A/N: I haven't even seen this freaking movie yet and I'm writing fanfiction for it. I am officially trash.

Btw I now have an AO3 account. This story is posted there as well.

Owen Grady knows things.

Like how his neighbor's dog, a golden retriever, hates it when her owners turn the TV really loud late at night. That's when the flashy, violent shows come on and the noises frighten her. Through the thin walls dividing their apartment complexes, Owen hears her fearful snuffling and anxious skittering of claws over wooden floors, and his heart aches. When 1 am strikes and he suspects the inhabitants have fallen asleep and that the TV will run all night, he resorts to folding his pillow over his ear so he doesn't hear her whimpers. He's eight years old, and there is a very wide, gaping divide between the authority of an eight-year-old and the Authority of an Adult. Namely, one exists, and the other doesn't.

He wishes he could do something, though.

His mother likes to take him on walks. "For fresh air," she says, smiling and smiling and smiling like always but there's a tightness lurking around her eyes. She doesn't know it, but there's a stiffness in her upper back, the way her shoulders naturally slide forward into a hunch and how her eyes can't stay still. Owen knows the look well. He's seen it often in the pitbull two streets over, the one that lashes out and bites people because he fears that the people will hurt him first, as they've taught him they will.

It has to do with his Dad–Dad, who swore not to drink that disgusting alcoholic stuff anymore and promised to stop sleeping past noon and promised to go out looking for a job and promised and promised and hasn't delivered. Again. It makes his mom sad, which makes Owen sad. And angry, in the hurt, indignant way that an eight-year-old can be angry. He just doesn't get it. His mother respects his dad, cowed and tamed like the way the neighbor's golden retriever entreatingly licks the hand of her owner even after a night of running the TV at top volume. His father doesn't respect his mother, or if he does, it's only in fleeting bursts. The relationship is uneven.

Owen moodily kicks an aluminum soda can, then stops and picks it up and resolves to properly throw it away at home. Raccoons can get their snouts or paws painfully stuck in trash like that. As a veterinarian, Owen's mother has been taught all sorts of stuff like that and she is always eager to share with Owen what she knows, who is always eager to listen.

His sweet mother, who respects Owen and respects his dad and respects everything just a bit too much to expect anything in return. Why can't everyone just listen to one another? Why are some people so dumb?

"Look, Owen! It's Oreo!" His mother points out, confused but happy. Owen perks up immediately. Oreo is a homeless cat, a black-and-white one, that likes to hang around the old, broken down city park. She's fond of canned tuna (Owen knows this because he smuggles some to her, from time to time) and hates dogs and doesn't like a lot of people, except she tolerates Owen because he can tell when she wants to be left alone and when she really just wants some tuna.

Sure enough, her lithe form slinks down the street, head swiveling and low to the ground, as if she's hunting for something. Strange. She lives almost exclusively in the park, and they are still quite a few blocks off.

Owen's mother whistles, goes down on her knees, and Owen follows her example. Oreo's head jerks up, ears swiveling in their sockets to face them like radio dishes, whiskers like antennae.

"Here, girl," Owen's mother calls lowly, voice unthreatening and relaxed. She almost sounds slurred, like a blanket has covered any sharp consonants in the words, smoothing them out to an even, beckoning noise. It's a good kind of slurred, very different from the slurred his dad makes after too many of those brown bottles.

Oreo weaves back and forth, eyes round and alert, ears twitching. Owen stays still, and so does his mother. He wants to see Oreo, yes, wants to pet her if she'll let him, but Oreo is a wild cat in the end and will do as she pleases, and Owen will just have to put up with it.

Coming to a decision, the wary feline trots their way. Owen tilts his head, frowns. Oreo is different today. He sees it in the way her paws scrape against the pavement, her drooping tail and tense shoulders. She is afraid of something, but it's not something she can see or drive off with wicked, thorn-like claws.

She twines around their knees anyway, and Owen's frown deepens as he trails a hand along her spine, feeling the knobs blunted by her loose, furry coat. She is very warm and light, and shakes beneath his touch.

"Oreo's sick," he staunchly tells his veterinarian mother. "Really bad." As if in agreement, Oreo mewls and butts her head weakly against his kneecap, lacking her usual vigor. Her claws slide out noiselessly, then recede, then stretch out again. With her ears plastered against her head, she looks as though haunted by something she can't escape.

His mother frowns as well, rubs her hand down the cat's spine. "Maybe she just isn't feeding well lately. We'll come back tomorrow with some tuna, okay?"

He agrees but lingers to say his last goodbyes. Oreo's claws tangle in the hem of his jeans and she presses into him, shaking, scared, but steadies after a few moments. Her eyes are dull, taxidermy things. She slopes off, tail dragging.

