Chapter Text
ONE
December 23, 2021 - 5:55 PM
"Happy Birthday!"
There was a dinosaur on the card, a pudgy pink and green cartoon with a toothy grin and spotted party hat fastened beneath its chin. Nondescript species, likely theropod. Center of gravity all wrong, tail too short, joints in the legs all wrong. The thin card stock was lightly dusted with rainbow glitter that came off on his hands and fell out of the bright blue envelope when he turned it upside down. It made Gray Mitchell smile. A little girl, maybe six or seven, had run up to him when he stepped out of the ceiling-high sliding glass doors of the Gurley Forum lecture hall on the Santa Fe Institute's Miller Campus. In her tiny grip had been the hand-sized envelope, and she'd said with a giggle that a really cute boy had asked her to give it to him. Then she'd skipped back toward two smiling women in peacoats who took one of her hands each, waved congenially with their free ones, and gone off toward the parking garage.
Opening the card revealed an elaborate pop-up, a hedgehog of thin moon-shaped blades of grass. The same ridiculous character from the cover was popping out of the bright green grass, smiling with an open mouth full of sharp white teeth and arms open wide for a hug. He laughed and ran a finger over the sloppy inked inscription next to a tiny red heart drawn in marker :
"Turn around."
Gray was grinning so wide he thought he must look addled. His arms were airborne before he even spun on his heel, ready for the wide familiar shoulders and thick, strong neck waiting for him. His hand flew to lock around a hunk of shirt, jacket, hair, anything he could hold onto. He knew it was a public place, there were people who knew him here. People who might be coming out the same doors soon. He didn't care. He was going to kiss him, right here. He was going to jump up into his arms like they were in a movie. It had been six months. He couldn't believe he hadn't cried in three. He'd wanted to the entire damn time.
His enthusiasm carried over into his momentum and he smacked his brother Zach in the right eye with the knuckle of his middle finger.
"Ah! Dude!"
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God!"
"It's OK! It's OK!" Zach was rubbing at the eye with his own hand, grinning. His other eye was squinted from laughter, hooded by his luxurious lashes. They were both smiling, Gray with both his hands on the sides of his older brother's head. "Your aim is off, Man."
Gray laughed through his nose and waved one of his arms like a pool noodle. "Growth spurt. I keep knocking stuff off my bathroom sink."
Zach rubbed his eye one more time, looked at his hand as though he'd rubbed the sting out onto his skin and could see it there, and rose to his full six-feet and two inches - probably more in those big clunky work boots he always wore now. It still made Gray swoon a little. On the night of his eighteenth birthday, Gray was still five-foot-nine. It had been a family joke for so long; Zach liked sports and fixing things like their dad, Gray liked animals and nature like their mom and shared her penchant for art and poetry. Their heights corresponded to the parents they echoed, though both boys had their mother's same creamy spotless complexion where their dad was swarthy.
"You're still a squirt." Zach said it with a wink, his gorgeous wet cherry-red lips turning up in one corner wickedly. He was wearing a white cotton t-shirt tight against his chest beneath a linen blazer, semi-formal enough for dinner while still rocking a pair of wrinkled blue jeans below and - yes, of course - the big heavy work boots he wore in the garage that were the only kinds of shoes he wore anymore. His shirt was cut low - intentional, Gray was sure of it. His brother always dressed modestly, didn't like attention. Sometimes he would go around in his boilersuit after work until it was almost bedtime, go to the grocery store and the bank in it. Zach had worn the v-neck just for Gray, to expose a thatch of coarse dark chest hair flush against the thick muscle.
Gray bit his lip and leapt with renewed intent, aimed like a drone missile this time. His brother caught him under the legs as his arms snaked around Zach's shoulders. He hung from that powerful neck like a sloth, beaming and giggling, before he drew himself up and stopped himself just before he crashed face first into those sighing red lips. For just a moment he watched the glare of the sun behind him turn Zach's focused hazel gaze into an explosion of brilliant amber, pressing their foreheads together and inhaling the breath from his brother's mouth. He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again into Zach's intense, penetrating stare, then pushed past his face and buried his nose in the nape of his neck. He felt his brother pull him closer under his thighs as he inhaled the light sweat pheromones that were so familiar to him. The oldest, most pleasant scent in his living memory. There was a hint of polished metal and motor oil, but that was always present since Zach had started his Engineering degree at UC Berkeley. It only made his personal bouquet more unique, something Gray could barely remember considering as anything but completely belonging to him. Nobody else got to experience his brother like this. Nobody else got to breathe him in like this. Half a year of this fellowship at Santa Fe pining and whining over the phone and finally he felt secure and whole again.
His brother was smelling him as well, nosing subtly under his chin before he gave the milky white flesh of his neck a single, secretive lick.
"I missed you so fucking much," Zach whispered.
Gray kissed the nape of his neck as quickly and covertly as he could. The comfort washing over him in waves was making his knees weak. Thank God he wasn't on his feet, but he'd have to be soon. People. Watching. Maybe just a close embrace at first. Had to make sure it stayed that way. He was the youngest person on the Miller Campus. People knew his brother was going to be here to pick him up.
"I love you so fucking much."
"Shh," Gray said slyly, setting back onto his feet. He was still cheesing. He'd wanted to hear those words in person again for so long. Zach was usually much more reserved about this kind of thing. He really liked how his brother was almost desperate for him.
"Sorry," Zach grinned, putting his hands in his blazer pockets.
"I love you too," Gray made sure to add as he absently ruffled his own shirt. "So. Fucking. Much. Where's Mom?"
Zach shrugged. "At the hotel. She's gonna meet us at the restaurant, she needed a nap after the flight." Gray reached down for his bag and Zach intercepted him, taking it and slinging it over his own shoulder. Gray rubbed his brother's arm affectionately as he tucked the birthday card back into the envelope and slipped it into the side of the bag.
"You're not tired?" Gray asked, and they quit the building's grandiose shadow and began down the lecture hall's smooth sandstone steps.
"Short flight," Zach shrugged again. His hair was a little longer than the no-nonsense close-cropped style he usually wore, just peeking down past his ears. Gray thought it was embarrassingly handsome how it moved when he walked and gestured or turned his head. "But you know Mom on planes," Zach laughed. Their mother was terrified of flying. She'd probably taken an Ambien before stepping through the gate.
