Title: Call It In
Author: Forged Obsidian
Rating: K+
Category: Humor/ Friendship
Characters: The humans from the trilogy, essentially
Setting: Post-Jurassic Park III
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Summary: Alan cashes in on an old favor.
Call It In
Alan Grant silently sent up another thanks to Ellie as he sat on the hospital bed. Eric and his parents were sitting across from him, a slight jumble of limbs as Amanda tried to keep her son as close to her as possible. They were all being treated in the Costa Rican hospital. For Alan, it was another instance of déjà vu. This time, though, it was Billy instead of Ian who was in critical condition.
A nurse walked in, carrying a tray covered in bandages and what Alan could identify as antibacterial cream. The nurse glanced at the reunited family, and moved towards Alan, setting the tray down on the bed beside the weary paleontologist. Alan knew the drill, and urged his sore muscles to begin removing his shirt. The nurse helped, and before long was rubbing the cream on scrapes and scratches that had found their way through the sparse protection of the fabric.
Alan was lucky, and he knew it.
Twice now he had been on an island with dinosaurs, and twice he had escaped mostly unharmed. Nightmares and PTSD aside, that was. Ian and Billy were extreme survival cases, and Tim. The boy had pretty much healed from his little run in with the electric fence with little more than light scars across his palms.
In fact, all the kids had handled themselves well. Lex and Tim had done wonderfully in both the kitchen and control room, and Eric had survived for two months alone on an island infested with dinosaurs, and apparently Ian's daughter had kicked a velociraptor through a wall. So maybe kids were alright.
Alan still wasn't sure about babies, though.
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"Yeah, I think he's teaching over there somewhere. It would be a place to stay while Billy is getting treated."
Alan sighed and leaned his head against the wall. "Do you even know if he's willing to put up with several guests, Ellie?"
"Yeah, I am. He called me right after he saw the news. Commander Jossel told me that you all were being transferred to Houston after everything gets cleared. Billy is already there. The hospital there will be able to look after him, Alan. And he needs you."
His stomach dropped. He hadn't seen much of Billy after being picked up. Just long enough to grab his hat - how had Billy managed to grab his hat - and make sure his understudy was alive. He really had thought that the boy was dead, picked apart by dinosaurs. Alan was glad to be proven wrong.
" . . . alright. Just don't expect me to enjoy it."
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The class could only watch as their professor chewed out the guy on the other end of the phone.
"And you called me insane!"
Professor Malcolm leaned against the table, his forehead meeting his hand as he rubbed at a building headache. "Do you, uh, need a place to stay at? Yeah, just for this semester. Yeah, plenty of room. Four? Sure."
The man, suddenly remembering where he was, looked up at the class, then turned his attention back to his phone. "Yeah, uh, listen. Just stay where you are. I'll be there as soon as I'm done here." The professor shoved his phone back into his pocket.
Cautiously, one student raised a hand. Slowly dropping it as they were called on, the they waited a moment before voicing their question. "Is everything alright, Professor?"
Malcolm gave out a small laugh. "Yeah, sure. Its just a, well, a pretty good example of chaos theory. A mosquito flapped its wings, um, centuries ago, and in response to that, ah, a few days ago Alan Grant was an complete idiot."
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"So we're meeting Ian Malcolm? As in the guy who wrote the book?"
"Yup."
"Neato."
Slumping down into the airport seats, Alan gratefully put his feet up on the opposite chair. Amanda slipped over his legs to sit next to her son, while Paul went over to the in-house McDonalds.
"Who?"
Eric looked at his mother, slight disbelief coloring his face. "He's a guy who was with Dr. Grant on the first island. The guy who ended the whole dinosaur-in-San-Diego thing? He's that guy. A little weird, but hey."
Amanda gave a small smile, one corner of her mouth turning up. "Sounds like an interesting man."
Alan snorted.
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Ian stared darkly at the approaching group, glaring at Alan and tapping his foot on the floor. When they got close enough, he walked up to the older man and whacked him on the back of the head. "Did the sun completely fry your brain? You have some pretty serious explaining to do."
Alan pointed back at Eric. "Kid got stuck on the island. Parents tricked me into going."
