Work Text:
And he feels like home
If the shoe fits, walk in it everywhere you go
(T. Swift, “Long Story Short”)
After they survive, Alan comes home with her to DC.
For days, ever since they made it out of Biosyn’s headquarters, their world has been very loud and very relentless, people and organizations clamoring to know the truth. Not quite like being swarmed by gigantic prehistoric locusts on the stress-o-meter, but close.
Just for now, though, this one morning, the world turns small and quiet.
It’s surreal – Ellie thinks as she steps inside, turning on the lights – to have Alan here again after so many years.
They’d really made an effort for a while – a whole decade after she’d married Mark. It hadn’t been a bitter or angry thing at all, breaking up with Alan. They both liked each other so much it was more like life’s saddest dance, trying to move in a way where they didn’t step on each other’s toes on their way out. She’s always thought back on that as the most painful time of her life. (The most painful time that didn’t involve running from certain death, anyway.) That probably indicates she’s led a pretty charmed existence overall. But God, it didn’t feel charmed at the time. Figuring out how to let go of the person you’d known for sure would be your future.
So they’d been determined to really do it, to stay friends. And it had worked – phone calls at least every few months, visits whenever they traveled near each other, a standing invitation for Alan to come to the Degler house for holidays, which he’d sometimes even accepted. For years she kept a picture on the fridge of Alan in a sideways Santa hat, grimace-smiling at her kids as they laughed up at him.
On the day the Jurassic World theme park opened they’d talked on the phone for hours: ranting in furious harmony like they still lived together in that tiny messy trailer at the dig site, raging at the greedy ignorance of the people calling the shots. When she’d hung up, it was like being hurtled forward into the future, realizing that he wasn’t hers and she wasn’t that Ellie anymore. She was a mom, a wife, an author, not a newly-minted doctor in dusty jeans and the most exhilarating relationship of her life. And that was all right; it was pretty great, actually. Just disorienting, like there had to be another Ellie Sattler out there somewhere digging in the dirt.
The last time they’d seen each other in person, her kids were twelve and ten and she and Alan had met each other at the approximate midpoint between Seattle and Billings to get coffee. (After the fact, she’d thought more than once about what an absurd amount of driving that had been for an hour of conversation.) She’d been in a fight with Mark at the time, and Alan had shown up with the beginnings of a scruffy beard and that same quiet smile he had always reserved for her, and the whole time she sat beside him and chatted about the slings and arrows of academia, there was an unignorable current of I used to have sex with this man all the time and I really wouldn’t hate doing it again right now. He’d seemed to pick up on it, careful not to casually touch her. They hadn’t hugged goodbye.
And then her kids were teenagers, and she was trying to pivot from commercial nonfiction back to academic research, and it was easy to let long distance friendships fall by the wayside, especially one that Mark was less cool with than he’d been when they were still in their happy baby bubble. So she and Alan had mostly gone their separate ways. She did wind up with his email address and she would occasionally drop him a line, tickled by the thought of him frowning at a computer screen. His replies were short, but he always answered. She never deleted them.
And now the kids are all grown up, and her marriage is ancient history, and dinosaurs roam the earth, and the world hasn’t ended in a plague of locusts just yet.
And here she is with Alan Grant.
“Wow,” he says, gazing around the house. He has sort of a somber energy, like someone taking their hat off in church. “It looks different.”
“Oh yeah. I hate to admit to being such a cliche, but there was a whole lot of ‘let’s save our marriage with home renovations’ for a few years there.”
“Kitchen’s nice.”
“That was all Mark. I hate that goddamn breakfast bar.”
Alan’s eyebrows shoot up, his mouth twitching in amusement. She turns away toward the fridge so he won’t see her smile.
“You want a beer?” she teases. “It’s almost nine thirty.”
“I’ll take whatever you give me.”
She considers the beverage contents of her fridge, and settles on: “Green juice smoothie?”
He makes a face. “Sure.”
God. He really is making an effort.
She has mercy on him and pours them each a glass of water from the Brita filter instead.
“Cheers.” She clinks her glass against his.
“Cheers.”
As they drink she takes in the sight of him, and realizes he looks exhausted. Beyond ‘I spent all night on a plane’ exhausted. She is too, as a matter of fact.
“You wanna sit down?” she offers, putting their glasses next to the sink.
“Absolutely. Not at the breakfast bar, though. It’s hideous.”
“Isn’t it?” She beams at him. Leading him down the hall to the living room, she adds, “I forgot how this feels. Like you’re completely exhausted and incredibly wired all at once. Starving and nauseous.”
“The side-effect of not getting eaten when you probably should have.”
