The Face with Two Skeletons

By: Tropicwhale

Disclaimer: not mine....if I owned them Zack would have still been on the show and gay with Neil Patrick Harris....I would make it happen....but I can't.

Warning: Zack/Booth slash...if you don't like it the back button is to the left and on top of the page...don't bother to flame....there's enough of that in this story. Flamers. Flames. Flaming. All those tenses.

Author Notes: First "Bones" fanfic. I was frustrated by the lack of Booth/Zack slash out there on the web so I set out to fix that problem. This was suppose to be a one-shot. Meanwhile I'm writing chapter sixteen. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter One

Special Agent Seeley Booth of the F.B.I was as the adage goes a "man's man". A masculine, athletic, completely heterosexual hunk with a smile that could make knees melt with a good ½ mile radius of its beam. It was totally like a superpower….if Zack thought superpowers were possible. But as the X-men and Superman had completely illogical power sources and contact with aliens like Martian Manhunter has never been made to Zack's scientific satisfaction so that ended that. But, when he was younger, he did like the Batman comics. They were believable to a point. So was Ironman and Captain America. Agent Booth would make a good Captain America, at least in Zack's opinion.

Booth also had a nice bone structure….except for the Neanderthal-like quality that his brow gained when he was angered or trying to figure out something. But his legs and arms were straight and his back was strong, at least structurally. Zack was pretty sure that his chronic back problems were due to muscular stress that would be greatly helped by a weekly massage. Here in laid the rub. Zack would love to be the one to give those massages.

Wow. Just the thought of giving Booth a back massage made him blush. He glances down on the bones he was cataloguing for Dr. Brennan thankful that he was in 'Limbo' as Angela called it. It was a fitting name so it stuck even in Zack's mind due to his brief stint in a private Catholic school right before he took his first IQ test and was declared a prodigy. He spends more time down here than in the proper lab. Here he could get work done and was able to think clearly without people looking over his shoulder asking him pointless questions. If Dr. Brennan or Hodgins or Angela or Dr. Saroyan needed him they knew where to find him but for the most part they, and everyone else, left him alone.

Zack liked working with bones. They were uncomplicated unlike the human beings that formed up around them. Bones couldn't lie about the lives they had once lead and things like sexual orientation and social mores ceased to matter. That was the cool thing about "being a squint in the boneyard" as Booth would say.

So obviously it was surprise when Booth appeared in front of Zack around five' o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday in May. Zack looked up from the incomplete Caucasian twenty-something female skeleton discovered in Alabama in the 1930's but only finding its way to the Jeffersonian this last January that was laid out carefully on the table in front of him. "Can I help you, Agent Booth?" he asked, his mind working in overdrive on why the Federal officer was in Limbo across from Zack. Booth shifted and it occurred to Zack that the movement spoke of nervousness or unease. He wasn't sure where he picked up that bit of information, maybe from Booth himself? Either way there was an 85% chance that Zack was correct in assuming that Booth was nervous. He often was around the scientists, especially Zack. This made sense. Even Hodgins and Dr. Saroyan sometimes had issues with being comfortable around Zack. His intellect coupled with his inability to understand the impractical and illogical nuances of human behavior did make for an unsettling combination. Zack understood that. So why was Booth here? Booth cleared his throat.

"Everyone-the squints, me, Angela, Cam, even Sweets are going out for dinner. They couldn't seem to remember if you were around and Bones said you might be down here so I came to check." Conscious of it or not Booth did break things down a little more than when he was talking to Zack then he would if he was talking to someone like Dr. Brennan.

"You drew the short straw you mean." Zack corrected. Federal agents shouldn't have to lie. Even if it were white lies that were meant to protect Zack's feelings, especially since it was unnecessary. Booth winced. "It's okay. I sometimes can be difficult to remove from cataloguing remains. One time I forgot to eat for three days and Hodgins had to drive me to the hospital because of severe dehydration. It was silly of me to get as caught up as I was but I had just started working here and wanted to make a good impression on Dr. Brennan. Ever since then they draw straws. It is a fair way of deciding who is going to make sure that I remember to eat." With that Zack turned back to the remains. He was something missing. He had to be.

