Romance short. A zookeeper falls head over heels for a regular visitor.
2k, rated T, just a cute short piece here! Adapted from a TweetFic.
Hal had taken the job only a few months ago, and he’s settled into it well, he thinks. It’s nice, that the zoo is closer to the city, and he enjoys working with most of the petting zoo animals, the donkeys, the goats. Bit by bit, at the same time he’s studying his diploma, they’ve been bringing him into the other enclosures and learning about some of the other animals, the more exotic ones.
Small mammals for now and some of the birds and insects, but he’ll be in with the zebras later in the week, and it’s exciting, to actually feel the difference he’s making with all the different animals, to realise some of them are recognising him.
One of the ostriches was flirting with him yesterday, doing its mating dance at him, and that was a little weird, but apparently ostriches are known for that sort of thing, and while it’s not the same as getting matches on Tinder, at least someone thinks he’s worth flirting with.
Speaking of flirting —
There is a man.
Hal’s been seeing him around a bit recently, hasn’t been looking out for him, particularly, just that he has seen him.
He’s a short man, wears suits and round glasses with wire frames, and he has an annual pass for the zoo — five days a week on his lunch break, he comes into the zoo, eats his lunch on a public bench outside the bat enclosure, and then spends another twenty minutes sitting in the darkened bat enclosure before walking back to work.
Hal doesn’t know what he does, what his job is beyond wearing a suit — no one ever really talks to him, apparently, and he barely ever says a word. When the regular keepers say hello to him, he normally just politely nods back.
Hal is scheduled on the Twilight Zone today, and he finds himself sort of hovering beside the man, looking down at him.
“Do you — do you know much about them?” he asks. “Bats?”
The man doesn’t turn around immediately, stays placidly in his place on the bench, watching the bats overhead, and then actually notices Hal standing behind him, turning to look at him. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” says the bespectacled man. “No, no. I presume you do.”
“Well,” says Hal, because this is only his second day on the Twilight Zone, and he feels a lot more confident about the insects and arachnids than he does the bats. “Um, these are fruit bats, uh, Livingstone’s fruit bats, and they’re… As you can see, they’re pretty big. As the name suggests, their diet is mainly fruit.”
He’s trying to sound official, trying to use his proper educator’s voice, and the little man looks up at him, his eyebrows raising slightly. There’s something wry in his expression, his lips shifting into the slightest of smiles.
“Yes?” he says, the word a prompt.
“Their, their Latin name is,” Hal starts, and God, fuck Latin. When he worked petting zoos, no one ever gave a fuck what a goat’s Latin name was. “Um. Shit.”
“Pteropus livingstonii,” supplies the bespectacled man.
“I, yeah,” says Hal, feeling his face go hot. “Right.”
The man is smiling a little wider now. His eyes are sparkling behind the glass of his specs.
“You know a lot about them, don’t you?” asks Hal.
“I wanted to hear you talk about them,” murmurs the man.
“Oh, right, well, they, they roost at the top of tall trees, and hang upside down, uh… They’re from the rainforest.”
“From the Comoros islands. Thus their alternative name, the Comoro flying fox.”
“Right,” says Hal, nodding. “Maybe we should trade places.”
“I’m not sure my employer would like that.”
“Mine neither. Well. Maybe he’d like it more than yours.”
The bespectacled man chuckles, checking his watch, and then gives a little nod. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says mildly, and picks up his little briefcase. He doesn’t wave or look behind him, just makes his way out of the park the same way he always does.
Hal stares after him helplessly.
* * *
The bespectacled man doesn’t go out of his way to greet Hal when he sees him pass on the paths, and Hal doesn’t ordinarily go and disturb him when he’s sitting with the bats, but sometimes they wave at each other when they pass each other on the paths, or give one another a nod.
“We do meet and greets, you know,” Hal tells him one day when he has a spare few minutes, and the bespectacled man looks up from his lunch, meeting Hal’s gaze.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I know.”
“But have you — have you ever gone?”
“No,” he says softly, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t want to take time away from any children with questions, or…” He exhales, shaking his head subtly. “I don’t like crowds of people.”
“Come ten minutes early,” Hal says. “Private session.”
He swallows after he’s said it, because the bespectacled man’s mouth has dropped open and he isn’t closing it, his gaze fixed on Hal’s face. “Oh,” is his soft response.
A few minutes later, the bespectacled man washes his hands very carefully before he pulls on his gloves — vinyl, because he’s allergic to latex.
“Guess that makes buying condoms difficult,” Hal blurts out, and immediately regrets it because the little man turns pink, and Hal is flushing too. “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
“It’s not so hard,” says the bespectacled man, and then flushes brighter, mumbling, “I mean, difficult. There are… alternatives.”
“Let’s go feed the bats,” says Hal desperately, and the other man nods his head.
“Just here,” he says, tapping one of the shallow troughs hanging from the branches inside the bat enclosure. The bespectacled man is so short he actually has to stand up on his tip toes to set the fruit into place, so much so that his wool vest rides up.
