[ 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. ]
[ He echoes her laugh with a joyless one of his own. ]
You are awfully good at putting out fires.
[ He falls quiet for a second. This whole thing has been a goddamn mess, but Owen's been lucky enough to avoid the worst of the flak. Not a high enough man on the totem pole, thankfully. Just some researcher who got caught up in the storm.
He feels badly for Claire, most days, having to play nice with the assholes trying to tear her down. Trying to extinguish fires with little more than a smile and a few nice lines. They had hardly given her a chance to decompress since everyone returned from South America, and he wonders if Claire ever managed to reset her brain, to convince herself that she no longer had to run for her life.
He has his suspicions. Most of them point to the negative.
He breathes out a sigh, casting her a sidelong glance. ]
You need a break.
[ (He wonders if she'll take that as an insult.) ]
god, when was the last time she had one of those? when was the last time she had a vacation or took actual days off?
when was the last time she gave herself permission for that?
(probably when she saw her sister and her nephews, seven damn years ago.
jesus christ.)
she gives a light shrug. ]
If there was time for a break, I'd have taken it.
[ but would she? or would she continue to find ways to keep herself busy, to distract from everything that happened like she's been doing for weeks now? ]
I have a lot on my plate, Owen. You know that.
[ which is one of the reasons they never see each other. she's always running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and settling in long enough to unwind or even just breathe is asking a lot. but again, in a big way, that's likely just her trying to keep everything at bay.
avoiding the reality of what she's been through. ]
I get it, yeah. [ Softly, but there's an insistence in his voice. ]
I get that you're busy. And I get that you work best when you're under pressure. It's kind of what they hired you on to do.
[ And God knows she's good at her job. It's why they've kept her on, after all, even when there was no longer a park to operate or manage. (He hopes that isn't a sign that they hope to resurrect the damn thing for the third time. What a goddamn nightmare that'd be.) ]
But I also get that you're running yourself ragged so you don't have to think about anything that happened.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you haven't stopped running since we left the island.
she lifts her head to look at him, leaning back against his arm.
she hasn't been around much to see owen, to see how he's coping (or not), but she knows he's sleeping just as little as she is, and maybe she's keeping herself busy to run away from all of this, but she's seen him physically doing it.
[ Later, he’ll acknowledge that it was fair that she turns it back on him, but in the moment, he bristles a little, jaw clenching slightly at the question – and that reaction is probably already enough to give him away, considering she’s finally looking straight at him.
So he goes for the easy diversion, putting on a small smile. ]
This a commentary on all my late night jogs? What, a guy can’t try and stay in shape?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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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You are awfully good at putting out fires.
[ He falls quiet for a second. This whole thing has been a goddamn mess, but Owen's been lucky enough to avoid the worst of the flak. Not a high enough man on the totem pole, thankfully. Just some researcher who got caught up in the storm.
He feels badly for Claire, most days, having to play nice with the assholes trying to tear her down. Trying to extinguish fires with little more than a smile and a few nice lines. They had hardly given her a chance to decompress since everyone returned from South America, and he wonders if Claire ever managed to reset her brain, to convince herself that she no longer had to run for her life.
He has his suspicions. Most of them point to the negative.
He breathes out a sigh, casting her a sidelong glance. ]
You need a break.
[ (He wonders if she'll take that as an insult.) ]
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god, when was the last time she had one of those? when was the last time she had a vacation or took actual days off?
when was the last time she gave herself permission for that?
(probably when she saw her sister and her nephews, seven damn years ago.
jesus christ.)
she gives a light shrug. ]
If there was time for a break, I'd have taken it.
[ but would she? or would she continue to find ways to keep herself busy, to distract from everything that happened like she's been doing for weeks now? ]
I have a lot on my plate, Owen. You know that.
[ which is one of the reasons they never see each other. she's always running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and settling in long enough to unwind or even just breathe is asking a lot. but again, in a big way, that's likely just her trying to keep everything at bay.
avoiding the reality of what she's been through. ]
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I get that you're busy. And I get that you work best when you're under pressure. It's kind of what they hired you on to do.
[ And God knows she's good at her job. It's why they've kept her on, after all, even when there was no longer a park to operate or manage. (He hopes that isn't a sign that they hope to resurrect the damn thing for the third time. What a goddamn nightmare that'd be.) ]
But I also get that you're running yourself ragged so you don't have to think about anything that happened.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you haven't stopped running since we left the island.
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[ the question is pointed, but still quiet.
she lifts her head to look at him, leaning back against his arm.
she hasn't been around much to see owen, to see how he's coping (or not), but she knows he's sleeping just as little as she is, and maybe she's keeping herself busy to run away from all of this, but she's seen him physically doing it.
better or worse, she can't help but wonder. ]
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So he goes for the easy diversion, putting on a small smile. ]
This a commentary on all my late night jogs? What, a guy can’t try and stay in shape?
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her expression ought to give away exactly how much she's not buying the bullshit. ]
Sure, if the guy in question didn't just go through hell in the shape of a theme park with previously extinct animals running rampant.
Don't pull that with me, Owen.
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