Work Text:
“Our world is overrun enough as it is, do we really need these creatures roaming it, upsetting the ecological balance even more? They’re relics of the past. They don’t belong here, and never will.”
Ben flinched at the unrepentant cruelty of the TV host, condemning his Bumpy and her entire population to extinction with a vehemence normally reserved for pests or vermin. This was not the first time he’d heard such callous remarks from the so-called ‘civilized’ world towards anything that dared to not fit the mold, and it wouldn’t be the last. And yet, the coldness of the words cut into him still, like blades of ice.
‘Survival of the fittest’, they had called it, conveniently placing themselves at the top in the process. If humanity was so quick to discard whatever it had no use for, no matter how much joy and awe they had inspired, then what hope was there left for a flawed specimen like him? The skittish, scar-ridden kid who was always by himself at school, who spent more time plucking wild berries than eating in the cafeteria like everyone else. Who was never seen without a few twigs sticking out of his hair, surrounded by a perpetual miasma of damp earth and rain.
Was Ben, too, doomed to be extinct, left behind by the times just like his beloved dinosaurs?
As if on cue, a warm, deep voice cut through the haze in his head, a hand reaching out to pull him from the darkness.
“Is this part of your graduation thesis?” Darius said, cocking his head towards the TV with an amused smile. “Torturing yourself to gather information? I’d rather go wrestle Toro again.”
Ben let out a snort despite himself, feeling the muscles on his shoulders loosening already in the warmth of Darius’ presence. His thoughts were like kites, ever eager to take flight. Darius was an anchor, giving them something to hold onto.
The younger boy called a waitress over and whispered something, a polite smile on his face. She simply nodded and went to rummage around the counter, before finally fishing out a remote control and promptly switched the TV to some popular music channel.
“Thanks,” Ben muttered, unable to look Darius in the eye. “But to be honest, I already know what they’re all gonna say anyway. It’s everywhere; TV, social media, Dark Jurassic...”
Darius simply raised an eyebrow before ordering a drink of his own and sitting down opposite of Ben. “If only you took what me and the others in the gang said to heart as much as you do random internet comments. I thought getting triggered by cyber bullying was supposed to be a Brooklynn thing?”
Ben tapped his index fingers together for a bit before replying. “She... may have rubbed off on me a bit when she was teaching me about all these computer stuff. And how to access Dark Jurassic in the first place. ”
Darius sighed. “Figures.”
“Anyway, it’s not like I’m just gonna go throw myself down a raptor paddock just because some mean comments online told me I don’t ‘fit in’. I’m done policing myself just to please everyone around me.” Ben’s hand gripped his drink tightly, his expression hard, and so missed the proud look on Darius’ face. “It’s just...”
His voice caught in his throat, and for a moment Ben wondered if he was going to have to cough them out. It was as if something physical had lodged itself in his airways. “Do you remember our, uh, little fight on Nublar?”
Darius’ hand froze in the midst of stirring his hot cocoa and his back straightened. A single shaky “Yeah?” was all he could muster, and Ben couldn’t exactly blame him.
“I’m... glad I made the choice to come back to the mainland. To you,” Ben said, reaching across the table to squeeze Darius’ hand lightly. “But everything I said before was still true. If I were to return there now, I’d still know exactly what to do. Find something to eat, a stream or a lake to drink. If I see something with teeth, I run. If I see something tall, I roll out of their way. Rinse and repeat. I knew myself, and knew what I must do.”
He broke eye contact to cast a glance at the bustling street outside the window. “Here, you can’t be sure of anything anymore. I get scared even when there’s no giant mouth full of teeth chasing me, and trying to figure out what people want is harder than looking at a patch of berries and trying to find the ones that are edible. And when I hear those mean comments talking about the dinosaurs I just... can’t help myself, Darius.”
Blue eyes met brown as he returned his gaze to Darius. “I know there’s nothing wrong with not fitting in, but doesn’t that just mean accepting that they’re right about us? That there’s no place for us in this world?”
“Well,” Darius said while doing his signature neck rubbing, “to be fair, it’s not like you weren’t an anomaly on Nublar too. Pretty sure the only other hairless apes the dinosaurs saw were the staff before it all broke down, and they were all three times your size.”
“I was a growing boy,” Ben said with a huff, but the corners of his lips found their way upwards anyway, such was the effect talking to Darius always had on him.
“Do you know something called niche partitioning?”
Ben shrugged. He’d been spacing out in pretty much every class that didn’t have a practical session that let him interact with live animals. “Vaguely.”
“It’s true that when two species find themselves occupying the same space, it will lead to competition. If conditions get harsh enough, one may even drive the other to extinction. But―” Darius held up a hand before Ben could begin to spiral― “sometimes coexistence is possible. Either there’s enough food and space for everyone, or they each find a way to exploit the ecosystem without getting in the other’s face. This could be done by either modifying their behavior, switching up their active hours, or exploring a different food source. Like what happened in the Morrison Formation.”
At Ben’s blank expression, Darius let out a tiny sigh. “Late Jurassic, American West. Fossils of three different giant theropod species have been discovered there: Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Torvosaurus. You saw an Allosaurus on Nublar, you know how huge they could get, and Torvosaurus was even bigger. Logically, there’s no way the ecosystem would be big enough for all three of them, but they managed it anyway.”
Darius was fully leaning forward now, his hands and eyes moving animatedly atop the table as if inspecting some invisible fossil specimens, and looking utterly rapturous to Ben.