They find her stiff, cold body curled up in an alleyway the next day.

"What is personification?" asks the teacher, because they are reviewing literary terms in the school library. Owen kneels on the outside of the circle of children, observing and active just enough to blend in with the others. He's good at that. The trick is to find a pack, find a group, and meld with them so well that they don't even notice when you've joined, when you're there, or when you've left. Staying out of the way and actively avoiding confrontation only draws attention. So he ends up getting fantastic class participation grades all the time because he knows his teacher is embarrassed that she can't say that he doesn't contribute, yet can't remember specifically what and when he does.

"I know! I know!" Voices chime and Mrs. Leary lets them. Their energy builds and snaps between them, exciting the other kids, and some wiggle on their butts and others stick their hands in the air and wave them crazily for attention. Mrs. Leary claps her hands three times, and like magic, the children hush and mimic the gesture, immediately ensnared by the "game". Mrs. Leary then snaps her fingers thrice, the gesture softer and smoother than the claps had been, and following the decrescendo, the children do their best to imitate the snaps as well. Silent. Attentive. The energy caught, harnessed, and calmed.

"Eyes on me," Mrs. Leary commands softly, but not ungently, and selects someone who had known the answer earlier.

"It's when a thing acts like a human. But the thing's not human, but it does stuff like one," says Bobbi. Owen examines her tilted, eager head, her smiling mouth and puffed chest. Pride. Confidence. Bobbi is one of the smartest kids in their class, and she knows it.

"Good job, Bobbi," says Mrs. Leary, not lingering too much or lavishing her with praise. Just enough to acknowledge her success and laud it before moving on. "Who can give me an example?"

Owen raises his hand. He expands his shoulders and holds his arm straight and directly up. His face is a flat stone of concentration, lowered brow, pressed lips, flared nose. The way you show your intensity or passion about something. The way you get noticed.

Mrs. Leary calls on him. He says, "The shark grinned at the diver."

He's never seen a shark before in real life, but he wants to. Shark week is one of his favorite weeks in the summer, particularly since they started doing specials on prehistoric dinosaurs that lived in aquatic environments.

"Good, Owen. Who can give me another example?"

Kevin, this time. "The cat cried when there was no more milk."

You're not supposed to feed cats dairy milk, Owen knows. His mother complains about it all the time, how its popular misconception in the media has led to hundreds of cases of ill cats. And he's not sure that's personification anyway. Oreo cried as much as she could when she knew she was dying. She just couldn't cry the same way Owen could. He expressed it through tears and a clogged nose and throat. She had showed it by her posture, by her gait and positioning.

"Good job, Kevin," the teacher says. She means it. She thinks Kevin is right. Owen doesn't want to disagree with the teacher and make a fuss over such a small thing, so he lets it go. It's sad, though. If only people weren't content to walk around so blind.

Personification means giving animals or non-human things humane traits. But what's the reverse of that? What's the word for when humans act like animals?

He emancipates when he's sixteen and lives with his best friend to evade his unstable and alcoholic father and unstable and fretful mother. They are too open to him, too raw and unfettered and he dislikes it because he doesn't like what such unguardedness reveals. He loves his mother dearly but everytime he looks at her he remembers Sally, the golden retriever, or Jack, the pitbull, from his childhood. Wrong. Bent. Ill. Warped.

He joins the Navy the moment he's able to. ROTC pays for his college tuition and so he studies animal behavior, earning several degrees in related fields. Eventually the Navy gets involved in transatlantic affairs and thus he finds his way into active duty. But after two tours, he's had enough of following orders from men who are consumed with maintaining an alpha authority over their subordinates, whether by means of bullying or incessant heckling or any other rough method. They are the opposite of his mother–they make their authority well-known and heard, but there is no underlying respect in their actions, no mentality that drives them to sit with their comrades in the evening and talk. Owen knows this isn't always the case in the Navy and shouldn't be used as a standard, but the experience leaves him disgusted and aching with a want for something more, something he can't describe, all the same.

He wants but he doesn't know what he wants, surrounds himself with comrades and friends and fellow sailors but stills feel alone. He goes back to collecting degrees.

He actually gets a little famous in the animal-science circles, traveling as a consultant for zoos and wildlife centers, though he has yet to author a book or settle down at some posh university somewhere. The actions don't appeal to him, and he can't stay in one place for longer than four months without getting antsy enough to pack up and leave.

