Chapter Text
The email with the peer review for the article he had submitted to next spring’s issue of “Vertebrate Paleontology” was waiting for Aerion when he came back to his office on Tuesday noon. The subject line Decision: Major Revision Required jolted him abruptly out of the strange daze that settled on him during his surprisingly satisfactory lecture with the primary school group. He had assumed the paper would be accepted with minor changes, if anything, if not outright as it was, and therefore hadn’t even devoted it more than a passing thought these last months, too preoccupied with the last writing phase for his book and the pending contract renewal. Instead, he was met with a systematic attack of every methodological decision he'd made in the paper, dressed in the civil vocabulary of academic peer review and no less vicious for it. And the dismaying prospect of yet another hole in a CV that wasn´t looking as bright as it could have been to land him his permanent research position.
Peer Reviewer One was at least reasonable. They had some structural notes and bibliography suggestions, indicated two places where the discussion section needed further clarification, and in the final line of their review, commended how the paper made a valuable contribution to the field. Good.
Peer Reviewer Two was the problem. Specifically, five pages of detailed criticism that Aerion read with growing disbelief, heart racing. To start with, his framing was characterised as “methodologically naive” and then, in the following paragraph, “somewhat dated”. Then, the bastard directly said that primary sources used by Aerion were “of questionable reliability given more recent work in the area”. More recent work was not cited. More recent, relevant work did not exist, as far as Aerion was aware. The literature in question, both primary and secondary sources, sat in the NHM archive two floors directly below Aerion's desk, documents he knew more thoroughly than some of his own memories. Dismissing it altogether was not a methodological position, just evidence the Reviewer was not qualified to do a review of this research at all. The next comments proceeded on the assumption that because the sources were unreliable, Aerion's deployment of them was also unreliable which made interpretive framework built on it was unsound and poorly built, as rendered the article useless, or as Reviewer Two succinctly concluded: “In need of major revision before publication”.
Aerion sat back on his wheelie chair, grabbing the handles with trembling hands until his knuckles turned white, and looked at the ceiling for what was maybe thirty seconds, feeling the pulse throbbing on his temples and eyeballs, his teeth tightly clenched. Then, he snapped out of it and opened a new document and began furiously typing: Dear Editors. I write regarding the peer review of my submitted manuscript, reference number SVP-2026-334, and specifically regarding the comments of Reviewer Two, which I must respectfully but plainly characterise as…
He backtracked, deleted respectfully and continued: …which I must plainly characterise as a review that demonstrates, at multiple points, a fundamental unfamiliarity with the source literature it purports to evaluate. Comment six states that the primary sources underlying my argument are of "questionable reliability", without citation, without explanation, and apparently without the awareness that these sources that represent the foundational scholarship of the field are fundamental part of the NHM archival resources with which I am intimately acquainted. To dismiss them in passing is not a scholarly position. It is a position that should disqualify the review from being used as grounds for a revision requirement, and I would strongly urge the editorial board to consider whether a reviewer who is not familiar with the existing literature of a discipline is appropriately positioned to evaluate contributions to it.
He stopped, read everything and added: I note also that comments seven through fourteen are structurally dependent on comment six, and therefore inherit its error. If the premise is unfounded the conclusions built from it cannot constitute a legitimate basis for revision.
He had begun the third paragraph, intending to address, at some length, the content of the specific source materials Reviewer Two had apparently neither read nor understood, and what they would have found in them if they had, when he became aware of his laborious breathing, of the growing tightening and pulsing across his temples that he recognised as the precursor to a headache of the kind that would write off the remainder of the afternoon, maybe even the week, of the nausea burning at the bottom of his stomach and expanding upwards towards his rabbiting heart, of the aching underneath his diaphragm as if his lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen and it made his vision swim and wobble.
