[ 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. ]
[ claire just looks at him for the space of a few breaths, holding his gaze with an exhausted (but still present) flicker of her usually unflappable expression — the cool professionalism she's perfected, but—
after a moment, she just deflates.
she's too tired for airs right now, too shaken by the nightmare to keep that refined "i'm perfectly okay" facade up for long. ]
Until I come up something better? I have no idea, Owen.
[ and she hates admitting that, hates letting that control slip from her fingers.
she lets her forehead fall to rest against her knees still curled against her chest. it's something vulnerable, the way she's folded in on herself, and not anything she'd let most people see — but owen is different. claire still isn't sure what the hell they have, what this is, but she's not trying quite so hard to keep her weaknesses in check around him. ]
I'm just— so tired right now.
[ because god, she needs sleep. real sleep. something without the nightmares, without the looming pressure of work — she needs some goddamn rest. ]
[ Owen frowns, though it's lost on her, considering her postured – closed off, vulnerable. Far removed from the Claire who commanded a veritable zoo yielding little more than a spreadsheet and a cup of coffee.
But trauma does that to a person, he thinks.
He closes the space between them with a careful shift, his hip pressing against hers, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. Still with that same gentle sort of voice, ]
I know you think this is something you can manage on your own, but it's not. And you don't have to.
It's been weeks, Claire. Have you even given yourself a chance to just— stop and breathe?
[ at first brush, she tenses, the contact catching her by surprise — but it's not unwelcome. she leans into his side without comment, her head resting on his shoulder, though she's determinedly looking across the room, rather than at him. ]
I've been busy.
[ a dry, humorless laugh. ]
Who knew I'd have more work after the park closed down?
[ she chooses not to comment on the "doing it on her own" part of this. it's the same thing she's heard from karen, worried as her sister is, but she's still struggling with the idea of sharing everything that's built up after the incident. this moment here, the one back in the hotel — this is the closest she's gotten to letting someone see her unravel. ]
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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. ]
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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?
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[ 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. ]
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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. ]
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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. ]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. ]
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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.
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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.
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[ 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.
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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.
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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.
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Maybe I can handle the surprise.
[ ...clearly not. ]
It's just a few bad dreams.
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[ 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.
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...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?
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[ 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. ]
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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.
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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?
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[ 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.
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[ He turns toward her, expression grim. When he speaks, though, his voice is soft, careful – the sort of voice he might use on a spooked animal. ]
How long do you plan on doing this, exactly? Running yourself ragged to avoid even thinking about what happened.
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after a moment, she just deflates.
she's too tired for airs right now, too shaken by the nightmare to keep that refined "i'm perfectly okay" facade up for long. ]
Until I come up something better? I have no idea, Owen.
[ and she hates admitting that, hates letting that control slip from her fingers.
she lets her forehead fall to rest against her knees still curled against her chest. it's something vulnerable, the way she's folded in on herself, and not anything she'd let most people see — but owen is different. claire still isn't sure what the hell they have, what this is, but she's not trying quite so hard to keep her weaknesses in check around him. ]
I'm just— so tired right now.
[ because god, she needs sleep. real sleep. something without the nightmares, without the looming pressure of work — she needs some goddamn rest. ]
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But trauma does that to a person, he thinks.
He closes the space between them with a careful shift, his hip pressing against hers, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. Still with that same gentle sort of voice, ]
I know you think this is something you can manage on your own, but it's not. And you don't have to.
It's been weeks, Claire. Have you even given yourself a chance to just— stop and breathe?
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I've been busy.
[ a dry, humorless laugh. ]
Who knew I'd have more work after the park closed down?
[ she chooses not to comment on the "doing it on her own" part of this. it's the same thing she's heard from karen, worried as her sister is, but she's still struggling with the idea of sharing everything that's built up after the incident. this moment here, the one back in the hotel — this is the closest she's gotten to letting someone see her unravel. ]
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