This is the third and final installment of this story (and my personal favorite!) Enjoy!
He trails kisses along every scrape, bruise, and sunburn line on her upper body, and she wonders how he just seems to know which spots hurt the most and which ones are okay to put more pressure on with his lips. It's getting late, really late, and Claire Dearing has never once let a man make her late to work, but when she woke up to Owen spooned behind her, playing with one of her nipples and gently sucking on her neck, she surrendered. Her hands slide up and down his back as he moves above her, and it's fast again, but it's good, so good.
The quiet knock at the door is almost masked by Owen's heavy breathing against her ear. She made it a point to lock the door before their clothes came off, but the walls are so incredibly thin, and there are kids out in the sitting room, kids that have been traumatized enough for one vacation, so they know they have to be quiet. Her sister calls their names, telling them that breakfast is almost ready, and she made enough for them, too.
"Okay, we'll be right…" Claire's voice trails off on a faint moan.
She hasn't quite lost the ability to think, though with Owen's hand slowly slipping down her body, she knows it's only a matter of time, and she thinks she can almost literally hear Karen's eyes rolling on the other side of the door, and it's not fair. She knows it's not fair. Karen's getting divorced, and Claire went from contently single to basically shacking up with a hot-as-hell raptor trainer who makes her feel like everything's going to be alright in just under 72 hours, and Karen's either witnessing it or incessantly hearing about it from two boys with a serious case of hero worship, and then Owen's fingers find their destination, and she arches into him, melting underneath his touch as she hears Karen, in a deadpan voice, say Aunt Claire's going to be a few more minutes.
The conversation about breakfast and pancakes on the other side of the door is drowned out in a flood of pleasure, but when she hears Gray anxiously ask if she's going to jail as they're in bed basking in warm, afterglow kisses, she knows it's time to get up.
"What? No! Honey, why would you think that?" she hears Karen reply as she tears herself away from Owen. The only word she catches out of Gray's reply is "investigation," and Karen sighs, telling him that's more about keeping her job, and she won't be seeing the inside of a courtroom any time soon. Claire knows that's probably not true. She won't be on trial, but despite the liability waivers on the Jurassic World tickets, someone, somehow, someway is ending up in a courtroom over this, but Gray doesn't know that, so he switches topics.
"So what about school?" he asks as Claire opens her bedroom door.
Karen freezes, mentally calculating what day it is (she's had absolutely no idea since she saw the breaking news about Jurassic World on the television set in her attorney's office; they even managed to somehow miss New Year's,) and a realization crosses her face. "Shit," she says, lunging for her phone.
Claire makes her way over to the counter, wrapped in a hotel robe. "What about school?" she asks. Gray tells her Christmas break ended yesterday as she pops Karen's forgotten blueberries into her mouth.
"What do you mean 'what is the reason for their extended absence?'" Karen nearly shrieks from the other room. "Have you turned on a TV lately? They were a sheet of Plexiglas away from being a dinosaur's lunch at my sister's theme park, and now Masrani Global is holding us hostage in San Diego until they decide my sister, who barely passed biology, by the way, had nothing to do with building a genetic hybrid murder machine!"
"You barely passed biology?" Owen says with a laugh, joining the congregation in the kitchen.
"And, as always, your timing is impeccable, Grady," Claire replies sarcastically.
"I've listened to you rattle off information about genetic modification like it was nothing!"
"I can memorize as many talking points as you want, just don't ask me to do it," she says.
Owen laughs again. He thinks this might be the best thing he's learned about her yet. "Maybe we should get Masrani to give you a test on gene splicing and genetics. That should clear you."
That remark earns him another that's-not-funny look from Claire, but he doesn't even care and keeps on chuckling as he walks to the fridge. Karen returns, frazzled, and abruptly stops in her tracks when she sees Owen, dressed in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, drop a kiss into her sister's hair as he makes his way back across the kitchen. Her eyes widen a little at the sight of his bare chest, and Claire, of course, notices, a small smirk forming on her face.
