"Brian, you're the biggest, hugest dork that ever dorked upon the earth. I'm trying to do stuff here."

"A Dorkasaurus," Brian agreed, chuckling to himself. He looked down the hill toward the base of the valley, watched people milling about beneath the tarps, then checked his wrist where his watch should be if it wasn't still sitting in one of the pockets in his tent. Brian rubbed his bare wrist, pale in contrast to the rest of his arm. It must be almost lunch time.

Nick looked up from the patch of dirt he was digging at and squinted at Brian, his sunglasses discarded somewhere with his long-sleeved shirt and zip lock bags.

"Dorkasaurus?" Nick asked. "I rest my case."

Brian shrugged. "You know you were thinking it too. Hey, you got the time?" Brian could really go for a sandwich.

Nick smiled. "I really really wasn't." He poked around in a pile of talus just outside of his marked off square, and tossed something toward Brian. Brian caught the watch and wiped the dust from the face with his thumb. 9:42 am. Too early for lunch. He had some of that damn trail mix that Howie made practically every morning, but it was in his bag and he couldn't quite remember where he had left it. Over with AJ, maybe.

"We should submit that name to Kev," Brian said, pointing at the half exposed bone in front of Nick. "If it's actually new. What do you think?"

"Dorkasaurus? I was thinking more along the lines of Nickolasauras," Nick mumbled, plucking up his dentist pick and going back to work.

"Yeah," Brian snorted. "That'll happen."

"Don't you have work to do or something?"

"Nope. My job is buggin' you."

"Really?" Nick asked, suspiciously. He stopped poking and looked around as though he'd find Brian's irresponsibly abandoned work station just nearby. As though Nick hadn't been guilty of that exact crime several times in the last few days.

"Really," Brian insisted, his palms out. "I was digging trenches down slope over there. Started yesterday. Finished twenty minutes ago."

"They're gonna catch you doing nothing," Nick said. "You'll look like a slacker on television."

Brian looked around, but the camera crews that had been present for two weeks now weren't anywhere to be seen. The other side of the valley, maybe. Or hiding somewhere in the shade. He shrugged and turned back to Nick.

"So," he said. "It's Kevin's documentary. No one cares what I'm doing."

"So why don't you bother someone else? Howie?" Nick suggested.

"I see Howie all the time. I never get to see you."

"That's what happens when you defend your thesis and then disappear the next day, running off to a school half way across the country from your nearest dearest friends."

Brian grinned, reached over and tousled Nick's hair. "Aw. You missed me too," he said.

"Yeah," Nick admitted. "Maybe. AJ has your desk in the office now."

"I like AJ," Brian said. He hadn't met AJ before this trip, but he seemed like a fun guy. He seemed to annoy the hell out of Kevin and yet never leave Kev's side, but he got along really well with Howie, and Brian had always thought that Howie was a good judge of character.

"Mm," Nick said, distracted. "Me too."

Brian stood from the rock he was sitting on, stretched, shook his legs out, then looked down at Nick. "I'm leaving," he announced. "But don't get too comfortable. It's only because I'm starving. I'll be back in five."

"I'll be here," Nick said, seemingly unconcerned by Brian's departure.

Brian trudged off, skirting around marked off areas of the hillside, dodging flying shovel loads of dirt and dust. That Ashley kid never watched where he was dumping his shovel, and he'd rained dirt on Brian twice in the last week. Brian always made sure to watch after the second time he'd ended up with a mouth full of sand.

He found his backpack beside his finished trenches, all stepped and ready for sampling. The backpack was red and overly bright against the sandy landscape. Brian shook his head, wondering how on earth he could have forgotten it when it was that obviously out of place. He slung the bag over his shoulder and headed back over toward Nick.

As he got closer he noticed that Nick was no longer working. Not really. Instead Nick was staring down at the valley floor. Maybe he was as hungry as Brian, but no. Nick wasn't looking at the tents or the tarp. He was watching a figure pacing with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Brian squinted, but he couldn't quite make out who it was.