Ian looked over at the boy, some of the anger in his eyes draining away. Leaning back and suddenly looking much more approachable, the professor instead gripped Alan's shoulder and muttered "Well you could have mentioned that there was a kid. That changes everything."
After introductions, the group turned toward the exit and walked toward the parking lot. Eric got ahead of the group and asked Ian why he was helping them.
A slight toothy grin and a shrug of lanky shoulders followed "I owe Alan. And I want to hear the story before the, uh, reporters get their . . . contrary hands on it. And Ellie asked me."
Then Ian leaned down and pulled Eric in conspiratorially. "And Alan is a friend. But don't tell him I said that."
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"Ian, I did not survive Isla Sorna to die in your car!"
"Oh, relax, Alen. You're just a country bumpkin who has no idea how traffic in big cities works."
"Dammit Ian NONONO WAIT-"
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Ian ended up spending the night on the couch, with the Kirby's taking the master bedroom of the suite he had while staying in Houston. Alan had opted for the privacy of the small guest room.
Ian slept well, up until around two in the morning. He got up and tottered around the kitchen, looking over the latest college test rubric his mind and keep himself from thinking about the dreams that had woken him.
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Ian was still in the kitchen when Eric staggered in. The boy had a wild look in his eyes, and he glanced around as though lost in a dream. Ian gave a sigh then limped over to the younger man, gently guiding him onto one of the bar stools. Eric just scrambled onto the chair and hugged himself, trying to stifle his shaking. Ian didn't remark on it. Instead, he grabbed the half-empty chocolate ice cream tub from the freezer and slid it across the counter, a spoon quickly following.
Eric picked them up in shivering hands.
It was quiet for a while, save the sounds of the coffee maker that Ian had switched on. He'd had enough nights like this to know that his chances of falling back asleep were slim to none, despite his love for unpredictability. Might as well grade some papers and try not to think about teeth and being thrown through various architectural structures.
After a while, Eric stopped shaking and seemed to come back to himself. He took bigger scoops of ice cream, looking around with tired eyes.
"So. Two months, huh."
The boy twitched. "Yeah. I mean, it felt like longer. Sorta like when you're in class and you just want it to end, but the clock won't move so you're stuck," Eric said, gently turning the tub in his hands. His gaze flicked to Ian, then to the counter behind the older man. A small furrow developed between his brows, and he leaned back in his chair. "You alright, Mr. Malcolm?"
Ian was confused for a moment, then turned to look back at the counter. Ah. Those. His leg had been bothering him, and the unfortunate placement of the apartment above the underground metro led to some very accurate thunder-like impersonations that stole his sleep. Ian reached over, grabbed the pill bottle, and shoved it back against the wall.
He turned back to Eric. "Yeah, it just . . . hurts. Sometimes worse than others."
Eric gave a little nod and went back to his ice cream. He had seen the cane in the back seat of the professor's car. Ian just slumped against the counter, resting his head on folded arms. When the ding signaled a ready cup of coffee, the older man gave a little groan and shuffled over to the coffee maker. He didn't bother getting a cup and simply drank from the jug.
"Soooo. Why do you owe Dr. Grant a favor?"
Ian masked his chuckle with a sigh. "Well, uh, for starters, I used him as a crutch for a while. Then he managed to get my kids on the phone when it looked like I might not make it."
"But I thought you just broke your leg?"
Ian let his small laugh sound this time. "Never underestimate the power of infection, Eric. It was six months before I could even leave the hospital bed."
"And it still hurts?"
"Sometimes. It always, uh, aches, and some days are worse than others. I never really expected to get a cane from my little excursion to Hammond's island."
"Oh." Eric turned back to the tub, and swirled his spoon around in the top layer of melting ice cream. Ian could tell the boy had a question, but he wasn't going to try and pull it from him. Kids don't work that way. It took a few minutes, but eventually Eric glanced up at him.
"Will Billy be like that?" Eric's voice was a whisper.
Ian looked hard at the boy, and said seriously "Nah, at least not much. I know enough medical jargon to guess that he'll be fine. Mostly flesh wounds, uh, a couple of hairline fractures. A couple of his fingers are a little screwed up, but they'll heal alright. At most he'll ache a bit when the weather changes."
