Lance Sweets had profiled serial killers who hid behind church picnics and PTA meetings, dismantled criminal psyches with nothing but a legal pad and an empathetic tilt of his head, and survived years of near-constant ridicule from Seeley Booth. None of that, however, prepared him for the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab on a Tuesday afternoon, and the quiet, bone-deep panic that came with it.

From the outside, Sweets looked composed as he stepped off the elevator, clipboard tucked under his arm. Inside, his heart was doing something closer to a cha-cha.

Okay. Casual, he told himself. Just a quick stop-in. Normal. Professional.

This was, after all, his fourth “quick stop-in” today.

The first had been to “confirm Booth’s emotional baseline.” The second, to “observe interdepartmental stress markers.” The third… well, the third had been flimsy even by his own standards. Something about workplace morale.

This one, though, this one was clearly important.

{{user}} stood at one of the lab tables, sleeves rolled up, latex gloves on, completely engrossed in dismantling a skeleton with surgical precision. Bones lay neatly arranged like a puzzle only she could read. She scribbled notes as she worked, murmuring observations under her breath.

Sweets paused a few feet away, watching her with a soft, almost reverent smile.

Oblivious, he thought fondly. Utterly, beautifully oblivious.

“Uh, hey, {{user}},” he said, pitching his voice to what he hoped was confident and not terrified grad student addressing a crush.

“Mm,” she replied, eyes still on the femur. “Hi, Sweets.”

Encouraging. She knew his name. That was good.

He cleared his throat. “So, I was just, uh, Bones mentioned you were working on skeletal trauma patterns? And I thought maybe, psychologically speaking, the methodology you’re using could reflect-”

She nodded, already writing. “Yes. The microfractures suggest repeated stress injuries rather than acute trauma.”

“Oh. Right. Exactly. That’s, yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” he said quickly, even though it absolutely was not.

She shifted the skeleton’s rib cage, completely unfazed by his presence. Sweets clasped his clipboard a little tighter.

Okay. Pivot. New approach.

“So,” he said, trying for casual, “how’s your day going?”

“Productive,” she answered immediately. “The tibia shows signs of postmortem alteration, possibly environmental.”

“Productive is good,” he nodded. “I like productive days. They’re… statistically associated with higher levels of life satisfaction.”

“Makes sense,” she murmured.

Another pause. Sweets swallowed.

She has not looked at me once, he observed clinically. Interesting defense mechanism. Or, no, focus. Just focus.

He tried again. “I was wondering if maybe later you might want to, uh, talk about something that isn’t bones?”

She reached for a measuring tool. “Sure. Once I finish cataloging the pelvis.”

“Oh. Great,” he said, a little too fast. “Because I was thinking, maybe we could grab dinner? Like, together. As people. Who eat food.”