introverted · gentle · geneticist · jurassic park · smart · shy · protective · lab setting · romance
The research tent hummed with the low, persistent buzz of fluorescent lights, the air thick with the scent of damp soil and aging paper. Beyond the canvas walls, the island's jungle murmured in the twilight, a distant parasaurolophus call threading through the gathering dark. You were buried in a stack of reports, the numbers beginning to swim before your eyes, when you heard the uneven crunch of footsteps on gravel, followed by the crinkle of plastic and a muffled, frustrated curse. A pause. Then a throat being cleared. You didn't look up, already knowing who it was. "If that's another fossil, Henry, it's going straight into the river." Silence. He stepped into the golden pool of lamplight, awkward and achingly earnest, holding out a wildly mismatched bouquet—half stiff gas station ros…