by Anna Martin
Like that, he fed her a dozen or more leaves. She didn’t like the dark purple ones, and he ended up with purple mush spat back out on his table from her tiny duckbilled mouth. Fine. The rest she munched through quite happily.
With great concentration, Logan took a piece of baby spinach and held it out. The dissimosaur leaned forward again, as she had before. She was sitting back on her haunches, her forelegs free, and he wondered….
“Here,” he said again, encouraging, and managed to get her to grasp the leaf between those two front legs. From there she could continue to eat without him feeding her every bite.
Logan grinned.
His phone was in his back pocket, barely enough charge to even open, but he managed to snap a quick picture and send it to Kit. He kept an eye on the baby, who was still eating happily, and crossed the kitchen to plug his phone into the charger.
As he did, it buzzed with a message.
Can I come over?
Sure. Apartment 18, Block B.
Logan hadn’t showered in almost two days, and he was aware of it. He thought he could maybe put the dissimosaur in the sink while he showered—she wasn’t likely to get out of there on her own—but it was just an edge too dangerous for him to mentally agree to.
It wasn’t ideal, waiting for Kit to come over while he was still so utterly gross. Kit would probably watch the baby while he showered, though. That would be fine.
While he waited, Logan moved around the kitchen, making a bowl of cereal and coffee while keeping a close eye on the dissimosaur. She had figured out how to pick up the next leaf from the small pile he’d left on the table for her. This was domestication; there was no way to deny it. But chances were they’d stopped any chance of her returning to the herd the moment they’d taken her away from it. Now the choice was to domesticate her or to let her to die.
And Logan still wasn’t sure exactly what her problem was.
A light knock sounded at the door.
“It’s open,” Logan called, not wanting to take the baby away from her meal or leave her alone on the table without his supervision.
Kit poked his head around the door. “Morning,” he said.
“Morning. Come in. Want coffee?”
“Sure. How was she last night?” Kit shut the door and walked into the apartment, shrugging off his jacket. Underneath he was wearing a long-sleeved maroon T-shirt pushed up to his elbows and very well-fitting jeans. Logan tried not to stare.
“Fine,” he said. “She slept okay. I guess she was still drowsy from the sedation. She’s eating well now, though.”
Logan stuck his hand into the salad bag and drew out another handful, dumping it on the table in front of her. She was eating slowly but methodically, working her way through the pile.
It didn’t take long for him to make another mug of coffee, with milk and one sugar, the way his mum always had. He picked up his favorite mug and left the other on the counter for Kit.
“Would you watch her while I go shower?”
“Sure, of course,” Kit said, drawing out a chair and sitting down in front of the baby.
“I won’t be long.”
Logan gave them both a lingering look, then took his coffee into the shower with him.
His apartment was small; he’d ended up being assigned to one of the bachelor suites that everyone else wanted. The living room, kitchen, and dining room were all one big space that the front door opened onto, with the bedroom to one side and the bathroom attached. He’d stayed in far less luxurious conditions over the years, but after a while the lack of space became oppressive. That was probably why he kept taking weeklong trips out into the islands.
It felt good to scrub off the dirt of the past few days. The realities of his job meant Logan was used to strip-washing out in the field, sometimes going a week or more before he could bathe properly. That didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate a decent hot shower, though.
Most of his injuries from the carnotaur and oviraptors were healing neatly. The island’s nurse had removed the stitches from the cut on his back, and now he just had to keep everything clean.
He dried off quickly and rubbed the towel over his hair, then put clean bandages on the worst cuts that were still healing, and pulled on clean shorts and a T-shirt. When he went back into the kitchen, Kit was taking a video of the dissimosaur eating.
“We didn’t know they eat like this,” Kit said, barely looking up from his phone.
“Huh?”
“It’s not in any of the records.”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry, sometimes I forget to write stuff down.”
Kit ended the recording and looked over his shoulder. “Don’t be. I know we ask a huge amount of you already.”
Logan still felt guilty. He sat down in the second seat at his small table and let himself look at Kit.
“I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“Hmm?”
Logan’s face flushed with embarrassment. He knew his cheeks were red—he’d always blushed a lot. “The—uh—the kissing-you thing.”
“I already told you; it’s fine.”
He couldn’t meet Kit’s eyes now, not until Kit reached across the table and took one of Logan’s hands in both of his own.
“Logan,” he said.
“Yeah?” Logan said miserably.
“I think you’re very attractive.”
Logan’s stomach dropped. “But?”
“But?”
“There was a ‘but’ coming.”
Kit laughed. “No but.”
Logan looked down at their hands. Kit’s hands were pale, the blue lines of his veins delicately bisecting the back of his hand, leading the way to long, confident fingers. His hands were big, compared to the rest of him.
Logan’s hands were rough. He’d worked outside for so long now, with animals, often in hot climates. His whole body was littered with scars; some bigger than others, some that had stories behind them and others he couldn’t even remember earning anymore.
To his mortification, Logan noticed there was still some dirt under his nails. He pulled his hand away.
