[ claire is pretty sure she's suffering from at least ten different nightmares at this point — and not all of them happen to be when she's asleep.
inquiries. lawsuits. the media.
a few weeks after the debacle in the park, and everything is a complete clusterfuck. the news is having a constant field day with the tragedy, update after update coming in about survivors, about the corporations, about the park and the animals, and who will be held responsible? claire is fortunate(?) enough that rather than dumping her in the middle of most of the court proceedings, masrani global has instead put her at the forefront of the media circus. she still ends up having to be involved with the hearings and otherwise miserable legal mess, but her strengths still lie with her ability to handle public relationships with the utmost grace. she knows how to smile, she knows exactly what they want to hear and how to give them something that's as enticing as it is vague, and she knows how to make it all look good. she's practiced this, and it all comes—
—naturally.
it's nearly an artform at this point, a dance where she knows all the steps, and it's just instinct.
so much so that interviews are still a piece of cake on the days she's slept less than an hour.
so much so that every brief she writes, every email she sends, and every call she takes is handled in that same crisp, professional manner, even when she's running on nothing but coffee and sheer determination to be awake.
to get things done.
to not— think.
it's when everything gets quiet that she feels out of place again. she's back in her apartment in los angeles, where she hasn't stayed in years (but still maintained, just in case), and everything around her feels unfamiliar and off. it's strange not being in the park, not going to her job every morning, not following her routine, even as she tries to find a new one, tries to find her new normal.
that doesn't go so well.
maybe it's because she isn't fucking sleeping, if she wants to analyze it. every time she tries, she's met with teeth and blood and screams, unblinking eyes and snarling, gaping maws.
she sees the indominus, in all its brutal glory—
—sees owen's raptors, jaws snapping inches from her face, yanking men out of the darkness—
—sees helpless people running, wailing, begging, as they're pinned to the ground or carried off into the sky.
it all plays in a vicious loop in her mind, and it's never silent — not until she's inevitably too tired to keep her eyes open, and she just...sleeps. finally, mercifully dreamless.
the more unfortunate aspect of being propped up as masrani's spokeswoman is that things get— busy. she's constantly scrambling all over the place, trying to get things in order, trying to keep everything from falling apart, and the first month back in the states is...a little miserable. meetings, briefings, interviews — there's no pause button, and it takes almost three hectic weeks of trying to keep everything in order that she remembers—
fuck. owen.
as soon as she'd gotten to la, she'd offered up her couch for him to crash on (for however long he needed to figure out where he'd be settling himself in), but claire hasn't exactly been around more than a few hours at a time. to shower, to change, to maybe sleep, but otherwise, she's trying to manage eighty things at once — and doing it, which would be more impressive if it wasn't at the expense of her near nonexistent sleep schedule.
she's busy, she's tired, and she still feels like she's coming apart at the seams, but— owen's there.
the couch doesn't last long, mostly because she feels bad relegating him to it when her perfectly (largely unused) bed is available — and also because when she does climb under the covers to attempt sleeping, she still finds the same level of comfort that she had with him in the hotel right after everything went to hell in a handbasket.
it's— nice.
(even if they've been absolute shit at finding the time to talk about "them," and whatever that happens to mean.)
but claire isn't naive, and she knows she's not the only one finding it nearly impossible to rest easy. she sees owen awake at odd hours, just as much as she is, but rather than prod him about it, she usually ends up buried in work instead. it's a strange sort of coexistence, trying to find time for a life outside of the veritable shitstorm still raging in the wake of the park's disaster, but it's...something.
and right now, claire will take "something" over nothing.
it's one of the rare nights that claire is wiped out enough that she wants to climb right into bed when she gets back to the apartment. she only has a somewhat clipped greeting for owen (which she would feel a little bad about, if she wasn't dead on her feet), and then she's just changing out of her suit and huddling under the covers.
today wasn't pretty, by any means. the interview she'd had to sit through had been an exercise in heaping a whole lot of blame on her shoulders, as if claire doesn't already do that herself, and she just had to sit there with a tight-lipped smile as she recited the well-practiced answers to the brutal questions.
don't let it get to you. don't.
with her face pressed into a pillow, it doesn't take long before she's out like a light (minutes, really, and that's a whole lot faster than her usual tossing and turning). she even stays asleep until the actual middle of the night, until the nightmares creep into her exhausted mind all over again.
teeth. screams. blood. death — so much goddamn death, and if she'd just— if she'd somehow— if she could have—
it's not until a flash of a raptor's jaws snap in front of her on an all-too-real, all-too-deafening replay that she jolts awake with a loud cry, her hands reaching out for— something, anything, until she comes into contact with—
owen.
warmth, sturdiness, and something very much human — something her subconscious desperately needs as she latches onto him without even realizing it, her breathing hitching, quick and unsteady, her pulse pounding in her ears as panic makes her chest tight.
[ All things considered, Owen doesn't have it quite as rough as Claire.
