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“Alright Junior Mints, hands down. KitKats, reach for the sky. Arlene, Sumeet, Harvey, Naser, Flora,” Steve counted off while his third-graders were sitting down for a snack. He had almost checked them off on the attendance list when he realized something was wrong; he needed a double take, and in an effort not to panic, counted heads.
Accounting for the two students in the bathroom, he was missing one student.
“Hands down KitKats,” he heard himself say with a smile, and crossed to where his assistant teacher was having a snack of his own while chatting with some of the kiddos.
“Hi, sorry Joanna, may I borrow Peter? Thank you.”
Peter handed his little tupperware of green grapes to Joanna and told her to share with her group, then got up to follow Steve a few feet away for privacy. “You feeling alright? You look pale.”
“Harvey is missing,” Steve said as quietly as he could. Thankfully, none of the students were paying attention anyway. “Did he say anything to you about going to the bathroom?”
“No,” Peter replied, and took a quick look around to confirm Steve’s count. “MJ went with Yuan and Emmie, but that’s it.”
“Stay with them here. When MJ comes back, have her report him missing to the staff,” Steve told Peter, “and tell the students—tell them to come up with stories, in their groups, about the fighting dinosaurs, okay? I have my phone if you hear anything.”
“You got it, Steve—hey! Maybe start with the fourth floor? He really liked the T. rex,” Peter suggested when he saw Steve walking towards the Hall of Asian Mammals, and Steve spun around to take the stairs instead at once.
That poor child. If something had happened to him—what if someone had taken him? Lured him away while Steve had been busy prompting the kids to ask their guide questions, or if someone had physically taken off with the child when none of the teachers had heard or seen him.
This was his responsibility; these precious souls were entrusted to him.
He tried to focus on Peggy’s voice, the way she would tell him how dramatic he could get in that voice of long-suffering amusement. After all, it was more likely that Harvey, curious little imp that he was, had snuck off to read something at some opportune moment, or wanted to check out a hall they hadn’t entered as a group, and was now perfectly content in his freedom to wander around. Of all his students, that was the kid who would try to stow himself away for an un-official reenactment of Night at the Museum.
“Harvey?” he called into the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, marching through the mostly-empty space as fast as he dared while still looking for his student. “Harvey, where are you?”
It took Steve no time to clear the fourth floor. He was climbing the stairs down to the third floor when he heard a woman’s voice call Harvey by name over the speakers, and for some reason, that only made the situation more real and nerve-wracking. He needed to find that boy before he lost his cool.
The Hall of African Mammals was a blur, and he was just entering the Hall of North American Birds when he heard a familiar voice call his name.
“Hey, Mr. Rogers!” Harvey grinned his way and waved.
Relief washed over Steve like an ice-cold Gatorade dunk. He rushed over to the boy and knelt down to hug the kid tight.
“That your teacher?” a smiling voice asked from somewhere overhead, and Steve looked up over Harvey’s shoulder to see honey brown eyes, warm with amusement, watching him and Harvey.
“I am,” Steve said at the same time as Harvey said, “he is.”
Then, just as quickly he had wrapped the kid up in a hug, Steve leaned back and held the boy at arms length by his shoulders to take a good, careful look at him from head toe.
“Are you okay, Harvey? What happened?”
Harvey just shrugged and grinned, then looked up at the man who was standing nearby still. “Tony found me.”
Steve blinked, a little alarmed, but then looked up at the man waiting with Harvey and in an unsteady but hopeful voice asked, “Tony?”
“I work here,” Tony explained with a smile, speaking in a blessedly calm tone. “We’re setting up the special exhibit across the hall, but I guess Harvey decided on a pre-show...”
Assured that nobody had tried to kidnap or lure his third-grader away, Steve struggled to settle on either overwhelming relief and gratitude, or frustration with the little renegade kid who clearly had snuck off without permission.
“Thank you,” Steve was saying without much thought, “I—I don’t know how he, how we didn’t see—if anything was damaged or, or—” oh, shit. How much do priceless fossils and artifacts cost?
“Everything is fine,” Tony promised, then with a quick grin at Harvey, added, “he’s a really clever kid. He knows his stuff.”
But Harvey was shaking his head and tugging on Steve’s sleeve, because clearly he knew better. “Mr. Rogers, Tony knows everything!”
“Not everything,” Tony laughed, giving the kid a pat on the shoulder. “Get back to class, and soon you’ll know more than me.”
Harvey beamed up at him, uncharacteristically shy. “Really?”
“Really.”
But Steve, who had just gotten back on his feet, was scrubbing at his face and still trying to get over the lingering fear that remained once the adrenaline ebbed away.
