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When one hears the mighty roar of a fearsome beast, the natural instinct is to run and hide—to seek shelter until the creature is gone—but around these parts, a roar is just another reminder that you’re alive. The roars are accompanied by heavy-footed thuds, overly pleasant music filtering through loudspeakers, laughter and screeches from excited tourists, and the snaps of camera flashes.
The pre-recorded feminine voice that shares daily announcements comes over the intercom to inform all guests and park employees that park attractions will be closing in one hour. At that time, guests will need to either head to the resort’s hotel or board the ferry to leave. Katsuki relishes this time every day. He doesn’t have to deal with tourists in the same way as everyone else but it’s still noisy and crowded even here, especially here.
The raptor paddock is one of the featured attractions. Everyone likes the thrill of getting as close to predators as they can without having to worry about dying. How fortunate for them. The park is just a cute little zoo. They don’t understand the dangers involved in running the place. Lions might as well be mice in comparison. Nothing, not even the herbivores, in the park should be taken lightly. One misplaced step and brachiosaurus will crush you.
“You’re making that face again,” says Kamiji. She slaps her hand on Katsuki’s shoulder and gives him a shake. Long, green hair is tied back into a ponytail, and it smacks Katsuki in the face as she turns away from him. “Shouldn’t you be less grouchy? You have a date after the park closes.”
“Shut up!” Katsuki whisper-yells. It’s meant to be a secret. Not for any nefarious reasons, Katsuki just really hates the idea of going to human resources to disclose the names of every person he has fucked or is currently fucking. Jurassic World isn’t just a job, it’s a life. Everyone that works there, save for a few Costa Rican locals, live on site. Even the ones with jobs as entry level as food service vendors live in employee apartments.
Katsuki has worked hard to earn his private bungalow, and he doesn’t want any relationships fucking that up. He also secretly enjoys the sneaking around. There’s a degree of taboo to it, despite the fact that their relationship will be stamped with a giant green checkmark of approval. Not like HR actually does that. They might. He doesn’t know. Again, due to the desire to not disclose his relationships.
“What are you doing this time?” Kamiji asks, not caring about Katsuki’s desire for secrecy.
“I dunno,” supplies Katsuki. “I was just told to meet by the herbivore paddock maintenance door.”
She waggles her eyebrows at him with interest. “Scandalous.”
Katsuki chucks a dead gopher at her. “Go feed the girls.”
“You’re not my supervisor.”
“You’re right,” says Katsuki, rolling his eyes. “You’re my supervisor, so start acting like it.”
Kamiji throws her hands up in defense. “Fine, fine. I’ll feed the girls. You do the safety check on the cage and then you can get out of here.”
Katsuki won’t argue with that. He waits until Kamiji and the rest of the team corral the velociraptors into the feeding area and lock the gate before entering the paddock. It needs a daily perimeter check on both the inside and outside to verify there are no failures. Park security monitors all of the electrical sensors twenty-four hours a day, but they won’t notice an out of place scratch on the wall or a crack in the concrete.
It’s a task he does every day, but Katsuki is still on edge every time he enters the paddock. It’s smart to be nervous. Complacency gets you killed. He’s thankful their habitat isn’t as large as some of the other species though that poses its own problems. Dinosaurs, especially ones like velociraptors, need room to run and hunt and roam. They’re not meant to be kept in a cage. He walks the full circle of the paddock in about fifteen minutes, ending when he reaches the feeding area they have the raptors currently sequestered in. They’ll inspect that section once the raptors are released back into the main area. There are five of them at present, each one just as deadly as the last.
Katsuki whistles and all five raptors spin on their heels to face him. Predatorial eyes stalk his every move, waiting for the moment they can break free from their cage and play their hunting games. Raptors remind Katsuki of domestic house cats in a way. How they taunt and tease their prey is incredibly similar, with the caveat being that cats usually just kill for the sport of it. They hunt but don’t eat. Raptors devour their prey, often while they are still alive.
He makes his way to the gate, exiting the paddock and securing the door. Kamiji presses the button that opens and shuts the feeding pen gate automatically, letting the raptors run free. They linger, eyes still fixed on Katsuki, calculating. Their intelligence is terrifying. Then after a long moment, the leader of the pack inclines her head towards the overgrowth of foliage and the rest follow. Katsuki lets out a breath of relief. He can’t breathe easily until he knows they’re gone.
Trainers are salary since they never know when they will be pulled out of bed to deal with a dino emergency. With that in mind, Katsuki gives a grunt of a goodbye before stomping his way over to one of the ATVs. He wants to wash away the stink of the day and get out of his uniform before his date with Eijirou. Hopefully Eijirou washes up too. The first time they went out, he stunk of dead fish. Katsuki had to drag him back to his place and shove him in the shower to force him to wash the scent away. Any thoughts of a night out were quickly replaced once he stepped out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel.