Granted, things haven't exactly been easy for him, either. Debriefings and interrogations – held by folks at Misrani Global or InGen – under the guise of fact-finding interviews. Grilling him for information while offering him coffee and store-bought pastries. Demanding answers for his involvement, for the failure of his team of Velociraptors, for why a simple researcher and trainer found himself in the eye of the storm.
He wonders if they expect him to buckle under the pressure.
He never does.
Because he's faced worse than corporate drones with bland, practiced smiles. He's faced monsters with blood-drenched maws, who could swallow him whole with barely a thought. He's confronted a team of killers, trained by his own hand. He's lived through hails of gunfire, explosions, death raining from above.
Some asshole with a few barbed words isn't going to bring him down.
(It also helps that Owen is used to having the blame heaped on his shoulders, most especially coming from himself.)
When the reprieve in Costa Rica is over – if it could even be called a "reprieve" – Owen finds himself floundering. He knew one day he'd have to leave Jurassic World, of course, but he assumed it would be months down the line, possibly years – assuming Hoskins didn't oust him for willfully shirking on sharing his results. He assumed he'd have time to line something up for himself, a new job or at least a new home. Something. But the disaster left him unmoored and drifting.
And Claire threw him a line, offered a couch to crash on, and with few other options, he took hold.
It should probably be uncomfortable, but with everything else going on, this, at least, was something of a bastion. Unsure as they were of where they stood, as little as they see of one another, they could at least take comfort in knowing the other is there.
He doesn't sleep much, or when he does, they're fitful, restless bouts. Caffeine carries him through the days. Endorphins from exercise, too. And failing that, sheer determination. On the odd occasions where Claire is actually home, he catches her awake, same as him. Only instead of talking it over, they leave one another to their own devices. Claire, to bury herself in her work. Owen, to run away from his thoughts, jogging through the neighborhood and blasting music into his head.
How they're coping is deeply unhealthy, but Owen doesn't find it likely that either of them will change their methods, any time soon.
Weeks later, and Owen still has no idea what to do with himself. Not as though there are many work prospects for a discharged Navy man, whose most recent job went ass-end up when a giant monster was unleashed on unsuspecting tourists. And that's just as fucking depressing as anything, he thinks, still surfing on Claire's couch – though he's mostly in her bed, these days. Just sleeping, when either of them can manage it, and after all this time, one would think they would have sorted out what the fuck they are to one another.
Still no. And Owen starts to wonder if he's merely there as some sort of security blanket for her. Something solid to grab on to.
... As she does now.
He can't even say that she's the one who wakes him, considering he had already been awake a few minutes before, queuing up his music for another of his late night runs. He stills, though, feeling the little twitches of movement through the mattress, hearing the little distressed noises from her side of the bed, and he sits up, his phone clattering on the nightstand when he tosses it aside. ]
Claire—?
[ Softly, in deference to the near silence around them; the quiet whisper of a car driving past, the soft rustle of wind through trees, the rumble of the heater kicking itself to life. (Living so long in Central America nearly made Owen forget what weather was like, and that had been a slap to the face, stepping off the plane to the relative chill of southern California, in the throes of winter.) Part of him wonders if he's misreading things, if maybe he shouldn't bother her; she sleeps so rarely these days, and he'd hate to wake her for misinterpreting her dream.
But as she so often does, Claire acts first.
She screams.
Her hands tangle into his shirt, her nails biting almost painfully into his chest, and he spurs himself into action, both hands framing her face. ]
Easy, easy—
[ He smooths sweat-drenched hair from her forehead, trying to imbue his voice with as much gentleness as he can muster. ]
C'mon, Claire. Easy. It was just a dream, alright? Focus.
[ at another moment, if her mind was clearer, if she could think straight, she might have had a curt word, a roll of her eyes, for the tone in owen's voice.
easy. focus.
like he's trying to settle a startled, unpredictable animal. like she's one of his raptors, panicked, all claws and teeth and volatile temperament—
—but in that instant, it's not far from reality.
not when her own perfectly polished nails dig marks into his skin, when she struggles against the constriction of the blankets and suddenly too-tight sheets, and despite clinging to him, looking for that anchor, she isn't settled. unmoored and drowning in a sea of nightmares and unbridled violence. her gaze is unfocused, even as she looks at him, like for an instant she doesn't see owen (or, at least, not owen in the here and now; maybe instead, owen back in the park). she stares at him, trying to breathe, but she can't quite manage a real lungful of air, not for another long moment of listening to him, looking at him, until finally, there's recognition.
she isn't back on the island.
there are no monsters here. ]
—Owen.
[ her voice still hitches when she tries to speak, and she's just shaking against him as she finally loosens her grip (just enough so she isn't effectively clawing him), her fingers tangling in his shirt instead. ]
I didn't— I'm—
[ she's not making a good deal of progress on controlling her breathing or the panic still making her chest impossibly tight, but she's at least grounded in reality now, not lost in the dream. ]
[ The sting of her nails against his chest is easily ignored. He’s had worse, after all – talons slashed across his skin when the raptors were still young enough to handle, awkward and unaware of their own strength. He stays where he is, voice and gaze soft, fingers carding through her hair. ]
Easy. I’ve got you, Claire.