How had he not noticed a child just walking away from his group? Anything could have happened. And fuck, the kid had snuck into a restricted part of the museum that was still under construction - what if something had fallen on him? Broken on him? Steve would never have forgiven himself.
Steve felt a hand gently squeeze his shoulder, and he looked up from the phone screen he had been staring at with unseeing eyes to find those warm, brown eyes watching him in concern.
“Hey, Mr. Rogers?” Tony asked at first, then with an encouraging smile said, “where’s your class?”
“Roosevelt Rotunda,” Steve replied automatically, then suddenly remembered why he had pulled his phone out in the first place. With jittery, inaccurate fingers, he tried to text Peter and MJ to let them know Harvey had been found and that they were coming back.
“Good choice,” Tony grinned, then looked down at Harvey. “Have you seen Barry?” he asked the kid, and slowly started to lead the way towards the stairs. “He’s our Barosaurus. Did you know he’s only one of two Barosaurus specimens on display in the whole world?”
“Really? Why?”
“Because they’re pretty rare; now, their relatives, the Diplodocus or Apatosaurus, you’ll see more of them. Did you ever see Little Foot? He’s an Apatosaurus.”
Harvey trotted down the stairs beside Tony, looking up at him curiously the whole way while Steve trailed behind them. “What’s the difference?” Harvey wondered.
“Well, the Apatosaurus is a little smaller, a little sturdier overall. The Diplodocus and the Barosaurus are about the same length, on average, but the Barosaurus has a longer neck and the shorter tail.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why, exactly,” Tony answered honestly, “but most likely it is their environment. It could have been what they ate; it could have been their predators. You see how Barry’s on his back legs?” he asked, pointing to the rearing dinosaur. “Because his front weighed so much more than his back, it is more likely that he fought off predators like this, with his tail anchoring him. The Diplodocus, because its tail and its neck are about the same weight, she would be able to use her tail to club her predators.”
“Like Little Foot’s mom!”
“Yeah! Exactly,” Tony said with a big smile. Peter came up then to introduce himself, thanking Tony again for finding their student, and then taking Harvey back to his group to make sure the kid ate his snacks before they continued.
Together, Peter and MJ were wrapping up the kids’ story time with the dinosaurs, and all in all, even Steve thought that they had handled that panic pretty well. Despite all the nerves still tingling and ringing about how horribly it could have gone, his students were now all here, all healthy and happy, and they still had two hours before the bus came to drive them back to Brooklyn.
“Mr. Rogers?” Tony asked quietly, again startling Steve out of his thoughts. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah—yeah, thanks,” Steve said, a little breathless with a nervous laugh. “Just—I thought, I thought the worst, I always; they’re just children, and they’re all sharp kids, but if something had happened, I—I’m not Liam Neeson, I don’t know what I would—”
“Hey, hey no, nothing happened, everything is alright,” Tony reminded him in a gentle voice, then after a moment of silence where he let Steve try to catch his breath, he asked, “do you want me to take your group around?”
When Steve realized what the man had offered, he tried to shake his head no, because this man wasn’t being paid to watch his kids, he had a job to do. A job they had already interrupted long enough. But before his refusal was verbalized, Tony just grinned and clapped him on the arm.
“You cool off. I got this,” Tony promised, then stepped away to face the children.
artwork by fanmkii as a gift from ishipallthings
MJ must have noticed that Tony had something to say to the group, because she clapped her hands and called, “Alright, stop!”
As one, the students turned to face her and called back, “Collaborate and listen!”
Tony clapped a hand over his own mouth, but that didn’t hide the fact that he cackled.
“You kids are the best,” he told them when he finally caught his breath. “Hi everyone,” he greeted them with a little wave, and the kids politely chorused a curious hi in return. “My name is Tony, and I am a paleontologist here at the Museum of Natural History. I work with the little guys, the smaller dinosaurs that were—well, about your size. I’m going to take you all around for the rest of your stay here, show you some of my favorite spots and exhibits. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have; actually, does anyone have any questions before we get started?”
“Mr. Rogers said we don’t know why the dinosaurs are extinct,” Harvey piped up in the shy silence. “Is that true?”
“Hey! Yeah, kid, Mr. Rogers is right,” Tony confirmed, “except, that should be “we don’t know why most dinosaurs are extinct.” Some theropods are still alive today. You see this guy behind me? The Barosaur? I call him Barry. He is a type of sauropod. He’s fighting an Allosaurus. What does he remind you of?”