“Can you take anything to make that go away?” she muses.
“Therapy?” he suggests, making her laugh.
“You remember that time we tried to go grocery shopping, like a month after Isla Nublar,” Ellie says, “and it was all way harder than we expected – too many people, too much noise – and we just sat down in the ice cream aisle?”
“And when that poor kid working there said people couldn’t sit down in the aisles, you said, ‘Excuse me, asshole, you have no idea what we just survived!’”
“Oh, God, did I?” Ellie puts her face in her hand.
“Something like that. It might have been ‘jackass.’ Scared the daylights out of him.”
“He probably thought we were in a gang.”
Alan chuckles. “What gang would take us?”
“I don’t know. One that wore a lot of denim and flannel.” She tugs the collar of his flannel shirt.
His expression turns wistful. “Nobody else ever really got how it felt back then.”
“No,” Ellie agrees softly.
There’d been many years where she was totally happy with Mark, totally secure in her choice, but even then sometimes she’d wake up in the middle of the night, nightmare-sick, and wish she could be with someone who knew what it was like. To have been so scared, to have suffered so much that it chiseled its way into you, changing you forever.
“I guess that’s not the case anymore.”
“Oh, brave new world,” Ellie says, wry.
They’re greeted by a squawk as they turn into the living room.
“Jack!” Alan says, delighted at the sight of Ellie’s trusty macaw.
“Yes!” Ellie follows him to the cage. “I got my first baby in the divorce, thank God.”
“I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of him in so long. Hey, fella. How’ve you been? He looks good.”
“Isn’t he magnificent?” Ellie sticks a finger through the cage, stroking Jack’s bright feathers.
“Fucking asshole!” says Jack cheerfully.
“And hello to you too,” says Alan.
Ellie grimaces. “He might have picked up some new lingo during the descent of my marriage.”
“Getting back to his origins.”
“At least around you, he was only saying ‘bullshit.’”
“In my defense, the world does seem to have a never-ending supply of bullshit.”
“You’re telling me. You want to give him a snack?”
“Sure.”
She tosses him a clementine from the bowl on the coffee table and sits down on the sofa. As he peels it, she can’t help watching his fingers. She used to watch his hands a lot while he worked. The deliberate delicateness of his movements – it was a turn-on, she won’t lie. It still is. They’ve slept together a few times already – there’s nothing like about fifty near-death experiences squeezed into a day to break the ice – but hey, they’ve got decades to make up for. She figures she can indulge in some one-track-mindedness.
He isn’t on her wavelength right now, though; she can tell. He has that glint in his eye, brain whirring; he’s probably drawing lines between ancient animal habits and this living, breathing creature.
So it surprises her when he says, “You know, macaws can live up to sixty years.”
She’s never had a hard time decoding what he means under the surface. That hasn’t changed.
“I know,” she says.
When Jack had shown up, she’d just been terribly sad that Alan had thought a bird for a birthday gift could stave off the inevitable, but now, she thinks she gets it. Something that said forever, or close enough, in the way he could.
Alan concentrates on the orange slices. “Sorry he wasn’t quite a kid.”
“Hey, he’s never thrown up on me or told me I’m ruining his life, which is more than I can say for Charlie or Amy, bless ‘em. This handsome boy has helped keep me sane. Thank you for the perfect birthday gift.”
The corner of his mouth twitches fondly. “My pleasure.”
“Did you ever change your mind? About kids?” Ellie doesn’t know why she’s asking. Emotional masochism, probably.
“Nah, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have had enough attention to go around, between that and my work. It would have driven me nuts. You know me.”
“I do.”
“I would have liked to be married, though.”
Her stomach twists, a sort of gnawing sadness mixed with butterflies. “Did you ever come close?”
He meets her eyes. “Just the once.”
He looks away again, offering another orange slice through the cage bars. Jack gobbles it up appreciatively.
“Hey,” Ellie says. “Come here.”
He yields the last of the orange slices to Jack, then crosses the room and sits down beside her.
Ellie takes his hands in hers. They’re a little sticky with orange juice. “You never said you wanted to get married.”
“I thought it was obvious.”
“It was. But you never said it.”
With careful disinterest, he says, “I bought a ring and everything.”
“What? You did not!”
He nods grimly.
“Alan! You didn’t!”
“Ellie, I did.”
She smacks his shoulder. “Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because you would have said yes,” he answers simply, “and we didn’t want the same things. And we were too good together to do that to each other.”
She opens her mouth to argue on instinct, and then discovers that he’s right. “Shit.”
“Shit,” he agrees.
“That’s really depressing.”
