Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ellie sensed Alan’s arrival even before his busted up old wrangler made its way back onto the dig site. In her mind, it was something that came naturally to people if they spent enough time in the other’s vicinity; the ability to intrinsically tell where they were, like some form of special magnetism. This was something she’d jokingly referred to as “telepathy” on more than one occasion, to which Alan had balked at every time, which resulted in Ellie laughing at him just as often.

Alan was a man of principles, and he stood firm in his dislike of kids, computers, and know-it-alls. She supposed he could add “nonsensical claims of the supernatural” to the list too.

The late afternoon sun was beating down on the paleontologists working on the dig site in the badlands of Snakewater, Montana, and all of them were ready to call it a day. Canteens of lukewarm water were passed around and drank from by dry, chapped lips, and hands covered in thick layers of rock dust swiped across foreheads and cheeks in vain attempts of getting rid of the sweat that glistened there.

Ellie straightened up from where she’d been crouching among the sun-baked rocks, adjusting her hat’s brim so she could see across the site. Just as predicted, Alan’s wrangler was bumping along the road that led to the scattering of tents, tipis and caravans littered around the desert. A pale cloud of dust was kicked up in its wake.

“Looks like Alan’s back,” said Billy, a fresh-faced college graduate they’d recently accepted onto the expedition. He grinned up at Ellie, his face several shades lighter due all the dust on him.

“Looks like it,” Ellie smiled back. Billy was a good kid; he still carried the boyish charm and keenness in girls that accompanied somebody of his age, but his expansive knowledge and intrigue in dinosaurs made him perfect for the dig. So what if he’d flirted with almost every girl on the dig already? So long as he didn’t try bending Ellie’s ear, she didn’t see the harm in it.

She clapped her hands and started heading down the inclined dune towards the approaching vehicle, side-stepping the uneven terrain.

That day had been pretty uneventful, all things considered; it had been four days since they’d last unearthed a fossil of any size. It had been the foreclaw of a theropod, too deteriorated to really tell its genera, but it had at least been something. Since that discovery, everybody had been practically scavenging in the rock and sand for any kind of trace of where the rest of the dinosaur’s ancient remains could be.

They’d been panting and hammering and pick-axing away in the blistering heat for what felt like forever, and Ellie could tell that morale was waning.

She knew that fieldwork wouldn’t be unearthing fully-intact dinosaur skeletons everyday, and she and Alan had done well to inform the students of this harsh reality so that they didn’t get their hopes up. But she had to admit, it was a little disheartening to be so tantalizingly close to unearthing a fossil without truly knowing where to look.

“We can always try again tomorrow,” Ellie lamented to herself. For now, she was just happy that Alan was back. He’d left early that morning for some business he had in the city, something to do with the university’s funding for the dig. They’d already been out there for almost a year now, and combining their grant money with the generous donations supplied by a Mr Hammond whom they’d yet to meet face-to-face, their efforts were showing diminished results.

A handful of small teeth, a femur here and there, nothing concrete, nothing big enough to “wow” their investors and justify them being out there for another year.

Ellie just hoped that they would show some leniency this time and just let them keep at it, rather than prematurely calling off the dig.

But when the vehicle came to a grinding halt and Alan stepped out, Ellie could see from here that his face was overcast with a look of barely restrained anger and disappointment, which clouded her own mood with sympathy.

Alan wasn’t a man that got angry, so seeing him in this state was a rarity for even Ellie, who was around him more than anybody. In the four years she’s studied under Alan, she’d seen him be blunt and straightforward and a little mischevious, but rarely angry. Especially angry enough to warrant the slam of his wrangler’s dust-covered door as he stormed across the site to his own caravan, which he’d insisted on parking a comfortable “do not approach” distance away from everybody else’s abodes.

Alan barged into his caravan, and Ellie trepidatiously looked back at the students watching on, distracted from their fruitless digging. They knew that Alan was a bit of a grumpy old guy, and none of them held it against him; he was just a man stuck in his ways, struggling to adapt to a constantly changing world. They knew that he just needed some time to himself.

Too bad that courtesy didn’t extend to Ellie.

