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“Please tell me again why we’re going to a museum at ten a.m. on a Saturday morning?” Jared asks blearily.
He drags a hand through his still damp hair, because Chad woke him up half an hour ago, and basically threw him into the shower with the directive to make himself presentable. When Jared came out of the bathroom somewhat presentable—it’s Saturday morning and he’s hungover, he’s just doing his best—Chad handed him two still hot pop tarts, and then herded him out of the door of their apartment with the very vague explanation that they’d be late for whatever insanity he’d planned.
The insanity, it turns out, is a visit to the Texas Science and Natural History Museum.
Chad looks unfairly awake, considering they’d both been partying well into the morning hours at Gen’s house.
“It’s a great place to meet chicks,” Chad says, like that’s a normal thing to say. About a museum. Of natural history. “And you’re my wingman. So.”
“You’re insane,” Jared says. “I’ve been saying this for years, but you’ve finally gone off the deep end.”
Chad just gives him a look, one eyebrow raised. “You’re the one following me. So if I’m insane, what does that make you, huh? Now come on, you’re gonna miss the tour.”
“The tour?”
“Yes, now get your ass in gear, Padalecki!”
It’s not the first time Jared curses whatever admin in student housing matched him and Chad as roommates their freshman year, but Chad is unfortunately not wrong. They’re seniors now, and Jared’s been living with Chad voluntarily for the last three years, so he might acually be the insane one. Which is honestly the only explanation for why Jared follows Chad to the Texas Science and Natural History Museum at the University of Texas at ten a.m. on a Saturday to find Chad a hookup. Seriously, Jared’s life.
The girl at the ticket counter is pretty. Actually, she’s gorgeous. Jared’s pretty gay, but he knows beautiful women and the redhead at the museum’s ticket counter would top anyone’s list, and especially Chad’s.
“Okay, I see what you mean,” Jared says quietly. “What I don’t understand is the time. Her shift can’t end this early.”
Chad just shushes him, then walks up the counter. “Danni, hey.”
“Chad.” She looks up at him in surprise. “I didn’t think you’d actually come.”
“Pff, I’m a good friend,” Chad says with a grin, then he grips Jared’s wrist and yanks him forward.
Jared stumbles at the unexpected pull and slams into the counter. “Ow. What the—”
“Danni, this is Jared, my awesome, smart, funny, and very single roommate.” Chad gestures at him like he’s a telemarketer and Jared the sixty-four in one vegetable chopping set. “The kitchen looks like the aftermath of a category five hurricane when he’s done cooking, but his food is really tasty, he’s a senior, majoring in engineering, 3.8 GPA—I think, the important thing is he actually studies and does homework like a nerd—and he’s a Texas boy born and bred. And you know what they say about things from Texas.” Chad waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
Jared stares incredulously at Chad. “What the fuck, man?”
Danni just smiles up at Jared. “And cute too,” she says with a wink.
Jared blinks. “Thanks. I mean, I think. But there seems to be some kind of misunderstanding here, because I’m—”
“Gay? Yeah, Chad told me.”
“Then what…”
Danni hands him a ticket for the museum. “The tour of the prehistoric exhibit starts in five minutes. The meeting point is the big dinosaur in the atrium, right through there, you can’t miss it.”
“What?”
“Dude,” Chad says, “she’s giving you a free ticket to the museum! Be a good boy, say thank you, and go have fun.”
Jared’s wondering if he’s still drunk. “But… what about you?”
“Me?” Chad points at himself faux-innocent. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess, Danni’s all alone out here and someone should keep her company.”
Ah. The whole thing makes much more sense now. Jared still feels like he’s missing something here, like why Jared needs to go on a tour and why Danni’s going along with it remains a mystery, but Jared’s here, and he does like dinosaurs—who doesn’t, really?—so he might as well.
When the tour guide shows up, it dawns on Jared that maybe, for once, he’s not the wingman.
“Hey, everyone, I’m Jensen, and I’m going to be your guide through our prehistoric world today,” the guide says, smiling brightly and Jared’s just… in love.
Jensen is probably the most gorgeous guy he’s ever seen in his life—seriously, how is this guy working in a museum and not in Hollywood?—and he wears a t-shirt with a T-Rex on it with the rainbow-colored lettering rawr means I love you in dinosaur. He gesticulates when he talks, he’s as enthusiastic about dinosaurs as the six-year old on the tour, and he explains science so that everyone can understand it. He’s funny, and smart, he’s got the most enticing bowlegs, and Jared needs to force himself not to think inappropriate things about his full lips. And he keeps sneaking looks at Jared.
