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Ryland Grace has a headache.
He loves his kids, no one would ever debate that, but come on. Sitting on a bus with a bunch of excited middle-schoolers would give anyone a headache.
A bus to where? The Aquarium of the Bay, the nearest engaging-to-most-tweens marine ecology hotspot in San Francisco. Not to be confused with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is also Californian and has 'bay' in the name. That is, in fact, in Monterey, not San Francisco. A little too far away for a field trip.
Not all the kids are excited about the aquarium, specifically- and currently, three who like to look at fish are bickering with two who like to reel in fish -but a field trip definitely beats keeping their butts planted in chairs, doing too much of their thinking with papers and screens. Grace can't fault the logic; A change of scenery certainly helps, even if, again, it's headache-inducing.
The drive is mercifully uneventful. Nothing chucked out a window, no fights, nobody pitching forward when the driver hits the brakes and getting a faceful of bus floor. It's just loud. Not 'everybody yelling as loud as possible' loud, but you know how a large group of kids can be. Making them sit in silence on a bus to the aquarium would be tyrannical.
Ryland Grace has to remind himself to be Mr. Grace when the bus finally stops. The relief of no longer being rooted to one spot in the midst of all the noise isn't something he gets to bask in. He's got a job to do.
He steels himself and takes a stand between the two front seats, cutting off the most overeager kids who tried to bolt for the doors. "Alright, hey! My hand is up! Let's be civil about this!" he announces loudly. Years of practice have yielded the skill of shouting over a rowdy class without sounding the least bit aggressive.
Getting the kids off the bus goes... about as smoothly as you'd expect. The bulk of them had swarmed the aisle as soon as the bus lurched to a stop, so it was half-pointless to enforce the 'kids in the front get off first' thing, but hey.
Keeping them in a group near the bus during unloading goes a lot smoother. Sure, a couple kids automatically started for the aquarium entrance, but they quickly realized the group was, in fact, not following, and they returned.
The most painful part: Getting them up to the entrance and into the aquarium without problems. Miraculously, problems were avoided, and-
True enough, that guy had to be the tour guide. The shirt matched, and he was in the right place at the right time.
Grace still had to do a double-take, though. Not often you see an aquarium employee with a missing left arm and heavy scarring- burns? -on the same side. Oh fudge, hopefully none of the kids would be insensitive about it, that would be awkward-
Focus.
Simon- the tour guide, his name is Simon (it's a nice name) -has a sort of effortless authority over the gaggle of middle-schoolers. He might be a particularly soft-edged veteran. Sure, veterans almost never have hair to their shoulders (especially not tied up somehow), but it's not impossible.
The tour was going well enough for Mr. Grace to relax. And Simon was so dang good at his job that Mr. Grace kept almost forgetting to do his own job, too caught up in learning new things himself, feeling more like just Ryland.
Jellyfish, assorted corals, an occasional look out the window at Pier 39 and all that came with it, open-ocean fish, schooling fish, sharks, touch-tanks (one kid got solidly splashed by a ray), tortoises for some reason, terrapins that definitely seemed more befitting of an aquarium, starfish (Grace found them especially neat, as he learned more about them), all sorts of anemones, fish you'd keep on display in a home aquarium, fish you'd keep waiting in your freezer, fish your uncle Jim would exaggerate the size of just a little more every time he talked about 'em, displays of what we know of extinct things (Grace wished he could un-overhear the conversation about megalodon vore), octopus, sturgeon, and-
"These guys are a little freaky," Simon announced wryly, leading the class up to one particular tank. "Who can tell me what they are?"
"Eels!" chimed in two kids, at the same time as one more articulate one saying, "Moray eels!"
"Moray eels!" Simon agreed. "They get big-" He gestured vaguely at the thick-as-your-arm eels poking out of their various hidey-holes, gulping serenely. "-as you can see, and in the wild, they mind their business if you mind yours. And you aren't a fish."
"Aren't they like xenomorphs?" another kid pointed out.