"When did you guys land?" They walked in practiced step, not too close but not far enough from each other that their hands didn't touch now and then as they swung softly at their sides.
"About noon, maybe a little after," Zach explained. "But she took her Mommy Medicine at like eight this morning at the airport, she's probably awake and getting into her Uber right now. What is this place you're taking us to? I Googled it, is this one of your hippy joints?"
"Oh, my God," Gray snorted. "You graduated from Berkeley, did you seriously just call me a hippy? You really are turning into dad."
"And be grateful he couldn't make it if this is another one of those places where you eat with your hands," Zach said. Gray rolled his eyes.
"Mom will like it," he said, and leaned in close to nudge his brother in the ribs. "You will, too. You always do."
"I always do," Zach agreed, turning his head down to look at him. Genuine adoration in that gaze. Just sweetness and warmth. And love. It still made Gray blush like a little boy. He hadn't felt so happy in so -
"Hey, Gray!"
Shit.
"Who's that?"
"Gray! Gray Mitchell!"
There was a short, solidly built woman with grey-streaked copper hair pulled into a messy bun waving at them from the top of the steps.
"Is that one of the..." Zach didn't know the term for people who lecture at these fellowships. It was just Lecturer or Fellow, typically, but Gray didn't get the time to explain that. "Does she teach here? Does she always dress like that?"
"Yes," Gray said, smiling at her. "Yes, she does. Hi, Doctor Harding!" He raised a hand and waved as the woman began to descend the steps spryly toward them. She was wearing a vented light green safari vest with half a dozen pockets lining the front, not a one of them empty. Pens, stationary sticking out, a pair of reading glasses, a multitool clipped over the lip of a pocket; these were just the items that could be readily identified at first glance. Her pants were long khaki cargos, also with an abundance of pockets secured by practical black Velcro, tucked into a pair of laced brown leather hiking boots at the calves.
"Are you the brother!?" She called happily down. She had attractive Scottish features; sharp green-gold eyes, kitten nose, tight smooth lips without a hint of makeup. Her gait was bouncing and energetic, not just for a woman of her age. Her shirt underneath the safari vest was rolled up to the elbows and her bare forearms were powerful, the hands crisscrossed in veins. She was utterly unpretentious down to the #2 pencil sticking out of her bun with the erasure clearly bearing signs of being chewed on. She certainly didn't look like any other member of the Institute faculty, much less a visiting Fellow who'd just given a two hour seminar to a hall packed so full that there were people sitting on each others' shoulders at the back of the room, leaning against the wall. Gray could see his brother liked her immediately. Doctor Harding had that effect on people.
"Sarah Harding!" She came to a stop on her toes and extended a hand to Zach, who shook it. She was also probably the only Fellow here who didn't always introduce herself as Doctor.
"Zach Mitchell, my pleasure. Your name is so familiar..." Zach said, and thought about it momentarily before it came to him. He turned to Gray. "You had a picture of her on your door." Doctor Harding smiled sneakily at Gray, who blushed deeply. "From National Geographic."
"The Serengeti piece! I remember, the painted dog study!" she ejaculated, and she slapped Gray on the back. "Only time they ever asked me for an interview because the painted dogs were such a hot topic with conservationists at the time. Took the bastards long enough. You know I took all the pictures myself? Four days in a jeep under the Tanzanian sun and I can't remember if they even credited me for the photos or not. God knows they barely paid me, but you couldn't do a damn thing about that back then if you couldn't afford a roomful of lawyers. And then you're losing money anyway. But I had to be in Senegal almost as soon as I came home from that one, so it didn't bother me too much at the time. Hindsight's a bitch when you're not tenured. But hey," she gestured around them at the wide, beautiful campus with its cold-hardy palm trees and glistening reflective pools. "Three years max on a fellowship grant ain't so bad. I don't like to be in one place too long anyway. That must have been a couple years before you were born. Who gave you the old magazines?"
"Our grandpa," Gray explained. "Well, our mom gave them to us after he died. He willed them to us. He also had a copy of your publication about tyrannosauridae parental care."
"Passing on knowledge," Sarah said approvingly. "It's why we do what we do. What did your grandpa do?"
"He was a mechanic."
"Oh!" She winked at Zach. "Like you!" Gray saw his brother's smirk and returned the look; yes, jerk, I talk about you. "I heard you just got your BSE. Good job!"
"I did, thank you. Longest four years of my life without a computer brain like this guy. Did you speak today?" Zach asked.
"That was me," she said, not proudly but not humbly, waving back at the austere visage of Gurley Forum. "Last lecture of my fellowship." She raised both fists and shook them. She had really nice teeth. Gray wondered how she kept her teeth that nice when she'd spent most of her life in the wilderness. He made a mental note to ask her later.
"Oh, so your three years are up?"
"He didn't tell you!?" She slapped Gray on the back affectionately again and he smiled crookedly at his brother, who looked inquisitive now.
"I didn't tell him yet," Gray admitted. "I was going to tell you. With Mom. I actually haven't decided yet. I wanted to talk to you guys. Dad too, but what are you gonna do about that?" He rolled his eyes. His older brother pressed a hand into his lower back comfortingly. Gray did not like their dad's new girlfriend.
"Well, you think it over hard," she said, putting her own hand on Gray's arm and smiling knowingly at Zach. "It's a big commitment." Then she looked at her watch. "Late for dinner. My daughter insists on scheduling these things so early it's turning my husband into one of those old fogeys who falls asleep at seven PM." Gray brightened.
"Are you going to meet Doctor Malcolm for dinner?"
Doctor Harding heard the hopeful squeak in his voice and nodded sympathetically. "Sure am, bud. You'll get that introduction, I promise." She winked. "Just not tonight. Go have dinner with your mom and give her a big hug and a kiss. You don't even have to think about the offer tonight."
She pointed to Zach. "Kiss him too," she said with a laugh, and they both laughed along. They'd gotten good enough at hiding their nervousness at comments like that a long time ago.
