Disclaimer: It's not mine. This is only a bit of fun. Please don't sue me… pretty please?
Zach leaned against the window, letting his cheek dampen from condensation. It was early morning. Clouds masked the sky in a deep grey and the roads bore puddles of the previous evening's shower. Noting this, Zach moved away from the window and wrapped his fingers around his seatbelt. Hodgins like to drive fast, even after the rain.
"Why don't you like Angela?"
Zach turned to Hodgins and stared. He tried to think of any words to say, but his mind was filled with the soft buzz of thoughts running to fast for Zach to understand them. The briefest glance of Zach's expression, only a split second between periods of road-watching, and it took every ounce of Jack Hodgins' self-control not to smile.
At last, Zach managed, "I do like Angela." He sank back into his seat. "Angela's nice."
"Yes, she is," Hodgins replied, "so why don't you like her?" She probably had some flaw he overlooked, some dumb squint thing like splitting her infinitives. The oxymoron made Hodgins happy—dumb squint. He liked that. Zach tended to be overly focused on details.
Zach thought for a moment. His shoulders curled inward and his mouth opened slightly, motions he was not conscious of and likely would have remedied had he noticed them. His eyes crossed, focused on a distant point. At last he leaned back and said, "I like Angela."
"No you--Zach!" Hodgins cried. He stopped at a red light and turned to Zach. "No you don't like Angela, and you're not a good liar. Why don't you just tell me? Don't you think things will be strange when she's living with me and we're all carpooling?" Zach's face at this pronouncement was priceless. Hodgins' capacity for anger with him vanished. He looked back to the road. A part of him wanted to push the matter, insist that the least Zach could do was give a response towards something Angela could speak to him about (this was largely her idea), but he was afraid he'd made Zach cry.
The light changed and Hodgins accelerated too quickly. He had gone two blocks without a word from Zach when Hodgins admitted, "You know, I think of you like a little brother." At a scuffling noise, Hodgins turned away from the roads to see Zach pressing himself against the door. "What?"
"My older brothers used to hold me down and beat me when they were bored. Or put frogs in my bed. Or tabasco in my chocolate milk. I was ten," Zach added sadly. "I never had chocolate milk again."
"How about the big brother who beats up the other big brothers who try to put frogs in your bed and tabasco in your chocolate milk?" Hodgins suggested. Zach smiled shyly, feeling warm in a very pleasant way. Then Hodgins continued, "And I can help you talk to girls. Boys--sorry!" he amended quickly. "Zach... I'm sorry." Zach didn't reply. Hodgins quickly crossed two lanes and left tracks of rubber on the road. A chorus of horns responded, and Hodgins stuck up a very rude finger out the window.
"Zach, should I turn around?" Hodgins asked. He didn't turn to look in case Zach really was crying, as Hodgins feared he was, and didn't want to be seen that way.
Zach blinked in surprise. "W-why would you do that?"
"Because most people think it's weird to cry at work," Hodgins supplied.
"I'm not crying."
"I don't care, you know," Hodgins told him. "I've known a while, anyway." Off Zach's surprised look, Hodgins explained, grinning, "Zach, you don't get to come out to everyone. You don't have to tell everyone you're a socially inept geek, do you?" he asked. It was quite obvious, in his eyes and in the eyes of others. And how had Zach not noticed? Hodgins had given him Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the autobiography of that thick gay actor for his last birthday. "Will you be all right at work?"
"Yes. Of course. I love work."
Hodgins put the car into gear, pulled dangerously into the road and sped towards the Jeffersonian. "And if Booth says anything, I'll stick a pregnant mygalomorphae theraphosoidea theraphosidae in his gym bag."
to be continued