This was evidently something Simon heard often, because it got a probably-rehearsed (but quite convincing, and charming) chuckle out of him. "Yes! These guys have two mouths. The second one is in their throat, and called a pharyngeal jaw-"
Grace was only half-paying attention. The eels had taken an unusual interest in Simon, and were sliding out of their various spots to get right up to the glass. One in particular started eagerly following his hand around.
"I think they like you!" one of the kids snarked.
Simon didn't quite hide his exasperation as he turned his head- going by his mannerisms, the left eye was artificial and he could only see with the right -to look at the eels. He led the interested one in a broad circle with his hand. "Yeah, I'm their favorite," he boasted plainly. He wiggled his fingers at the biggest eel, which was the most invested in his hand. "Especially this one. I think she's in love with me."
Saying the L-word around middle-schoolers tends to get mixed reactions. Oohs, laughter, various ways of expressing a cringe. The reactions were even more mixed considering the 'love interest' was a moray eel with an infamous pharyngeal jaw. Which one kid called a 'yoinker' a minute ago. Grace wished he hadn't heard another kid with an impressively smart mouth (he meant that as a fond insult) make some comment about what she'd like to yoink. Gross, kid. (He couldn't blame her. Simon was indeed pretty good-looking.)
"So, wait. Do the eels only like that hand? Whaddya think they'd think of the other one?" a not-so-wise kid asked very bluntly.
"I have no idea," Simon answered, just as bluntly. "They've never seen it."
"What happened to it?"
Grace knew what was about to happen before it did happen. That was the 'making bullshit up because you can just do that with children' glint-in-the-eye.
"I touched a sea lion," he confided lightly. "Which is so illegal they had to cut my arm off for it. They threw it in the bay, and word must've got out that I taste good-" (Grace seriously wished he was imagining that wry glance at him meant what it possibly meant.) "-and the eels must really want a piece of this." He flexed for good measure.
One smartass kid applauded him. Another joined. That was a nice bicep, anyone with vision could tell.
One wiseass kid had to add, though: "But how'd you get the scars? Are those burns? Amputation doesn't do burns."
Simon blinked, caught off-guard. And put further off-guard by the wet fish of another kid piling on with: "Are they chemical burns?"
Grace gave it exactly one beat- just to see whether Simon was really floundering, or had dealt with this before (nope, he was floundering) -before he stepped in.
"Alright, hey," he started, raising a hand and giving the class that 'seriously?' look that always landed harder from the fun teacher. "We're here to learn about marine life, okay? Not everyone likes to talk about scars." He shot a look at Simon, double-checking he was actually helping here, and got the subtlest look of gratitude in return. "Let's keep things strictly about what lives in the water. 'Kay?"
He got a couple affirmations back. Good. Cool. Getting put on the spot by a handful of tweens was terrifying, and he would seriously hesitate to wish that on his worst enemy. Which, obviously, Simon was not. He wouldn't wish that on Simon. No way José.
More talk about how freaky moray eels are later, the class moved on.
It took a lot longer to get them away from the otters. The power of charismatic megafauna, man.
...And in the midst of trying to wrangle the kids for departure- letting those who brought some pocket money make a quick trip through the gift shop -Simon pulled Grace aside. As nonchalantly as possible without catching the attention of too-observant, too-gossipy middle-schoolers.
"Thanks for getting them off my ass earlier," he murmured conspiratorially. "I'd be fired if I told those kids... y'know, if I answered their questions about me honestly. Thanks." He held up a torn-off little piece of paper between two fingers. "And-" He offered said scrap of paper with a knowing smile that felt a lot like early-morning sunlight through a window. "-let me thank you properly over coffee sometime?"
Grace blinked. Stared for a long moment. Cheese and crackers, seriously?
"Y-Yeah, I- Yeah!" He agreed breathlessly. He very nearly fumbled the piece of paper in his enthusiasm as he pocketed it. Holy cow. Hot aquarium guy Simon was offering coffee.
Okay, okay, wait, play it cool. This is 'thank you for defending me from a pack of tweens' coffee. Not a date. Probably. Most likely.
...Maybe.