[ Quiet reassurances that turn into a chant: Easy. I’ve got you. It was just a dream. Consistency, he’s found, tends to help; a constant pattern to latch onto while everything else feels like chaos.
He’s not sure if it helps, with Claire staring up at him like that, unseeing and unrecognizing, with her nails still digging into him, but the spell seems to break at last. Awareness trickles back into her eyes, and her death grip on him slackens. Those first few unsteady words, and Owen shakes his head. ]
Breathe, Claire. Do that for me, please? Like this.
[ A deep, slow inhale, through the nose. Holding it. Then a slow exhale through the mouth. They can’t get anywhere if she hyperventilates herself back into unconsciousness. ]
[ she's trying, which is what's so frustrating to her as she settles back into awareness. she hates feeling out of control enough that she can't immediately calm herself down, that her body is so fueled by that panic response, but— she'd expected to wake up to more teeth. more deafening roars.
but there's only owen; owen, in the stillness of her apartment, with the vague murmur of the outside world around them.
a few moments of trying to mimic the slow breathing, and claire finally pulls it together enough for a deep breath in, holding it, and then out again. a few more of them, and her heartrate starts to even out, the wild, disquieted anxiety tapering off a bit at a time. she's still flushed, cheeks damp with tears, her hair a complete mess, but— she's calming down.
she finally swallows around the thickness in her throat, opening her mouth to speak. ]
—I'm sorry.
[ because, god, she didn't want him to see her like this. not this bad, not this shaken. ]
[ Owen is a damn patient man when he needs to be, and he needs to be now. He waits, coaching Claire through it, waits as she finally takes a deep breath, waits for her to calm enough to focus, waits for reality to finally settle around them both.
He’s at his best when he has a task in front of him, when there’s a definitive goal that needs meeting. In this case, it’s ensuring that Claire simply breathes.
And she does, slowly calming, though she’s still clearly in distress. He keeps his touch gentle, one hand threading through her hair. The other cupping her jaw, his thumb brushing away the tears from her cheeks. ]
Hey. You haven’t done anything to apologize for.
[ This, at least, he says with conviction, even as his voice stays quiet, gentle. ]
[ she says it on reflex — her usual response whenever anyone asks how she's doing. it couldn't be farther from the truth, obviously, but claire still hasn't figured out how to admit that she's not okay.
she avoids it, mostly. that night in the hotel was the closest she's come to really acknowledging that she's not perfectly fine, and even then, it had been for that brief space of a hug, of finding some comfort in owen's arms, but she'd very determinedly not talked about it. ]
Just a bad dream.
[ as per usual. the reason she stays awake more often than she lets herself sleep.
her eyes fall away from his face, embarrassment starting to tug at the edges of her awareness, but she's at least still leaning into his hands on her face, the fingers combing through her hair. it...helps, even if she hates how vulnerable and exposed she feels. ]
[ She’s not fine, and they both know it. Waking up in the dead of night, screaming and crying, is hardly “fine” or “just a bad dream.”
But he can’t blame her for saying it. It’s reflex, he knows. He would’ve done the exact same thing, were their roles reversed. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” even as the world crumbles around them. They’re more alike than they care to admit, he thinks. Only difference here is that Claire hates ceding control, where Owen knows that most of the time, he’s hardly in control in the first place.
He frowns when she looks away, sees discomfort edging into her expression. She hasn’t pushed him away, though. That’s something.
So he keeps it up, cards his fingers through her hair, smooths the pad of his thumb over her cheek. ]
You wanna talk about it?
[ A token offer, if only because he doubts Claire will take him up on it, but he hopes she’ll surprise him, this time around. ]
[ claire's eyes flick back up to owen's face, sharp even with the remnants of her nightmares clawing at her. ]
I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I dream about, Owen.
[ it's not a flat "no," or a quick subject change, which is definitely— different. it's avoidant, absolutely, but not an immediate attempt to shove him right back out again.
she reaches up for his hand, tugging it carefully away from her messy face, though she doesn't pull his fingers from her hair yet. she's still covered in sweat, shaky and unbalanced, and she realizes she really needs a shower.
she'll take care of that soon. she'll do that instead of going back to sleep. ]
[ He pulls his hand away at her insistence, though he keeps the other in place, maintaining that same rhythm, easing through some of the tangles in her hair. ]
Remind me.
[ Because even if she wants to (even if he would want to), there's a difference between tacit acknowledgement and speaking her dreams aloud. One is leaving everything buried, willfully ignored. The other is purposefully dragging those memories into the light.
Dryly, ] 'Cause for all I know, it could be one of those dreams where you find out about a giant assignment only seconds before it's due, or you show up naked to work. Toss-up.
[ she'd probably pull away entirely if it wasn't so soothing to feel his fingers comb through her hair, and she still leans slightly into the attention without even realizing it.
damn it.
some of that sharpness eases with his humor, if only for a moment, and an exhausted ghost of a smile tries to pull at her lips. strained, but there. ]
I'll take "naked at work" over a lot of things right now.