“Not so depressing. You’ve had a great life, great career, great kids. You’re out there changing the world. I’ve been able to work without too many interruptions, and you know I never wanted much more than that. And hey. We’re both here.”
She decides not to tell him that some part of her worried about him every day. Not consciously, always, but in the same way your heart kept beating. He was always so alone , kept company by the past, staunchly uninterested in the future or, God forbid, the present. She’d always hoped something would happen someday to pull him more into his own life. She just hadn’t been quite bold enough to hope it would be her again.
“We are here,” she says. “Which is pretty incredible, considering recent events.”
“And you know,” he adds, “maybe I could use a break.”
“What??” She feigns a gasp. “I’m sorry. I think all that death-defying stress has me hallucinating. Did you say–”
“Yes, a break. Lecturing bored tourists who won’t look up from their phones so we can keep the dig financed, barely – right now I think there might be better ways to spend my time.”
“Well, I’ve got a ton of work to do.” She drums her fingers on his shoulder. “So you can carry my briefcase, and bring me coffee, and -- oh, I don’t know -- lend your brilliant mind to fixing the dangers facing our planet. Starting with raining hell on Biosyn.”
“It would be an honor.”
“I do like almond milk lattes,” she says, “so the coffee orders might be a little painful for you.”
He gives her an affectionate smirk. “I’ll adapt.”
She smiles, pressing a hand to his cheek. “Oh, I really missed you.”
“Yeah?”
“Dr. Grant, no one on earth is more fun to be with than you.”
“Dr. Sattler, you’re definitely the only person on earth with that opinion.” He chuckles, turning his face to kiss her palm.
***
Later when they’re lounging in bed, Ellie asks, “Do you still have the ring?”
“Ring?”
“The engagement ring you confessed to the existence of.”
“Oh,” he says in that too-light voice he always uses when he lies, “maybe. Can’t remember.”
“Okay,” she says, laughing, and rests her head on his shoulder. “Did you notice that I was wearing this one?” She holds out her hand, showing off the amber ring.
He wraps an arm around her, bringing her closer. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“I wasn’t sure you would.”
“But I gave it to you.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d remember that!”
“Of course I remembered it. That was a memorable night.”
“Did you think that maybe I was trying to tell you something,” she says, “by showing up after we hadn’t seen each other for years, wearing a gift you gave me in a very romantic context?”
“I didn’t want to presume,” Alan says gallantly.
“That was very polite of you.” She leans in closer. “Please presume from now on.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They kiss, lazy and blissful, until a memory strikes her that makes her grin.
“You remember that time we fell out of the shitty trailer bed and you nearly got concussed on that … God, what was it? A filing cabinet? A safe?”
“Which time?” he quips.
“You were bleeding so badly–just everywhere!” She mimes blood pouring from her own forehead.
“You were a pretty good nurse.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“No, you weren’t.”
She laughs, and he joins her, and her life seems to fold neatly into itself. Now, in her nice expensive king-sized bed, and back then, on that awful mattress that only held them both due to their sheer force of will. Both places exactly right, with him next to her.
“I think I’m gonna sell this house,” she realizes.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s too big for just me and Jack. This is a house that’s supposed to have kids in it. I had a great chapter – lots of great chapters here. But it’s time to turn the page.”
“And what’s on the next page?” he asks, sounding a little shy.
She rolls over to face him, resting on her elbow. “How attached are you to your place?”
“Not at all.”
“How do you feel about shacking up with a preeminent paleobotanist and a macaw with a potty mouth?”
“The same way I did thirty years ago.” Oh man, she’s missed that smile.
“Good,” she says, flopping contentedly back down into the pillows.
They pack up their lives with remarkable speed and squish them together in a small house in beautiful middle-of-nowhere Montana. Ellie has always missed it here, and traveling so much for work is way sweeter when there’s somewhere so gorgeous to call home.
They fall asleep and wake up to the sounds of animals outside, a symphony that’s always there if you’re willing to listen. It feels good, being part of the unity of things instead of persisting with the fiction that humans, or dinosaurs, or any one species reigns supreme. There’s real peace in being just a creature among many. Jack in particular doesn’t discriminate, and enthusiastically mimics everything he hears.
One morning, Jack starts trilling out what sounds uncannily like a compsognathus call. Alan nearly spontaneously combusts at that one, and spends the whole day trying to whistle the sound back to him. Ellie half-expects a dinosaur to wander into their house and ask what’s up with all the racket.
They don’t have a ton of space indoors; most of the time they don’t need it. The spare bedroom usually serves as an office, but Charlie and Amy both make separate weekend trips over to make sure their mother’s unscathed after her first brush with death this millennium.