"You okay, sis?" she teases. Karen gives Owen another once-over and mumbles again about life just really not being fair, and despite the bit of guilt she feels in her stomach, it's Claire's turn to laugh.
The familiar click of a hotel keycard sliding into the door alerts them that they're about to no longer be alone. They're on the couch watching the day's Jurassic World coverage (at this point, they don't think it's ever going to slow down), Owen's arm slung casually around her shoulders, and there's an alarming amount of banging and noises of struggle as the boys burst into the hotel suite, yelling her name, cries of "look what we got!" propelling her to her feet. Her nephews enter the living area, each of them holding a novelty check almost as big as Gray. At least that explains all the thumping.
"What is that?" Claire asks. As the question leaves her lips, her eyes zero in on the $10,000 figure written in bold black font on each check. "Oh my god!"
"Ellen gave them scholarships for their commendable quick-thinking and bravery in the face of the Indominus Rex," Karen says slowly as she enters the room at a speed equal to her speech. She's staring at the presumably real, normal-sized versions of the checks in her slightly shaking hands. Claire almost laughs – the mixture of utter shock and thrill on her face is a sight to be seen. Karen waves the checks to the side, looks at Claire, and adds, "I mean, I am a little annoyed, as a mom, that they're getting so handsomely rewarded for blatantly defying instructions with that hamster ball thingy, but oh my god."
Despite witnessing Claire and Owen's disastrous first public appearances, the boys hadn't wavered in their clamoring to do an interview. Karen had eventually relented and agreed, accepting the offer from The Ellen DeGeneres Show, thinking that would be the friendliest place for them, and the trio had just returned from the taping in Burbank. Both boys spoke excitedly at once, trying to tell Claire all about their appearance. She didn't catch much, but they had, apparently, fulfilled their wish to tell the world about how they electrocuted a velociraptor from the back of a speeding vehicle, and she puts a hand on each boy's shoulder with a laugh, elated by how full of life they are, and promises to watch the show the next day.
Karen finally catches a glimpse at the television, sees that another person has died from their Jurassic World injuries, and quietly asks how their day was. Claire says any day she manages to get through without someone mentioning a return to the island – she'll go when it's time, but she's glad it's not time – is a good day. She drops her voice to match Karen's tone and says Owen's been fired.
"Hey," Owen says, finally standing to join the group. "I prefer the term 'officially released from my contract.' That just sounds better." Gray looks sad, and Zach immediately looks guilty, which Owen catches with rapid speed. "That's not your fault, either, dude. My raptors are gone; I don't really have anything to go back to."
It's the first time he's mentioned his girls since the island, and though he hasn't verbalized it, Claire knows he's hurting over their loss, so she slides her arm around his back and leans in to him. He wraps his arm around her, too.
"Plus, you know," Owen adds. "I punched one of the company higher-ups on live, national television, and I refuse to apologize for it, so I had it coming."
"I have good news for you, though," Claire says to Karen.
"Better news than the twenty thousand dollars in my hands?" Karen asks skeptically.
"You get to go home," Claire reveals.
"What? Is it over? Is everything okay?" Karen asks. She grabs a lock of Claire's hair and lets it slip through her fingers as she adds, "Are you okay?"
"That's still ongoing," Claire sighs. "But I convinced them there was no reason to keep kids out of school when they've already been thoroughly interviewed and have no experience with me as a manager."
"The kids weren't complaining, you know," Zach mutters.
"Hey," Karen snaps, putting the check with his name on it in front of his face. "You've got to get into college, buddy. Back to school for you."
Zach surprises everyone by tossing his novelty check down and wrapping Claire in a hug. Claire giggles and returns the hug, and it instantly becomes Owen's new life goal to make her make that noise again someday soon.
"Goodness, what is this for?" she asks, taken aback by the teenager's affection.
"Don't let me be out of college before I see you again," he mutters, pulling back, a little embarrassed.
"Oh, sweetheart," she says, clutching his cheeks. "You're going to see so much of me from now on, you'll get totally sick of me."
