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"It's big."
"It's enormous."
Alan took a step back and put his fists on his hips, surveying.
Billy knelt down, zooming his camera in on the curve of the joint where the fossilized bone stood out from the texture of its surrounding sediment.
It wasn't even halfway out of the ground yet, but this was going to be the best find of the year—or possibly the next, too, if the hadrosaurid specimen was as complete, and as large, as it seemed.
Students buzzed past them to set up for the next step—getting equipment arranged to take a peek down into the ground, and find out how far an area they were really working with. And maybe who they were working on; it was likely to be Edmontosaurus, if only based on its size and then some. Only one way to find out for sure, though, and as always, Billy was trying to properly capture the early stages of the discovery before the excavation went much further.
A little to the right—the sun wasn't washing it out there—focus—and click. One there, and there. Billy checked out the shots in the display, flipping back to all of the ones he had taken since the end of the leg bone had been revealed, shaking his head.
"Can't find the right one?" Alan stepped forward, peering over his shoulder.
He turned the display off before Alan had a chance to judge them. "It's a perspective issue, Alan." Billy stood and hopped up to the ridge above the exposed fossil, stamping his heel on the dirt that still covered it.
"How is anyone going to be able to tell at a glance this size of this thing? The beef? How often it hit the gym?" For a momentary flash of emphasis, Billy let the camera hang by its strap to curl his arms inward, flexing his biceps in a strongman pose. Alan's eyes swept over him, the corner of his mouth twitched, and then his gaze fell into shadow beyond the brim of his hat as he looked to the ground.
"Look, I mean," Billy jumped back down and patted the joint, gripping it with his palm and stretching his fingers as far around as they could go—not enough. "This guy's femur head is almost the size of your head."
He threw out a pointed finger at Alan's head and—well, there was an idea.
Before Alan could react, Billy lunged his outstretched arm up at him and plucked his hat off.
"Hey!" he heard behind him as he set it down on the ground next to the fossilized femur end.
Billy grinned back at him. "For scale."
With the hat in frame, there it was—his shot. He took a few photos in quick succession.
"There are rulers for that, Billy."
"Sure." Billy pulled his vision out of the viewfinder and squinted back up at Alan, his eyes narrowed in the bright sunlight. "But they just weren't working for this one." He shrugged.
He knelt down and rearranged the hat, hanging it off the joint head and then snapped a couple more. "Perfect."
Alan huffed at that. "There's dirt on it, Billy."
Billy retrieved the hat and stood up, suddenly in Alan's space. He tapped and flicked the felt and then brushed the streaks of dirt off the brim before slowly placing it back on top of Alan's mussed hair and pushing down gently, their faces inches apart as Billy stared into his shaded, burning eyes.
"You know how it is, Dr. Grant. Sometimes our line of work is better with a personal touch." Billy slid his fingers along the front brim of Alan's hat, lowering his hand and letting his fingertips brush down the front of Alan's shirt before falling away from the soft cloth and sturdy chest.
Alan glanced at the busy crowd before locking his eyes back to Billy's. "Don't push it."
He turned away and Billy followed, clambering up the hill to get a better view down to the spot where the specimen lay, where they'd both be spending the next hours and days to uncover it.
"How about later?" Billy called up behind him. "Can I push it then?"
Alan turned back, smirking. "Yeah, you can."