Amy is zen about the new developments. She’s been very into the idea of Ellie getting back out there since Ellie and Mark first separated a few years ago. She does seem a little disappointed that Ellie went back to Alan instead of becoming the upteenth Mrs. Ian Malcolm. (Amy’s generation, like all generations, is very into Ian.)
“I guess I get the appeal, though,” she admits with a weary sigh when she and Ellie are chopping dinner veggies one night. “Alan’s always loved you, and he does kind of look like hot Santa Claus.”
“Thank you,” Ellie says, “and please never say that again.”
“I’m just saying he, like, aged well.”
“He did, didn’t he?”
“It’s like that picture on the fridge had prophetic powers– Hey. Please stop smiling like that.”
“What? You’re the one who called him Hot Santa Claus.”
“But I don’t need to know about you sleeping with Hot Santa Claus, and that’s what your face is telling me.”
“Shhhh. You can never say Hot Santa Claus in front of him, by the way. His poor brain won’t be able to take it.”
“Are you talking about me?” Alan asks, peeking in at them.
“No,” Ellie and Amy chime angelically.
Charlie is a bit more of a wild card – he hadn’t been as open to the divorce as Amy, probably because he had witnessed a few more years of marital harmony. But he plays it very cool.
“Don’t stress, dinosaur man,” he says when the three of them are having dinner together. “I knew you’d be our stepdad pretty much the second Mom and Dad said they were getting divorced.”
“Really?” said Alan. “I wish you’d called. I would have liked to know sooner.”
Charlie laughs, winning Ellie’s infinite gratitude.
“So, I hear you two lovebirds are – ah, cooing in the same nest again.”
“It’s so nice of you to call and congratulate us, Ian,” Ellie says, waving at the little Ian inside her phone screen. “You’ll have to come visit sometime. The country out here’s beautiful. Right, Alan?”
“Yeah, sure,” says Alan gruffly.
“We’ve got a spare room and everything,” Ellie goes on, while Alan makes ‘NO’ faces at her that Ian has a perfect view of. She’s not sure if Alan doesn’t know that, or just doesn’t care.
“That’s so lovely of you, Ellie, such hospitality. Alan, just know I can see you right now.”
“I don’t care,” grumbles Alan.
“What do you call that look – pufferfish chic? Never mind. I’ll let it go. Now, just to get ahead of this, on the subject of – well, exclusivity versus what the kids today refer to as a polycule, I feel like it behooves us all for me to, to be frank: I just started seeing someone new, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not open to whatever shape this–” Ian gestures between them. “--might morph into. I think we three have always had this, um, this rather potent gravitation toward one another that feels infinitely worth exploring, given the right circumstances–”
“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Ellie says cheerfully. “I don’t think there’s going to be any morphing.”
“All right, all right, there’s a no-vote from Dr. Sattler. Alan, I think it’s only fair to ask where you stand vis-a-vis any potential manage –”
“How do you hang up on someone on one of these?” Alan asks, stabbing random spots on the touchscreen.
“Hey, uh, easy there,” says Ian, “that tickles.”
One night she’s sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine and her laptop, reading her notes for the Biosyn hearings aloud to Jack, when Alan comes in.
“Hey, look what I found.”
She turns to see him holding something tiny that glints in the lamplight.
“The ring! There it is!” she gasps, getting up.
“I guess I did have it tucked away somewhere. What do you think?”
It’s been nearly three decades since it happened, but the thought of Alan Grant braving a jewelry store melts her heart like no time has passed at all. She imagines him, still younger and clean-shaven, squinting at the ring selection with the careful consideration he usually gave his fossils.
She puts a hand to her heart. “You nailed it.”
“Really?”
“Automatic yes. One hundred percent. Can I?” She reaches for the ring.
Alan pulls it out of her reach. “No, no–”
“What?” she demands, laughing.
He captures her fingers gently in his, and her laughter fades.
“Ellie Sattler,” he says, and it turns out that’s enough.
Her eyes are hot as she watches him slide the ring onto her finger. It’s a perfect fit.
She pulls him into a fierce hug, and stares at her hand over his shoulder.
“It’s supposed to be on the left hand,” she points out, her voice thick with happy tears.
“Oh, damn it,” he mutters, turning and trying to reach for her left hand.
“No.” She stops him, hugging him tighter. “Actually, this is perfect.”
“You think?” he asks as they loosen into a dancelike sway.
“Honey, since when have we ever done things the normal way?”
“Good point.”
“Fucking asshole!” contributes Jack.
“And they all lived happily ever after,” Alan murmurs, his cheek against hers.
"Finally," sighs Ellie gladly.
"Finally," he agrees.