So he stopped writing and closed his eyes, and tried to breathe, to think. This was, undeniably, one of the better emails he had ever written, but he could not send it, for the simple reason that the journal's editorial board contained people he'd need on his side if his contract renewal stalled and he found himself applying for positions elsewhere. So he closed the document without saving it and stood up, moved his chair out of the way with more force than the task required, sending it toppling against the bookcase, knelt and subsequently lay face down on the carpet, his forearms stretched over his head and breathed in and out, his forehead pressed against the carpet. Four counts in, hold for four, out for six, again and again, for minutes, until his heart rate normalised and he could get back up, straighten his turtleneck and hair, and move the chair back in front of his desk.
He sat down and immediately closed the email, closed the email program altogether, and instead opened the manuscript of his book, and spent the next few hours engrossed in line editing and cross-referencing the second chapter, finding joy in the simple, rewarding task of perfecting his lifetime’s work, until natural light had completely waned and he sat back to relax for a minute, both the annoyance and budding headache barely registered in light of a suddenly pressing feeling: the emptiness of his stomach. He got up, calling it a day, and went home on his scooter, the cold autumn air whizzing past in Hyde Park managing to dispel the last remnants of headache, for which at least he was thankful.
Wednesday and Thursday were not much better. In light of Raymun’s continued absence and Tuesday’s success, Patricia assumed he would take on every dissemination activity, which meant his work days were now full with school groups nowhere as charming as the Tuesday one, but not as difficult as Aerion had assumed they would be, and then he was also tasked to review the copy for a forthcoming exhibition panel because Raymun had been the one liaising with the design team and the deadline couldn’t be moved. Aerion did all of it with as much grace as he could muster, which was not much, and tried not to grind his teeth every time Patricia reached out to him with a new task. In the hours that remained, early mornings and late evenings, he worked with his book manuscript and composed a polite, curt reply to the “Vertebrate Paleontology” editorial team, asking for a third reviewer in light of the evident bias of the current second reviewer. He just worked and tried not to think about what it would cost him if this article wasn’t accepted, if his book wasn’t accepted, if his contract at NHM didn’t get renewed, if his CV stopped growing at a point in his career where he needed it to grow the most, and he was left to fend for himself, again. That, he didn’t contemplate, he couldn’t fathom.
His monthly therapy appointment was Friday at 8:30, which meant he would not start working until 10 that day, which was not a crisis, should not be, not with the amount of extra hours he had been doing all week. Aerion had been doing therapy, on and off, since he was in his first year at college, and this particular therapist had lasted more than any previous ones, perhaps because she was the only one, so far, that didn’t appear to find his struggle with communication exhausting and had never tried to tie every single problem to his gender identity.
Dr. Mulligham began with the usual check-up questions which he addressed with precise wording, as if reading from a list. His sleep was adequate according to his Applewatch, even if he had trouble falling asleep and sometimes woke up in the middle of the night without any discernible reason because he hadn’t had any nightmare recently, at least not one he could recall after waking up. His appetite was fine, mostly, didn’t mention most days he only drank black coffee in the mornings, and then either Tesco meal deals or whatever sandwich and soup deal the NHM Cafe had available that day, how he rarely bothered to buy groceries that more often than not ended up rotting in his half-fridge, because, what was the point of cooking for one, it was more bother than reward. And no, he hadn’t made any attempt to make contact with his family because he didn’t have any wish to, nor was he the one who should crawl back to them anyway, because it wasn’t him that was in the wrong, not for being himself, for being true to who he was.
Dr. Mulligham hadn’t made any comment as she scribbled on her notebook, and when he finished she just asked how the last weeks had been. He began telling her about his book project, how happy he was with how it was turning out, and then about the extra work tasks he had been forced to tackle because one of his workmates was sick. When gently pressed, Aerion admitted he hadn’t hated them as much as he had expected, it had been kind of fun to see how eager the students were to learn about science, to be able to plant new questions in their minds and answer them too, to which she smiled and scribbled something in her notebook, but then his stupid mouth kept moving and he began babbling, with a whiny voice he didn’t recognise as his own, about the unexpected wobble with the peer review and how his job was hanging from a thread, and about how that day he could barely breathe and he could feel his temples pulsing and his heart about to come out of his mouth, and had to lay down in the floor, and when his brain caught up with what he was saying he just shut up and drank some water, and stared at his hands.