Doctor Harding shook Zach's hand again and sounded extremely sincere when she told him she was happy to meet him. Zach returned the sentiment wholeheartedly, still clearly confused but holding onto it for later. She hugged Gray, rubbing his back like a proud aunt, and off she went like a bolt across the breezy campus. The boys fell into step again and meandered toward Zach's rented car in the garage.
"It's a Yemeni place," Gray said absently. "The restaurant. It's called Shibam. You eat on the floor... And with your hands."
Zach laughed aloud, shook his head, and looked around. A few people still milling around, but the boys were stepping together into the long shadow of the parking garage. He reached for Gray's hand and strung their fingers together. Gray's smaller hand locked into his brother's automatically like a puzzle piece, and then he let go and pulled Zach's arm around his neck as they entered the garage. The air was even cooler than the beautiful New Mexico evening outside, and there was a soft Bossa Nova coming from speakers somewhere inside. Gray leaned into his brother's chest and bit him playfully between his pectorals, pulling at some of his chest hair with his teeth as he withdrew. Zach hissed and reached down Gray's shirt to pinch one pert nipple, which caused him to yelp.
"Are you going to tell me what that was about or is this a Mom Too thing?"
Gray groaned as he yanked his brother toward the stairwell door by the wrist. "Please don't talk about Mom right now."
"Baby," Zach said, and Gray's face split into sunbeams at the endearment. He didn't mind 'Man' or 'Dude' even when they weren't around people who didn't know about them. They'd called each other so many different things since they were kids. Even 'Bro' could be really hot at the opportune moment. But 'Baby' made his stomach flutter to the point he needed to curl his toes sometimes. "What was she talking about? What offer do you have to think hard about?" Gray could see he was trying with difficulty to continue projecting concern even as the door shut behind him and he fell back against it hard to keep it shut.
"This first," Gray said matter-of-factly. Zach didn't argue. Gray's hands were travelling up the back of his brother's shirt before their lips finally collided, Zach's fingers likewise kneading their way down the back of his little brother's slacks. They opened their mouths simultaneously, and when his brother's breath billowed against the roof of his mouth followed by his thick probing tongue Gray lurched forward and pressed their groins together. Zach's fingers on both hands had reached down to the very center of him down there and were pulling him apart gently, circling heat on his asshole. He lifted one leg and hooked it over Zach's thigh to give him better access, but Zach retracted the finger that was teasing his entrance and immediately lifted it to his own nostrils over his light stubble.
Gray giggled. "Pervert." His brother grinned wickedly and sniffed deeply from the tip of his finger with a long, reverent sigh. He closed his eyes and shook like he was possessed. Gray felt Zach's bulge surging against his own at the smell, grinding and gyrating.
"God, I fucking missed the way you smell." Then Zach stuffed the finger past his own juicy lips and sucked it, moaning - clearly louder than he'd intended. He worked the finger in and out of his mouth to wet it properly and slipped it back down to his little brother's opening, wiggling the tip inside.
"Oh, my God. Thank fuck," Gray squealed, and pushed back until he felt two knuckles pop past his anus with a searing, satisfying burn. "Thank fuck Baby, I needed that so bad." He rocked back and forth a bit, feeling his opening pushing and pulling with his brother's finger. Zach bit his lower lip on one side and began to add another digit.
"Oh, my God," Gray said again throatily. His brother found his prostate easily with the first finger and began to trace its shape in pulsing circles as the second finger sliced into him a little more unkindly than the first. Middle and index, all the way to the metacarpophalangeal joints. Hooked into him, searching inside of him. Every pulse against his prostate made his penis, locked between polyester and buckle on both sides, jerk against Zach. If this went on they were going to make a mess. Embarrassing. Public. "Baby, we gotta wait."
"I know," Zach said, but he was slow to stop. They were making intense eye contact even as they fought to suck on each others' tongues.
"I love you so much, you fucking pervert." Gray could barely breathe. His asshole was past the burn, walls slick and pliant inside. Zach was wiggling his fingers, the other arm holding Gray tight against him. "Jesus, we have to stop. Baby, baby..."
"I know," Zach said again, this time with a good-natured whine. Both their jaws dropped as he began slowly - dramatically - withdrawing his digits from his little brother's asshole. There was the burn again. The countless callouses on those thick knuckled fingers. Gray didn't want them out of himself, no matter what he said. He felt like he could feel every wrinkle of his brother's knuckles, the dull edge of his nails which he kept pristinely trimmed and filed. Every surface dragging along inside the most intimate, dirtiest part of himself. He wanted to slam his aching, wet butthole back against them. He wanted at least one more inside, just enough to hurt a little. More later. So much more later. He loved it when Zach got him wet down there like that. For Zach it was like priming an engine. Or marinating a meal. He liked to get his little brother a little moist down there, tool some spit and sweat with his sticky pungent ass juices. Rub it into the sparse chestnut-colored hairs around his asshole. Later, when they were alone, it was going to smell like Zach's personal salon in God's mansion.
"Oh! Ooohhh..." The index finger came out first, the nail rocking provocatively against his opening. The loss of heat inside of himself was jarring and saddening. The middle finger came too, reluctantly, and as his hand came out of Gray's pants Zach made sure those fingers didn't contact the fabric. The hand shot up to his face again, under his nose. Gray nuzzled him under his chin and kissed his collarbone as Zach sniffed his fingers and moaned deep in his chest, weakening against the door. Both fingers went into his own mouth again, and Gray could see Zach's tongue working between both cheeks as he slurped at the dank, musky fluids he'd collected from inside his little brother's rectum. Zach sucked his fingers almost too long and was outwardly resentful when the flavor faded, grinning ear to ear at his brother.
"Can I kiss you?" It was only polite after what he'd just done, but Gray rolled his eyes.
"Chivalry's for boys who don't like to smell my asshole after I just sat through a two hour lecture," Gray said. "And I don't want anything to do with those boys. Lemme taste." And he prodded his way to the base of his older brother's tongue with his own. Intoxicating, the smell of himself - the lingering taste of himself - on his brother's lips, on his tongue, at the back of his throat. Rubbed onto Zach's teeth, smeared onto Zach's facial hair. Scent had always been their language of love. They kissed and kissed, adjusting their clothes and dusting themselves off as they did. Gray broke away first and turned suddenly to race playfully up the stairs, pulling his pants and underwear down past the smooth globes of his buttocks and prompting his brother to snort and chase him. They made a silly, childish game of it where Zach pretended to lag behind just long enough to catch him at the landing of the right floor and encircle him in a crushing embrace as he pulled his pants back up.