Ignoring Alan’s antisocialness and being in his immediate vicinity was something only she could get away with, and she secretly relished in that knowledge. She never used this power with ill intent, she just knew Alan well enough that when he said he wanted to be alone, he really meant he only wanted her around.

And she was more than happy to oblige.

With a placating smile and a quiet instruction to resume their work, Ellie jogged over to Alan’s caravan and let herself in without so much as knocking. There were very few people who could intrude on him like this, especially in a bad mood, but Ellie was one of those people.

“I’m guessing the university didn’t have much in the way of good news then,” she lamented, taking off her hat.

The caravan was cool and shady, the AC constantly on full blast to ward off the worst of the Montana heat. Sunlight shafted in between the shuttered blinds on the windows, catching the mountains of books and newspaper clippings and jars of formaldehyde that filled Alan’s caravan, which also doubled as his personal study.

Alan himself was pacing up and down, running his hands through his hair, muttering glumly under his breath.

“Alan, sweetie?” Ellie called out, leaning into his view and waving her hand. He finally stopped pacing, and glanced at her with such a pained look of disappointment that it made her heart sink.

“They’ve cut the funding,” he sighed defeatedly, his whole body deflating. It was like the mere utterance of those words drained all the energy out of him.

Ellie balked at that. “They can’t be serious!” she gasped. “They should know that digs don’t immediately produce results. I’ve known some that take whole years to unearth anything of significance. Did you try bartering with them? Buy us some more time?”

While Alan took his time to reply through gritted teeth and an anxiously-bouncing leg, Ellie took it upon herself to retrieve them both bottles of chilled water from Alan’s mini-refrigerator. He took it with a quiet “thanks”, but didn’t immediately drink from it.

“I did,” he replied, eyes staring into the middle distance. “But they didn’t wanna hear any of it. They said that they can’t expend any more budget for a backwater site like this.” He glowered. “Goddamn it. It’s not like they’ve ever been out and done fieldwork themselves. They just sit in their lofty offices and think that reading through other people’s research papers is the same as living it, breathing it, getting on your hands and knees in the dirt to see if you can find something, anything, that brings us one step closer to understanding the past.”

Ellie watched him wringing the unopened water bottle between his hands, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

“How long do we have?” she breathed quietly, bracing herself.

Alan heaved a deep sigh. “Less than one week,” he replied bitterly. “Five days to scrape together what we can and make ourselves scarce. It’s bullshit.”

Ellie rolled her shoulders, trying to figure out the best way to break the news to the students. It would come as no surprise to some of the veteran volunteers, but some of the students might be discouraged so much from being let go that they might never pursue the field again, which would be a waste of their potential.

Ellie found her mind going back to Billy, who had only been with them for a couple months. She didn’t want to extinguish the flame of adventure burning inside him.

That unspoken telepathic link between them seemed to be working, as Alan muttered, “How are we gonna tell that lot?”

Less of a question of “how do we tell them”, but more “do I have to be the one to tell them”. Ellie understood the underlying nuances in Alan’s wording, even if he didn’t fully himself. She took a swig of her water bottle, the refreshing coolness assuaging the dryness in her throat and clearing her head a little. She thought on it for a moment, wondering how she would feel in their position if they were told that they’d have to be packing everything up in a matter of days. She’d feel disparaged and unfulfilled. She didn’t wanna hurt them like that.

“We don’t have to tell them today, do we?” Ellie said. “At least, not yet. They’ve had a hard day. We all have,” she added, gesturing to Alan. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, the exhaustion was written across his face, the age lines looking deeper than the crevices outside. “We don’t need this to top it off.”

Ellie straightened herself up. “We’ll give them the night off,” she stated. “Let them have fun while they can. It’s the least we can do.”

Alan nodded absently, still staring into the middle distance with his icy blue eyes. Ellie always found their paleness to be one of Alan’s most attractive features, even if he insisted that his character was more important.

“That goes for you too, sweetie,” she continued.

She expected Alan’s usual waving off her concerns, but she wasn’t having it this time.

“I mean it,” she said over his claims of “needing to finalize his research” and “the deadline being even closer”. “You’ve been through the wringer today, you deserve a night off for once. When was the last time you had one?”

