ADAPTATIONS

14 – Working Things Out

Two days passed and not a word had been spoken between Billy and Pet in that time. By now, those who knew the situation figured the newly blossomed romance dead and reduced to a husk on the ground.

Pet and Derek arrived to the fossil site's canopy looking a little too close for Billy's comfort. The thought of everything he had been told a couple of days ago resurfaced and he frowned. Or maybe that was because a chunk of rock was digging into his elbow and rather painfully at that. Either way, he readjusted how he was laying on the ground and chiseled some of the rock sediment away from a vertebra of the fossil.

Neither he nor Pet visually acknowledged the other upon her arrival. Instead, she went for her favorite tools, consisting of a metal pick and well-worn tooth brush, tucked away in a rusted coffee can on a fold out table. Content, she got situated on her belly at the opposite end of the fossil and began to work.

An hour later, their working was disrupted by the blaring of a familiar vehicle's horn. Pet poked her dust patched face upwards to see Ellie pulling up to Grant's trailer. A broad smile stretched across her face. "Yea! Ellie's back!"

Derek almost knocked Pet back to the ground when he got to his own feet. "Hell yeah! Eye candy!" He was quick to reach the paleobotanist's vehicle. "Welcome back, Dr. Sattler!"

Ellie smiled confusingly as the man opened her driver's side door and offered her a hand out. "I wasn't expecting this, but okay..." She accepted the kind gesture, Derek noticing what looked like an engagement ring on her left hand's ring finger.

Pet and Ellie hugged the other, the hybrid exclaiming, "It's good to see you again!" Even she noticed the shiny piece of jewelry. "Oh, la la what's this?"

"I'm getting married," Ellie shyly stated and just in time for Dr. Grant exiting the trailer to hear. The news stopped him dead in his tracks. That wasn't the first thing he was expecting to hear and it damn near destroyed him. She could see the self-explanatory look pass over the man's face and bit out a sympathetic frown. "Mark proposed this past weekend. I wanted to tell you over the phone, but felt it better in person."

Grant fought with the words he thought would be convincing enough of relaying his happiness for her. "That's great, Ellie. I'm happy for you." He wasn't fooling anyone. Everyone present could feel the vibe of unease radiating off him. "Is that all you came for or were you going to be sticking around for a bit?"

"Actually," Ellie shoved her hands in her pockets to hide the ring from her good friend's view. "I planned on sticking around for a bit."

Grant peered over Ellie's shoulder and to her SUV, seeing her travel trailer not there. "Where's your Coleman?"

"In the shop. A tree branch fell on it night before last so it's needing some repairs."

Derek winced. "No one was inside, I hope..."

"No, thankfully not. It was sitting where it usually does under the tree by the garage." Ellie shrugged. Pet joined Ellie and Grant as they strode into his trailer to talk for a little bit.

Derek shifted his unblinking stare to Billy, who had been standing quietly nearby. "So that's just it?"

Billy narrowed his baffled watch down on the other man. "That's just what?"

"You find out your girlfriend is a genetically created psycho bloodthirsty hybrid and instantly you break things off?" Derek shook his head dejectedly. "Whatever happened to commitment in relationships?"

"I didn't break things off," the junior scientist snapped back defensively. "I've just never dated someone like her and well, I don't know what to do."

Derek shrugged. "Take her out for a burger at that shithole bar and grill."

"You mean Catfish's?"

"Whatever it's called. It's the one with that smoking hot black waitress. And I mean smoking. Hot."

Billy sighed. "Her name is Camille and you're not her type. She likes men who don't act like over inflated prudes all the time."

Derek snickered. "Well, I also thought Pet would end up with a badass big game hunter, not some science dweeb, yet she found something to like about you. I guess you never can tell with people."

Inside the trailer, Ellie could tell something was off going by the two other peoples' off character personalities. "What?" Her blue eyes darted between them questionably. "Did something happen while I was gone?"

"Billy knows," Grant stated.

The answer didn't help Ellie understand. "Knows? Knows what?" Pet changed her eyes to a raptor's and pointed at herself. "Oh. Oh! How?"

The hybrid thinned her lips in a grim frown. "I had a bad dream. One minute I was sitting on the couch and watching a movie with him and then the next, I was asleep. From what Derek told me, I made a noise that scared the absolute shit out of Billy and my eyes were all weird." Pet shrugged. "I don't know, to me weird is when they're that blue or green color. They just feel so unnatural when I'm having to keep them that way."