[ because it's absolutely better than the reality.
her smile drops away entirely as she's drawn back to the idea of her dream, though, and for a moment, she looks— distant, like there's something very intense about the flashback, of remembering her nightmare. she shakes it off quickly enough, refocusing on owen with a frown. ]
Are you sure you need reminding? Because I've noticed you spend just as much time as I do trying not to think about— this.
[ which is the first time she's really acknowledged, in her own roundabout way, how unhealthily they've both been avoiding their baggage associated with the incident. her with her work, him with exercise — both with a boatload of caffeine.
neither of them dealing with it. ]
Unless you're stuck dreaming about an overdue essay, but I doubt that.
[ The corner of his mouth quirks up in an imitation of a smile.
Another difference between them, he supposes. Claire avoids thinking on the disaster. Owen thinks on it all far too much. The quiet during the day – sometimes alone in her apartment, sometimes reaching out to men and women he knew from the Navy – lends itself well to reexamining each minute of the ordeal in crystal clear detail.
Every failure. Every misstep. Every action he should have taken but didn't.
It started, he knows, because some asshole with an overactive imagination said, Let's homebrew Godzilla. But it kicked off because Owen's dumb ass stepped out of the safety of the viewing room. The unsteady domino that set off the entire disaster.
So Claire tries to forget, avoiding sleep because it brings back those memories. But Owen can't help but remember, and his mistakes plague him in the silence and dark of the night. White noise at the back of his head.
He pulls away, though he doesn't go far. Keeping his hand threaded with her hair means he has to stretch out his free hand to click on the lamp on the nightstand. Light tends to help put distance between dreams and the waking world. A barrier, sort of. Makes nightmares feel far away. ]
[ claire spends so much of her day confronting her own mistakes regarding the park that they're, shockingly, not what keep her up at night. still working with the masrani corporation and dealing with the media means answering a lot of questions, constantly, about what went wrong where, how they handled it, how they'll deal with it moving forward. so often she has to just put on that smile, brush it all under the rug with that perfect, practiced pr — all the right words, the best soundbites, the easiest solutions.
it's only times like yesterday, when questions are a little more personal, that it's harder to run from her own guilt.
god, what a mess.
fortunately (or otherwise) for her, it's not the shame and regret that keeps her up at night.
it's usually the former park's man-made monsters.
the bedside light is welcome, if enough to make her wince at first. her eyes adjust, letting her see owen a whole lot more clearly. there's something comforting about his face, about waking up to having him there, and just a hint of her tension slides away without her realizing it. ]
Just—
[ she pauses, taking another breath as she looks down at the sheets. ]
Owen is not at all qualified for this, coaching other people through trauma. Hell, he can barely coach himself through it. He's about all Claire's got at the moment, though, so poor substitute that he is, they'll have to make do. ]
It was just a dream. [ As gently as he can manage. Then, with a thread of humor, ] No dinosaurs in LA, thankfully.
[ she tries for a smile, she really does, but it comes out halfhearted. ]
Let's hope it stays that way.
[ because she's not naive; she knows ingen has those genomes of the various dinosaurs, but she still has no idea what that means yet (she just likes to hope that whatever they're doing has better sense than to be near people).
despite being at the forefront of this particular circus, claire has still been kept in the dark about quite a few things.
that doesn't always sit well with her. ]
I know it's a dream, Owen. That doesn't...really help when I'm in the middle of it.
[ a little reluctantly, she pulls away to sit up, leaning back against the headboard. ]
I know it doesn't, but— you can do something about it when you're awake. Remind yourself that they're memories.
[ He lets her pull away, hands dropping to his lap. He flounders a little, wishes he had some magic remedy that would erase the shit the two of them were dragged through. Make things instantly better.
No such thing exists, yet, he knows. Which is a shame. ]
... Might help if you stopped trying to shove it all away.
[ He falls quiet for a second, shifting to sit beside her. Not quite touching, but close enough that either of them could close the space with only a thought. ]
That's kind of the thing, I think. Have to build a tolerance to it, or else it's going to keep taking you by surprise like this.
[ This, with a certain sort of finality. Because they both know it's far more than "just a few bad dreams." They've been dealing with this shit in their own ways, but not in any way someone would deem "healthy." ]
"Just a dream" doesn't have you trying to claw my skin off.
[ He waves a hand, dismissing her apology. A little wryly, ] I think I’ll live.
[ He’s had worse, after all, and Claire was likely privy to some of those injuries, thanks to some reckless handling of the Velociraptors in their awkward teen phase. Owen’s work always fell strictly under the InGen umbrella, but conducting it on Jurassic World’s land still meant he had to go through the park’s chain of command. ]
That’s not what this is about. How often are you waking up like this?
[ She’s so rarely in her apartment, these days, sent somewhere abroad to put out fires or do damage control. ]
[ the dismissal is a reminder of a few of the other injuries she remembers owen sustaining while training the raptors — definitely worse than her largely harmless nails. that should make her feel better, but mostly, she's still embarrassed it happened at all. ]
Occasionally. [ vague as hell, way to go, claire. ] It depends on how long I go in between sleeping, I think.
