A/N: I just can't stop! What can I say, I love it when the rough-and-tumble guy gets the prim-and-proper girl. This is so much sugary fluff that you could probably use it to make marshmallows, and a lot of introspection on Owen's part. Rated for semi-sexual themes and language; in my head Owen's inner monologue is a total pottymouth. Disclaimer: I don't own Jurassic World, I just have a ClairexOwen obsession. Partially inspired by the song Bewitched. I also don't own the rights to the song, but I love Sinatra.

Bewitched

Owen sat by himself at the bar, listening to the rain pour outside the propped-open door. He swirled his glass of whiskey and took a long sip. If he'd still been a smoker her would have lit up a cigarette, but he had given up smoking during his time in the Navy. Good smokes were about as hard to come by as good alcohol was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, especially in the middle of the freakin' ocean, so he'd quit cold turkey. It had been the most excruciating four months of his life, until the nicotine fits finally wore off. Since then he'd only slipped up once, and he was considering bumming a smoke from the guy down the bar and slipping up again, if only said guy wasn't smoking the cheapest Camels money could buy. Even Owen Grady had standards.

Not that he ever held himself to his standards in any way that mattered. Owen took another long sip and placed the empty glass on the bar. The bartender turned around from reorganizing his stock of vodka.

"'Nother one, Owen?" He asked, leaning on the bar.

"Make it a double this time."

"Man, if you're drinking to forget, you know you gotta pay up front," the bartender japed, picking up a bottle of Tennessee whiskey and pouring Owen's drink. Owen smiled half-heartedly.

"It's not like that, Mike. There's this girl…" Owen and Mike had known each other before Owen's Navy days. Back when he was younger, he'd haunted this bar, back before he went to Tunisia and Portugal and half the damn globe, and before he'd left to live on Isla Nublar. Back when there were still stories of Isla Sorna to be told that no one had heard yet; back when a dinosaur theme park with actual live dinosaurs was the fevered dream of the madman. The stories of the original park on Isla Nublar had since died down, and new stories had arisen thanks to the extensive media coverage and the class-action lawsuits, along with the government inquest. The news was turned to coverage of the latest media circus that was one of the Congressional hearings on Jurassic World, and Owen did his best not to pay it any attention. It helped that the volume was set on mute and Mike didn't let anyone bother him about having worked for InGen. He was just a behavioral researcher, and he had just been doing his job.

Mike's guffaw brought Owen back to reality. "You? Woman problems? What'd she do, laugh at your dick?" Mike laughed heartily. Owen's glare made his throw his hands up defensively.

In fact, the girl in question hadn't laughed at it at all. She'd screamed because of it and damn near woke every neighbor in the vicinity. But that wasn't his problem. No one knew Owen Grady as a one-woman man. He'd once shown up at this very bar for a week straight with a different woman on his arm each night. Seven women in seven days, or had it been more than that?

Anyway, Long-term relationships weren't his thing. Owen Grady lived for the here and now, moment by moment, and sometimes moment by moment meant taking two girls at once back to his apartment. The Navy may have cured him of what could have become rampant alcoholism and his dependence on nicotine to stay calm, but there was only so much basic training could do to rid him of his playboy mentality. Even on Isla Nublar he'd gained a reputation among the staff, male and female alike, for being a womanizer. He'd propositioned most and been propositioned by some, and he was hard pressed to think of a single hotdog stand or attraction in the park where he hadn't had sex with someone.

"Nah, this one's different." Owen took a long gulp of his whiskey, draining almost all of the alcohol before he set the glass back on the bar. "Can I bum a smoke?" Mike pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and passed one to Owen, along with his lighter.

"Man, I haven't seen you this torn up since that stripper. What was her name? Ginger, Sparkle…" Mike laughed.

"Candy," Owen finished as he lit the cigarette, grinning ruefully. "I haven't fallen off the wagon like this in three years." He took a long drag on the cigarette and passed the lighter back to Mike. "With the smokes, I mean." He rattled the ice in his glass. "'Nother double. Come on, man, I'm dry over here." Mike laughed and poured Owen another drink.

"So what's this girl done that's got you in such a panic?" Owen knocked the ashes off the tip of his cigarette into an ash tray Mike had pulled out from beneath the bar. He took another drag and stared thoughtfully up at the TV. There, on the screen, was Claire Dearing, the woman responsible for his current state, pushing her way through a crowd of reporters demanding comments on the hearing. She climbed into a taxi without a word and the camera panned after it as it sped off, no doubt headed back to her apartment. Owen hoped his space-out had gone unnoticed, but when he looked back down at Mike, the bartender was waggling his eyebrows at him, a stupid smile plastered on his face.

"What're you smiling about?" Owen did drain the entire glass in one gulp this time.

"That's her, isn't it?" He grinned, reaching over to pat Owen on the shoulder when he didn't answer right away. "Man, she's gorgeous."

"You don't know the half of it." Owen shook his glass again and Mike put the bottle of whiskey on the bar.

"Pour yourself. Not like you haven't drunk a quarter of the bottle already. Damn, man, if that's the girl you're worked up about, I see your problem." Owen's head snapped up as he stubbed the tail end of his cigarette out in the ash tray. The look in his eyes was absolutely dangerous.

"What do you mean?" Mike threw his hands up defensively for the second time that hour.

"I mean, she's a bombshell. Where'd you ever get involved with a classy lady like her?" Owen huffed and poured himself another drink.

"I worked with her." He slammed back what was probably his fifth or sixth glass of whiskey; he'd lost count at that point. "On Isla Nublar." He felt everything in the bar come to a grinding halt, and there were whispers from the patrons at the other end of the bar. Mike quickly sent them down another round of beers and pulled up the barstool he kept behind the bar for himself. He poured himself a single from the same bottle Owen was in the process of killing.