Gray could've died happy. A weighted blanket hadn't been enough. He was going to sleep like a baby.
For awhile, anyway.
Zach was holding him from behind, rocking them back and forth. Gray's hand was on the door handle. Garage Floor 6. The parking lot through the reinforced glass window was dimly lit.
"Do you want to wait for Mom?"
Gray nodded. Just like that, he snapped out of his gleeful daze. Don't cry. You're eighteen years old, don't cry.
"Just..."
"What is it?" Zach gently turned him to face him.
"Don't be mad, OK? I haven't decided yet."
` "Dude - "
"I know, I know," Gray said with a smile, holding back his tears. "You don't get mad, you're the best brother on the face of the planet." Zach lifted his hand and kissed it.
"And I love you."
"And you love me. That's pretty cool, too." He pushed the door handle down, opened the door. Zach kept a hold of his hand to lead him to the car as the rush of cool air from the garage blew across their flushed faces. "Zach?"
"Yeah, Bro?"
"Can I suck it in the car? On the way to the restaurant? I really need it."
"Yeah, Bro."
*****
December 23, 2021 - 7:15 PM
"Two years!?" Karen Mitchell had gone from ecstatic to see her youngest son to staggered in a blink. "Honey, we haven't even gotten you back yet! And you'd have to leave in less than a month!?"
Zach Mitchell was sat cross-legged next to his mother on a cushion atop a mat of elaborately patterned linoleum. They sat across from his little brother who was looking down at his bowl of wafting dark soup on the floor with rice and potatoes and adding two different hot sauces - one bright gore red speckled with yellow seeds, one dark spinach green with similar seeds. Both searing hot. Gray and their mother loved spicy food. Zach couldn't handle it. His own saltah was delicious but probably nowhere near as authentically spiced. Karen, unfamiliar with the spread, copied her younger son, mixing the hot sauces in then dipping her flatbread in the broth as he did. Her eyes rolled up in momentary pleasure and she moaned, then swallowed and scrunched her face into another hesitant frown.
"I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to shout."
"You didn't shout, Mom," Gray assured her softly, and she reached to stroke the back of his hand. The restaurant was dark, and a myriad of other diners were laughing, gossiping, and cheering all around them. Overhead was a canopy of softly glowing yellow lanterns which spread a dim glow that almost didn't reach them where they sat on the floor. The graceful servers darted in and out of the shadows between dining groups like dancers or stage hands. "I'm not sure yet if I'm going to do it. But it's a big deal that she even asked. Doctor Harding only takes on one research assistant at a time because of how remote all her work is. It's hard to get permits and visas sometimes where she goes. Easier with less people, so she doesn't switch around learning associates according to their schedule like most researchers. It's got to be a commitment. Two years in the bush monitoring the same sample group."
Zach listened, stunned. He dipped his malawach and lifted the sopping, steaming flatbread to his lips and chewed. Tried to savor it. It really was delicious. The broth was hearty, protein-rich and filling. He noticed Gray was having trouble looking at him, trying to just talk their mom through this. The music was percussive and glamorous, a man singing in lilting Arabic.
"But sweetie, hyenas? That means lions too, right?"
"Yeah, Mom. It's a predator study." Gray was speaking slowly and patiently, methodically finishing his saltah soup and moving on to his plate of charred spiced lamb and rice. He spooned more of the dark green sahawiq sauce onto the tender grilled lamb and cut it with his fork and knife. "The study is about hyena social structure and predation behavior, but there will be lions. Leopards. Elephants... Hippos."
"Oh, my God, Gray." Their mother was almost in tears. Zach put a hand on her back and she sniffed, leaning into him for a hug. "Honey," she said to Zach. "Talk to him?"
What could he even say? He and Gray locked eyes and he knew his little brother could see the panic in his expression.
"Mom, that's not fair," Gray interjected, and she nodded.
"I know, I know," she said, moving to wipe her eyes before she remembered she'd been handling hot sauce. She took a clean napkin to do it instead. She hugged Zach again. "Sorry, honey." Back to Gray. "But the bush? So no roads, no bathrooms, no bed? Are you gonna sleep in the car? Is your phone going to work!? Sorry, I'm sorry." She looked down, tenting her fingers over her forehead, then back up.
"It's OK, Mom. It's a lot. It's OK." It was the first thing Zach had said since Gray had broken the news. He didn't say anything else for awhile, but he made sure with a glance Gray knew the second 'It's OK' was for him. If there had been a table between them he would have put his foot on his little brother's, his hand on his knee. Gray looked meekly at him and went on.
"Doctor Harding knows what she's doing. She's been in the field in Africa since she was 20 years old with her dad. You wouldn't believe some of the stories. Once a small pride of Kalahari lions abandoned a springbok kill to stalk her across an entire desert when her jeep ran out of gas. She lived off of ants and a single canteen of water while she fended off the lions by throwing rocks until she made it to a town with a phone like, a week later. When her canteen ran out she dug a coyote well to filter the water next to a dirty pond where there were hippos living. I think she got like, giardia and a bunch of other nasty things from the water anyway and her kidneys almost shut down in a shanty hospital in Ghanzi, Botswana."
Zach did a double take. The little lady in the Nigel Thornberry getup? Well, that explained why Gray had her picture from National Geographic on his door when he was a kid. She was a real-life Lara Croft. Gray loved old wilderness adventure stories almost as much as he loved Tomb Raider. Zach used to let him read to him from Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson when they were both really young. Gray had been reading since the age of three. They'd learned together.
Jesus, his little brother was getting a chance to work for one of his childhood heroes. Zach felt like a shithead for being so distraught.
"Sweetie, that is literally one of the worst things I have ever heard in my life, and I have been alive considerab - mildly - longer than you. What exactly are you trying to convince us of here? Oh, my God. Your dad is going to have a heart attack."
"I know." Soft response, looking down.