[ when she's not at peak levels of exhaustion, she can usually shake herself out of the nightmares before they get this bad. when she's reaching the tail end of how long she can forcibly keep herself awake, that's when it's harder to control how deeply she gets sucked into the dreams.
and that just becomes a different kind of terrifying. ]
If I can just...wake up before it gets like this, it's fine.
[ her dry tone gives away that, yes, she knows this isn't the best way to go about dealing with these dreams. claire isn't naive, and she isn't clueless.
she's realistic enough to know that this hasn't worked yet, and it won't start working now.
but that doesn't mean she has a better plan yet. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
all aboard the ptsd train
inquiries. lawsuits. the media.
a few weeks after the debacle in the park, and everything is a complete clusterfuck. the news is having a constant field day with the tragedy, update after update coming in about survivors, about the corporations, about the park and the animals, and who will be held responsible? claire is fortunate(?) enough that rather than dumping her in the middle of most of the court proceedings, masrani global has instead put her at the forefront of the media circus. she still ends up having to be involved with the hearings and otherwise miserable legal mess, but her strengths still lie with her ability to handle public relationships with the utmost grace. she knows how to smile, she knows exactly what they want to hear and how to give them something that's as enticing as it is vague, and she knows how to make it all look good. she's practiced this, and it all comes—
—naturally.
it's nearly an artform at this point, a dance where she knows all the steps, and it's just instinct.
so much so that interviews are still a piece of cake on the days she's slept less than an hour.
so much so that every brief she writes, every email she sends, and every call she takes is handled in that same crisp, professional manner, even when she's running on nothing but coffee and sheer determination to be awake.
to get things done.
to not— think.
it's when everything gets quiet that she feels out of place again. she's back in her apartment in los angeles, where she hasn't stayed in years (but still maintained, just in case), and everything around her feels unfamiliar and off. it's strange not being in the park, not going to her job every morning, not following her routine, even as she tries to find a new one, tries to find her new normal.
that doesn't go so well.
maybe it's because she isn't fucking sleeping, if she wants to analyze it. every time she tries, she's met with teeth and blood and screams, unblinking eyes and snarling, gaping maws.
she sees the indominus, in all its brutal glory—
—sees owen's raptors, jaws snapping inches from her face, yanking men out of the darkness—
—sees helpless people running, wailing, begging, as they're pinned to the ground or carried off into the sky.
it all plays in a vicious loop in her mind, and it's never silent — not until she's inevitably too tired to keep her eyes open, and she just...sleeps. finally, mercifully dreamless.
the more unfortunate aspect of being propped up as masrani's spokeswoman is that things get— busy. she's constantly scrambling all over the place, trying to get things in order, trying to keep everything from falling apart, and the first month back in the states is...a little miserable. meetings, briefings, interviews — there's no pause button, and it takes almost three hectic weeks of trying to keep everything in order that she remembers—
fuck. owen.
as soon as she'd gotten to la, she'd offered up her couch for him to crash on (for however long he needed to figure out where he'd be settling himself in), but claire hasn't exactly been around more than a few hours at a time. to shower, to change, to maybe sleep, but otherwise, she's trying to manage eighty things at once — and doing it, which would be more impressive if it wasn't at the expense of her near nonexistent sleep schedule.
she's busy, she's tired, and she still feels like she's coming apart at the seams, but— owen's there.
the couch doesn't last long, mostly because she feels bad relegating him to it when her perfectly (largely unused) bed is available — and also because when she does climb under the covers to attempt sleeping, she still finds the same level of comfort that she had with him in the hotel right after everything went to hell in a handbasket.
it's— nice.
(even if they've been absolute shit at finding the time to talk about "them," and whatever that happens to mean.)
but claire isn't naive, and she knows she's not the only one finding it nearly impossible to rest easy. she sees owen awake at odd hours, just as much as she is, but rather than prod him about it, she usually ends up buried in work instead. it's a strange sort of coexistence, trying to find time for a life outside of the veritable shitstorm still raging in the wake of the park's disaster, but it's...something.
and right now, claire will take "something" over nothing.
it's one of the rare nights that claire is wiped out enough that she wants to climb right into bed when she gets back to the apartment. she only has a somewhat clipped greeting for owen (which she would feel a little bad about, if she wasn't dead on her feet), and then she's just changing out of her suit and huddling under the covers.
today wasn't pretty, by any means. the interview she'd had to sit through had been an exercise in heaping a whole lot of blame on her shoulders, as if claire doesn't already do that herself, and she just had to sit there with a tight-lipped smile as she recited the well-practiced answers to the brutal questions.
don't let it get to you. don't.
with her face pressed into a pillow, it doesn't take long before she's out like a light (minutes, really, and that's a whole lot faster than her usual tossing and turning). she even stays asleep until the actual middle of the night, until the nightmares creep into her exhausted mind all over again.