“You work in the labs,” he mumbled inelegantly. “I’m just a ranger. This is stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Kit said indignantly. He grabbed for Logan’s hand again, using the other to steady the dissimosaur as she hunted around the table for another handful of leaves. Logan thought she probably wasn’t even hungry anymore, she was just curious, and—
Kit tugged his hand again so Logan was forced to look at him.
“I like you, Dr. Beck,” Kit said, a faint color rising on his cheeks. “Hell to the no-fraternization policy, no one pays any attention to it anyway. If I want to date you, I will.”
“You want to date me?”
“If you’re amenable,” Kit said. He smirked, as if to say, “Well?”
“That would be nice,” Logan mumbled.
“Good.”
The dissimosaur turned away from her little salad and bumped her head against Logan’s hand on the table. He rubbed under her chin almost absentmindedly.
“And what are we going to do with you, hmm?”
“You want to run more tests?” Kit asked.
“I think so, yeah.” Logan felt more sure with the change of subject. When it came to dinosaurs, he knew what he was talking about. Dating, not so much. “I don’t want to sedate her again yet, though. We’re not sure how that’ll affect her metabolism, and I’d prefer to be safe than sorry.”
“Another forty-eight hours and she should be fine.”
“Yeah.”
“Does she have a name?” Kit rose and put his now-empty mug in the sink.
“Huh?”
“Did you name her?” he repeated, turning back and folding his arms over his chest.
“Uh, no. I don’t normally name them. Except for coding. You know.”
“If we’re going to keep her, she should have a name.”
Logan realized he was staring at the blond hairs on Kit’s forearm and
quickly looked away.
“How about… Dizzy.”
“Dizzy the dissimosaur?” Kit looked like he was trying very hard not to smile.
“Yeah.” Logan looked at the dinosaur, who was currently biting at her hind leg. He guessed she had an itch. “Dizzy,” he called gently.
She looked up and cocked her head.
“See, she likes it,” Logan said.
Kit huffed a laugh. “Okay. Dizzy the dissimosaur it is.”
Logan went to the Keurig and programmed himself another cup. He was going to need a lot of coffee to get through this day.
“My moms are coming out next weekend,” Kit said casually.
“Moms plural?”
“Yeah,” Kit said, grinning. “They’re awesome.”
“Do you have any siblings?”
“Nope. Just me. How about you? Is your family very far away?”
Logan chuckled. “It’s a long story.”
“I don’t mind.”
He moved into the living room, wanting to be somewhere more comfortable if they were going to talk personal things. Dizzy seemed happy enough to follow them. Logan took a seat on the couch, leaving the chair free for Kit, and couldn’t hide his surprise when Kit sat down next to him instead.
Logan twisted so he could face him while they talked.
“Well, I was born in Cambridge, in England. Then when I was about four, my parents moved to Saudi Arabia for my dad’s job. So I went to an international school for about eight years. Then we moved to California. My parents and my younger brothers moved to Australia a few years ago. I was already living in Kenya by then.”
“That’s a lot of moving. I was having trouble placing your accent.”
“Yeah,” Logan agreed. “A lot of people do. When I’m around my folks, it sort of drifts back to sounding more English, but I spent so much time in the States that I adopted that accent too.”
“I grew up in Chicago,” Kit offered.
Logan shivered dramatically. “Cold there.”
“Not all the time.”
“Kit, I grew up in Saudi Arabia and California. Then moved to Africa.”
“Do you find it cold here?”
He shrugged. “It’s weird. Even when it’s cold, it’s not really.”
“Warm rain!” Kit exclaimed. “I have never known somewhere with such warm rain.”
“Yeah,” Logan said, laughing. He sipped at his tea. “So what was it like growing up with two moms?”
“They were always quite involved with the LGBT community in Chicago,” he said, leaning back into the corner of the couch. Dizzy had curled up on herself and fallen asleep, her back pressed to Logan’s ankle. “So I grew up with a bunch of other kids who had two moms or two dads. They did the thing that was typical at the time, you know, getting a gay friend to donate sperm.”
“Do you know your… dad?” He wasn’t quite sure that was the right term.
“Sure. I don’t have a particularly close relationship with him, but he’s part of my moms’ social circle. But I’ve always known who he was. He adopted kids with his husband a few years back.” Kit shrugged. “When I was a kid, I thought the other kids with heterosexual parents were the weird ones. Probably because all my friends were the kids of my parents’ friends, so that was normal to me. We used to have drag queens over for dinner on the weekends.”
Logan laughed. “Wow. That sounds awesome.”
“I guess. I suppose I never really reflected on it. It’s just the way our family was.” He grinned slowly. “It meant coming out was never really a thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know if I ever did, to be honest. When I was young, my parents always framed hypothetical situations like ‘when you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend.’ It was always a possibility, that I would prefer boys to girls.”
“Wow,” Logan said softly. “I’m, uh, only kind of out to my parents.”
“Kind of?” Kit asked.
“Yeah. I told my mum I liked boys when I was about fourteen, but I don’t think she took me seriously. I didn’t have a boyfriend through the whole of high school, and I took one of my friends to prom. She didn’t have a date, so….” He shrugged. “It was better than going alone.”
“Have you ever taken a boyfriend home to meet them?”