Apparently, he's somewhat of a miracle worker with animals. To his humbled credit, he starts small–observing sheep and goat populations, working out why they huddle and refuse to graze or why the females are rejecting the ram. Then he hops locations and happens to work with ponies, making discoveries about their social interactions in captivity and in natural herd formations in the wild prairies of the Chincoteague and Assateague Islands. A quick stint with snakes–red-sided garter colonies–and he moves on to wolves, and then bird flocks. He is good with all animals in a way that few can mimic. Skittish horses calm in his presence. Flighty wolves linger long enough in the twilight gloom to be captured in photographs for science journals. Lions pace and growl and snarl at him just the same as any other observer intruding too deeply into their claimed territory, but their vocalizations lack bite or true menace, and once the top female chuffed at him in a friendly way and rubbed against their jeep.

Owen loves each animal he encounters, but cautiously. He never forgets that the organisms he mostly works with are bred and raised as predators, as carnivores. That they can chuff at him and purr all they want but if he abandons reason, if he strolls into their midst, they will attack. They will defend their families, their territory, their interests. Owen understands that, and he knows when and how to push and pick at that boundary, and when he should just call it a day. Nature is Nature, an untameable, unmitigatable and vast thing that Does as She Wants, and you've got to deal with it.

One day he gets an email from the secretary of a billionaire named Simon Masrani, a billionaire apparently interested in inviting him out to lunch.

(He wears shorts to the restaurant.)

Simon Masrani actually reminds Owen of himself in some ways. The way he handles his money, especially. Masrani uses it but doesn't obsess over it, respects it but doesn't thirst for it. It gives Owen flashbacks of those dim memories from his childhood of stretching out a hand for Oreo and rejoicing when she nuzzled him, or watching as she waved her tail and showed him her hindquarters while darting away, and being content all the same.

Masrani makes pleasant talk until their main courses arrive. Every meal on the menu had been ridiculously expensive. Owen knows Masrani will want to pay for it. Ordinarily, he would stubbornly decline and fork out his own cash, but one examination of the darker-skinned man's face and posture (relaxed, but interested and mentally involved when Owen speaks. Joking, but focused all the same. Authoritative, but willing to listen) and Owen decides he will let the billionaire offer.

"So," the man begins, and sets down his fork and spoon, and Owen almost sighs in relief, because finally. "You, in your work, have probably heard of my endeavors."

"Jurassic Park," Owen affirms, sipping his water.

"Yes, the park. What do you think?"

Owen doesn't shrug. The Navy beat such senseless gestures out of him and the animals he works with wouldn't understand its meaning, so the human tendency is worthless to him. Instead, he thinks out his reply before delivering it.

"I think it's certainly incredible, and a modern marvel. And kudos for satisfying animal rights activists with both the treatment of your dinosaurs and the protection measures for the visitors." He swirls the ice in his glass–not because he's nervous about what he's going to say to one of the most powerful men on the planet, but because some of the cubes were fusing together and he had a thought to break them up. Calm, calm, calm. Owen radiates it like a campfire emitting heat. Even when he makes jokes, when he laughs so hard his breath comes in snorts, when he huffs and curls his fingers in exasperation, he is Calm, because he knows how others will act and thus how he will act.

"But I certainly hope you're not forgetting something," he finishes.

"What is that?" Masrani asks, genuinely intrigued. His immaculate suit barely crinkles when he leans forward to rest his chin in his palm.

"That they're still dinosaurs." Owen puts implication and subtle emphasis on the last word, saying all that needs to be said. Sometimes, he has a bad habit of running his mouth with meaningless streams of sentences. He's found that animals like his voice when he uses it the way his mother did, with softened consonants and even tones, so it doesn't really matter what he says as long as he keeps saying something. But other times, Owen knows how to convey an emotion, how to deliver an essay of information in a single clipped sentence, in one ripple of body language. The body is much more honest than the tongue, and he plays his like a beloved instrument or well-oiled machine.

Masrani smiles, slides him a sleek and official-looking folder that is sealed shut with Jurassic World's logo sticker. Owen slits it open neatly with his thumbnail and pulls out the glossy and crisp dossier.

Velociraptor Handling and Prehistoric Pack Mentality Analysis Experimentation.

"Well," Owen sighs gustily once he's finished skimming through the documents. He snaps the folder shut, tapping it ponderously against the edge of the table. The maitre d' sends him a dirty look, as though waiting for him to tear the pristine white tablecloth. "I've handled and trained penguins, seals, lions, wolves, and even a llama herd. What can be so difficult about velociraptors, huh?"

It's a joke. Masrani chuckles and Owen laughs harder than he should, considering what he's agreeing to.

Velociraptor Handling and Prehistoric Pack Mentality Analysis Experimentation.

He runs the words through his mind again, dwelling on them, chewing on them repeatedly like a cow mulling over its cud.

The title is certainly a mouthful, but one Owen thinks he could get used to feeling on his tongue.

A/N: Reviews are lovely!