When most of the kids called out “T. rex!” Tony grinned and nodded. “That’s right, a T. rex. The Allosaurus and the T. rex are both from a group of dinosaurs we call theropods. But chickens, and pigeons, and ostriches—they are theropods, too. So, not all dinosaurs have died out.”
The children threw a great series of questions at Tony after that, and had Steve been in a better state of mind, he would have been gushing with pride.
Did dinosaurs evolve? Yes, and our best guess is that most dinosaurs - and even crocodiles- evolved from a two-legged dinosaur.
Why were dinosaurs so big? There is no clear answer. Some attribute it to the atmospheric differences of the time which allowed for much more vegetation that allowed vegetarian dinosaurs to live in perfect buffet-style comfort, and subsequently feed enormous meat-eating dinosaurs, too. Other people say it was easier to survive and to stay warm (as cold-blooded creatures) if they were larger. But most likely, it is a combination of the two.
How did dinosaurs make babies? Like modern reptiles, dinosaurs laid eggs. How they raised the young depended on the dinosaur, and we have some clues about their behavior. For example, the dinosaurs that lived in herds shared the responsibility of protecting their nests of eggs and possibly also protecting the young from predators. But how they actually reproduced is one of the largest mysteries in the field. Some dinosaurs were so big that we have no animals alive today that we could compare them to and imagine it. For that reason, some people believe that large dinosaurs may have regularly migrated to big bodies of water where the water could have helped support their weight.
A little girl who was sitting fairly close to Tony raised her hand. Tony smiled at her and asked what her question was. “My mommy is a doctor,” Arlene told him, matter of factly. “She says that men’s penises are pro-por-sho-nal,” she enunciated slowly, and looked rather proud for having said it right. “Would dinosaurs have penises bigger than Mr. Rogers’?”
In that moment, Steve regretted everything that had brought him to this point in time. He was not proud of his students anymore. He wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole so that he could die and be at peace and never reflect on this day again.
Tony slowly pivoted to look at Steve, and without saying anything, without so much as a grin or a smirk, he raised his brow in a challenge to inform Steve that despite his composure, Tony was thoroughly, shamelessly, amused. And, likely, would be asking for the full story later.
“That is a great question,” he answered Arlene just as calmly and kindly as he had the others. “Actually, we don’t even know if they have penises, or - for the females - vaginas. It is possible that they did, but over time, fossils do not preserve clues either way. In some cases, we can easily tell who the females are and who the males are because of the structure of their hips, but that is as far as we can get. It is possible that the animals who were small enough to mate like modern mammals had penises and vaginas, but in the same way that it works for people, they do not need to be proportional: they only need to be functional. It is also very likely they reproduced like modern lizards, in which case they would not have vaginas or penises, but would just rub against each other for a few seconds and that would be enough.”
Arlene looked horrified, likely on behalf of her mother. “Seconds?”
“As fast as a good sneeze.”
***
“Son, are you calling to tell me you’ve met the woman of your dreams?”
Steve blinked up at the ceiling over his couch, ironically caught off guard. Ironically, because it wasn’t the first time his mother had answered the phone with the same question.
“No,” he eventually admitted, “but mom—”
“Then the man of your dreams,” she said over him, “and you need me to help you with getting the adoption papers started?”
“Mom, I’m still single and childless,” Steve answered with a sigh, rolling his eyes. “Mom, could we talk? I thought I lost a kid today.”
“But you didn’t?” she guessed, which he confirmed with a hummed affirmative. “Then you’re fine. Chin up, Steve, mommy’s playing Texas Hold ‘em and there’s two tickets to Hamilton for next week in the pot.”
“What?” Steve stammered at first. “Mom? Mom!”
He didn’t have to look at the phone to know she had hung up on him.
***
Five minutes into Steve’s lunch break the next day, his mother called.
“Hello, mother,” he greeted her in a cold deadpan. “Did you win your tickets?”
“Your mother is a winner, Stevie, what kind of question is that? Of course I won,” she replied, but her voice was so cheerful Steve could easily imagine the big smile on her face. Grudgingly, he smiled, too. “Now, tell me what happened. You almost lost a kid?”
“I did lose him for like, ten minutes? Harvey walked off when we weren’t paying attention—”
“If those assistant teachers of yours weren’t so busy flirting all the time,” she started in on her commentary, but Steve interrupted her before she got too far.
“Mom, Harvey’s always getting into trouble. He’s a good kid, but he’s pretty damn clever,” Steve said in Peter and MJ’s defense, even though he had often had the very same thoughts. “He snuck into a restricted area where they were setting up an upcoming exhibit to look at the dinosaurs, but luckily this guy who works there found him and brought him back.”