The therapist hummed and scribbled, and asked him whether the aching burn in the thoracic region and palpitations always came after he felt an emotional outburst, and he nodded, and studied the colourful pattern in the carpet between his feet.
Dr. Mulligham hummed again, and explained that it was possible that testosterone, over time, could have measurable cardiovascular and mood-related effects that were worth monitoring, and that he should speak to his GP to get a specialist appointment.
Aerion pressed his lips thin, swallowed and answered he could book an appointment just for monitoring’s sake but he wasn't stopping his shots, if that was where this was going, and still wouldn’t look up from the fascinating carpet pattern.
She said it wasn't where she was going, necessarily.
He said good.
She asked him to look up.
He did.
She leant forward then and touched his knee, very gently, a barely there press, surprisingly comforting, and said with a very gentle voice, his eyes gentler still, to the point he had to fix his gaze on her forehead instead, to pretend he was looking and yet not able to actually look, that she wasn't suggesting he stop anything, only that the constellation of symptoms he'd been describing might be pointing out to a bigger health issue that was worth monitoring, and even if it was eventually recommended for him to stop, it didn’t need to mean anything about who he was and how he was perceived.
Aerion interrupted her to say, with a not-wobbly-at-all voice, that if he was going to have a cardiac event in his early thirties because testosterone made his heart go bump more than his stressing job and life warranted, then he would gladly accept that, because it was his life, and his alone.
His life.
His.
To live alone.
Alone.
His words trailed off.
Dr. Muligham was writing something in her notebook that seemed much longer than her usual quick scribblings.
He wanted to ask what she'd written. He suspected what it was and was scared to have it confirmed. And so he didn’t.
After some time, she looked up at him and smiled reassuringly, and asked him to tell her more about the school groups, how that had made him feel, talking with children about his work, teaching them. And so he did, and he felt the knot in his chest dissolving the more and more he talked, describing how eager they were, how they reminded him of his own childhood, how they made him feel seen and heard in a way he hadn’t long felt seen and heard. Dr. Mulligham listened without interrupting, her notebook closed now, her hands folded in her lap as he talked about that one kid’s surprising knowledge of Greek language, and the one who'd asked if his tooth could become a fossil and been genuinely bereft about the time frame, and the one who'd wanted to know if Mary Anning had a dog and that girl who'd said his piercings looked like a Stegosaurus and had nearly touched them, and how the teacher had stopped her and made it an opportunity to remind her what personal boundaries and consent were. He couldn’t help the blush, the smile on his cheeks as he described how good the teachers, the male teacher, particularly, were with the children, how he wished he’d had a role figure like that when he was growing up.
Dr. Mulligham asked, after a beat that she allowed to run slightly longer than comfortable, whether he expected to encounter that particular school group again, or perhaps this teacher, in the context of the museum's educational programme or otherwise, and Aerion answered that after Raymun’s return to his normal duties, and as his contract with NHM was still pending, it was very unlikely. His voice was even and entirely normal.
She nodded and opened his notebook to write something brief, and then set it aside and crossed his fingers before her chest and looked at him and said that what struck her the most, listening to him describe this last week, was the contrast between how he talked about the stress of his academic job, alone in his office, the usual and extra workload, and how he had talked about how the contact with children had made him feel. And she wondered whether he had noticed that too.
Aerion nodded, reluctantly.
She smiled and nodded as well, and just added that before the next appointment he should work more on doing new things, checking what unexpected things made him happy, live more in the spur of the moment and not let the uncertainty weigh so much on him.