Morning comes far too soon, and the Mitchells are getting ready to leave, and both boys are clinging to Claire as if their lives still depended on it while Karen embraces Owen in a hug, asking him how she can ever thank him for putting himself in danger to take care of her family. Owen looks over at his happy, teary girlfriend, still sandwiched between her two nephews, and a fond smile crosses his face.
"Let her see them again," he says. "Maybe sometimes alone. She's scared you're never going to trust her with them again – but you didn't hear that from me."
Karen scoffs as if that's the most preposterous thing she's ever heard and says if anything, it's the opposite of that. She looks at Owen for a moment and quietly adds that even though she has her concerns about them, she's really glad her sister isn't alone in all this. He just grins his shared approval of the situation, and Karen declares a switch. The boys nearly pummel Owen to the couch, and she hugs her little sister, hard, again.
"Seriously," Karen says, pulling back after several long seconds. "If Gray is graduating high school the next time we see you, I'm going to have someone send that T-Rex after you again."
That joke shouldn't be funny. Neither of them should find that funny this close to the incident, but, despite themselves, they both laugh. Karen tells the boys it's time to go, but neither boy really wants to leave, so Karen hustles them towards the door, but not before Gray can steal one last hug from Aunt Claire. Karen picks her duffel bag off the floor and swings it around her shoulder.
"I'll call you when we get home," she promises Claire, who nods in response. She then turns to Owen and because she just can't resist, says, "Nice meeting you, Board Shorts."
Claire laughs; no, she downright cackles as Owen glares at Claire from across the room and mutters, "I hate you."
"That's not what you said last night," she teases, eagerly throwing his joke from the island back in his face.
"Hey, I thought you were worried about us being late!" Zach indignantly calls from the hallway. Karen sighs and, with one last little wave to her sister, follows her kids out the door.
When they finally leave, Claire takes a deep breath, and Owen sees her lip trembling. He comes up beside her and asks if she's alright. She quietly admits that she's really going to miss them; he tells her that he will, too.
"But hey, when we get settled…somewhere…wherever…we'll have them over," Owen suggests. "They'll be thrilled to spend a week with Badass Aunt Claire and Cool Uncle Owen."
That simple statement holds so many promises for their future – they're going to settle somewhere together; he thinks of himself as Zach and Gray's uncle…and they haven't even had their second date yet – promises that excite her and make her feel calm and completely scare the hell out of her all at the same time, and she doesn't know what to say.
Their second date starts about as well as their first.
They vow to not make any of the same mistakes the second time around, but then she comes home from work with a reservation print-out in her hands because it's the city, and if you don't get a reservation, you're not getting a table unless you want to sit in the lobby for two goddamn hours, and quit teasing her because it already took her ten minutes more to get back to the hotel than she had planned for, and they need to go, and he threatens to go exchange his slacks for board shorts.
It doesn't matter anyway, because if the bickering hadn't made them a little late, the cameras would have. There are cameras outside of the hotel when she goes to the Masrani offices in the morning, but the company has been sending a car for her, so once she makes it into the vehicle, it's not too much of a problem. Tonight, they're on their own with the rental car, and driving through the crowd of paparazzi surrounding their vehicle is a challenge, at best, scary, at worst, and the businesswoman in her notes that their presence, their relentless covering of this story, reinforces Owen's idea that maybe dinosaurs are still wow enough.
They think they'll be fine once they make it into the restaurant, miraculously only three minutes late for their reservation, but despite being seated in the middle of the dining hall, the photographers have pressed themselves against the front windows. They try to power through – ignore them, don't give them this power, ignore them, ignore them – but they're uncomfortable, and other guests are complaining, so they get their meals to go and head back to their quiet, safe, now much-too-big and much-too-empty hotel room.
He tries to set the mood, finding little candles in a bathroom drawer, lighting them with leftover matches swiped from Gray's survival pack before he left, but it's not quite the same. He opens the minibar, but then stops.
"Masrani's paying for this, right?" he asks. She nods, and he pulls out two little vials of tequila.
"What happened to nothing like how we did this last time?" she groans.
"Pretty sure that went out the window when you showed up with an itinerary," he replies.
"A reservation is not an itinerary!" she insists.
