Zachary Uriah Addy (Zach)

Zach is dirty, and exhausted. He’s not thinking about that, though, with a bag over his shoulder and a wad of cash in his hand as he pays the taxi driver outside of the Jeffersonian.

There are some surprised greetings (Hello-Dr.-Addy’s that he takes a split second to remember refer to him) as he walks through the main hall, which he returns tersely and keeps going. He avoids the Paleontology section—he doesn’t want to deal with Naomi and her colleagues now, not given how sleep-deprived he is, or how close he is to the Medico-Legal lab.

But there is a discussion occurring inside of the lab.

“Don’t you people understand?” Booth is yelling at the people in the lab. Zach sees the new person right away, a young, African-American man and slows. He must be the graduate student—Dr. Brennan won’t need his help if she already has someone to pick up the extra work in the lab. “No, this is enabling. You're enabling somebody with a mental problem.”

Dr. Brennan has seen him, already, and says his name.

“No, you,” Booth says, back to him and angry. “You, Bones. You’re the one with the mental problem.”

But no one else is listening to him any more, and Angela shrieks something that might be his name, if he had the proper ear structures to understand bats, and rushes to hug him, followed by Hodgins (who is laughing in surprise), and Dr. Saroyan, and behind them Dr. Brennan.

Angela asks him what he is doing back, but he is more concerned by Hodgins and asks, nervously, if he can move back in above his garage.

“Are you kidding?” Hodgins asks, going serious. Zach’s swallows to say something before Hodgins starts to laugh again and says “Of course! Come here!” and hugs him as well.

When he lets go, Dr. Brennan welcomes him home and does the same. Zach’s slowly beginning to relax, but Booth calls out to him from the raised lab area and asks if he got wounded.

“No,” he says, walking forward, “they just sent me home.”

“When can you start work?” Dr. Brennan asks, and he turns to blink at her as Booth says pats the new guy’s shoulder and says something.

“If you didn’t fill my job, who’s that guy?”

But the guy says he is ‘nobody,’ amiably, and turns to leave—Zach is still curious, sure, but he’s too overwhelmed with being home to give it much thought.

Hodgins, affectionately, tells him he “looks like crap” and Cam tells him off, but Zach isn’t really listening (though he does react to Angela’s declaration that he is rakish with a bewildered look).

“Are you starving?” She asks.

“Actually,” he says, carefully, “what I'd like is to get into whatever it was you were talking about before Dr. Brennan's mental problem.”

Hodgins reaches out and ruffles his closely shorn hair, before pulling him to the platform. Zach is incredibly glad that they aren’t mad at him, and that this—the one place he fits in, even if the army counselor tried to warn him about that—is still open to him.