teeth. screams. blood. death — so much goddamn death, and if she'd just— if she'd somehow— if she could have—
it's not until a flash of a raptor's jaws snap in front of her on an all-too-real, all-too-deafening replay that she jolts awake with a loud cry, her hands reaching out for— something, anything, until she comes into contact with—
owen.
warmth, sturdiness, and something very much human — something her subconscious desperately needs as she latches onto him without even realizing it, her breathing hitching, quick and unsteady, her pulse pounding in her ears as panic makes her chest tight.
fuck. ]
no subject
Granted, things haven't exactly been easy for him, either. Debriefings and interrogations – held by folks at Misrani Global or InGen – under the guise of fact-finding interviews. Grilling him for information while offering him coffee and store-bought pastries. Demanding answers for his involvement, for the failure of his team of Velociraptors, for why a simple researcher and trainer found himself in the eye of the storm.
He wonders if they expect him to buckle under the pressure.
He never does.
Because he's faced worse than corporate drones with bland, practiced smiles. He's faced monsters with blood-drenched maws, who could swallow him whole with barely a thought. He's confronted a team of killers, trained by his own hand. He's lived through hails of gunfire, explosions, death raining from above.
Some asshole with a few barbed words isn't going to bring him down.
(It also helps that Owen is used to having the blame heaped on his shoulders, most especially coming from himself.)
When the reprieve in Costa Rica is over – if it could even be called a "reprieve" – Owen finds himself floundering. He knew one day he'd have to leave Jurassic World, of course, but he assumed it would be months down the line, possibly years – assuming Hoskins didn't oust him for willfully shirking on sharing his results. He assumed he'd have time to line something up for himself, a new job or at least a new home. Something. But the disaster left him unmoored and drifting.
And Claire threw him a line, offered a couch to crash on, and with few other options, he took hold.
It should probably be uncomfortable, but with everything else going on, this, at least, was something of a bastion. Unsure as they were of where they stood, as little as they see of one another, they could at least take comfort in knowing the other is there.
He doesn't sleep much, or when he does, they're fitful, restless bouts. Caffeine carries him through the days. Endorphins from exercise, too. And failing that, sheer determination. On the odd occasions where Claire is actually home, he catches her awake, same as him. Only instead of talking it over, they leave one another to their own devices. Claire, to bury herself in her work. Owen, to run away from his thoughts, jogging through the neighborhood and blasting music into his head.
How they're coping is deeply unhealthy, but Owen doesn't find it likely that either of them will change their methods, any time soon.
Weeks later, and Owen still has no idea what to do with himself. Not as though there are many work prospects for a discharged Navy man, whose most recent job went ass-end up when a giant monster was unleashed on unsuspecting tourists. And that's just as fucking depressing as anything, he thinks, still surfing on Claire's couch – though he's mostly in her bed, these days. Just sleeping, when either of them can manage it, and after all this time, one would think they would have sorted out what the fuck they are to one another.
Still no. And Owen starts to wonder if he's merely there as some sort of security blanket for her. Something solid to grab on to.
... As she does now.
He can't even say that she's the one who wakes him, considering he had already been awake a few minutes before, queuing up his music for another of his late night runs. He stills, though, feeling the little twitches of movement through the mattress, hearing the little distressed noises from her side of the bed, and he sits up, his phone clattering on the nightstand when he tosses it aside. ]
Claire—?
[ Softly, in deference to the near silence around them; the quiet whisper of a car driving past, the soft rustle of wind through trees, the rumble of the heater kicking itself to life. (Living so long in Central America nearly made Owen forget what weather was like, and that had been a slap to the face, stepping off the plane to the relative chill of southern California, in the throes of winter.) Part of him wonders if he's misreading things, if maybe he shouldn't bother her; she sleeps so rarely these days, and he'd hate to wake her for misinterpreting her dream.
But as she so often does, Claire acts first.
She screams.
Her hands tangle into his shirt, her nails biting almost painfully into his chest, and he spurs himself into action, both hands framing her face. ]
Easy, easy—
[ He smooths sweat-drenched hair from her forehead, trying to imbue his voice with as much gentleness as he can muster. ]
C'mon, Claire. Easy. It was just a dream, alright? Focus.
no subject
easy. focus.
like he's trying to settle a startled, unpredictable animal. like she's one of his raptors, panicked, all claws and teeth and volatile temperament—
—but in that instant, it's not far from reality.
not when her own perfectly polished nails dig marks into his skin, when she struggles against the constriction of the blankets and suddenly too-tight sheets, and despite clinging to him, looking for that anchor, she isn't settled. unmoored and drowning in a sea of nightmares and unbridled violence. her gaze is unfocused, even as she looks at him, like for an instant she doesn't see owen (or, at least, not owen in the here and now; maybe instead, owen back in the park). she stares at him, trying to breathe, but she can't quite manage a real lungful of air, not for another long moment of listening to him, looking at him, until finally, there's recognition.
she isn't back on the island.
there are no monsters here. ]
—Owen.