Ellie looked to her very close friend, knowing this was a concern of his; someone finding out about the hybrid's secret. "So, what now? What does this mean?"

Grant sighed and explained. "Robert gave him a good talking to."

"Oh boy." Ellie hid a nervous smile behind her hand. "How did that go?"

Pet snickered. "Oh, you know. Rob has this great way of putting the fear of God in someone." She toed off her boots and flexed her feet inside her socks. "I don't know what all was said. What I do know, is, Billy hasn't said a damn thing to me since then."

Grant lowered his gaze on the hybrid with a smirk on corners of his mouth. "Can you blame him?" Pet snorted. "Besides, I told him to put as much distance between you two as possible just for this reason!"

Pet rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Too bad it didn't work. I haven't had my vaccinations in a few…years." She gave a toothy smile.

Grant blinked. "You mean immunizations?"

"No, I mean vaccinations…as in rabies, stuff like that. I am part animal, after all, so what's to say I can't get all foamy at the mouth on a bad day?" Grant didn't blink and neither did Ellie. Pet shrugged. "If you need me, I'll be outside playing." She drove her feet back into her loosely laced boots and left the trailer.


Less than an hour later, Pet was nose deep back in excavating and zoned out in it, too. A shadow crawled across the ground and over the area where she was. Pet grumbled at the shadow blocking the sun and hung her head. "Damn it Derek, will you move your ass out of the sun so I can see what I'm doing?" She glared over her shoulder to see Billy instead. "Oh. I'm sorry, I-"

"It's fine," he chuckled out and knelt down next to her. "Looks like you've gotten a bit done. You've already gotten the top surface of the rib completely exposed."

Pet nodded. "Yup. Now to decide if I want to keep working on it or move down the skeleton to try and do the same with what I can."

Billy laid down on his stomach and was shoulder to shoulder with the hybrid. "Alan likes to have the surface of the fossils revealed as much as possible so he can visually see where everything is. From there comes the digging it up piece by piece." He reached over her arm to get the toothbrush she used and dusted off where she picked the dirt out of.

To see the cute junior scientist talking to her again made her smile. "How long does it usually take to dig one of these things up?"

"A fossil this size? Depends, really, on the available manpower, funding amounts and how favorable the weather is. The last one took almost a year and a half and that was with Mr. Hammond's funding. So far, we've been working on this one for two and a half years."

"Ah." Pet visually examined the parts of the fossil that was visible, which was most of it, and nodded. "Meaning this will take a while..."

"Yeah." The two people exchanged smiles and laughed.

Pet chewed at her bottom lip nervously. "Hey, uh... I'm sorry about the other day. I didn't mean to scare you or freak you out."

Billy gave the anxious blue-green eyes another smile and continued to brush away flecks of loose dirt. "It's fine." Silence hung in the air between the two for a few minutes until Billy mustered the nerve to ask Pet out, again. "By the way, I was thinking of going into town for a burger and beer later this evening, if you wanted to join me."

"That sounds good. Well, except for the beer part. I can't drink in a public place since I don't have an ID to prove my age."

Billy stopped brushing off the fossil to look at the hybrid. "Really? Why?"

"Reasons." Pet frowned and tapped the point of her pick on the ground. "Before I can get an ID I need an American citizenship. Before I can get an American citizenship, I need an official birth certificate. I remember talking to Hammond about it in the bu-" Pet stopped herself before spilling the beans about Derek's hush, hush bunker. "In the bunkroom, one day. He said the whole process would be extremely complicated to execute and trying to do so without InGen finding out made it that much more impossible."

Hazel eyes frowned sympathetically at Pet's saddened expression. "I'm sorry. Maybe we can come back after those burgers and get something to drink here."

That brightened up Pet's downed spirits. "I like the sound of that. Just let me know when so I can get cleaned up before then." She chewed at her bottom lip, again. It was something she was noticing when uneasy. "Just know that…Derek will have to come, too."

"I know." Billy tried to smile as though not bothered by the third wheel's company, but Pet wasn't convinced. "Mr. Muldoon made it pretty clear that was the stipulation. As long as he keeps his distance, he can do whatever."

"What time were you thinking about leaving?"

Billy shrugged. "Can't say for sure. It's whenever Alan says I'm done for the day." Pet nodded and scratched the dirt out of a nook in a tail bone segment.