He stopped being able to recognize everyone as soon as the camera crews arrived, which had been almost immediately.

"Howie," Brian said, taking the few extra steps over to where Howie was crouched scribbling in a field notebook.

"Yeah?" Howie asked, looking up at Brian from beneath the visor of his baseball cap.

"Is that that kid?" Brian asked pointing to the solitary figure. "The soap opera kid?"

Howie followed Brian's finger and frowned. "Yeah. Justin. Why?"

"He looks bored."

Howie shrugged. "I think his trailer over there has a TV. He's probably got the entire thing filled with video games or something. He's the last person that should be bored."

"Ooh," Brian said, considering that. He'd quickly discovered that all of the book he'd packed were mind-numbingly dull.

"Nick says he's a good guy," Howie reasoned. "Ask him. Get him drunk or something. He'll let you use his television." And with that Howie went back to his notes.

Brian continued over to Nick who was still watching Justin pace the valley floor. "Justin looks bored," Brian said, and Nick jumped, his hand slipping and spreading dirt over the piece of bone he'd just cleaned off. Part of a rib from the looks of it.

"Shit," Nick said. "Brian, you scared me."

"Howie says you know him," Brian said, sitting back down on his rock and nodding toward Justin. He unzipped his bag and rummaged through the notebooks and ziplock bags and toilet paper until he found the bag of trail mix. The M&Ms had started to melt in the heat of his bag but Brian shoved a warm handful into his mouth anyway.

Nick shrugged, but wouldn't look Brian in the eye. "We've talked," he said, noncommittally.

"Have you played his PS2?" Brian asked, figuring this was his in.

Nick did meet Brian's eyes then, but he didn't say anything, just stared with his eyebrows raised. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Brian frowned. "Xbox?" he asked instead.

"Are you joking? Did you talk to AJ or something?"

"What? No. Howie said he had a video game system in that trailer. I just figured, since you know him and all -" Brian held out the bag of trail mix to Nick, but Nick waved it away.

"Oh," Nick said, squinting. Nick was always forgetting to attach the lip on sun lenses to his glasses. "I thought you were just being an ass."

"Nah," Brian said. "I'm never an ass. The biggest dork that ever dorked the earth, sure. All the time. But never an ass."

"Okay," Nick said. He picked up his brush and turned back to watch the valley floor. Brian watched too. Justin had stopped pacing and seemed to be staring up at them now, his hands propped against his back in the patented stance of pregnant women everywhere. Brian figured Justin must have just been stretching though, because a moment later one hand was back in his pocket and the other was shielding his eyes as he looked up at them.

"Is he waiting for you or something?" Brian asked after a moment or two.

"I don't know," Nick said. "Maybe."

Brian turned toward Nick and noticed the small smile on his face. He reached over and pulled on Nick's ear.

"Hey," Nick said, swatting at Brian's hand.

"You wanna go down there? Talk to him?" Brian asked, zipping up his bag of trail mix and dropping it back into his bag. "I'll take over for you here."

"You sure?" Nick asked, already handing Brian his chisel and brush. Nick stood and tried to wipe the dust from the back of his shorts.

Brian shrugged. "Sure," he said. "We have a while before lunch and my only job was bugging you."

"Thanks, man," Nick said. Nick smiled down at Brian and then reached out and rubbed Brian's shoulder. "We missed you."

"I know," Brian said with a grin, and then shooed Nick off.

Brian wiped his hands on his jeans and kneeled in Nick's former spot. He brushed off the layer of dust that had fallen over the piece of exposed bone when Nick's hand had slipped. Looked like a piece of rib to him, but then Brian was no paleontologist, had never been much for biology at all, so it could be a dino toe for all he knew. He poked at it a little, then glanced back down the slope in time to see Nick and Justin heading off toward Justin's trailer. Justin's hand brushed along Nick's lower back before slipping back into his own pocket.

Brian shook his head and smiled, suddenly getting why Nick got so defensive at an innocent question. "Playing his PS2," he said. "Oh man. And he says I'm the dork."