[ her voice still hitches when she tries to speak, and she's just shaking against him as she finally loosens her grip (just enough so she isn't effectively clawing him), her fingers tangling in his shirt instead. ]
I didn't— I'm—
[ she's not making a good deal of progress on controlling her breathing or the panic still making her chest impossibly tight, but she's at least grounded in reality now, not lost in the dream. ]
no subject
Easy. I’ve got you, Claire.
[ Quiet reassurances that turn into a chant: Easy. I’ve got you. It was just a dream. Consistency, he’s found, tends to help; a constant pattern to latch onto while everything else feels like chaos.
He’s not sure if it helps, with Claire staring up at him like that, unseeing and unrecognizing, with her nails still digging into him, but the spell seems to break at last. Awareness trickles back into her eyes, and her death grip on him slackens. Those first few unsteady words, and Owen shakes his head. ]
Breathe, Claire. Do that for me, please? Like this.
[ A deep, slow inhale, through the nose. Holding it. Then a slow exhale through the mouth. They can’t get anywhere if she hyperventilates herself back into unconsciousness. ]
no subject
but there's only owen; owen, in the stillness of her apartment, with the vague murmur of the outside world around them.
a few moments of trying to mimic the slow breathing, and claire finally pulls it together enough for a deep breath in, holding it, and then out again. a few more of them, and her heartrate starts to even out, the wild, disquieted anxiety tapering off a bit at a time. she's still flushed, cheeks damp with tears, her hair a complete mess, but— she's calming down.
she finally swallows around the thickness in her throat, opening her mouth to speak. ]
—I'm sorry.
[ because, god, she didn't want him to see her like this. not this bad, not this shaken. ]
no subject
He’s at his best when he has a task in front of him, when there’s a definitive goal that needs meeting. In this case, it’s ensuring that Claire simply breathes.
And she does, slowly calming, though she’s still clearly in distress. He keeps his touch gentle, one hand threading through her hair. The other cupping her jaw, his thumb brushing away the tears from her cheeks. ]
Hey. You haven’t done anything to apologize for.
[ This, at least, he says with conviction, even as his voice stays quiet, gentle. ]
You alright?
no subject
[ she says it on reflex — her usual response whenever anyone asks how she's doing. it couldn't be farther from the truth, obviously, but claire still hasn't figured out how to admit that she's not okay.
she avoids it, mostly. that night in the hotel was the closest she's come to really acknowledging that she's not perfectly fine, and even then, it had been for that brief space of a hug, of finding some comfort in owen's arms, but she'd very determinedly not talked about it. ]
Just a bad dream.
[ as per usual. the reason she stays awake more often than she lets herself sleep.
her eyes fall away from his face, embarrassment starting to tug at the edges of her awareness, but she's at least still leaning into his hands on her face, the fingers combing through her hair. it...helps, even if she hates how vulnerable and exposed she feels. ]
no subject
But he can’t blame her for saying it. It’s reflex, he knows. He would’ve done the exact same thing, were their roles reversed. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” even as the world crumbles around them. They’re more alike than they care to admit, he thinks. Only difference here is that Claire hates ceding control, where Owen knows that most of the time, he’s hardly in control in the first place.
He frowns when she looks away, sees discomfort edging into her expression. She hasn’t pushed him away, though. That’s something.
So he keeps it up, cards his fingers through her hair, smooths the pad of his thumb over her cheek. ]
You wanna talk about it?
[ A token offer, if only because he doubts Claire will take him up on it, but he hopes she’ll surprise him, this time around. ]
no subject
I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I dream about, Owen.
[ it's not a flat "no," or a quick subject change, which is definitely— different. it's avoidant, absolutely, but not an immediate attempt to shove him right back out again.
she reaches up for his hand, tugging it carefully away from her messy face, though she doesn't pull his fingers from her hair yet. she's still covered in sweat, shaky and unbalanced, and she realizes she really needs a shower.
she'll take care of that soon. she'll do that instead of going back to sleep. ]
no subject
Remind me.
[ Because even if she wants to (even if he would want to), there's a difference between tacit acknowledgement and speaking her dreams aloud. One is leaving everything buried, willfully ignored. The other is purposefully dragging those memories into the light.
Dryly, ] 'Cause for all I know, it could be one of those dreams where you find out about a giant assignment only seconds before it's due, or you show up naked to work. Toss-up.
no subject
damn it.
some of that sharpness eases with his humor, if only for a moment, and an exhausted ghost of a smile tries to pull at her lips. strained, but there. ]
I'll take "naked at work" over a lot of things right now.
[ because it's absolutely better than the reality.
her smile drops away entirely as she's drawn back to the idea of her dream, though, and for a moment, she looks— distant, like there's something very intense about the flashback, of remembering her nightmare. she shakes it off quickly enough, refocusing on owen with a frown. ]
Are you sure you need reminding? Because I've noticed you spend just as much time as I do trying not to think about— this.