“That is niche partitioning. They lived together, but they didn’t go after the same prey―they even ate different parts of a carcass! Allosaurus’ neck had a ‘locking’ mechanism that allows it to put more force into pulling its head back, and with a mouth full of short serrated teeth it could easily tear off flesh. Meanwhile, Ceratosaurus’ anatomy couldn’t let it do that, so it probably waited for its turn to get into the squishier organs inside. And Torvosaurus, thanks to its gigantic size, could just choose to hunt prey that are way outside the size range of the other two.”
“Darius―”
“They also had separate hunting grounds. An ecosystem can be way bigger than we thought, so Torvosaurus probably hunted in forest environments while Allosaurus preferred open plains. And the long, low body of Ceratosaurus may have given it an edge around waterways, though it probably wasn’t anywhere close to being fully aquatic―”
“Darius.”
“―and then there’s the possibility of commensalism! Torvosaurus could have done the heavy lifting by killing and tearing open a sauropod dinosaur in the first place, thereby giving access to the other two once it had eaten its fill―”
“Darius!”
The dino nerd stopped with a start, mouth still half open. He blinked once, twice, then turned an endearing shade as he chuckled to the side awkwardly. “Sorry, what were we talking about?”
Ben merely smirked. “You should probably consider a position as lecturer at my college. That little speech was more interesting than any class they’ve forced to sit through.”
“Only thanks to my audience,” Darius muttered, taking extra care to keep his voice below Ben’s hearing. Still, he did not miss the tension leaving the other boy’s body with every breath, nor the gap in his front teeth that was only visible when Ben was truly, honestly smiling. For that treasured sight alone, Darius would consider his mission fulfilled. His relief was reinforced further when Ben casually leaned back on his seat and stretched his arms above his head with a loud groan, and Darius only resisted staring where his shirt rose up through sheer force of will.
“What about you?” Ben said, the words leaving his mouth much more easily now. “No problem with your place in the world, then? No staying up at night thinking about the meaning of your existence?”
“Are you sure you want to study zoology and not philosophy, Benjamin?” Darius teased effortlessly, then took another sip of his drink. “And no, not really.”
Ben did not request elaboration right away, content to just watch his boyfriend place his cup back on the table and stare into it like it may contain all the secrets of the universe. Truth be told, that would have been enough for Ben. He’d admired Darius ever since their camping days, when the world went to hell and forced a leader out of the youngest of them all. How he had stepped into the role as naturally as into a tailored suit. How he knew Ben even before Ben knew himself.
Lost in introspection, he almost missed Darius’ answer when the younger boy next spoke.
“You get used to death pretty early when you love dinosaurs,” Darius said as he idly swirled the liquid inside his cup. “Intimately, from a young age. And then there’s the thing with my dad... ”
Ben’s heart twisted as he watch Darius suck in a tiny breath, his grip on the tableware tightening almost imperceptibly before continuing, “It hits you quickly, how little it all means. All the fancy titles and monuments, all the expensive suits people like John Hammon or Masrani or Kenji’s dad put on themselves? They’ll still die like the rest of us in the end. Countless animals and plants have come and gone, and only a fraction of a fraction of them gets any recognition through pure dumb luck. Once scavengers, rain, and a million years have had their way with you, in most cases―”
He held up his tooth necklace at eye level.
“―a creature amounts to almost nothing at all.”
Ben swallowed. Was it just him or did the café get a bit chilly all the sudden? “But doesn’t that worldview make your job kinda pointless?”
“Quite the opposite, actually. It’s literally the entire goal of paleontology: to study the past so we can appreciate the present.”
Fast as a striking viper yet gentle as a soft blanket, Darius’ hand enveloped Ben’s own. Their eyes met, earth to sky. “To cherish every single moment, big or small, because you’ll never know if it’ll be etched in stone for all eternity or fade away into a footnote of history.”
Something inside Ben broke, and it was taking everything he had not to meltdown right there in public. Darius merely held onto his hand tighter and rubbed comforting circles into their matching scars with this thumb. “A new paleo documentary coming out next month, finding a new jacket, publishing an article I’m proud of, or just being here with you, stuff like that are more than enough to give my life meaning. If the world doesn’t have room for me, then I’ll just have to carve out my own niche. Same goes for our dinosaurs.”
Our. The simple surety of the word almost sent Ben over the edge into the precipice; only instead of a yawning, all devouring void, all he could see was an endless expanse of sky. He was more than just scared Ben who first came to Camp Cretaceous, more than tough jungle Ben who ate bugs and leaves, and yet he wasn’t complete without them either. They were all him, occupying different parts of him and may even compete at times, but coexisting nonetheless.
“And, just in case you need more convincing...”
Darius gestured at something behind Ben, and he turned around. What he saw made his heart skip a beat: the unmistakable leathery wings of a pterosaur, forming a black silhouette against the wine-dark sunset sky. But it wasn’t alone―accompanying the beast was a small flock of cranes, all flying together in perfect formation as they embarked on life’s eternal search for food. The camera then panned down to show the rest of the field, displaying dinosaurs―Nasutoceratops, Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus, and many more he couldn’t name―browsing alongside elephants and wildebeest.
The past and present, in beautiful harmony.
Ben turned away from the screen and came back to Darius’ welcoming smile, feeling his heart swell with love. Leave it to the dino nerd to always know how to ground him, to make him feel safe.
“Thanks, Darius.”
“Of course. Camp fam for life, right?”
Ben couldn’t help but chuckle. This concrete and modernize forest may be a tad louder and less green than what he was used to, the threats lurking in its corners less tangible than stomping feet and flashing teeth, but it was just as much his home as Nublar.
Because he didn’t have to be afraid of every facet of it like scared Ben, nor distrust everything and everyone like jungle Ben.
Because he was just Ben.