"I'm sorry, I'm not trying to guilt you, honey." Remorse passing back and forth, mothers and sons since the dawn of time. Or maybe just families. Zach just listened. "I know this is important to you. You're so..." She looked back and forth between them. She didn't want to say 'gifted' and alienate Zach; didn't want to say 'different' and alienate Gray. She didn't know they were so far beyond that, that the idea they'd be upset if she said either was laughable. "You just grew up so fast, and I don't mean how big you got."
Gray had skipped most of high school, graduated just after he turned 14 then finished a Bachelor's in Science in Biology at UW Madison while living at home with their mom by the time he was old enough to drive. He'd just finished a year's post-graduate work for Life Sciences here in Tesuque, just to have the experience of being at the Santa Fe Institute and the tick for his future resume. It had been incredible for his expanding young mind; the people he met, the experiences he'd had, the Fellows and professors and top minds in their fields he'd gotten to learn from and network with.
Zach hadn't been embarrassed to be in the same graduating class as his 14 year-old brother. He couldn't have been prouder, couldn't have loved the kid more. After all he'd been through? Everything he'd accomplished after that waking hell on the island? It was nuts. Absolutely nuts. He loved calling nights and letting Gray go on and on about this theorem or that postulate that had been discussed in one of his seminars, his voice rising in excitement the same way it had when he'd talked about dinosaurs when they were kids. Nobody in the world impressed Zach Mitchell more than his kid brother.
It had sucked to leave for Berkeley. Zach had gotten into UW Madison too. It was his safety school, but for Gray it was one of few options since he needed to stay close to home. Zach wanted to stay, wanted to go to college with his brother. He'd actually been really excited. But Gray had convinced him to go to Berkeley for the incredible engineering program that had been the entire reason he applied; "You can't stay here forever and keep me in a bubble. You need to go get what you want."
Gray had been a thoughtful kid like that, even before the island. Too old for his own bones, empathetic and honest. Well, maybe it was his big brother's turn to step up. Even if it hurt. Even if it broke both their hearts.
"So, I just want to compartmentalize real quick," Karen Mitchell said, digging into her own lamb and rice a little voraciously. Eating her feelings, talking with her mouth full. "Living in the jeep. No toilet - no toilet, right? OK, so no toilet. No phone?"
"Satellite phone. Maybe once or twice a week when we're not tracking the animals or observing them. Or when we go back into town for supplies. We'll get you both one. Dad, too, if Gina will let him talk." Zach smiled despite himself. Gray really didn't like their dad's girlfriend. Zach didn't think she was that bad. She just wasn't sure how to talk to Gray, or he to her. It was a common problem he'd had growing up.
Gina was a venue promoter. Zach had helped her patch her radiator once while he was home for Spring Break and she'd listened indulgently to him go on about how much he liked Raptoress while he was under the hood. Two days later she'd shown up with two tickets for him and a friend to the sold out show in Green Bay. Zach had taken his best friend Joe and banged their heads to the grungy thrash metal till their necks hurt and their eardrums rang.
"Honey, I gotta tell ya, I've had dinner with her and your father a couple times now and I kinda like her too," Karen said, laughing and grateful for the detour. Her relationship with their dad had become remarkably less contentious after the divorce. Thanksgivings and Christmases were still spent together for the most part, their parents acting like lightly adversarial old friends. "You've been calling her his new girlfriend for like, a year now. And she's kind of the only girlfriend your dad's had since the divorce. Maybe it's time to cut the woman a break? Especially if you think you're going to be going to Africa for two years? Oh, my God, I hate saying that out loud."
With both hands she lifted her steaming cream-domed coffee, redolant of cardamom and cloves, and sipped deeply. Zach mirrored her and downed more of his as well. The coffee was unbelievable. He was going to ask Gray what all the spices were later on. Every swallow felt like he was pouring lava-hot fuel into an engine in his chest, clearing his sinuses and soothing his belly with a spreading tingle. He could've used a cup or six of this stuff back when he was cramming for finals.
Gray hesitated, then asked, "Have you heard from Aunt Claire?"
Their mother sighed sadly, then shook her head. "Not for a few months now." It was hard for her to think about the government agents, the questions - the interrogations, really - the poking and prodding into their family's lives and livelihoods by wave after wave of terse men in black. The phone calls and the protestors outside their home when Claire had come to stay with them after Jurassic World fell. Karen had been up for partner at the firm. The media attention had almost ruined that for her, especially after what happened at the Lockwood place.
She wasn't angry with her sister for disappearing, not really. She was terrified for her. They all were. No one knew where or how Aunt Claire had gone underground all by herself after the Lockwood incident. She was living like some kind of spook, moving from place to place and calling once every couple of months from a (somehow) professionally encrypted line just to check in on the family and let them know she was alive. No one knew anything. Well, no. That wasn't true. Owen knew. Zach knew Owen knew. Joe too, Zach's best friend and Owen Grady's nephew by his paternal sister. Zach hadn't pushed. He knew Aunt Claire was doing something bigger than all of them. Something they couldn't understand. Or wouldn't, if they knew. He knew they'd hear from her again.
"I think she'd like this for you, though," Karen said to Gray, and she smiled up at the server as he kneeled with a circular mirrored tray laden with three bowls of house-made ginger cardamom ice cream. "Thank you. Oh, my God," she moaned as she nipped her first spoonful after handing her sons a bowl each. Zach spooned the airy frozen custard into his mouth with a chuff of approval. It was so fresh, sweet, and creamy it lifted his spirits for a few scant seconds. "Gray, you're eating like royalty out here, honey. They need to open one of these places back home. Not a lot of ice cream in Masai Mara. Sorry, I'll stop."
Gray actually laughed around his spoon. "It's OK, Mom."
"Back to compartmentalizing," Karen said, clapping her hands together before she scooped another cloud and waved it nonchalantly as she spoke. "Hyenas, lions, leopards, elephants, hippos." She sighed deeply and exhaled through pursed lips, trying to self-soothe, then had a thought. "Crocodiles?" Gray nodded. She groaned, put spoon to mouth. "And those big buffalo that have it out for white people?"
Zach cocked an eyebrow. Gray snorted. "Mom, that is wildly speculative and I'm pretty sure it's based on decades-old assumptions from people who weren't even scientists... Cape buffalo are not reverse racists."