He normally wears a suit with a vest or waistcoat underneath, and with his jacket hung up, Hal can see more than he would ordinarily be able to. All the vest shows as it rises is the crisp, white fabric of his shirt tucked into his trousers, but it still makes Hal fidget.
As he steps back, the bespectacled man is staring up with delight, jaw dropped, his eyes wide, as the bats climb closer, moving along their branches with their feet.
He’s so entranced as he shuffles back by the sight of one of the bats stuffing a piece of melon into its mouth that he doesn’t even notice Hal standing right behind him. They knock together, and Hal touches the centre of his back to keep him steady and thrills at the warmth of his body through the wool.
“Sorry,” whispers the little man.
“It’s okay,” says Hal. He lets his hand stay there as they watch the bat chew, its mouth absolutely stuffed with fruit, juice dripping down its furry chin and belly, its eyes big and shiny. “Um, what’s — What’s your name?”
“Rory,” he answers, not even blinking, not turning his head away.
Hal has never seen such a look of wonder as the one on Rory’s face now, his eyes utterly fixated on the bats, a slightly dreamy smile tugging at his lips. His hands are twitching in front of his chest, as if he wants to reach out and touch one, as if he’s imagining the texture of their hair under his fingertips.
“Why do you like them so much?” asks Hal softly.
“You don’t like them?”
“Sure, I do, I do,” Hal says. “But not like you do.”
“They’re the perfect animal,” says Rory worshipfully. “So beautiful, and with such huge eyes and sharp teeth and they look so… cute. I love their little hands.”
The meet and greet proper starts a few minutes after, and as hypnotised as he is by the bats as they eat, Hal can see Rory get stiffer and stiffer, how the small group of attendees makes him flinch and tremor. He takes a few minutes to calm himself down, taking in slow, even breaths, before he smiles at Hal and makes his way back to work.
* * *
It’s after the weekend has passed that Hal sees him next — not during lunch time, but instead at three o’clock, just after Hal’s shift has ended. Rory is waiting for him with two cups of coffee, smiling warmly at him.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he says. “I, um — I come here so often, you see, I know the regular keepers’ rota by heart, no one told me you were..” He trails off, suddenly looking quite consternated. “Oh, it’s quite creepy, isn’t it?” He turns his head as if he’s going to go, saying, “Sorry, sorry, I’ll just — ”
“No, it’s not creepy,” says Hal as he comes over, taking one of the cups. “It’s — It’s sweet. What is this?”
“A mocha latte.”
“You guessed that?”
“That, I did ask.”
Hal laughs, falling into step with Rory as he takes a step of his drink, and Rory curls his fingers underneath Hal’s elbow, leaning into him, their steps synchronised. He’s an accountant, it turns out — he works not far away.
“I can be a bit tightly wound,” he says after telling Hal that. “My father was a watchmaker — it shows.”
It takes a minute before Hal realises it’s a joke and laughs: Rory looks like he’s pulled the stars down from the sky for him, he’s so completely surprised. He looks around furtively, and then he tightens his grip under Hal’s arm, pulling him off of the main path.
“What are you looking for?”
“Bystanders,” says the zookeeper. “Witnesses. May I show you something?”
Hal blinks. Opens his mouth. Closes it. He has no idea whatsoever where this is going.
“Uh, ye — yeah?”
Rory sets his coffee into Hal’s hands so that he’s holding both, and turns around. When he hikes up his sweater vest and his shirt and his jacket, Hal’s eyebrows rise too.
The bat is so brightly inked it looks like it might fly right off the little man’s pasty skin — its eyes shine, its fur looks fluffy, its wings leathery and outstretched as if it’s flying outward. It’s not a Livingstone’s fruit bat or even another kind of megabat — he’s not certain, looking at the stylised image of it, but he thinks it might be a Horseshoe bat. He’s been looking at bats a lot, the past few weeks, and learning about the different species.
“You have,” Hal says, then has to stop to clear his throat, because it’s abruptly hoarse, “you have a tattoo?”
“Yes,” Rory says, hurriedly tucking his shirt back in and rolling his vest down over it. “Do you like it?”
“Yes,” says Hal. “I do like it. Have you… have you got more?”
Rory, when he turns back around to take his coffee, is bright pink. “Yes,” he says.
“Can I see?”
He’s glowing like a lava lamp, the colour in his cheeks so bright as he takes a step back. His smile is bright too. “Yes,” he says breathlessly. “If you like.”
“Oh, I like,” says Hal, and nods for Rory to walk with him back to the main path.
* * *
That night, Hal kisses every tattoo the bespectacled man has, although he isn’t bespectacled now — Rory has set his glasses aside and his hair is messy and he’s out of breath and glowing with sweat. He can’t stop smiling, and it’s wonderful.
“You only like me for my bats,” says Rory as Hal presses a kiss to the baby bat eating a raspberry on Rory’s thigh.
“Pot,” says Hal, kissing the bat on the other side, which is eating a banana. “Kettle.”
Rory slides his hands into Hal’s hair and pulls him closer, laughing.
“Kiss me,” he requests. “Not the bats!”
Hal kisses the bats trailing up from Rory’s navel, and delights in the giggles that follow.
FIN.
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