Katsuki greatly prefers those kinds of dates to whatever Eijirou has in mind for tonight. He washes quickly, towel-drying his hair and pulling out a plain, black t-shirt from his closet. His clothing options are limited and no matter what he wears, he’ll likely end up sweating through it all. The hot, equatorial climate doesn’t lend itself to staying cool when outside the comforts of air conditioning. He pulls on a pair of clean jeans and looks for his backup pair of boots. They look identical to his work boots, but without all the mud and dinosaur shit caked on the bottom.
Satisfied that he looks as good as he is going to get, Katsuki grabs his keys, ID badge, radio, and phone, pocketing the keys, badge, and phone, while clipping the radio to his belt loop. He mounts the ATV and begins the nearly twenty-minute drive to the herbivore paddock maintenance entrance from his bungalow. When Katsuki arrives, it’s not Eijirou that he sees, but the silver-haired maintenance worker that his boyfriend is friends with. He pulls the ATV off to the side and parks it, killing the engine and hopping down.
“Sup?” greets the maintenance guy, still in uniform. Katsuki adamantly refuses to learn his name.
“I’m supposed to meet Kirishima around here,” he says carefully. He doesn’t know what Eijirou has planned, but he assumes it involves sneaking into the paddock after hours and without authorization.
The maintenance guy smirks and nods his head to the service door behind him that is slightly ajar. Katsuki frowns at the open door. It’s reckless, even if the dinosaurs in this area are too large to slip through it, one of the smaller critters could get out. “You shouldn’t leave the door open like that,” he says.
The maintenance guy rolls his eyes. “I’m shutting it as soon as you walk through it. I’ll be back in three hours to let you out, per Kirishima’s instructions.”
Katsuki side-eyes the open door and the maintenance guy but relents, crossing the boundary into the paddock. The door shuts with a heavy creak behind him and he’s left wondering where he should head from here. He’s standing near the door like an idiot when Eijirou comes bounding out of the tree lining, arm waving frantically in the air.
“Katsuki!” he shouts, drawing Katsuki’s attention.
Katsuki approaches him and is greeted with a kiss on the forehead. Red hair is pulled back, tucked under a headband and damp with the fresh scent of oranges. Thank the gods that Eijirou opted to shower as well. He’s the mosasaurus trainer, which is more entertainment and showmanship than animal caregiver, but it suits him. He’s a people-pleaser. The wide smile that stretches across his face with every showing is genuine. Eijirou loves the mosasaur and equally loves teaching all the guests about it. He named her Momo.
Katsuki caught one show before they started dating. To this day, he’ll complain about how annoying it was to get soaked when the mosasaur burst out of the water to eat the shark hanging from the hook before diving back below the surface, but none of that compared to the sight of Eijirou. His smile was radiant as he stood with his back to the sun, and cascading waters of the dinosaur’s splash. He was unperturbed by getting soaked multiple times a day and as rivulets ran down his hair into his face, it made him sparkle. Katsuki was breathless, drawn in by the majestic scene. Eijirou had been pestering him for weeks to come check out the show. Katsuki asked him out as soon as the show ended.
“This way,” says Eijirou, taking Katsuki’s hand and leading him to the jungle.
“Rule Breaker.” Katsuki quips, though he happily lets himself be steered deeper into the herbivore paddock.
Eijirou boops him on the nose with the tip of his finger, smiling that bright, warm smile. “I just wanted to show you a good time.”
“We could have done that back at the bungalow.”
Eijirou rolls his eyes but continues. “I had some free time the other day, so I came with Midoriya to help out while he examined a sick trike. While we were out here, I noticed an observation deck in one of the trees.” He steers Katsuki to the right where some of the monstrous 200-foot-tall trees for brachiosaurs to eat are. “And I thought it would make a nice little date spot. I set up a picnic.”
Katsuki’s eyes widen as it comes into view. A ‘little picnic’ is a bit of an understatement. The rope ladder that descends from the tree stand is wrapped in string lights, glittering in the shade. They lead up to the deck. Eijirou releases Katsuki’s hand and climbs first, Katsuki following. As he reaches the top—and tries not to think about how high up they are—Eijirou stretches his hand out for him to grab, pulling him onto the safety of the wooden floorboards.
The observation deck is even more decorated. It’s wreathed in lights with a blanket spread on the floor. There are a pair of matching green pillows on the beige blanket, with a cooler sitting next to the blanket. “I promise I didn’t cook,” assures Eijirou. “I ordered some things from Satou in the hotel restaurant. I hope that’s okay.” He looks at Katsuki with hopeful, apologetic eyes.
Truthfully, Katsuki would have stomached whatever Eijirou made on principle, though he’s happy to hear that whatever is in the cooler is certain to be delicious. There’s a bottle of red wine behind the cooler with plastic cups and paper plates stacked neatly. All this work must have taken him hours to set up.
“It’s amazing,” Katsuki breathes.
As if to punctuate how perfect of a date it is, the branches of the trees part to reveal the massive head of one of the brachiosaursus as she eats. Her muzzle is within reaching distance and Katsuki moves carefully to the railing. He pets her and Eijirou sidles up next to him, wrapping his arms around Katsuki’s waist. The bodily contact is too warm for this time of day, but he lets himself melt into the touch, too enamored by the life he currently lives with creatures of the past and the man at his side he can easily see a future with.