"Well, that's good." Ian caught the guilt in Eric's voice.
"It's not your fault, you know. Alan told me what happened. All of it. Billy, um, made his choice, and I doubt he regrets it."
"But he could have died."
Ian sighed and leaned back against his chair. "I could have died trying to outrun a T-Rex. Alan could have gotten squashed by a spinosarus. Your dad could have died on that, uh, old crane arm. You could have died anytime during those two months you were stuck on that island. But we didn't die, and, um, Billy didn't die, so that just makes everything that much better."
Eric just nodded and kept swirling his spoon. Before long the others filed in, gratefully smelling the breakfast Ian had made.
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The Kirby's stayed for only a few days, resting and avoiding the press. They managed to slip away on an early morning bus, pressing their phone numbers into the hands of Ian and Alan.
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Alan was grateful that he survived Isla Nublar, and Sorna. If he hadn't, he might never have learned that Ellie was made of something stronger than steel and that, in the end, it wouldn't work out between them but she would find a wonderful husband. They were still extremely close friends, and Alan was alright with that.
He was able to learn that Ian was an excellent cook, and an even better pianist.
That Lex wanted to go into computer development and wasn't very fond of cats, and that Tim desperately wanted to become a teacher and that his favorite color was green.
And now he was learning that Eric disliked swimming and wanted to be a photographer, that Amanda liked reading and was a born-and-bred surfer, and that Paul loved his little business and had been working on writing the same novel for more than 6 years.
He had yet to meet Sarah Harding or Kelly, but he had listened to enough of Ian's - occasionally drunken - ramblings on the phone to learn that they were both "Goddesses who got less praise than they deserved."
And while Alan still preferred dust and wind and old bones to people, maybe the strange, convoluted family he had sort of found was . . . nice.
He never thought he would connect with people over shared trauma and living dinosaurs, but there it was.
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Billy spent his time in Ian's flat sleeping.
He had been retrieved from the hospital with surprisingly little fuss and, as expected, was going to make a full recovery. Alan fretted over his understudy like a father bird, constantly asking if he was alright or if Billy need anything. Ian though it was hilarious, but chose to not remark on it. A few days after that, the two paleontologists decided that it was time to head back to the wastelands of the Midwest.
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Alan slid into the drivers seat and looked over at Billy. The younger man had fallen asleep, leaning his chair back and cramming his head into the crevice between the edge of the car and his seat. Alan gave a little smile, shut his door, and twisted the key in the ignition.
Rolling down the window and leaning out to Ian, Alan said haltingly "Thanks, Ian. I, uh . . . I appreciate it."
Ian just gave a small smile. "Just try to call more often, alright? Or you could, um, check your e-mail every now and again? I just wanna make sure you don't die of heatstroke or, uh, or something."
"Sure."
"And call Ellie more often. She misses you."
Alan gave a small nod and turned the car key. Giving one last little awkward wave and rolling up the window, Alan turned onto the off-ramp. Ian stood there a moment longer before whirling on his good leg and stalking back to his car. Sliding in on the hot leather was a slightly uncomfortable experience, but then he looked over at the paper stack in the passenger seat and his discomfort was forgotten.
On the top of a thick manila folder was a stamp of a tyrannosaur skull, while underlined underneath was "JURASSIC WORLD: REVIEW."
Ian had already gone through the file, looking over their plans, before he finally got to where their purpose for sending him the folder was clear.
"We would appreciate your certification and full public support of this venture. Due to the nature of your experiences with JURASSIC PARK and affiliates, your support is crucial to the park's future success. It would also be appreciated if you were able to contact Dr. Alan Grant, who we have been unable to reach, and offer our same requests. We appreciate your time, and look forward to future collaboration."
"They never learn," Ian muttered darkly under his breath, before angrily shoving the papers into the passenger seat.
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Author's Note
IDK I just really liked these films.
Given the recent performance of my fics, I honestly don't expect anyone to review this. I know it's not the best, but I did enjoy working on it. At this point I mostly want it out of my documents, though I really do think it's a passable work. Thanks for reading.
Originally Published: 9/25/2015
Edited: 10/14/2016