Same disclaimers as always!

With the amount of time he spent and the things he'd seen as a sniper and army ranger, FBI special agent Seeley Booth was difficult to shock. His partner, Dr. Brennan, had her own share of surprises, but her latest one had him questioning her sanity. Leaving the fate of an FBI case in the hands of a 22-year-old intern? He hadn't spent much time around Kylie Wells, but he was unsure she was ready for such a big responsibility. From what Angela, Hodgins and Cam had told him about her, she was punctual, thorough and hard-working in the lab, but outside of that, the three of them drew a blank, and that worried him. What was Kylie Wells really like?

"So, um, where's Doctor Brennan?" Kylie asked as Agent Booth opened the door to the Royal Diner. "She said she'd be observing me."

"She will. I just thought we could have a little chat and grab a bite to eat first," he shrugged, making an excuse to get to know his temporary partner without Bones scrutinizing her.

"Why?" she frowned.

"Get to know you a little. Sure, it's just one case, yada, yada, yada. But if I can't get a feel for you, this won't work. Then, this case is screwed, and Bones'll fire you from the Jeffersonian. So what'll it be?"

Booth and Brennan were completely opposite in personality, Kylie observed, but their methods of blackmail were remarkably similar, albeit executed differently. "What do you want to know?"

"Anything," he replied honestly. "Maybe how you and Zack became buddies, since that seems to be the thing around here."

"My brother forced me to join the debate team," Kylie rolled her eyes at the memory. "I guess I argued too much for my own good."

"Well did you?"

"Eh," Kylie scoffed. "I like to think of it more as me pointing out where he was wrong. He didn't like that too much."

"What about your parents? What'd they have to say about that?"

"They're dead," she replied coldly.

"Both of them?" Booth was shocked. Going through high school without one parent was tough enough, he could vouch for that, but both parents?

"My parents' will stated that if anything were to happen to them, we'd either move to Texas with my aunt and uncle, or if my brother was 18, he'd become my legal guardian," she explained.

"Wow." So she spent a crucial chunk of her life without any real parental figures, Booth blinked a few times. If only Bones knew how much her intern was just like her, he thought.

"That's a good word to describe it," she agreed.

"Any chance you'd want to talk about that?" Booth asked, sensing that she was still suffering emotional trauma from her parents' death.

"No," she said firmly, clamming up.

Kylie was relieved when the waitress came to take their orders; she'd never talked about her parents' death to anyone, except for Zack. His logical perspective provided her a sense of comfort, unlike others, who would always pity her or act sensitive around her. She and her brother saw a grief counselor for a while, but it didn't do much for either of them, especially her.

"Alright," Booth backed off, not wanting to piss off both Bones and her intern. "So Zack, then?"

"What about him?" she asked, partially to give Booth a hard time. She couldn't help it; it was her defense mechanism when people asked anything personal.

"You said you met in the debate club. In high school?"

"Yeah," she replied. "We became partners for tournaments, which we always won. I'm not bragging; it's a fact."

"Never said you were," Booth held up his hands in surrender, lightly chuckling. He had to give it to Kylie; she had attitude, and her bragging remark reminded him of Zack.

"Our coach usually switched us around so that we got a chance to work with everyone, but I seemed to be the only person who could get through to Zack, so he kept us together. We even won nationals in our senior year by two-tenths of a point. It was insane; we went up against a team from California where both of them were basically Zack clones, genius-wise," she went on.

"Clearly you guys had a good thing going on. I take it you visit Zack at McKinley from time to time?"

"Mhmm," she nodded. "Just saw him 3 days ago." Wherein we semi-awkwardly discussed how Lance and I hooked up, she silently added to herself. But then again, things always got that way with Zack, even though it was unintentional. His lack of social graces and to-the-point manner brought up many awkward moments between the two; she remembered laughing at him for days when she first heard him refer to sex as coitus, which just so happened to be shortly after she'd lost her virginity in her sophomore year of high school.

Six years earlier...

"You weren't at debate today."

Kylie jumped slightly at the sound of her debate partner's voice. She kept her head down, not wanting to show that she had spent the time she should've spent at debate crying in the girls' locker room. "My stomach hurt."

That wasn't completely a lie, she figured, but Zack saw through her anyway. Him and his damn genius perception, she grumbled internally. "I beg to differ."

"I already had enough crap to deal with today," she threw her cheer bag angrily on the ground. "Didn't want to deal with more insufferable assholes."

"I am an…insufferable asshole?" Zack frowned slightly. They'd treated each other with kindness, in his point of view, in their two years as partners; it puzzled him as to why she would refer to him as such.

"Not you," she shook her head, sniffling and rubbing her fingers against her nose. "You're probably the only person in there who doesn't judge me based on the fact that I'm a cheerleader."

"It is highly illogical to judge a person's aptitude based on an activity he or she chooses to partake in for leisure," he replied, moving to sit next to her on the bench in front of the school. "Your decision to wave bundles of plastic in the air and perform lackluster gymnastics during football and basketball games does not correlate with your intelligence."