[ which is the first time she's really acknowledged, in her own roundabout way, how unhealthily they've both been avoiding their baggage associated with the incident. her with her work, him with exercise — both with a boatload of caffeine.
neither of them dealing with it. ]
Unless you're stuck dreaming about an overdue essay, but I doubt that.
no subject
Another difference between them, he supposes. Claire avoids thinking on the disaster. Owen thinks on it all far too much. The quiet during the day – sometimes alone in her apartment, sometimes reaching out to men and women he knew from the Navy – lends itself well to reexamining each minute of the ordeal in crystal clear detail.
Every failure. Every misstep. Every action he should have taken but didn't.
It started, he knows, because some asshole with an overactive imagination said, Let's homebrew Godzilla. But it kicked off because Owen's dumb ass stepped out of the safety of the viewing room. The unsteady domino that set off the entire disaster.
So Claire tries to forget, avoiding sleep because it brings back those memories. But Owen can't help but remember, and his mistakes plague him in the silence and dark of the night. White noise at the back of his head.
He pulls away, though he doesn't go far. Keeping his hand threaded with her hair means he has to stretch out his free hand to click on the lamp on the nightstand. Light tends to help put distance between dreams and the waking world. A barrier, sort of. Makes nightmares feel far away. ]
Wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to hear it.
no subject
it's only times like yesterday, when questions are a little more personal, that it's harder to run from her own guilt.
god, what a mess.
fortunately (or otherwise) for her, it's not the shame and regret that keeps her up at night.
it's usually the former park's man-made monsters.
the bedside light is welcome, if enough to make her wince at first. her eyes adjust, letting her see owen a whole lot more clearly. there's something comforting about his face, about waking up to having him there, and just a hint of her tension slides away without her realizing it. ]
Just—
[ she pauses, taking another breath as she looks down at the sheets. ]
Teeth, Owen. A lot of teeth.
[ and death. and blood. all of it. ]
no subject
Owen is not at all qualified for this, coaching other people through trauma. Hell, he can barely coach himself through it. He's about all Claire's got at the moment, though, so poor substitute that he is, they'll have to make do. ]
It was just a dream. [ As gently as he can manage. Then, with a thread of humor, ] No dinosaurs in LA, thankfully.
no subject
Let's hope it stays that way.
[ because she's not naive; she knows ingen has those genomes of the various dinosaurs, but she still has no idea what that means yet (she just likes to hope that whatever they're doing has better sense than to be near people).
despite being at the forefront of this particular circus, claire has still been kept in the dark about quite a few things.
that doesn't always sit well with her. ]
I know it's a dream, Owen. That doesn't...really help when I'm in the middle of it.
[ a little reluctantly, she pulls away to sit up, leaning back against the headboard. ]
...it still feels real.
no subject
[ He lets her pull away, hands dropping to his lap. He flounders a little, wishes he had some magic remedy that would erase the shit the two of them were dragged through. Make things instantly better.
No such thing exists, yet, he knows. Which is a shame. ]
... Might help if you stopped trying to shove it all away.
no subject
So far, that hasn't exactly helped.
[ if anything, it's brought that panic to the immediate forefront. ]
I think about it, and I start to—
[ her voice catches, and she clears her throat, giving a dismissive wave of her hand. ]
It makes it worse.
no subject
That's kind of the thing, I think. Have to build a tolerance to it, or else it's going to keep taking you by surprise like this.
no subject
Maybe I can handle the surprise.
[ ...clearly not. ]
It's just a few bad dreams.
no subject
[ This, with a certain sort of finality. Because they both know it's far more than "just a few bad dreams." They've been dealing with this shit in their own ways, but not in any way someone would deem "healthy." ]
"Just a dream" doesn't have you trying to claw my skin off.
no subject
...that was just a fluke.
[ no, that's definitely not true. on these harder nights, she's woken flailing before, trying to get away from an imagined threat.
owen just happened to be caught in the middle of it tonight. ]
But I'm— sorry. I didn't hurt you, did I?
no subject
[ He’s had worse, after all, and Claire was likely privy to some of those injuries, thanks to some reckless handling of the Velociraptors in their awkward teen phase. Owen’s work always fell strictly under the InGen umbrella, but conducting it on Jurassic World’s land still meant he had to go through the park’s chain of command. ]
That’s not what this is about. How often are you waking up like this?
[ She’s so rarely in her apartment, these days, sent somewhere abroad to put out fires or do damage control. ]
no subject
Occasionally. [ vague as hell, way to go, claire. ] It depends on how long I go in between sleeping, I think.
[ when she's not at peak levels of exhaustion, she can usually shake herself out of the nightmares before they get this bad. when she's reaching the tail end of how long she can forcibly keep herself awake, that's when it's harder to control how deeply she gets sucked into the dreams.
and that just becomes a different kind of terrifying. ]
If I can just...wake up before it gets like this, it's fine.
no subject
But he refrains, if only because that might not be the route to go, here. ]
So you're banking on being able to wake yourself up. Is that really your plan of attack, here?
no subject
[ her dry tone gives away that, yes, she knows this isn't the best way to go about dealing with these dreams. claire isn't naive, and she isn't clueless.
she's realistic enough to know that this hasn't worked yet, and it won't start working now.
but that doesn't mean she has a better plan yet. ]
I'll figure it out.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)