"Zack? Zack!" Booth snapped fingers in front of Zack's face. Zack's head snapped up to face him.

"Yes, Agent Booth?"

"Put the bones away. Come eat. Be human for once." Zack looked back at the girl's bones…woman's bones. The pelvis was broader and-that's what he was missing.

"She had a child. You can tell by the way the pelvis bone is spread. See?" Zack looked up at Booth who was giving him an odd look. "She was human too. The only difference is that now she can't lie about her life. It's easier to find out things." Zack looked back at the bones. "I wonder what happened to the baby."

"Zack?" Booth sounded confused. It wasn't too often that Zack spoke the tangents in his head out loud. It put people off more than normal or so Hodgins had said so Zack tried not to do it.

"She most likely drowned. See?" Zack pointed to telltale signs of drowning induced hemorrhaging on the ribs and altas cervical bone. "I wonder what happened to it." Zack looked back at Booth. "It's easy to be forgotten and then you end up down here, in Limbo. She had a baby. It doesn't seem fair."

"No, it isn't." Booth was looking at him with something like pity. Zack wondered why that was. He was merely stating fact. "Where did she come from? The bones?" Booth spoke carefully…almost as if he was afraid he was going to spook Zack back into technical speech. Zack was very careful to speak in a common vernacular when speaking in Booth's presence. It seemed that Booth was less put off by that than when Zack spoke in the correct technical terminology.

"Alabama, in theory. She was found there in the 1930's. Before that it is unsure. The bones were dredged up in a swamp according to the corresponding file."

"Put her away. Come eat. Figure it out later. She can wait a few hours. You might collapse then who will figure it out?"

"Dr. Brennan." Zack stated quickly. Obviously. Booth smiled at that, almost as if Zack had made a joke. The fact of the matter was that Zack was stating fact. Eventually, if he collapsed, there was a reasonable probability that Dr. Brennan would be the one to figure out who the woman had been. But Zack wasn't thinking about that. Zack was thinking about how his knees melted when Agent Booth smiled which is technically impossible. Cartilage doesn't normally melt. But the metaphor described how Zack felt very efficiently so he felt comfortable in using it.

"Zack? Are you okay?" Zack hadn't realized that he had semi-collapsed when Booth smiled. The bones rattled on the metal table as Zack grabbed the edge of the table so that he would not completely fall. Partly he collapsed because of sudden arousal and partly because he hadn't eaten since yesterday but that was negligible at the moment because Booth was around the examination table to make sure that Zack did not fall with his arms around Zack's waist and Booth's front bracing Zack's back and side. Booth's goal proved difficult to achieve because Zack's arousal had increased when Booth touched him and he felt dizzy. Zack was also very careful to ignore the impluse of wrapping his arms around Booth's neck.

"I feel dizzy."

"When was the last time you ate anything?"

"Last night at dinner. I had macaroni and cheese with a small salad. I tend to not eat protein at night. It irritates my stomach when I'm trying to sleep."

"Zack…"

"I'm talking too much?" It was an educated guess on the grounds of past experiences with Booth. It didn't count as real guessing. Zack's stomach growled audibly.

"No." See, this was why Zack didn't guess. It was inaccurate. "It's just-you need to eat healthy."

"I usually do. And technically what I ate was healthy." Booth sighed in irritation. "What?"

"I don't feel like explaining. Come on." With that the federal agent dragged Zack away from the bones of the unknown Caucasian female in her mid-twenties that was discovered in an Alabama swamp sometime in the 1930's.

Author After Talk: This is my break from my Buffy fanfiction "Grimmoire" series featuring Spander....it has to be finished by the 12th of June because that's when the first chapter of "Sometime Around Midnight" goes up that day. If "Skeleton" isn't finished by then it will be going on hiatus until "Midnight" is finished. I'm telling you this upfront because....well, I've lost track of how many times a good fic was hiatus-d because the author didn't plan things out and that deadline is a challenge to myself which is only offical if its announced. Watch me move!

Tropic