"And?" He took a small sip. Mike technically owned the bar now, it was his prerogative if he wanted to drink his own stock.

"And? And what? What do you want me to say?"

"And why is she so different from the others?"

It was a question Owen had no trouble answering, usually. Claire was intelligent and worldly and beautiful. She was tough as nails, she ran in heels, she handled a shotgun like no woman he'd ever seen. She wasn't afraid of the dinosaurs that now ran rampant in the park she used to manage. She hadn't been afraid—not that she'd shown, anyway—when she led the T-rex to fight that mutant dino-monster with only a road flare to protect herself.

She was also incredibly vulnerable right now. Claire had received summons after summons for inquest after hearing after inquest. It had taken a month before he could see her again and take her out to dinner, and that night he'd shown her exactly how she made him feel. At first, he thought Claire was going to be okay, that she'd trudge her way through the inquests, but she was cracking. It had been three months since that second first date, four since everything on Isla Nublar had gone to absolute shit. Claire had gotten mired up in the class action suit filed by the families of the victims of the dinosaur attacks, and even when she wasn't required to give testimony, she followed the case in the news. Photos of mutilated corpses made their way to her mailbox by way of disgruntled ex-employees and angry family members who thought all InGen and Masrani Global personnel, including her, needed to be put on trial for murder. He'd fought and fought for her to get a PO box for her mail, and finally she'd complied. He had the key, and once a week he picked up Claire's mail for her, throwing out anything with a handwritten address that wasn't from her sister or her nephews. His heart had skipped a few beats when the pickup included her Victoria's Secret catalogue one day, and he went through and circled pieces of particular interest before giving it to her that night. She had gotten a good laugh and he'd gotten laid, so it had all worked out. He smiled to himself at that particular memory, heat rising in his stomach.

"She saved my life, man," Owen finally said after a long pause. "Some sort of t-rex-pteradactyl hybrid got loose, and it was trying to eat off my face. Claire shot it. She didn't run, she shot it, and she saved my life." Owen was decently drunk now, and the memory of that day on Isla Nublar almost stung. Claire had saved his life, and he'd never forget it. He used it multiple times as justification to take her out for dinner at fancy restaurants and buy her expensive presents. He had almost beamed with pride when he caught a glimpse of a necklace he'd given her flashing around her throat as she got in her taxi on TV moments ago. He'd gotten a job as a behavioral researcher working with boring old regular reptiles, anyway, so he could afford to spoil his new girlfriend. His girlfriend…the very idea sent a shiver down Owen's spine, and the heat in the pit of his stomach intensified. He'd never thought of himself as a man to have a steady girlfriend, but for the last four months he'd only had eyes for Claire. Not that he totally failed to notice other women, mind you, but they just couldn't hold a candle to her beauty, her charm, her wit. He'd deleted at least a hundred phone numbers that he saved primarily for booty calls, and had reeeally offended a few more when he replied to text messages with "who is this and how did you get this number?"

"So what's the problem?"

What was the problem? The problem was that Claire deserved so much more than an ex-military former man-whore like himself. She needed an intellectual equal who could debate with her. Not that he couldn't debate with her, but they usually debated about what they were going to watch on Netflix or who was going to buy the last round of shots before they went back to one or another's apartment. She was no match for him in the field of animal behavioral sciences, he knew, just as he was no match for her in terms of business management. She was entirely too good for him, but she texted him every night that they didn't spend together until she fell asleep and texted him as soon as she woke up to get ready for work at her new job on the board of directors for some massive multi-million-dollar investment firm or other; he was honestly embarrassed that he couldn't recall which one. She continued to go out with him on dates and for drinks, and she'd even gone clubbing at his insistence and he found out just how well she could dance. She needed someone just as passionate as she was, and he didn't fit the bill.

"She's entirely too good for me. You said it yourself. What's a woman like that doing with a man like me?" Owen put his head down on the bar and his phone buzzed in his vest pocket. He pulled it out quickly, unsurprised that it was a text message from Claire. He was honestly surprised it had taken her this long to respond.

At your place? I had a really bad day. Wanna snuggle and watch a movie or three.

Owen texted her back and put the phone on the bar.

"That from her?" Mike asked knowingly. Owen nodded, and Mike took the bottle of whiskey and dropped a pile of cracker packets in front of Owen. "Chances are she's wondering what a guy like you sees in a girl like her." Owen fumbled with one of the cracker packets, wondering where the bartender had finally pulled that bit of wisdom from.

"She's beautiful, and smart, and passionate, and incredible." He tore open the crackers and ate them. "She needs someone who will settle down with her, not a lowlife womanizer like me." Mike slapped a hand on the bar, gaining Owen's attention.

"Dude, regardless of what she sees in you, she keeps coming back. And it sounds like she's trying to call you." Owen's phone was skittering across the bar, Claire's beaming face smiling from her caller ID picture. "Get your ass out of here and get back to your woman, Grady." Owen nodded and smiled, answering his phone and settling up his tab.

"Yeah, I'll be there in a few minutes. Yeah, just having a drink or two…no, not driving, don't have a car, 'member? Okay…see you in a few." He stepped away from the bar, smiling like a madman. "…I love you too."

I love you. He hung up the phone, her words swirling around his head. He felt like he was floating. I love you, I love you, I love you. He turned back to Mike, grinning like an idiot.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

"She said she loves me."

Hope you enjoyed! Reviews are like cookies, I only don't like them if they have raisins.