“Nope. I guess they’re kind of homophobic.”
“Oh,” Kit said. He sounded disappointed.
“It’s not—I mean—they’re not violently antigay or anything. They’re just… disapproving, I guess.”
“That has to be hard. How old are you?”
Logan grimaced. “Thirty-seven.”
“Fucking hell.”
He laughed loudly, then shot a guilty look at Dizzy. She slept on.
“Don’t your parents ask about dating?” Kit asked.
“Yeah, all the time. But I’ve been really busy the past few years. First in Amboseli, then here. And it’s such a weird situation here, I’ve never really been tempted to look for a date.”
“And now?” Kit asked.
Logan blushed. “I might have found an exception,” he said, then busied himself with finishing his coffee.
“It’s not like there’s a bunch of places here to go on a date,” Kit said. “Would you like to come over for dinner, though? I’ll kick Leilani out.”
“Leilani? Your lab assistant?”
“Lab assistant and roommate,” Kit said with a wry smile.
“Oh. That’s… unusual.”
“We got assigned a shared apartment due to a clerical error. But she’s fun to live with, and she won’t mind going to stay with her friends if you want to come over.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“What, cook you dinner or kick Leilani out?”
“The second one.”
Kit grinned. “She won’t mind. Are you allergic to anything?”
“Not that I’ve discovered so far.”
“Great. Are you busy tomorrow night?”
“No,” Logan said. “But I’ll probably need to bring Dizzy with me.”
“That’s fine.”
“Should I bring wine? Dessert?”
“No, honestly. Just you. And the dinosaur.”
“I can do that,” Logan said.
“Okay. I can see myself out; don’t wake her.”
“Sure.”
Kit hesitated, then leaned in and kissed Logan, square on the lips. They were one-for-one on surprise kisses now.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, smiling fondly, and Logan could barely stand to watch him leave.
Chapter Ten
By the time Logan knocked on his door the next evening, Kit had gone through the whole range of panic that accompanied any sort of dating scenario, and he was back to being calm again. Leilani was out at the diner with a friend—they were having one of their semiregular girls’ sleepover nights in someone else’s apartment. Not that he was planning on letting anything happen tonight. But still.
“Hey,” Kit said, pulling the door open to let Logan in.
“Hi.”
Logan was wearing a plaid button-down shirt and jeans, and the baby dissimosaur was in a makeshift sling across his chest. Kit couldn’t help but laugh.
“Is she comfortable in that?”
“Apparently so,” Logan said. He peeled back the fabric so Kit could see her. “She fell asleep on my way over.”
Kit laughed again and beckoned Logan through to the kitchen.
“Would you like a drink? I have wine and beer.”
“Beer would be great, thanks. Something smells good in here.”
“It’s a one-pot dish,” Kit said, popping the lid on a bottle of beer. He’d already opened one for himself and probably wouldn’t drink another tonight. “My mom is a Pinterest fiend and has all of these one-pot meals saved to a board. She hates washing dishes.”
Logan leaned against a counter and rested his hand under the weight of the dinosaur as he sipped his beer. Kit pressed
his lips together to stop himself laughing more.
“What?” Logan demanded. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No, no,” Kit said, holding his hands up. “I’m sorry. It’s just… that’s such a motherly gesture, you know?”
Logan shrugged. “She can get heavy after a while.”
“I’m not making fun of you, I swear. It’s… endearing.”
“If you say so. So, what’s for dinner?”
“Oh, it’s lemon and herb chicken and rice. I’m not the best cook in the world. Leilani is, but she hates that I make her do it all the time. She makes the most amazing manapua. I’d eat them with every meal if I could.”
He lifted the lid on the pot and gave the contents a gentle poke. “It won’t be long now.”
“No worries.”
“So,” Kit said, taking his own beer bottle and rolling it between his palms, mostly to keep his hands occupied, “how is she settling in?”
Logan huffed a laugh. “We are having a lot of discussions about the appropriate place to poop,” he said. “She’s very bemused by the concept. Other than that, she’s like any other baby animal, I think. Sleeps a lot, eats a lot, craps far too much comparative to her size.”
“Are you regretting foster parenthood?”
“No,” Logan said, looking down at the little dinosaur. Was she snoring? Kit thought she might be snoring. “I’m starting to think I might be crazy, though. I have no idea how it’s going to work out.”
Kit shrugged. “These things have a way of figuring themselves out.”
“Have you ever adopted an injured baby dinosaur before?”
“No. I was thinking more philosophically.”
“Well, if your philosophical musings lead to any ideas on how to litter-train a dissimosaur, let me know,” Logan said, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
Kit winced. “She’s not?”
“In a day? No, Kit. We’re working on it.”
“I don’t think I have any newspaper or anything to put down,” he said, fretting.
“Kit. She’s a herbivore. And a very small animal. Just watch your step.”
Kit shut the door between the kitchen and the hallway to keep Dizzy contained while Logan got the straps of the sling undone. Dizzy yawned and stretched as she was set down on the hardwood floor in the kitchen and bumped her head against Logan’s ankle in what was clearly an affectionate gesture.