"Was that a compliment or an insult?" she laughed through her sniffling.

"I was paying you a rather high compliment," Zack couldn't comprehend how his partner didn't get that; in his mind, he had made himself perfectly clear. "Something is deeply bothering you," he further observed from Kylie's puffy eyes and nose, which indicated she had spent a good amount of time crying in the past couple of hours.

"No shit, Sherlock," she rolled her eyes to look at him, not caring about her raccoon eyes from her eyeliner and mascara, or the black tear stains on her cheeks that resulted from her raccoon eyes.

"Would you like to talk about it?" he asked in an unusually gentle tone.

"I've never felt so stupid in my life," she buried her face in her knees, sobbing again. She should've seen it; it was too good to be true. Chris certainly seemed respectful. He never openly pushed her to have sex, but she knew his random, sexually suggestive touches to various parts of her body should have waved a red flag. At first she thought that because he respected her enough to wait until she was ready, he'd continue to respect her after that; boy, was she wrong. "I wanted my first time to be special."

"First time for what?" Zack was confused. People had first times for many things; what was Kylie's?

"You've got to be kidding," she looked at him in disbelief.

"Oh," he realized what his partner was referring to. "Coitus."

She blinked for a few seconds, unsure whether or not to laugh. She was pretty sure that was the first time someone had ever referred to sex as coitus, even though that was one of several technical terms. "Coitus?"

"Coitus," he nodded. "Sexual intercourse. When the male genitalia…"

"I know what sex is," she cut him off shortly before thrusting her head into the crook of his neck, sliding her arms around his waist. "I thought maybe he actually liked me for me, and not what was in my pants."

Zack swallowed, concerned for her. She had not fully recovered emotionally from her father's death; he was sure his second death anniversary was two weeks ago. His family often expressed concern that his genius-level intelligence prevented him from connecting with others around him, which left him surprised by his actions when he reciprocated Kylie's affections for the first time, delicately wrapping his lean arms around her petite frame.

"As my sister would say," Kylie lifted her head as he spoke. "You deserve better."

She smiled through her tears, reaching up to touch his cheek affectionately. "Thank you, Zack."

In return, Zack tightened his hold on her, doing his best to keep her from shaking. "You're welcome, Kylie."

"Bones tells me he recommended you?"

"He did," Kylie confirmed. "I wasn't sure about it at first because I don't have a doctorate like the other interns do or will, but I decided to give it a shot."

"A person's worth is determined by more than just a doctorate or a degree," Booth pointed out. "What makes you think you're up for this?"

"Other than motivation by the fact that Dr. Brennan will fire me if I don't pull this off, I'd like to make sure that I didn't spend excessive amounts of time in a police department when I was a child for nothing," she replied bluntly as the waitress brought her the pancakes she'd ordered.

"A police department?" Now Booth was intrigued. Kids usually spent their childhoods at friends' houses, in playgrounds, or at after-school activities, but this girl spent hers at a police department?

"My dad was Chief of Police back in Ann Arbor for fifteen years until he died," Appreciating the FBI agent's non-persistent manner when it came to personal details, Kylie decided to take a chance and open up to him. "He didn't trust babysitters, nor did he want to pay for one anyway, so he'd bring me to the police station after school or cheerleading practice and I'd do my homework there and wait for him to finish his duties. After my dad died and my brother eventually became a cop, I'd still go there sometimes to visit Paola, the pathologist I became friends with when I was young. I'd help her drain the bodily fluids, or with x-rays and stuff like that. When I was old enough, I even helped her with a dissection, but don't tell my brother that. I'm pretty sure he'd shoot me."

That explained a lot, Booth put the pieces together. Being raised by two male cops was bound to make for an interesting upbringing, and he was eager to learn more, but her Bones-like tendency to keep personal details close to her chest kept him from pressing her for more details.

"The dead bodies didn't bother you?" he decided to ask instead.

"It's not like they were going to come back to life and stab me or something," she shook her head with a short laugh and paused momentarily to recall her first dissecting experience when she was 12.

Booth chuckled along with her as his phone buzzed in his pocket, interrupting their bonding moment. "Booth. Yeah, Bones, we just wanted to grab a bite to eat first. Don't you want your squint to have as much energy as possible?" He paused to roll his eyes; Kylie figured she was berating him for taking too long and covered her mouth as she snickered. "Okay, okay, fine. We'll be there in five."

I don't really have much to say about this chapter, other than that it was somewhat of a filler. I wanted to get Zack in the chapter again, but I didn't want Kylie to take another trip to the loony bin, hence the flashback (which would reappear in the potential prequel, if enough people are interested). I also wanted to explore her background a little more, and I decided that Booth would be an appropriate person for her to open up to first; I was debating between him and Sweets, but she was just with Sweets a couple chapters ago. So there ya go. Hope y'all enjoyed it. Feedback is always appreciated!