Work Text:
one.
Owen is grateful to Masrani Corp. Really. From the bottom of his warm, beating, watch your anxiety levels it could actually kill you heart -- he is thankful. He loves this little blue Prius, with its scratchy seats and bluetooth connection and little backup camera that stops him from running over their neighbor and her fifteen hundred dogs she walks every morning. He loves his shiny new zoo job, where he takes in big cats that have been roadside shows for seven years and molds them back into proper, happy things. He does, he couldn't lie, wouldn't want to lie.
He pulls up to the pump and chokes on prices and fishes his wallet out of pile of 7-11 cups that are slowly filling up his front seat. He's had the car for almost three weeks and it's the first time he's needed to fill up -- mostly because driving is hard and Claire takes him a lot of places because, okay, driving is hard he can't focus, can't read the signs, can't handle other people --
Today is okay. Today is good. Owen is taking it one day at a time and he's really just fine. Really. He gets out of the car and digs for his credit card, struggling to remember the zip code. The fact that he can is a small victory and, alright, this day could get better, it could move up from here.
The smell hits him half-way through the fill-up. Acrid, sharp, invading his nostrils and taking what it shouldn't, dragging things out that do not belong there, do not do not --
He vomits into the open garbage can, right in front of seven other people filling up their tanks. Breathe, Grady. Breathe. It's only teeth and the stench of it all that violates the good feeling he had before, the one that smelled like Claire's shampoo and Nutella on toast and sounded like rain and wind chimes and felt like hands on his shoulders and lips on his palms. He heaves and there is nothing because it's hard to eat, sometimes, and today was a good day except for that, except for this.
They are all watching, and all Owen can think is that this is the first time he's had a panic attack alone.
The pump clicks off behind him and he struggles to put it all back with shaking hands, stumbling into the driver's seat and taking deep, shattering breaths. Count. Count. One-- Someone honks and he wants to get out and tell them that they aren't helping, they will never be able to help because they will never be able to understand, never be able to know what he needs. Only Claire knows, and Claire is at work and he can't call her and breathe into the phone and feel better like magic.
Owen lifts his head and puts the car in drive. Pulls into a spot in front of a poorly trimmed hedge of magnolias and reaches for his jacket. Presses it to his face. Screams.
His shrink will ask him how he's managing his anxiety, on a scale of one to ten, one meaning poorly and ten meaning well, because she is a nice woman who cares about him, but isn't sure what he is. Frankly, Owen isn't so sure about that part either. He feels whole and himself when he's with Claire, because Claire has seen what he's seen and Claire is red sparks and gun metal and silk and pink lips and Owen cannot help but be a ten around her.
Somewhere in the mess of his car, his phone is buzzing. Text, not a call. Owen hadn't used a cell phone in three years before being back in the states, so sometimes he forgets it exists. Leaves it in weird places in the house for Claire to find later when the noise of it is driving her crazy -- The medicine cabinet, Owen. Really? -- but he finally gets at it and feels the vise in his chest unclamp.
claire: hi
Thumbs shake, lungs fill with air, expel carbon dioxide into the cramped space of his fuel efficient little blue monster.
owen: hi
That's probably all she can manage, busy or not. She prefers looking at him and Owen prefers talking. Open, moving mouths mean beating hearts mean living mean love mean --
A surprise.
claire: thinking about pulling the fire alarm
owen: i'm so proud
claire: i love you can you please buy coffee today
owen: i love you and i can
He puts the phone down and closes his eyes. Work. He has to go to work. He has to keep driving. Coffee on the way home, he can do that. He can do all of those things. He looks at his phone one more time --
claire: thanks partner
And it sparks something alive in him, gives him the push to rinse his mouth and spit into the parking lot and put the car in drive and go. One minute at a time, he thinks, he can do this.
two.
"Mr. Grady, do you feel like you could have done more--"
"Owen, talk to us about the raptors! Where--"
"Have you read what Dr. Grant thinks--"
Owen shoulders through the handful of reporters who have figured out where he works, abandoning the zoo interns at their post while he makes his way to that God forsaken fucking Prius piece of --
Behind the security of the door, car locked and engine running, Owen wants to die.