When Aerion finally left, with an appointment set for early instead of late October, Dr. Mulligham citing a busy schedule around Halloween, he was feeling wrought out but calmer. He stopped for a take-away coffee in his favourite coffee place in the upper corner of Hyde Park, and then sat on a bench to drink it, observing the ducks ducking in and out of the Serpentine, before walking leisurely towards the NHM. The electric scooter he had left at home today, on account of how much it had been raining in the early morning, but it wasn’t raining right now, and getting a few extra thousand steps worked towards his physical and psychological health goals, anyway.
He was at his desk by ten thirty. He opened his manuscript. He worked for some time. He was about to get up to check what was on today’s daily menu at the NHM Cafe when the internal telephone rang, startling him.
He stared at it, frowning, and picked it after the third shrill tone.
“Yes?” his tone was guarded. What could possibly Patricia want out of him now?
A long pause. Then, a nervous, deep voice.
“Oh…hiya! Is this…. sorry, is this Dr. Dayne? The palaeontologist?”
The palaeontologist. As if NHM didn’t have the biggest concentration of paleontologists in Europe. “Speaking,” he said, and did not add who is this, because he had a hunch, and his stomach seemed to have reached a conclusion too, by how much it was churning.
“Right, brill. Hi. This is, um….Dunk. That is, Duncan. I mean. Duncan Donaghue… ehh… you know me as Mr D. which is short for, Mr Donaghue. The teacher. From Tuesday visit, we came with… Ashford Primary?”
“I know who you are,” Aerion rasped out, his tone almost cutting, and then the person on the other side of the line seemed to have choked on something and began coughing, and two, three, five seconds of silence stretched.
“Sorry, sorry.” The voice came again, deeper and raspier. “I think I might have swallowed my chewing gum, which would….ehh… probably be fine. Sorry. Ehh…. I got your card from Tanselle, Mz Legrand, I should say, my colleague, she said you asked her for me to… ehh… take contact with you in case I had any questions and I…”
“And do you?”
“What?”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Oh, yes. A lot. Your lecture was brilliant. The kids haven’t stopped talking about dinosaurs and have asked me so many questions about British scientists that I have run out of excuses not to answer them right there, so I think I need more references. To help me. Help the children, I mean.”
“Right.”
“Honestly, it’s just extraordinary that they are so excited with such an academic topic. Usually, they are full of questions, but they are about more pedestrian stuff, or like, Pokémon evolution charts.”
“So you are calling me to ask about the school-museum collaboration programme?”
“Ehh… yes. No. Well” A sound on the other end that might have been something set down, or a door pushed back. "Just… I guess, absolutely, why not. If there's a formal programme, or if it's something we can arrange separately, I’d be happy to get any help. From you.”
“There's a formal collaboration programme. But I am not responsible for it so I am not sure…” Aerion stopped talking. He was not responsible for it, it was entirely Raymun’s domain, except Raymun had been out since Monday with gastroenteritis and he wasn’t yet back, and Aerion had been assuming all his tasks. “But I can explain how it works. If you want to come in.”
A sharp breath intake. “Yeah. I want to. When?”
Aerion looked at the pile of documents on his desk, the dozen word document tabs open on his laptop, the unread message notifications flashing on Outlook and Teams. “Today,” he said.
Raymun would be back by Monday. Probably. And Aerion would have to lock in with his research goals.
“Today?” asked Duncan. “As in… Friday afternoon today?”
“Is there a problem with Friday afternoon?”
“No! No, not at all. I just… I thought you'd be busy.”
“I am very busy,” Aerion sniffed. “That is why I am giving you my only available slot. Which happens to be this afternoon. Do you have any other plans?”
A beat, and then a very raspy, rumbling laugh. “Honestly, no.”
“I can finish by four o'clock,” indicated Aerion, feeling the butterflies manifesting again under his thorax. “I'll meet in the main hall, where Dippy used to be.”
“Dippy?”
“The diplodocus that used to be there. Just… Not important. Underneath the whale, ok?”
“Brill. See you there.”