“Cute guy?” she wondered, and really, sometimes even Steve didn’t know why he ever called his mother. “Single?”
“Mom, you don’t even know how old he was!”
“Well, darling, you’ve been alone for two years. Maybe it’s time for you to be less picky,” she pointed out sagely. “Now, tell me more about him.”
“He couldn’t have been that much older than me,” Steve said, knowing better than to argue with her. “I think—he must have realized how worried I was, because he spent the last hour and half with us. He took the kids around on a private tour, answered all the kids’ questions. He even went to his office or something and brought the kids some fossils and bones and teeth to play with. Then he brought out a few plastic models of reeds or something and showed the kids how people would weave baskets and then coat the inside with running mud and then let it bake over fire so that they could carry water for longer distances. And before—”
Sarah cleared her throat on the other end of the phone, and when Steve quieted down, she said, “Honey, sweetheart, stop using gender pronouns. What’s his name?”
“Tony.”
“Did you get his number?”
“Mom! No, everything isn’t about dating. How many times do I have to tell you it’s okay to be single?”
“Sure it is, if you’re 26. You’re 35. Now, dress up nice and go find him, and thank him for the save yesterday. Then ask him for his number.”
Steve stared straight on at the opposite wall of his classroom, wondering how productive the last five minutes could have been if he hadn’t picked up the phone.
“Alright, mom. I have work to do before the kids come back,” he told her without preamble, and fast enough that she didn’t have a chance to interrupt him. “I love you, bye.”
***
“He is hopeless,” Sarah complained to Jackie while they were getting their nails done later that day. “How is he ever going to find someone if he doesn’t create any opportunities? Or take advantage of the opportunities?”
“Honey, you’re preaching to the wrong crowd,” Jackie reminded her, “remember how James ran around before he met Natasha? Every month I had to march him to the clinic to get tested just to sleep at night.”
“I remember,” Sarah said with a sympathetic frown. “You brought up a good kid, girl, he clearly knew to wrap it up.”
“Don’t remind me,” Jackie answered with a little shudder. “I’m so glad he settled down. And Natasha is good for him, she helps him keep his head on right.”
“Why can’t my boy find someone like that?” Sarah complained immediately. “When he told me he was bisexual, I was delighted—that was so many more potential partners! But at this rate, I’ll never know my grandchildren if I don’t set him up on a date myself.”
Jackie shrugged a little in her massage chair and looked across at Sarah with an innocent, curious look. “Well, why don’t you?”
Sarah blinked at the question, surprised by the simple solution she had never considered before.
“Good heavens, you’re right,” she whispered. “I’ll do it myself.”
***
Not two hours later, Sarah and Jackie bought their tickets and walked into the Natural History Museum Steve had taken his students to earlier that week.
“His name is Tony,” Sarah reminded Jackie in a conspiratorial whisper. “For men, Steve always has the same type, so we’re looking for a leggy brunet with a plump ass.”
Jackie frowned a little in confusion, because somehow that didn’t add up. “I thought you said it was someone who happened to find the kid, not someone Steve was physically attracted to?”
“He wouldn’t be wrapped up about him if he wasn’t attracted to him,” Sarah said reasonably. “If he wasn’t attracted to him, he wouldn’t have thought about Tony’s age with reference to himself. Now, I’m telling you, we’re looking for a brunet with good legs and a good ass.”
When the museum closed two hours later, Jackie and Sarah had to admit defeat for the day and leave with the rest of the visitors. But the next day, they were back after their morning shifts with a vengeance: they brought their cameras, their walkie talkies, and lots of pens and highlighters to annotate the museum maps.
After the fifth day of this business (including the Friday and Saturday they weren’t scheduled to work and could spend all day at the museum), they agreed that disguises were necessary. Two women returning every afternoon, eyeing the staff, and taking notes for hours? They needed disguises. So on Wednesday, a week after Steve had taken his class to the museum, Sarah and Jackie walked into the museum in their biggest glasses, baseball caps, and one of the many large hoodies their sons had, respectively, littered their house with at some point.
“This is ridiculous, over,” Jackie muttered over the walkie talkie around four in the afternoon, less than two hours before closing. “We are ridiculous. We’re not going to find this guy! Over.”
“He has to work here, over,” Sarah replied seconds later. “This is the only natural history museum in New York, right? Over.”
“I don’t know, over,” Jackie said after some thought. “Maybe? Over.”
“Hello, may I help you find something?” a person asked Jackie, nearly scaring her out of her mind. She whipped around to face the information desk she had come to stand by without realizing, and she clutched at the walkie talkie like her life depended on it.