"Drink up, Dearing," he says, putting the bottle down in front of her plate.
Claire makes a noise and drops her head, and Owen's not sure if she's laughing or crying. She tilts her head back up and brushes the red hair out of her face, and thank god, she's laughing. He asks her what she's suddenly finding so hilarious, and she's laughing so hard, he thinks he can see a tear forming in the corner of her eye as she tries to compose herself enough to reply.
"This is absurd," she says. "Everything with us is wonderful for a whole week, but the moment we try another official date…"
"Maybe we should just stop dating," he shrugs, and she knows he doesn't mean stop the relationship.
"We're clearly not very good at it," she laughs. She goes on to point out it's kind of ridiculous anyway, a second date when they're basically living together with, according to what he said after her family left, no plans to change that when things, life, settles.
"I'm not going anywhere, Claire," he says, looking right at her, and her stomach flips. She tells him that's a little absurd, too. She doesn't want him to go anywhere, either, but she barely knows anything about him. He looks up from his plate and boldly says, "What do you want to know?"
They end up on the balcony with blankets and a bottle of wine, still dressed for their night out. There are cameras on the ground, watching them there, too, but they won't know that until they see the pictures online the next morning. For now, she's in one chair, curled under a blanket, bare feet tucked up underneath her, and he's in another, and they're separated by a little table where two wine glasses lay forgotten as they simply pass the bottle back and forth as they talk. She spends a lot of time looking up at the stars, something she never really took the chance to admire, despite being on a rather isolated island, and he spends a lot of time looking at her and the way the moonlight bounces off her face, something he never really got the chance to admire without admitting he still wanted her.
He likes this Claire – the casual, relaxed, drink-right-out-of-the-wine-bottle Claire. He tells her as much as he passes the bottle to her, expressing surprise that such a state of being is even possible for her, and she scoffs as she takes a drink of the wine.
"I'm organized; I'm not uptight," she says, and he maybe yanks their second date past the point of no return, because the words leave her lips, and he laughs harder than he has in a while.
"That's the funniest thing you've ever said," he replies with a scoff of his own.
She rolls her eyes and chooses to ignore him, almost outwardly pouting as she keeps the wine bottle nestled in her hands, and Owen falls a little bit harder. If the version of her on the balcony tonight had shown up to their first date, and okay, fine, maybe he shouldn't have worn the board shorts, they would never have had a problem. He can't believe it took a fucking dinosaur disaster for her to let him see this version of her, but, he thinks, as she loosens back up and laughs at a story he's telling about a four-day-old Echo nearly biting a finger from his left hand off while he was using his right to scold Blue for doing the exact same thing, if she had, then he would've really known what he was missing if things still ended badly, so maybe it was for the best. Maybe that first date just wasn't their time.
"I'm sorry," she says, finally passing the bottle back to him as the story ends. "About your raptors."
He silently takes the bottle and nods in gratitude, for her condolences and for the drink, and stares down at it, his heart sinking, for a long time before taking a sip.
"Yeah, well," he says with another nod. "With what InGen had planned for them, I was bound to get hurt eventually. At least Blue's still out there."
He says it with such hope that it brings a sad smile to her face, and she asks if Blue was his favorite. He looks a little insulted before insisting, as any good father would, that he does not have favorites; he loves all his raptors equally.
"But Blue was the beta, right?" she asks, trying again. "She was your girl?"
"You're my girl," he says instantly. "But yeah, Blue was the beta of the pack."
He's not sure how she'll take such a bold declaration, and she freezes for a moment, not having expected that response to escape his lips, before a grin overtakes her face and she has to shyly look away from him again. He leans over to offer her the wine bottle, shaking it to pull her attention, and she happily steals a quick kiss as she leans over to grab it.
Their second date is infinitely better than their first.
She asks him to go to Masrani Global with her, and even though he wants to, he can't say no. They're throwing her on television again, and it's due to be held outside again, and she's pretty sure what happened last time will happen again, and she wants him nearby. He makes a quip about how he's glad to see their decision making skills have improved since the incident and then follows her downstairs to meet the company car.
