A/N: You may have noticed that the fic now has a cover. It is, in fact, a moodboard that I made for it today and posted on Tumblr.


It is a Thursday when they set out. Not a Monday, which Raoul might half have expected, but a Thursday. And something about it feels like such an odd day for starting something of this magnitude, for the first day of a journey across so many miles into a barren land devoid of other people. It weighs wrong inside of him, an oddly unsettling fact, and he does not know it now, but as long as he lives (which will be a good many years beyond this date) he will never look upon Thursday in the same way again.

Charlie leads the way, and Lake brings up the rear with the packhorses, McKey and his wagon and mules just in front. Taylor and Jackson ride side-by-side and Roberts is sometimes with them and sometimes hangs back with McKey, and these divisions are things which Raoul sees but which do not quite register, not when he can ride alongside Martin. He learned to ride horses in his youth. Philippe practically insisted on it and he did not protest. But the saddle is a sort which is unfamiliar to him, and it takes some getting used to.

Then again, it is a long time since he's done much in the way of riding at all.

By the end of the first day he has mostly adjusted, but his legs are numb when he slides off and he has to grab the stirrup to balance himself. Then Martin is there, steadying him with a hand on his elbow, and with a quick glance to be sure everyone is occupied, he bows his head, and presses a light kiss to Raoul's forehead.

Charlie hobbles the horses, and Roberts, his dark skin shining in its glow, gets the fire going. Lake and Jackson brew the coffee and cook the beans, and when they are finished Martin takes a pouch out of his saddlebag, and brews his tea, and they all sit in a circle, the companionship quiet, as soft rustles whisper of wildlife, and somewhere in the distance an owl hoots, the last droplets of vermillion in the sky fading into inky blackness.

Then they roll out their blankets, and drop into sleep. And it is sometime later, much later, when the moon is glowing high in the sky and all around are snores, that Raoul is dozing, his back uncomfortable on the ground, and feels the brush of Martin's hand against his thigh.

Their lips, when they meet, are soft. And then they are together, beneath the blanket, trousers opened and shirts unbuttoned, and hands slowly, gently, exploring territory already learned.

And Raoul's whimper, at the moment of release, when he presses up against Martin's hand, is lost in the soft stirring of the grass.


The days settle into an easy rhythm. Rising shortly after dawn, breakfasting, picking their way over the land until the sun sinks in the sky, dining, sleep. And when the moon is high, Martin comes to Raoul, or Raoul rolls over and goes to him, and it is peaceful, and easy.

Martin begins each morning with a cough, and Raoul reasons that it is because of his tobacco habit, and the cold nights, and Martin smiles and quietly agrees. He is fastidious about keeping his moustache neatly trimmed, and on the third day Raoul shaves, though he has not much to shave, and could easily go a week or more, if he wished. But though there is no one out here to see, no one out here who would care if he let his habits slip, even now he can sometimes hear Philippe's voice in the back of his mind, murmuring about being neatly presented, and the ingrained habits of a lifetime are difficult to break.

And almost before they know it, though in truth it takes them the best part of five days, they reach Cheyenne. It is a relief to bathe, a relief to lie down in an actual bed and not on the ground, but the biggest relief of all is to have the privacy of a room, if only for a couple of nights.


And then they are off again, into the semi-unknown. And there is something about the way that Martin's eyes light up at discoloured rocks that makes Raoul's heart catch, and more than once he has to reach over to grasp the reins of Martin's horse as he jumps off to make an examination.

He invariably declares them useless, and mounts up to continue on, but even the prospect of maybe finding a bone is enough to lift his mood, and those nights by the fire he rambles on about the bonefields he's known in Europe, and there is something about the way the fire's glow lights his face that makes him even more beautiful.


They are two weeks out from Cheyenne (by Raoul's estimation), almost in the mountains (which according to Charlie are not the Rockies but actually the Bighorns), when Martin sees it. Raoul is musing on how nice the scenery is, when he hears the soft inhalation from beside him, and turns to look just in time to see Martin jump down off his horse and take off running.

Raoul passes his reins over to Lake, jumps off, and follows him, stumbling on loose stone. Up ahead Martin is coughing, stumbling and coughing and then he stops, and sways. Raoul half-trips as he catches up to him, and grasps him by the arm to steady the both of them.

"Do you see it?" and Martin's voice is rough and low, awe-struck.

But Raoul looks at the cliff face in front of them, and sees only rock. "See what?"