"I watched the same documentary you did, sweetie. So just on the off chance they are reverse racists, would they be expressing those rather baffling opinions in Masai Mara...?"
"In herds of up to 500."
"Dude, you're not helping," Zach said finally, but it was with a hard smirk. Gray smiled back, relieved at his big brother's levity no matter how forced.
"Neither of you are helping," Karen lamented. "What about..." They both knew what the pause meant. She didn't need to go on, but she did. "...You know?"
Gray's turn to sigh. "Six confirmed herbivorous species have appeared with two more suspected but unconfirmed because they're so small."
"Uh-huh," Karen said, putting an elbow on her knee and resting her chin in her hand. "And...?"
"C'mon, Mom. I'm eighteen. It's been six years."
"Gray," Zach cut in. Gray relented, apologetic.
"Three confirmed large carnivore species spread across Masai Mara National Reserve, one confirmed species of medium carnivore. One small taloned theropod that hasn't been correctly identified yet. No human fatalities across Kenya. Well, reported fatalities. In rural areas, they often don't - "
"Rural areas like where you'll be living in a jeep in the bush?" Karen asked. A nod. Defeat. Zach had a knot in his throat the size of a golf ball. His delicate, sensitive, beautiful little brother. His mind was threatening to unwind just at the thought.
He remembered when the Costa Rican government had finally flown the family home after the park went down. They'd been in that cramped refugee facility for almost two weeks, their parents bringing them things from their hotel every day and spending days and nights with them there while making every conceivable call they could to news outlets and online sources to pressure the Costa Ricans into finally letting their traumatized sons come home with them. Perks of having two lawyers for parents.
Of course - as trauma does - none of it stopped with coming home. They'd had trouble sleeping from day one, wouldn't even think about sleeping in different rooms. Wouldn't even let each other out of eyesight for more than a few minutes. Within weeks Gray began to develop panic attacks, the first one manifesting when their dad took Zach to the store to try on shoes and took ten minutes too long to come home.
Karen had suggested they make a fort in the living room and sleep there together for awhile like they had when they were younger, and that had been a comfort until a neighborhood cat passing a window threw a moving shadow across the room and both boys began scoping the room for every possible point of ingress and danger; the bay windows could be shattered like nothing, the tight corners in the front foyer just outside the room able to hide anything in the shadows. Death behind every swaying curtain with eyes like glowing amber, skin filthy white like freeway snow. A hand larger than he was tall, grasping. Hungry. Claws, black and gleaming and speckled with crusty dried blood; longer than his entire arm, icicle sharp. Hooking into his brother's pack, pulling away the most important person in his earthly existence with an ungodly strength that was so casual for the animal it might have been scratching its ear. The look in Gray's eyes, the pain in his sobs as his limbs and trunk strained. The worst moment of their life together yet.
Zach wouldn't have survived either if the stupid Dork Pouch hadn't snapped. He wouldn't have been able to go on. He'd never been so grateful for anything in his life, but he couldn't stop reliving that moment in his sleep. He could still feel the pull, the animal's hot rotten breath washing over them in gusts, and he knew Gray did too. Gray tried to disappear into his big brother when they were in bed together at night. As if he wanted Zach to sprout two new dimensions to be able to encase him completely like a carapace of diamonds.
They quit the living room for Zach's room the first night. Less dinosaurs in there than Gray's. Well, no dinosaurs in there. Metal posters. Pop stars. He cradled his little brother like a mother in their sleep, neither of them ready to be cognizant of how awkward they must have looked at their age. Their parents indulged them and kept on indulging them. Anything to let them feel safe. The park didn't destroy Gray's love for dinosaurs, but it took him a long time to come back to it.
Their parents went ahead with the divorce quietly. Their father stayed in the house for years after to be with the boys. Maybe that was why he and their mother got along so much better now.
One night, maybe a month after they'd come home, their father Scott had peered in the door to check on them a little after midnight. Zach had been cuddled up with Gray on the messy twin bed, the sheets around their ankles. When Scott lifted the blankets to pull them back up over the boys, Gray had uttered one long, piercing scream and shrunk into the hollow of his brother's body.
Zach had... Exploded.
"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!!!"
Against his knowledge, against his will. He'd always been a quiet kid. They both had.
"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HIM!!!"
If his mother hadn't woken up to help he might have done more than give his dad a black eye.
When he came to, slipping out the other side of the episode like a curtain had been drawn back and he saw his father's face, he'd immediately understood what happened and begun to sob like a baby. He apologized, choking between words : "I'm sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry, Daddy."
"No, buddy, it's OK." He remembered a hand stroking his face, his father's tears falling on his head. Gray's arms were thrown around the both of them, squeezing. "It's OK, you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do a damn thing."
He hadn't called his father Daddy since he was six. Neither of them could recall their father ever being as soft with them as he was those first few months after the island. He'd never been unkind or aloof, but he stepped up in a big way. He made breakfast every day, pressured school to let them do remote learning and sat with both of them to help with homework until they felt they were ready to go back. Zach had a suspicion Gray disliked Gina so much because their dad had moved into his own place when he started dating her. Zach hadn't been crazy about it either - he'd always been closer to his dad - but he knew it had to happen eventually. Gray had been younger. He'd thought there was still a chance their family could stay together.
And now he was going to fly to the other side of the planet for two years. Somewhere he'd wanted to go since he was a little boy but someplace so unfamiliar and alien it might as well be on a different planet. The backcountry of the Dark Continent, one of the most dangerous environments on the planet. Zach had watched a lot of documentaries with his little brother in their lives. More dangerous now. Jesus, that was five confirmed meat-eating dinosaurs. Doctor Harding could handle lions, could she turn a pack of raptors away by throwing rocks?
"Doctor Harding was on Isla Sorna in 1997 with her husband Doctor Malcolm," Gray explained, still trying to alleviate their fears. "It was Ingen's starter island where they grew dinosaurs for the original park. She survived there by herself for three days out of a single pack before the rest of her survey team arrived with all-terrain vehicles and provisions. She wrote a thesis about complex communication in tyrannosaurus parenting that changed the entire field of paleobiology! She knows what she's doing, Mom."
Karen wasn't convinced.