Not die. He won't tell his shrink that because she'll extrapolate and he already thinks she's going to write a book about him, once she talks him into signing the waiver or something, but okay, yeah, he kind of wants to become close to nothing in the hot space of his car. Less than nothing. Exactly nothing. What is exactly nothing? He should text Gray, ask him what nothing means, if it has a value or a place and how easy would it be to obtain that value or go to that place.
Claire would be angry. Claire would be upset that he's thinking this, even though she would pace and tell him she understands (mostly) and loves him (completely), and wants the best for him (always). But she would get that look, the one he gets when he talks about the island and how he wishes the jungle would have consumed him because it made him. He hates the dead eyes of the kids he works with, the faces of the other keepers he sits next to at lunch. They aren't Blue. Beautiful Blue, who looked at him one last time and became solitary. More than nothing. Who battled hell itself and was more.
Blue would never want to be nothing, but Blue is a wild animal and the jungle consumed her like Owen wanted for himself --
This car could consume him. How strange is it that it's all he wants? To be swallowed and made into dust? God, if Claire -- no. No, stop. The panic isn't coming, meaning he's handling things at about a five right now, but the image of Claire leaving, of Claire getting sick of his shit, of Claire telling him she just can't watch him lose his shit in the grocery store again, even though literally nothing she's ever said or done tells him she's planning on saying or doing any of that. But Owen can picture it, so clearly, just like he can see the exact moment Blue and the girls turned on him, the moment when he thought Barry was dead, the moment when Claire stepped into his space and told him not to go, to stay with her, to make her apartment home.
The reporters have tapered off, so Owen gets out of his car, for some reason. The interns are standing awkwardly at the edge of the parking lot. Owen bends down so they can't see him take a few deep breaths, straightens up, and marches back into the zoo, because he's got a fucking job to do.
"Sir?"
"We're good," Owen says, smiling at one of the girls. "Really."
"Those people--"
"They'll forget about it." Owen puts a hand on her shoulder. "Really," he says, more for himself than her and the others. "Come on, we've got shit to do. Sorry your time got wasted."
One of the boys pipes up, "It's cool! I told someone to fuck off."
"Don't say that word." Owen looks over his shoulder, though, and grins. "Thanks."
"Any time, sir."
three.
He doesn't mind watching Zach and Gray for the long weekend while their mom and Claire go on a sister trip, but the bickering is slowly driving him insane. Owen's an only child with dead parents. The family thing, the one you're born with -- it doesn't come naturally to him.
"Zach, stop being a jerk!"
"Shut up, you aren't even watching."
"I don't want to watch this, it's stupid."
"You're not--"
Owen turns off the TV and snags the remote. "Okay. No one's watching anything. The end. It's midnight. You're done."
"Dude."
"Don't dude me, okay?" He pinches the bridge of his nose. The migraines are bad. They come and go and they didn't start until two months after they got back, but there's one starting to swell up and if someone says just the wrong thing at just the wrong octave, he'll scream. Or vomit. Or both.
"Owen?"
"What?"
Gray leans forward and puts a hand on his elbow. "Are you okay?"
Arms down by his side. Straighten up. They're kids, they're kids, they --
"Yeah. I'm good."
Zach's snort says he doesn't believe it for a second, but the boys give in and filter back to the guest room while Owen sits and stares at the ceiling from the couch. He misses Claire. Painfully. The idea of sleeping without her is daunting, overwhelming, makes him twitch and sink into the cushions. Owen closes his eyes, sucks in a breath and wonders if he should call her, but -- no. No, she called already and said goodnight. He's not doing this, not now. He stands, paces. Can't have a beer, not if he's going to take something for his head. The pain rolls through him and suddenly he's sick in the sink. He hates the feeling, the way he spasms and can't control his muscles or his gut. It aches in the morning, whatever this thing inside him is.
"Owen?"