Martin raises his hand, and points. "Right there. Beneath the pink striation band. Over to the right, the patch of roughness." And there are tears sparkling silver on his cheeks. "It's a fossil." And Raoul's gaze follows the line of his finger, and he distantly sees the way the light catches differently, the faint contrast in colour, and his heart stalls.

Bones. He's not looking at rocks. He's looking at bones.

A whole cliff full of bones.

How is it possible?

How could it be real?

Surely he must be dreaming, must be still cuddled against Martin beneath the stars. But Martin is looking at him, smiling, the tears trickling down his cheeks even as he trembles and his hand slides into Raoul's, their fingers twining.

Raoul's breath hitches.

They're the bones. They're the bones. They're the dinosaurs.

So spellbound is he, he does not even notice the others come to join them until he hears Taylor's murmured, "now the real work begins." But all he knows is that there is what is left of the dinosaurs, and Martin is brushing his thumb over his knuckles.


It takes hours. Hours of careful seeking, of chiselling and brushing and checking for colour difference, to get the first bones out. But once they are laid on a groundsheet, and Lake is boiling rice to make a protective paste, and McKey is photographing and Raoul sketching while Martin makes notes and stands over his shoulder, murmuring things to add to his drawings, and the others are back working at the cliff-face, Raoul can only marvel at the fragility of the bones. They are so big it is impossible to see how they ever made up a living creature, and so delicate that one of them broke in the extraction and the pained noise that Martin made cut Raoul right to the quick.

But they lived. They lived, they breathed, they walked this land. They died here and were buried in the rock for their bones to be found all these thousands of years later. He brushes his fingers lightly over one bone, and shudders to think that it was once covered in skin, it was part of a creature made up of flesh and blood.

How did God create something like this?

And all of his theories, all of his conclusions and answers, fall away. How could these bones have been planted? How could something that must have been so huge, so majestic, have drowned in a flood? How could it have been real, but it was real, it was, and here is the evidence of it, beneath his fingertips, and he turns and his eyes meet Martin's, and it does not matter that the others are here, it does not matter that McKey is taking his pictures, not when Martin's arms come around him, and draw him close, and he leans into him, leans into this man who has brought such wonder into his life, who is himself the greatest wonder of all, and murmurs, softly, "I love you."

Martin inhales sharply, pulls back to look at him, and there are fresh tears shining in his eyes as his lips twist and Raoul almost regrets his words until he feels fingertips, gently pushing back a strand of hair, and Martin smiles. "I love you too."


And it is as if he is dreaming. As if the moment he traced his fingers over that cold ancient bone that the world slipped and re-aligned, and it does not matter how the bones got there, does not matter whether they were planted by a trickster god or lived and died upon this land or were all destroyed in some huge nightmare tragedy. All that matters is that they are here, now, and Martin's face lights up each time they ease a new one from the rock, and Raoul is helpless to do anything but gape anew at each one even as he sketches it, sketches Martin leaning over it, sketches Martin by the fire, sketches the others too, by the cliffs and the bones, but mostly Martin.

And the days blur into weeks, blur into months of seeking out new cliffs, new bones, of unearthing and sketching and Martin getting that fevered look in his eye over something exciting (the giddy way he danced when they found a partial skeleton, singing "it's an Allosaurus it's an Allosaurus it's an ALLOSAURUS" and grabbed Raoul and spun him around and kissed both his cheeks, or how he stood, still and hushed after taking several measurements of a length of jawbone and murmured, "I think it's a Brontosaurus") and covering in protective rice paste and packing away in crates to move on again. There are more bones than they can possibly bring with them, and Martin lovingly chooses the best specimens, and secrets the others away in what he determines are safe places, making careful notes. And the blue sky of day and the stars of night are the only ceiling he needs, the bones the only answers, and with Martin pressed close to him beneath the blankets, murmuring to him Latin names of long-dead creatures between soft declarations of love, there is nothing more that he could ever want.


A/N: Some historical notes (because I haven't done any yet for this fic) - the Allosaurus was discovered in Colorado in 1877. Brontosaurus was discovered in 1879 (the same year this fic is set) but for the purposes of this fic I decided to fudge that date the way Michael Crichton does in his delightful novel Dragon Teeth (which was no small part of the inspiration for this fic) so that Martin would have heard of it. I'm not sure if putting a rice paste over the bones was an actual protective thing that actual palaeontologists did in the late-19th century, but it sounds plausible and the idea for that also came from Dragon Teeth.

Anyway. We're halfway through and I'm glad everyone is enjoying this and I hope you'll stay with me (and continue to review!) for the second half!