FIC: Maps (My Kind's Your Kind) (Jurassic World, Claire Dearing/Owen Grady, PG)
TITLE: Maps (My Kind’s Your Kind)
RATING: PG
FANDOM: Jurassic World
PAIRING: Claire Dearing/Owen Grady
SUMMARY: What happens next.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for the very first @clawenficathon for @cometothedarkside-x, who wanted Claire and Owen snowed in with cuddling, a fireplace, silly banter, and without pregnancy, kids, or a proposal. Title from “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Many thanks to perpetual for the beta.
PORTO LIMÓN, COSTA RICA
It is 18 hours after a girl in high heels ran a t-rex through an empty amusement park, and Claire dyes her hair in the bathroom of a touristy hotel on the mainland. The dark brown dye leaves stains on her hands and a ring around the sink. Owen watches her exit the bathroom, toweling off the rest of the dye.
“You’re hot as a brunette,” he says, and she can’t tell whether he’s serious.
He has the television on; static runs across the screen, but she can still make out the picture: coverage of the disaster on Isla Nublar. For a moment, they show her face-a promotional shot from a press packet several years old-and she barely recognizes herself. In the mirror above the hotel sink, hair dark and skin so pale, she looks like another person.
“Park manager Claire Dearing was not available for comment,” the reporter says, and Claire walks over and snaps the dial to off.
She looks at Owen, who is looking at her.
“What now?” she says.
LIMÓN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, COSTA RICA
Claire has to take her sunglasses off to pass through security. The customs agent looks at her passport, then looks her straight in the eye. She can feel color coming to her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away. If he recognizes her, he doesn’t say anything; he simply hands her passport back and wishes her a good flight in slightly accented English.
It’s possible that no one’s looking for her.
Owen’s hand is at the small of her back as they pass into the terminal.
“I don’t need you guiding me around,” Claire says, but she is shaking. She expects a fight, but all Owen says is, “Okay.” His hand stays on her, though, as they sink into their seats aboard the plane. Claire squeezes into the window seat and Owen takes the aisle. His hand falls over hers so naturally that she doesn’t notice until they’re in the air.
If you would have asked her an hour ago, Claire would have told you she may never again be relaxed enough to sleep. But the events of the past day sneak up on her, pooling heavy in her muscles, and she falls asleep, curled up against the cool plastic of the window, the earth falling away beyond her closed eyes.
MIAMI, FLORIDA
There is no press outside the terminal once they reach the States. Claire wonders if it was all just a dream-but then she catches the headlines on the newspaper hanger: all blood and teeth and 33 dead. Thirty-three people, dear God.
Maybe it’s just that no one knows where they are.
Owen suggests a hotel, but Claire can’t be still. It’s around one p.m. in Miami, and Owen suggests lunch, but Claire can’t eat.
They leave the airport and get into a cab. After all those years in Costa Rica, Claire’s Spanish is still atrocious. She listens to Owen and the cabbie converse in what appears to be a dialect of Cuban Spanish as the taxi weaves in and out of traffic. She closes her eyes, and feels the world move around her.
The cabbie lets them off downtown. Owen takes Claire’s hand before she can protest, and leads her down the bustling streets. Claire feels overdressed in the linen suit she bought in the hotel gift shop in Porto Limón-God, was that yesterday? She expects Owen’s eyes to wander to the girls walking around in tiny bikinis, but his eyes stay on her.
“You probably need some sunscreen,” he says.
“I need to get out of here.”
He nods. “Okay.”
They veer into a used car lot. Claire is confused until Owen starts harassing the overweight salesman in a sweat-stained suit. Of all the shitty cars in the car lot, Owen haggles over the shittiest, a silver convertible with a broken top cover. Claire eyes it, eyebrows arched over her cat-eye sunglasses.
“That thing is a gasoline black hole. What’s it get, twelve to the gallon?”
The salesman sweats. Owen smiles, patting the shark grey frame.
“She has character,” he says.
TEMPE, ARIZONA
It’s been 56 hours since they left the park. Claire’s cell phone is still there, on Isla Nublar, somewhere beneath the blood and debris, but still-she hasn’t heard a word from the park’s attorneys, so maybe no one is chasing them.
She still wants to run.
Arizona looks like the backdrop of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Everything is red and orange and flat for miles and miles until an enormous mesa appears out of nowhere, stretching into the sky like the hand of God. They’re bigger than dinosaurs, and somehow that is terrifying and reassuring all at once.
Something is wrong with the car; the poor convertible coughs and shudders, dies on the side of the road. Owen pulls the hood open, the old metal groaning. It’s hot, and Claire sweats in the passenger’s seat, her skin sticking to the vinyl upholstery.
She fans herself with the roadmap. “What is it?”
Owen looks up. “This is the engine,” he says. “The part of the car that makes it run.”
“Very funny. What’s wrong with it?”
“Carburetor. Have you ever hitchhiked before?”
VAIL, COLORADO
They are snowed in. They are staying at Owen’s cousin’s summer place-which Claire finds hilarious, that he has a cousin with a summer place-which is much nicer than the motels they’re used to. There is a fireplace, and Owen gets it going, the fire aromatic and violently orange. Claire curls up next to it, as close as is wise. She is wearing Owen’s coat over her pajamas, and Owen notices her shiver.
“If you’re cold, just say so,” he says.
Claire gives him a poisonous look-as if she would do something as pedestrian as be cold. Still, Owen grabs the comforter from the bed and wraps it around her shoulders; he sits behind her, taking her into his arms. After a moment, she relaxes.
“You know,” he says, “it’s an old tracker’s trick that the best way to keep warm on a cold night is skin to skin, naked under a blanket.”
“I imagine you’ve tried that out with a camping buddy?” she says.
“Is that something you like to imagine?”
She blushes, plummy and dark, and Owen laughs, his fingers sliding through her hair, tracing over the stone cold, marble white skin of her neck and shoulders.
“You think you’re funny, Owen Grady,” she says, “but really you’re-”
“Charming? Handsome?”
Claire’s mouth tenses for a moment, and Owen is sure she’s preparing a nasty barb. But then her face relaxes, and she just says, “You’re something else.”
FORT COLLINS, COLORADO
They stop just before crossing the border to gas up and stretch their legs. The Rocky Mountains, blue and white, seem to surround them on every side. Snowflakes dot Claire’s upturned face, and she spins around, arms extended-it’s like being in a snow globe. Owen’s breath fogs the air, and the corner of his mouth turns up when he sees her spinning; he doesn’t say anything, just watches her with his unflinching gaze.
Claire isn’t sure what they’re looking for. Not a place to hide, not anymore. They could be safe if they slowed down. Maybe what they’re looking for is something like home-but then, she realizes, maybe they’ve already found it.