Alan’s silence was the only answer Ellie needed to know that even he couldn’t remember.

“You know me, Ellie,” Alan insisted. “No rest for the wicked. Taking it easy just isn’t for me.” Ellie stepped closer to him and rested one of her dusty hands on his, absently noticing just how much smaller hers was compared to his. “I get that,” she replied softly. “But it’s clear that you need it. You deserve it, honestly. Please, Alan, for me. Just for tonight.”

Alan’s eyes met hers, those cool blue eyes meeting her own grey, and with a resigned sigh, he deflated and nodded slowly.

“For tonight.”

“For tonight,” she echoed.

Ellie pecked him gently on the cheek, then an idea made her straighten back up again.

“I need to borrow the wrangler,” she announced matter-of-factly. The change in demeanour made Alan glance at her quizzically. “Huh?”

Ellie made a “gimme” gesture with her open palm, in which he reluctantly placed the car keys with a soft metallic jingle.

“What for?”

“Supply run,” she said, already on her way out of the caravan.

“But-!” Alan jumped up from where he’d been leaning against the counter and followed her out into the blistering heat of the Montana desert, momentarily blinding himself against the harsh glare of the sun. “We only did a supply run yesterday. The funding isn’t gonna stretch far enough for a-”

“Trust me, sweetie,” Ellie insisted, climbing into the wrangler and strapping herself in with the worn nylon seatbelt. “I’ve got it covered.”

Ellie stuck the key in the engine and heard it purr to life. She rolled down the window and gave Alan a cheeky grin.

“Field experiment: you have to tell them that they have the night to themselves,” she jeered with a twinkle in her eye. Knowing that any kind of cross-generational interaction made Alan feel ten times older than he was, Ellie put the wrangler in reverse and left him standing there open-mouthed, laughing as she did so.

“Good luck!”

–

It was evening when Ellie finally arrived back on site in Alan’s wrangler. The journey to and from Snakewater had been uneventful, as had been the rest of the day, but Ellie had really only stopped at a tiny Sinclair station on the outskirts of the city. She’d quirked a smile up at the neon green Brontosaurus logo on its sign, the plastic bag’s contents clinking together as she dropped it in the passenger seat.

The sky, which had been a great big bowl of cerulean blue dotted with puffy white clouds, had darkened significantly. Now, it was a reddish-purple, streaks of blazing orange, yellow and hot pink to the Western horizon, over the craggy black mountains whose ridges were a shimmering gold. The smallest stars had already started peeking out in the cosmos above, and the half-moon was starting her ascent too.

The sweltering heat of the day had given way to a refreshing chill, with a welcome breeze that swept Ellie’s blonde hair back from her forehead and swirled around her bare legs.

After cutting the engine with a clunk, Ellie stepped out from the wrangler and strolled across to Alan’s caravan. He’d apparently overcome his social awkwardness and told the students that they were free for the night, as most of them had taken to setting up a firepit in the middle of the site. Fold-out chairs and benches were occupied by people laughing and drinking, and somebody was playing the latest hits on the tinny radio whose reception made every song crackly like the fire that illuminated their grinning faces.

It was a welcome sight, and Ellie was glad that they were enjoying themselves after the gruelling day they’d had, though it was tinged with sadness. They would inevitably have to be told about the premature end to the expedition, and it would crush them.

But that would come later.

Tonight, they were happy, and that’s all that mattered.

Ellie let herself into Alan’s caravan again, and, unsurprisingly, he was nose-deep in paperwork. She should have known better that he couldn’t just let up, that he couldn’t set aside his duties and let loose for once. But that was why she came prepared.
“Come on,” she announced, startling him. The bags under his eyes were accentuated by the glare of the table lamp.

“Ellie, please,” Alan pleaded, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I know we agreed that I should take it easy tonight, but there’s just so much to do that I-”

“I’ve heard these same excuses every single time I propose you have a night off, Alan,” Ellie said as she swept around the caravan, snatching up a couple things she needed: a few of Alan’s throw blankets, a cushion or two, the two-way radio. “And I’ve taken them all in stride. But not tonight.”