The press conference is about to begin, and she's in a corner checking herself out in a reflective surface, straightening her jacket, smoothing her skirt, making sure her bangs are even across her forehead and no hairs are frizzing out of her sleek, flat-ironed bob, and Owen gently puts his hand on her back. His instinct is to tell her she'll be okay, but after what happened before the last press conference, he decides a kiss to convey what he wants to say is the safer choice.
"Lipstick!" she says abruptly as he leans in, tilting away from him. He instantly leans back upright, his hands up in a mock surrender.
"Okay, so I want to do something encouraging, but I don't want you to bite my head off again, and if I can't kiss you…" he mutters. "You seem more nervous than last time."
"They didn't know about the investigation last time," she says, referring to the latest news that had leaked the day before. The corporation had yet to identify where all these leaks were coming from, but Claire's more concerned with the fact that instead of discussing the park and the Indominus and the incident on the news, the pundits were now filling their time discussing her. "And you're helping just by being here, honey."
It's the first time she's ever called him anything resembling a pet name, and he likes the way it sounds rolling out of her perfectly painted lips, so he pulls her close to his side with one hand and leans in to her ear, whispering, "You're not helping that wanting-to-kiss-you problem I'm having."
She barely has time to breathe out a pledge of later before someone's pulling her outside. Owen slips out, too, standing off to the side of the crowd instead of watching from a television inside. He's promised her he will refrain from punching anyone in the crowd who says something bad about her – it's inevitable, she says – but he doesn't want to watch from inside the building; he wants her to be able to look at him if she needs something to stabilize her. She sits on a chair to the side of the podium nearest him as flashbulbs go off all around them and the acting president steps up to the microphones. She doesn't know what the new man in charge is about to say, but she thinks it might be about her since the official apology for their poor judgment in the creation of the Indominus went out shortly after its genetic makeup hit the public, and there hasn't yet been a decision regarding what to do with the park. She watches carefully as he says he knows the crowd, reporters and spectators alike, are probably all aware of the internal investigation being conducted against her, and he would like to address that before turning the press conference over to her.
"That investigation," he continues, "I am pleased to announce, has culminated in the conclusion that Ms. Dearing was acting in accordance with procedures laid out by Steven Masrani and the Masrani Global Corporation. She will retain her position with Masrani Global and Jurassic World, whatever its future may be and no disciplinary action will be taken at this time. In addition, the corporation would like to formally thank Ms. Dearing for her actions in stopping the Indominus Rex."
She tries, she tries so hard not to visibly react to the news that at least that part of the hellish nightmare that her career has become is over because she knows at least half the cameras have shifted to her, and she knows whatever reaction she gives them will be the breaking story on the six o'clock news, and she doesn't even know if she wants to be a part of whatever future they concoct for Jurassic World, but she's so relieved. She's so damn relieved that she can't help it and lets out a breath she didn't fully realize she was holding. Despite the noise, both positive and negative, the announcement generates from the audience, she thinks she can hear Owen yelling in support, and she stifles a laugh as the conference is turned over to her.
The first reporter to ask a question starts by congratulating her, then asks about the families. Claire tells her they're meeting with the insurance company tomorrow to discuss the specifics, at which time she'll have a better answer, but, she says, "I can assure you myself and the Masrani Corporation will ensure every family affected by the events at Jurassic World will receive the proper compensation and consideration."
Owen watches from the side, filling with pride as he watches her. He knows, no matter how the questions go, she'll probably cry when it's over, lock herself in an office for a few hours, or want to spend the whole night lost in him, but for now, she's calm and cool and confident and Claire. He thinks, as he watches her, that despite the fact that he's out of a job and they're far away from Isla Nublar, things seem like they're finally going back to normal.
She catches his eye in the crowd; he scrunches his face into a deep grin and sends her a thumbs up, and she shoots him a small, barely discernible smile and a quick wink.
Okay. Maybe things are a little better than normal.
Thanks, everyone, for reading! If anyone's interested, you can find me on Tumblr under the same name I have here. And, of course, reviews make me happy :-)