God dammit. "Hey, Gray." He wipes his mouth and rinses the sink. "You good?" Back still to the kid. Like nothing's wrong, like nothing's happening.
Gray's hand stretches up, rests on his shoulder. "Are you sick? Mom says you're seeing a shrink and you take medication."
"Dude." Zach comes into the kitchen, pulling his brother away. "You can't just say that."
Owen leans back against the counter, finally turning to face them. The bickering is going to start again, so he just says, loudly, "Your mom's right."
"Mom says you've got, like, PTSD. Or something." Owen nods. "She's worried about Aunt Claire."
"Gray."
Owen sighs. Karen's a good mom and a good sister. He likes her and she's told him a hundred times she's glad he's okay and glad he's there and glad he's helping her sister -- but yeah, alright, Owen is fucked up and sometimes (read: most of the time) Claire does a better job at handling her stress and her other shit while Owen just flails around making play at being an adult.
Used to be he had to figured it out. Back when he knew what he could and couldn't control, when the building blocks of his life were steadily and readily in place.
Used to be.
"Aunt Claire is fine."
"Mom's worried you're gonna hurt her."
That. That there. That thing. Those words. The look on this kid's face -- it takes the wind out of him, a suckerpunch to the gut. Bile rises up in his throat again, and maybe the pain will just take root and never go away.
"You're not though," Gray says. It isn't a question. "You love Aunt Claire."
"I do." Zach makes a noise.
Gray nods. "You're stronger than that."
"She's stronger."
"That's okay. It just means you're good for each other."
Owen smiles, feels so tired now. "You're a smart kid." He puts a hand on Gray's shoulder and looks between the boys. "Now go to bed."
The boys shuffle off and Owen takes half of the pill his shrink prescribed him before changing and crawling into bed. And it is weird, sleeping without Claire. The room smells like her. Or them. Together. Two of them. Something like that. It's just a weekend. It's just a few days without her.
Owen breathes. The ebb and flow of the pain starts to settle, and finally, he can sleep.
four.
"But you're okay out there?"
"I'm good."
"If you need me for anything--"
"Claire." Owen shifts the phone to his other ear, flips a pancake in the skillet. "I'm a grown-ass man. I can spend a weekend alone in my own house." A lie.
She sighs, and he can see her huff and see her tug on the end of her hair and do that thing where she pushes her shoe on and off her heel without ever taking it off. "Fine."
"I love you. Go do work, or something."
"I'll call you," she says. Then: "I love you, too. Get some rest this weekend."
"Yes, ma'am."
When he puts the phone down, Owen suddenly feels the overwhelming loneliness of the situation he's in. This isn't like the weekend he spent with the boys. There's no distant rumble of arguing brothers or tossing coins over pizza toppings or playing Fallout until two in the morning. He could do most of that stuff -- except for the bickering, he definitely should not start arguing with himself -- but being alone is taxing. It sucks everything out of him. It's hard to pretend to have your shit together when you're the only one you have to pretend for. No one else watching. He could go into the zoo, but the guy who does Owen's job on Saturdays hates it when he shows up to do work on the side.
It isn't the day part that has him worried. He can find things to do with himself while Claire is away, he doesn't need her to be with him every waking moment. He missed her when the boys were there because he was keenly aware of how much of a family they were becoming, and how much he needed her to keep it that way. Out here alone, he misses her, but he's surviving. He does play Fallout until two in the morning, and he does order himself a pizza -- he does not stage a coin toss with himself, he does not and will not -- but going to bed is. Different.
Different when there's no one. When he knows he will wake up and there will still be no one. He won't take sleeping pills, he doesn't need them, but he can't stay up all weekend. He can't go two days without sleeping, he absolutely can't. So he pushes himself, closes his eyes, and embraces the fact that it's just him and he will wake up and it will still be just him and that's definitely okay. It's really just fine.
Owen wakes up and he's choking on a scream. He wakes up and he is sobbing. He wakes up and the stain of gasoline is still on his clothes and he is watching his girls die protecting him and he is alive and he wishes he wasn't --
He chokes on her name, lays back, and starts to breathe.
