FIC: balance (jurassic world, claire dearing/owen grady, R)
balance, jurassic world, claire dearing/owen grady, R
In ancient Egyptian lore, at the end of your life, there was a test before you could enter the afterlife. There was a great scale: on one side, a feather, and weighed against it, your heart.
***
They ferry back to the mainland, the children with their parents inside, away from the wind, and Claire and Owen sitting outside, the sea breeze ruffling their hair and sticking salt to their skin. Claire’s hands are burned from the flare, and Owen takes her wrists in his hands, turns her hands palms up and looks at the damage.
“I think you’ll make it,” he says.
He’s waiting for an answer, but she doesn’t have one. Claire rests her head on his shoulder, and he puts an arm around her. It’s a long ride to the mainland, and she sleeps.
***
Owen still smells like gasoline, so Claire lets him shower first. She sits on the bed, the hotel bedspread scratchy against her legs, the skin bared by her torn skirt. She’s heard somewhere that they never wash these bedspreads, and for a moment she worries about infection before realizing that germs are the least of her problems.
Owen emerges from the shower with a towel slung around his waist. His hair is plastered to his head, and somehow this makes him smaller, more vulnerable. That’s not a side of him she’s seen, and it creates an ache in her chest.
“Are you okay?” he asks. He slicks his hand through his wet hair; rivulets of clean water glide down the planes of his face.
She shakes her head. He comes close, his hand on the back of her neck, a touch meant to be reassuring, but Claire’s blood is up; she looks up at him, and puts her hands on his waist and pulls him toward her.
Owen kneels, so that they’re eye to eye.
“What now?” he asks.
She kisses him. He tastes gamy, wild, loamy in a way that reminds her of the forest. At first he’s unsure, uncharacteristically demure, his hands mocking the shape of her body but not actually touching her, but then he starts to kiss her back and he touches her, his touch gentle but confident. Claire lays back on the hotel mattress, and he climbs over her. His hands come up under her skirt, and the rough skin of his palms drags across her white flesh and she feels something inside herself dilate. She gasps. He is so close to her that droplets of water dot her skin, soak through her clothing so that she feels naked. He kisses her face, sucks at the pulse point in her neck; her fingers in his hair and his hands peeling off her panties. Owen crawls down her body, his hands on every inch of her, and his mouth falls to her sex and Claire’s world bursts into Technicolor. She thrusts up against him, her body so alive and her mind so present that she feels the weight of the past twenty-four hours bleed away, the weight of everything off her shoulders; there is only this moment, this sensation.
And she comes, and he smiles, and somehow the two get all tangled up in her head, like he can smile and make her body sing, his face-his face-lit up and his eyes on her like she’s the only thing in the world, like what happened at the park doesn’t matter, like it was another life ago.
And maybe that’s just it: they were lovers in a past life, and they’ve only just now found each other again: a trial by fire-iron forged into something sharp, something beautiful. I could spend forever here, Claire thinks, and she knows that forever is an option, like it never has been before.
Claire pulls Owen up over her, pushing the towel to the floor, and her legs wrap around him as he enters her, the sharp bones of her ankles digging into his ribs. He doesn’t seem to mind, and Claire has never been a romantic, but this time every touch means something, and Owen is cradling her face in his big hands, smoothing her hair back and looking at her with such a look that she wants to ask him what wrong, and it is then that she realizes she is crying. It’s just that everything was too much, such horror and tension and fear, and now everything’s over. They’re alive and they’re together, and it’s impossible but perfect.
And when it’s over, they lay together, the pleasant weight of Owen atop her holding her in place. There are bruises on Owen’s ribs, and she traces them lightly with her finger-some foreign constellations, memories of that night at the park that will soon fade away. They’ll be gone, but so much will remain. The thought makes Claire lose her breath, but just as Owen is asking if she’s okay, she realizes that she is. Because they’re in it together. Maybe there is blood on their hands; maybe their hearts weigh more than a feather, but-oh-their hearts weigh the same.