Author's Note: I am so sorry for the long break in publishing! Thank you guys for being patient with me as I went through one of the most important times in my life (marriage/honeymoon/working on changing my legal name). It's been crazy, but things are starting to settle down, and I really wanted to dig back into this story. I have a short chapter, and I'm hoping that it will tide you over until I can really flesh out some more chapters. Cheers!
The storm had reached its high point. Lex sat, dressed again in Owen's flannel shirt, in the booth of the galley, and stared out the window. She had focused on a nearby palm tree, and watched as its leaves blew harshly in the wind. The sky was now dark. Lex wrapped her hands around the mug of coffee that Owen had made for her. Owen slid into the booth beside her, clad only in his boxer briefs and a white tee shirt. He put his hand on Lex's leg, which was covered by the blanket taken from the bed.
"Where are you?" Owen's voice broke Lex's trance.
"Huh?" She looked back at Owen, and drank from the coffee, which has finally reached a drinkable temperature.
"You're clearly lost in thought. Where are you?"
"Oh." Lex gave a small smile. "Just thinking about when I was here." Lex looked from Owen's eyes down to her coffee, self-consciously.
"Tell me about it," Owen said.
"You know what happened," Lex's eyes pleaded with Owen's.
"Yes, but not from your perspective. And if I'm going to be showing you what we have going with the raptors, I'd like to know what it is that you've experienced."
Lex steeled herself. "My granddad, he... he wanted us to be his sort of test subjects for the park. We were so excited." Lex smiled, recalling the time before she came to the park. "Tim was so into dinosaurs after he learned that grandpa was working on something with dinosaurs. He read up on everything he could find. And when he found out that Alan Grant was going to be with us, he just about lost a gasket."
Owen sat silently, letting Lex continue her story at her own pace.
"I read Doctor Malcolm's book, and later learned that the park was at risk for never being opened to begin with. Shareholders were getting nervous after a few park workers had died. So we were sort of a desperate, Hail Mary. I loved my grandfather, Owen. But he gambled with our lives." Lex searched Owen's eyes. She found no pity, but understanding.
"All these years I've gone through what happened, what I did… A couple of times I made things worse, I know. I was just a scared kid. But even now I agonize about the things I did to make… her… see us in that Explorer. Thank god for Doctor Grant." Lex paused. "The SUV was just twisted metal by the end. Knocked off the dam like it was a pebble."
She sighed, hoping to gloss over the finer details. Her heart quickened as she remembered. "So we were out there. In the park. Alone with a paleontologist who only studied bones and dust. But he was the best person to have been out there with. And you know, the raptors, they… they're a different type of fear."
She searched Owen's eyes for what he was thinking. "The T-Rex was terrifying. I thought I was going to die, Owen. She was crushing us under the SUV. But the raptors were a special type of intelligent. Fast. So smart… We underestimated them. And those sounds they make, Owen. They haunted my dreams for so long."
"I was twelve when it happened. Too young to have seen any of that. My survival instincts have been on high alert for most of my life because of it." Lex gave a half smile, looking down at the coffee mug that had been clutched in her hands as a form of distraction. "Relationships suffered for it. Guess men don't like sleeping next to someone who has night terrors. Too much baggage."
Lex sighed and ran a hand through her now wavy blonde hair.
Owen chewed the inside of his lip a moment, before speaking. "You ever think of letting someone else help carry those bags for you?"
"Well, that doesn't exactly seem fair to the person who's helping," Lex knew where he was going with this.
"I know the animals. I can be your sort of…"
"Therapist?" Lex asked, amusement spreading across her face. "Oh, Owen if a weekend with you is all I need to conquer my past, I'll write you a check for double what I've paid my actual therapist over the past decade."
"Oh, so I'm getting paid to service you now, huh?" Owen asked with a wicked grin.
Lex's mouth fell open. She brought a hand up to it, covering her embarrassment. "No, god, that's not what I meant!" She could see the playfulness in Owen's face, so she allowed herself to laugh with him.
Owen took his arm and looped it around the small of Lex's back, pulling her towards him, letting out a playful growl. "You're wicked," Lex said, blushing as Owen pulled her legs over his lap so she was very nearly sitting on it. She leaned in to kiss Owen, and just before his lips met hers, he seemed to purr the words, "the best kind of wicked."
The evening passed lightly enough, with the storm dwindling down and stopping entirely by midnight. By then, Lex and Owen were far too tired to part ways, so Lex slept in Owen's bed. She still felt as if she was imposing, and even apologized for it while nestled under a blanket, lying next to him. He reassured her, pulling her to himself and breathing her in.
Owen marveled to himself as he sensed Lex fall asleep in the crook of his arm. He wondered why he had felt so protective over her, a virtual stranger. And why? Because she was John Hammond's granddaughter? Because he felt he needed to show her that raptors weren't just killing machines, but intelligent animals capable of a real bond with humans? If that was so, he felt guilty for taking her to bed in the process. Had he slept with her just to defend his four adolescent raptors? Feeling her in his arms, and listening to her small breaths, he shook that from his mind, and allowed himself to fall asleep with her.
