "It must be a great tool to use in your line of work. When you confront suspects, I imagine that if they think they are being confronted by a stupid cop then they can over reach and give themselves away. That's really quite clever."

Booth shrugged his shoulders and ran his tongue across the bottom of his teeth. The sizzling of the steaks drew his attention, so he popped open the hood, looked at the meat and closed the hood once more. "I work with geniuses. They think I'm stupid."

"Surely not stupid." Gordon was surprised at Booth's revelation. "You have a Bachelor of Science in Criminology. As well as English, you speak Pashto and some Arabic. You've worked up through the ranks of the FBI and are now the head of Major Crimes. Hardly the credentials of a stupid man."

A slight smile on his face, Booth nodded his head. "If you don't have a doctor in front of your name most of the people I work with at the Jeffersonian consider you fairly stupid."

"Most of the people . . . surely Dr. Brennan knows you're quite intelligent." Gordon found the attitude of the people on Booth's team to be rather disappointing.

His smile gone, Booth shook his head. "No, she's told me I'm stupid. She didn't mean it the way it sounded, she wasn't trying to be mean. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body, but yeah, she thinks I'm stupid, at least compared to her and I guess I am . . . Angela is probably the only one that thinks I'm not. "

Gordon glanced away and stared at the gleaming grill behind Booth. "Does this bother you?"

"Nope." Booth turned, opened the grill, flipped the two steaks on to two plates and carried them over to the table. "Those squints really are geniuses and when they do their job, they make me look good. If they need to be smarter than me then let them, I don't care. They work really hard to explain things to me in a way that they think will help me understand what's going on. Sometimes I have to rein them in because they want to use fifty dollar words when a dollar word will do, but in the end because they're used to explaining stuff to me, they do a really great job when they're in front of a jury . . . well not Bones, but she's better than she used to be."

"So you don't mind that Dr. Brennan considers you to be stupid?" Gordon was totally fascinated.

Booth sat down and started to cut up his steak. "She needs to be the smart one, Doc. She was treated really badly when she was in foster care, you know that. She used her brains to escape total poverty and she's proud of that and she should be. She worked her ass off to get where she is in her field. She didn't have any family she could count on. It was just her and her genius brain. It's helped her get through some tough times and if that makes her feel better then I don't care if she thinks I'm as dumb as a box of rocks. She's my partner and we have the highest solve rate on the eastern seaboard. I wouldn't be able to solve the cases I've been able to solve if it wasn't for her. I'm Pinky and she's the Brain. It's fine."

Gordon shook his head. "You have a high solve rate because you're part of that team. It's not just science. It's common sense, which is rare by the way. It's the ability to read people and use that knowledge to your advantage. It's years of experience solving cases by yourself and with others. Your EQ, your emotional intelligence is quite high, so with that and an IQ of 127 you're quite a valuable asset to your team."

"Thanks Doc." Booth was rarely complimented about anything and he appreciated it when he was. "I want to remind you that you're my psychologist and I don't give you permission to talk about what we just talked about to Bones or anyone else at the Lab."

A knowing look flashed across Gordon's face. "Like I said, you're EQ is quite high."

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