He won't call her. He won't. He won't. He will do this. He will sleep in their bed alone and he will get up and do it all over again, he will, he --
The sun comes up, and Owen wakes with a start, but not a scream. The first night is done, he's okay and alive and not suffocating under his own pillow, which seemed like a good idea when he first thought about it.
The second night is easier. He wakes up more often, but the first time it's that pack of feral cats living behind their building, knocking over everything in sight. Then it's the dogs, then it's the car backfiring, then it's the sound of a truck that makes him think of Delta when she wanted a snack all to herself. It's all those things, and not the mind numbing fear of being lost between teeth that wakes him up.
So when Claire comes home, and he looks for all the world like he hasn't slept, he's okay with the lecture and okay with the backrub that turns into her in his lap, skirt up and mouth open -- because he's asleep, after, or close to it, and he can feel her fingers in his hair and the soft words on her mouth reminding him that he's okay, he's fine, he's all hers and she'll keep him safe.
five.
This was all his shrink's idea. And Claire's, maybe. Claire agreed. Claire drove with him here, the two hour trip to where Alan Grant is guest lecturing for the spring. Claire hates Berkeley, but she smiles and they have dinner and no one bothers them. Months later and everyone is already bored. Owen is relieved. Beyond relieved. He could cry. He won't, but he could.
Claire doesn't go with him to sit in on Grant's lecture, but he wishes she had. "I think I'm done with dinosaurs, Owen." She pressed a kiss to his temple and said she was meeting with a friend and maybe getting a massage. Owen walked to campus alone this morning, but he's okay with doing this part on his own. He's missed these animals. More than he can articulate without sounding kind of insane.
When Grant is done lecturing about acute sensory receptors, the students filter out, but Owen stays in his seat in the back, watching Grant gather his things. He's older, now. But he looks the same in the pictures Owen's seen. Without looking behind him, Grant calls out, "We'll have lunch in my office, Mr. Grady," and begins erasing the white board.
Owen finally makes his way to the front of the lecture hall, leaning against the podium. "Still allergic to the internet, huh?"
"I have earned the right to do things the way I want to, I think." Grant turns and gives him a smile, winding the strap of his bag around his shoulder. "Please, after you. Down the hall and third on your right, once you get out there. I'll get us a pizza."
It's not the last place he ever thought he'd be, but having pizza with Alan Grant isn't up there on things Owen thought he'd be doing any time soon. Grant, for his part, leads the conversation, fills in the gaps of silence and asks Owen small, unimportant things. How was the drive? Weather good? You should try that taco place by the beach, it's alright. Owen does his due diligence and answers as best he can, but he can't make himself eat, and all he can think about is what they aren't talking about, what they can't seem to say --
And then. And then -- he sees it. Tucked in the corner, he knows it's just a cast replica, something Grant had made for himself and it surprises him, really, that he did.
"Is that a raptor skull?" he asks, just because he has to.
"Fake," Grant says, turning and lifting it up. "I dug up the original ages ago. Best specimen I've seen to date. She stays back there." Grant looks at the thing like he's remembering. Owen knows he must be. "Sometimes, you know, it's very easy--"
"To know what she really looks like," Owen murmurs. He reaches out, fingers brushing the place where Blue's snout would be, other hand coming up to line her jaw, and he can see her so clearly, can picture her eyes in complete and living color, here in the muted, dusty silence of Grant's office. He hears this noise, like someone's choking, maybe crying, and he realizes it's him and he realizes he's crying in front of Alan Grant and that's really just the icing on the cake of all this. Fuck.
"They told me you could control them."
"I couldn't."
"I assumed as much."
"It was just...just power. Give and take. Respect. They knew me." He looks up. "That was it."
"You miss them."
"I--" Owen swallows down what he wants to say, and instead: "Family is what it is."
"Interesting choice for a family, don't you think?" Owen shrugs, pulls his hands back. Grant sets the skull back in its place and covers it with a towel.