"Honey," she said softly, her eyes quivering just slightly. "I'm scared."
"I am too, Mom, but - "
"So maybe don't go? You've been pushing yourself so hard studying these last few years, moving so fast..."
Hell.
"Mom," Zach spoke up again. "He should go."
Gray's jaw dropped. Their mother's did too, and she cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, studying her older son intently.
"OK... What's the angle here? You two haven't done the team-up thing in forever."
Translation; I thought you wanted to keep your brother safe.
"I haven't seen him in half a year," Zach shrugged. "We'd probably do it more if I had."
Translation; I want to keep my brother happy. Gray grinned broadly at him. "You want this, Squirt? It's important to you? Once in a lifetime?"
Gray thought delicately on it before he answered. "Yes. I've missed you... So much. Both of you," he added quickly. "Dad, too. But it's important to me. I think I'd already decided before I told you anyway, but it'd be great if you guys were happy for me."
Zach nodded. He was... Terrified. But he liked this color on his baby brother. Assertive. Barely, but it was there. It was Gray. Gray, but two inches taller than he'd been six months ago. Grown-up, more self-assured. So damn sexy. Always so goddamn effortlessly sexy. What the fuck was he going to do without him?
"So he should go," Zach said again with finality. His mother's shoulders slumped, but she was smiling proudly, her eyes wet. "Look how hard he's worked for this, Mom. He's an 18 year-old postgraduate for God's sake. Most kids his age are throwing up under a beer pong table."
"Don't I know it," Karen admitted, and they all laughed. It was nice talking to her as an adult. Zach was glad he'd moved back home after college. He'd never had the chance to get particularly close to his Mom till then. He'd been his Dad's little Mini-Scott, always wanted to play catch and get dirty. Now he and his mother had a scheduled brunch once a week.
"God, you're so much like your Aunt Claire when she was your age," she said to Gray. Zach recognized that far away look in her eyes. She wasn't seeing the handsome young man he'd grown into sitting in front of them; high cheekbones and sparse baby stubble at his narrow chin; intelligent, bright blue eyes. All she could see right now was a precocious little boy who'd had a propensity for passing out written surveys to the entire family about which way they preferred to pronounce 'diplodocus'. "Don't ever tell her I said that with approval."
She inhaled deeply through her nostrils and clapped her hands again, dessert finished. "OK boys, so what's the plan?"
Zach licked his spoon. "Dork's choice. He's the Birthday Boy."
Gray was flushed with emotion. "I guess... We just spend the rest of the week like we planned. Museum of Indian Arts and Culture tomorrow after breakfast. Then I have the fellowship dinner tomorrow night - you're both still coming? Awesome." He'd been excited about that. He was getting some kind of accord. Black tie. Karen had packed a cocktail dress, Zach a tuxedo. "After that, Zach..." Gray looked to him. "There's a club..."
Zach snorted. "You wanna go clubbing?"
His little brother blushed. "It's a bunch of Fellows from Life Sciences. Celebrating end of year."
"Ah," Zach said, finishing his coffee and raising both eyebrows. "Postgrad adult dork clubbing. Way more my scene."
"Aren't you too young to get into a club?" Karen asked Gray with a squint.
"Your Wisconsin's showing, Mom," Zach said, and she smacked him playfully on the shoulder.
"You're going, right? Maybe drive him?"
"Yes, Mother, I will drive him."
His mother squeezed him and beamed at Gray. "Aren't you glad you have the best big brother in the world?"
"I will be when he returns my Raptoress shirt that he borrowed three years ago."
"Oh, buddy, you don't want that back."
Karen winced and looked at the ceiling. "You know my mother wanted me to have girls?"
*****
December 23, 2021 - 10:34 PM
Gray's apartment in Tesuque was part of a small privately-owned complex on a small forested acre, right on the edge of the beautiful Sangre de Cristo mountains. The dark drive in was chilly and breezy, though with not a drop of snow yet even two days till Christmas. Their mother had retired to her hotel room.
Gray pointed things out to Zach as they traversed the quiet little town; where he liked to get coffee before class, where he walked between lectures for lunch, where he'd met this friend or that person. He'd made so many friends here, something that had been so hard for him everywhere else. Zach loved getting this glimpse into the life he'd built here. Like he was meeting his kid brother all over again. A simple drive felt like a second date, their hands intertwined over the center console. Every once in awhile Zach would lift his brother's hand and kiss it. Gray would blush and stutter and they'd laugh, then Gray would lean over and plant a lingering kiss on his cheek. They repeated the motions like cranes performing a mating dance.
"You gonna miss me?" Gray purred in his ear, sniffing his hair as Zach drove deftly with one hand. Zach turned fast and planted one happily on his lips before turning back to the road.
"Don't even ask that, Man. I feel like my heart's going to fall out through my ass." He put his arm tightly around his little brother, slipped his hand down his shirt again and stroked his smooth chest. "But you need to go get what you want. Remember what I said on the island?"
"We said a lot on the island, Dude."
Zach mussed his brother's hair. "Dork. I said we'll always come back to each other. You coming back to me?"
Gray sniffed into his neck. "Yes. Duh. Don't even ask that."
"OK. Good. So go get what you want, OK? Go live in the bush and poke through hyena poop and sleep downwind and drink your own pee and all that good shit. Go learn from Doctor Harding. Maybe don't start dressing like her when you get home."
"I have to call her in the morning..."
"Don't be anxious." Zach kissed his forehead once, twice, three times. Easiest, quickest way to soothe him. "That's tomorrow. And then after that you're going to fly home with me and mom on Sunday and leave everything at your apartment here." Zach had already planned it all in his head wth the cool precision of an engineer.
"But I already have most of my stuff packed... My lease isn't even up until after I have to leave. Oh, shit..." Zach could see Gray hadn't thought about that. He had.
"You're going to pack a carry-on with everything you can't live without and come home with us," he said again firmly, and he felt his brother assent by nodding against him and squeezing. "And leave everything else. Furniture, everything you have packed. You're going to see Dad and have dinner with Mom and Gina and me whenever we want you to for the next four weeks until you have to leave again." No argument. Good sign. "You're going to see Joe because he misses talking about Dork stuff with his little Dork friend."