She stopped, hands full, staring down her slender nose at him, a woman to be feared and respected in this moment.

“Now put down those papers and join me. They’ll still be here when you get back, I promise.”

Alan sighed again as he squared up the loose papers on his desk, then slipped on his trademark Stetson. It suited him quite well, Ellie had told him on several occasions. Like an old-timey cowboy, complete with his flannel shirts and ascots.

“Even if I want to take it easy, I can’t do that with all the kids around,” he bemoaned as they stepped out of his caravan. He glanced uneasily in the direction of the firepit. “I’m way out of my element as is.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing it’s just us tonight, isn’t it?” Ellie chirped with a cheeky grin. She led him over to the wrangler, where she put all the stuff she’d collected from Alan’s caravan in the backseat, along with the bag of clinking glass she’d bought from the Sinclair station.

“I’m driving,” she pointed out before Alan could do her the favour. The two of them settled into the worn leather seats, comfortable in their familiarity, and then they pulled out.

Ellie had been eyeing this spot for ages, but had never gotten the chance to get Alan to go with her until now. Come Hell or high water, Alan would be toiling away at those rocks no matter what. If this change in circumstances was what it took for them to disengage from work for a little bit, then maybe it was worth it.

They drove through the night, the bright headlights picking out the shapes of cacti and boulders as Ellie followed the dusty road into the desert. They weren’t going too far, only to the top of the nearest ridge. But it was far enough away from the dig site that it was a smattering of small flickering lights in the far distance, with Snakewater being completely invisible in the dark.

The sunset had given way to true night time now, replaced by a velvety black hued by dark blue. Stars lit their way up the incline, and Alan, for what it was worth, blindly trusted Ellie’s navigating skills without question.

Eventually, they reached their destination, and Ellie cut the engine. Flashing Alan a broad grin, she hopped out of the wrangler and grabbed everything from the backseat. She did her best with what she had, which was one of Ellie’s better qualities.

In the bed of the truck, she put down several layers of warm throw blankets, all of them carrying Alan’s signature scent of patchouli and aftershave. It was a calming scent for Ellie, because she knew that she was safe.

Cushions next, arranged against the rear of the truck bed so that they could lay down underneath the stars. She slipped the two-way radio in there too; even though they were taking it easy, it would still do well to have some communication with the others, just in case.

By now Alan had joined her, and was staring at the makeshift bed like Ellie had just planted it in the Earth and grew it herself.

“You’re really taking this seriously, huh?” was all he could say, a smile beginning to break his tired face.

“Only because you take everything too seriously, sweetie,” Ellie chided, swinging herself into the truck bed. It was warm, and soft, and the cool night breeze made her hair sway about her head. “Don’t just stand there,” she chuckled, when Alan was still just standing there, gaping at her. “Get in, silly.”

Alan hauled himself in after her, and settled himself in among the cushions and blankets. Seeing him in such a relaxed position made Ellie feel much more at ease; she felt the tension dissipating from both of them, and the smile that Alan bore warmed her cheeks and her heart.

“This is definitely…cozy,” Alan said quietly. Ellie beamed. “I did my best, given the short notice,” she replied. She rummaged through the plastic bag from Sinclair’s, and produced two bottles of cheap wine with a flourish.

“I know we don’t have the funds for the expensive stuff, so this was the best thing I could spring for,” she explained, handing one to Alan. It wasn’t anything special, just garden variety red wine, but it was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

Its tang made this moment real, and she cherished it.

Ellie curled up next to Alan, hooking one of her legs under his, his broad arm supporting her head, as they both lay back.

Above them, the cosmos illuminated the night sky, a million stars twinkling and sparkling. The singing of the cicadas lulled them both into a rhythm of deep, steady breathing, listening to their heartbeats in synchronisation.

The breeze carried with it the promise of tomorrow, the inevitable end to this current moment in their lives.

Something else would come along, surely. Another dig, another surprise donation from the mysterious Mr Hammond, something will change the tide in their favour for once.

But for now, they were here.

Tonight, they were happy, and that’s all that mattered.