As Jensen explains the communal offspring rearing of hadrosaurs to the group—complete with hand-drawn baby dino pictures that make everyone aww—Jared manages to reconstruct that Chad probably met Danni somewhere, learned about her hot, gay, and presumably single coworker, and immediately thought of Jared. It makes Jared all mushy inside that Chad did that. Judging by the Jared-cliff-notes Chad gave Danni when he basically presented Jared for inspection, Danni obviously approved, hence the free ticket to the Jensen-guided tour.
Jared really needs to send a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolate to whatever admin in student housing who matched him and Chad up as roommates their freshman year.
When they’re walking from one room to the next, Jensen lets the group move past him, so Jared slows down until he is the last one and Jensen falls into step next to him.
“This is a really great tour,” Jared says. “How do you know so much about dinosaurs?”
Jensen smiles. “I’m getting a PhD in paleontology. So really, I should know all of this.”
“Fair,” Jared says. “Do you wear an Indiana Jones style hat when you go digging in the desert?”
“Of course,” Jensen says deadpan, “it gets hot out there.”
Jared is definitely getting hot in here.
The museum really isn’t that big, so they end up standing in front of what looks like a T-Rex skeleton after a few moments.
“You know, a T-Rex wouldn’t be able to beat a human in an arm wrestling match,” Jared says.
Jensen turns to him with wide eyes. “How the fuck to you know that?”
Jared grins. “Practical engineering project I did last year. We were supposed to use modern tech to explain something from history, so Chad and I wanted to figure out if T-Rex could arm wrestle with his tiny, tiny arms. To be fair, we were pretty drunk when we came up with the idea, but we did get an A on it. The T-Rex’s arms are as strong as a very strong human, but—”
“Its elbow joint can’t rotate far enough,” Jensen finishes his sentence for him. “Fuck, you proved that?”
“If our calculations were correct. But yeah, we built a robotic replica of T-Rex arms. Chad put them on and I arm-wrestled him.”
“That sounds amazing. Please tell me there are pictures.”
“There’s video,” Jared says smugly and he’s never been so happy about a school project, because for the first time it looks like it might be getting him a date.
Jensen is straight up beaming at him. “That’s seriously so cool. Do you think—”
Someone loudly clears their throat.
Jared looks around and realizes that most of the adults on the tour are staring at them.
“Right,” he says faintly. “I guess you have a job to do.”
“Sorry, just some scholarly interdisciplinary exchange,” Jensen tells the group. “About the T-Rex, actually, which is the big guy behind you. Fun fact: even though tyrannosaurs were stronger than humans, even their small arms, they wouldn’t be able to beat us in an arm wrestling match because their elbow joints can’t rotate fully enough.”
The group looks delighted at that and two of the kids want to be lifted up to the skeleton to try this out immediately. It takes their parents a while to calm them down.
Jensen winks at Jared, then takes his position in front of the fossils and continues the tour.
It takes about twenty more minutes and Jared’s charmingly entertained the entire time. He really does like dinosaurs, and Jensen gives fun facts and good descriptions. And then of course, there’s Jensen himself, and really, Jared needs to ask him out as soon as this tour is over. He already passed the friend-test, this is the only logical next step.
Jared’s so caught up in staring at Jensen, he almost misses it when Jensen says, “Any last questions?”
There’s a moment of silence so Jared takes his chance. “Yeah. How did dinosaurs date?”
“Date?” Jensen repeats. His eyelashes are ridiculously long. Jared wants to trace them gently with his fingers. “You mean mate?”
“Yeah, the whole shebang. I mean, was there like a chance meeting in the woods, a mating dance, or was there more wooing involved? Like, I don’t know, coffee in a museum cafeteria for example.”
Jensen looks extremely cute when he blushes.
“Well, it depends on the species,” he finally says, “and most of our theories are speculations and inferences from modern animals’ mating behavior we can observe, especially birds. We do think it was generally the males who fought for territory and access to the females. There are differences for solitary animals and herd animals of course.” Jensen clears his throat. “I can definitely say though that there is a certain species of homo texaniens that loves coffee in museum cafeterias on their breaks.”
Jared beams at him, the people on the tour who caught on to what’s going on whistle and clap, and the rest, as they will much later always say, is history. Well, prehistoric history as Jensen likes to say with his dorky dino joke face, but they kiss for the first time under the T-Rex skeleton after hours, so really, Jared does love dinosaurs a whole lot. He loves Jensen more, but when they get married five years later, they do get a T-Rex-shaped wedding cake.