"I just talked to Joe, he called last night at midnight to say happy birthday."
"And didn't spoil me surprising you by picking you up for dinner, good for him. He's really growing up."
"Oh shit, my Uber!"
"Oh, no," Zach assured him, laughing out loud. "He hacked your account remotely and cancelled that shit hours ago."
"Oh... So not actually growing up, then."
"No, not as such, admittedly, but that one's really more on me for asking."
"Here it is. Left here." Gray pointed and Zach veered the modest rented sedan into a long, grass-lined driveway that wound under a hanging wooden arch that read 'Bear Acre' with a black silhouette of a bear sitting on its haunches with its front paws drawn up like a tyrannosaur.
"Cute," Zach said. "You said there are actually black bears around here?" They had them back home too.
"A lot of them. We're in the mountains," Gray explained. "See the dumpsters?" He pointed out the lines of large wooden cages wound with tight wire fencing and suspended on stakes driven deep and securely into the earth. Each box had a hinged door and a padlock, and inside each was a personal dumpster with a number on it corresponding to the duplex units. They were the same kind of bear-proof trash cans people used back home in Wisconsin - well, people who gave a damn about not living around problem animals. Their mom had grown up in the country with Aunt Claire. "And coyotes. So many coyotes, you wouldn't believe the racket some nights. Cougars too. They come down and take peoples' pets sometimes. They tracked one and relocated it a few months ago."
"Yeah, you told me," Zach said, remembering with a wince. None of those back home. Gray had told him that Fish and Game had found the animal's den not even half a mile into the brush from the complex. Littered outside the unprepossessing hole in the ground at the base of a large tree had been a medley of colorful dog and cat toys - tug ropes, tennis balls, frisbees, catnip-filled mice and nylon plush fish. Inside the filthy den had been the skulls of over a dozen cats and small to large dogs, some of them shattered almost beyond recognition. When Zach had asked why their skulls had been shattered Gray explained that cougars liked to snag their prey by the back of the skull and drive their teeth into the brain. Cats were fragile. They had to kill fast.
Zach remembered the Indominus Rex with an imperceptible shudder. He remembered the ankylosaur on the ground, blubbering, trying to shift out from under the hideous white monster's restraining foot. The long crushing jaws with their yellow scimitar fangs - so discolored and sickly against that white skin - falling and closing around the ankylosaur's tiny skull. The crack, then the crunch, then the slump. Gray whimpering, crying, groping for his big brother's hand.
Don't think about it now. It had been a wonderful night. Zach's heart was breaking right down the center but it had been such a nice night.
"So, how am I going to get my stuff?" Gray asked, pointing again to his duplex once they had driven a quarter mile through the moderately spaced structures. The apartments were modern with gleaming polished windows, the shared porches on each duplex sporting some different form of seating on either side. Some shared big tables between both sides.
"I'l fly back out with Joe once you leave," Zach explained, parking in Gray's empty reserved spot. Gray didn't have a car out here, and they shared Zach's back home. That would probably change when he got back. "We'll rent a moving truck and go back cross country on wheels with all your stuff. We haven't taken a road trip since sophomore year."
"You don't have to do th - "
"I want you home," Zach said without missing a beat as he rose from the car and shut his door, then added like a dog that's upset he barked at his person; "Please? For whatever time we have. It was a lot easier thinking I had to wait a month longer to have you home when you weren't going to Kenya." He came around the car and drew close to his brother, taking his wrists and kissing him full on the mouth. Gray wasn't close with his neighbors. They thought Zach was his long distance boyfriend who'd showed up to visit twice in the last year. Well, he basically was, wasn't he?
"OK," Gray said. He was grinning wetly against his older brother's mouth, licking Zach's lips from corner to corner. "OK, I'll come home with you. You have to do something for me, though."
Zach parted his lips and breathed hotly into his brother's mouth, speaking slow and deliberately. He was throbbing like someone had kicked him in the balls. "Literally. Any. Filthy. Unconscionable. Thing. You. Want."
Gray giggled. "That load in the car certainly didn't slow you down, huh?"
"That was impressive," Zach said. "I can't believe you got that all down."
"It was a lot of cum," Gray agreed, his voice a little husky. "Great way to pregame for dinner. But that's not what I meant. When I come home..." He looked up at his older brother, reached up and ran an exploring hand through his hair that was beginning to get a little misty from sweat in their embrace. "You need to move out of Mom's house and get a life.
"With me."
Zach threw his hands up, exasperated.
"That's it? You think that's a favor?" He was laughing again, deeply and sincerely from his gut.
He dug in his blazer for his phone and pulled something out of one of the pouches on the leather case. He passed the object to Gray ceremoniously, a small brass key.
Gray squinted. "What's this?"
Zach took his hand with the key in it in both of his and kissed his knuckles. "Birthday present, Birthday Boy.
"That is - was - the key to my - our - first house. Which is looking more like the first house I'll be sharing with Joe like two of the Golden GIrls until you get back."
"I'm sorry, what?" Gray wrestled his hand free and gawped at the key.
"It's just a rental," Zach said, holding his palms up. "Hilariously enough I signed a two year lease. But it's inside Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Big cottage, three bedrooms, fenced yard. Neighbors far away. Three hours from Mom and Dad so we could visit but far enough away that we could..." He paused, unsure. He'd thought about this a million times, every day of his life for years. But he'd never said it out loud. Neither of them had. "I don't know, so that we could be a couple. Boyfriends, partners, I don't know. Shit. I could have maybe said that better. Or maybe just not told you till later. I'm not trying to guilt you, I promise, I - what? What? Dude, what is it?"
Gray had ducked behind him, grinning like a satyr. His face beet red. He was pushing Zach up the steps of his unit, shoving him toward the door on the left even as his hands flew around Zach's waist and began to yank on his belt buckle.
"Baby - "
"Nope," Gray snapped, fumbling with his own key in the doorknob then shoving it open awkwardly. Zach's belt came loose like a snaking whip - zip, clatter - right down onto the porch. Gray kicked the strip of leather under a cushioned chair and shoved his big brother through the threshold. The door swung shut on its own and he locked it with one hand with practiced ease. "No talk, no more. Upstairs. Now."
Zach didn't argue.