"Thanks," Owen finally says.
Grant nods, leaning back in his chair. "It'll get easier, you know."
"When?"
"After a while. You won't hear it when you sleep so much. Sometimes you'll smell the place--" Peat and dirt and wet rock and moss and blood. "--and you can hear it. I'd avoid those sounds of nature CD's."
"My girlfriend's sister gave me one for my birthday."
"She probably meant well."
"She did."
"Your girlfriend, she--"
Owen shifts in his seat. "We're fine. She's--" Stronger than me, better than me, doing better than I ever could. "We're there for each other."
"That matters," Grant says, pressing forward. "It does."
Owen nods. "Good to know."
"You'll never be able to explain what happened to you," Grant says quietly. "But you have her. You should hold onto her, you know."
Owen laughs, leaning forward and feeling like, now, for the first time since they met, he has the upper hand. "Believe me, doc. I'm not letting go."
claire.
"Breathe," she says. She puts her hands on either side of his face, forces him to look at her. "I love you. Breathe."
"I can't--" Wheezing, his chest tight, panic gripping at him for the first time in a long time. He doesn't know why, can't think of the trigger in this moment. But he's suffocating, feels like he's dying in her arms and okay, that's trite, but he'd like to do that if he's going to. Which he isn't, but still. The thought that counts, or something. He wants to say her name, but the sounds coming out of his mouth are alien to him. Rasping notes like a broken instrument. Strings caught in his throat. Wire in his lungs, he burns with the need to tell her what he feels --
"Owen." One. Two. Three. Four. "Eyes on me. Please, don't look away. Don't lose me, not right now."
What started this? The haze clears, he is starting to remember. They are home, thankfully, he's not out so the whole world can see how good she is at setting him straight. What she does and how she does it are for him. It's just for him. For them. Because sometimes she's right there, right along the edge of panic and Owen brings her back, the way they learned together. But right now, she's talking, she's got the voice that drags him back and he comes down from wherever he's been and leans forward, capturing her lips in his own.
The news story, he remembers. Seeing the park and seeing some video some asshole took with their phone -- people lifted off the ground, people running, terrified.
"Hey." She pulls back, her turn to be breathless, and smiles at him. "Hey, I'm here. You're doing really good, you know that don't you?"
"It's getting better," he murmurs, echoing Grant. He's getting better. She's getting better. Collectively, they are all getting better. Owen is grateful for her, for Claire, his Claire, sitting there on the edge of the bed, whispering, Owen, my Owen, I've got you, you're safe --
"You need a shower," she announces. "I'll get one with you."
"That's like a backhanded compliment," he manages, standing and finally catching his breath. "But alright." Claire's already out of her clothes, heading into the bathroom to turn on the water. "Yeah, I said alright," he mutters, and she laughs.
It is getting better, Grant wasn't wrong. And Owen doesn't want to say practice makes perfect, because he doesn't want to have to explain all the solitary moments where he couldn't function, couldn't breathe. His therapist told him not the be ashamed, and Owen had to tell her then that he wasn't, that his upset about losing control like that in public was just exactly that. He didn't care that everyone watched. What upset him was it came without permission. What upsets him still is that it comes without permission, like it deserves that spot at the table.
And even though he's handling it. Even though he's managing things on his own end just fine --
It helps. Helps to have her right there, in his arms, whether he's the one who needs holding or it's her. He can be there. She can be there. And yeah, okay, he's not suffocating on the highway. Better to be what he is now than to think he could have ever done this alone.
It's one thing he's happy to have just gone after. To have pulled her to him during and after and telling her he had nowhere to go, that what she'd given him was all he had, now. He's glad he did it. They did it. The feeling was and is pretty damn mutual at this point, and their shared road through this goes both ways.
She calls him her partner, and there is something about that word that speaks volumes about what they have. Something that boyfriend can't articulate. That doesn't romanticize it the way lover would. His partner. His building block. His keystone.
Hands on her shoulders, hot water caught between them, Owen breathes and is at peace like he can only be when he's right here.