Jackie glanced down at the walkie talkie for a moment, thought about it, then stuffed it into the pocket of her hoodie. If they were going to succeed, they would have to change their strategy. She walked over to the tall counter where the man was waiting politely.
“Yes, please,” she said. “My nephew Steve was here last week with a school group; third graders. Uh, he, well, I don’t know how to describe it, but he got into some trouble, and this man who worked here helped him and I really wanted to find him and thank him. I only know his first name, Tony, and that he’s brunet. And probably has great legs.”
“Really? That’s—okay, that’s, let me see if we can’t help you find him. But I don’t normally work on the support staff, let me ask my colleague,” he excused himself briefly, then leaned over to the redhead sitting next to him. “Hey, Pepper? A visitor is trying to find someone who helped her nephew last week while he was here with a school group. Do you know a Tony, who is a brunet, and has great legs?”
Pepper gave the man the most irritated, pinched look Jackie had seen since she tried to dress James in a pink button-up for her sister’s garden party when he was seventeen years old.
“Oh, yes, you’re right!” the man laughed then, and he turned back to Jackie with a bright smile and mischief in his eyes. “Hi, how can I help you? I’m Tony.”
“Shit.”
***
“Steve, darling,” were the first words Steve heard when he picked up his phone on Wednesday evening. He hummed something vaguely affirmative as he tugged at the wraps around his knuckles with his teeth to let her know he was listening. “Why don’t you come over for dinner Saturday? I got some shelves yesterday that I want to put up, and I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
Steve momentarily forgot about the bandages to remind his mom that he wasn’t the bad son she seemed to like thinking he was. “Mom, I was there on Tuesday for dinner,” he reminded her, then frowned as he remembered something else. “Didn’t I put shelves up for you then?”
“Right,” Sarah said after a beat, but quickly resumed in her usual cheerful tone. “These are the second half. Why are you arguing with me, do you have a date?”
“No, mom, but—”
“But what? Your mother needs your help and what?”
“Mom, can I breathe for a second? Fine, yes, I’ll be there on Saturday.”
“Thank you, sweetie,” she beamed, “be here at four? Don’t make plans for later, either, grouting in the bathroom needs to be redone, and my back has been hurting.”
“Yes, mom,” he answered as usual, because what else was he doing on a Saturday? “I won’t make other plans for Saturday.”
“I love you, baby. See you Saturday at four.”
***
“Mom! I’m here,” Steve called into the house to announce himself. He’d come over in his grungy clothes - something he wouldn’t miss if they were ruined while re-doing the tiles.
When she saw him, Sarah was anything but impressed.
“Sweetheart, hi. Now, go take a shower, shave,” she said in a rush. “Hurry. There’s clothes for you in the guest bedroom.”
“What?” he asked with a frown, but still obediently walked along as his mother shepherded him towards the bathroom down the hall.
“Less questions, more scrubbing. What do you think this is, Pearl Jam?”
“Mom! You wanted me to do grouting,” he started to say in his own defense, but she just opened the bathroom door and pointed to indicate the way in.
“Shower. Scrub well, and everywhere. Shave. I want you looking your best, okay? We have company coming.”
“Mom, if this is a blind date, I will not—”
“Less arguing, more yes, mother.”
Steve set his jaw in a firm line, and tried not to let his hands fist too aggressively at his sides. But in the end, she was his mother, and she wasn’t going to let it go, so finally he marched into the bathroom and tugged the door shut behind him.
It didn’t take him that long, in the end, to get dolled up and dressed. His mom had left a dark grey suit and a blue button-up to wear, and how she had a pair of his dress shoes, nice belt, and even his cologne, was really starting to weird him out.
Maybe it was time to start having some real plans on his Saturday nights, because if she had all this on hand, he was clearly spending way too much time at his mother’s house.
There was a knock on the door, and immediately he heard his mother yelling from wherever she was conveniently hiding at the moment.
“Honey! Get the door!”
In the safety and privacy of his old room, he dared to roll his eyes. He pushed the tie into place, gave himself a last once-over, then walked out to go get the door.
On the other side of the door stood Tony, handsome Tony has-no-last-name in a well-made suit, who is a paleontologist and great with kids and has kind eyes and doesn’t laugh in his face even when his kids compare him to dinosaur genitalia.
“Hi,” Tony said with an easy, albeit amused, smile. “Remember me?”
“Tony, hi,” Steve answered finally, snapping out of it. “Of course, you, you—thank you, again, for the save. That was the best field trip ever.”
“Well, I dare say your mother had a better one,” Tony laughed, then out of his jacket pocket he pulled out two tickets to Hamilton. “But we might even top that. What do you say, Steve?”
“You’re on.”