RESCUE FLARES

The aforementioned rest of their lives, after Claire and Owen get together in the aftermath. Sequel to Distress Flare. Considerably less smutty, a whole lot fluffier, and with a little angst because I can't resist. In two parts, because apparently I have a lot to say.

I was so impressed with the feedback to Distress Flare I couldn't resist giving Jurassic World/Clawen another crack, a great deal sooner than anticipated.

Previously…

"Where are we?" he whispers, moving his fingers in circles on her skin, "Where did we end up?"

And when she replies, it's pretty much the only thing left that still makes sense.

"The first day of the rest of our lives."

Part I

The first day of the rest of their lives is somewhere as close to hell as two people who've faced the ultimate predator can get. Before they even make it onto the ground floor of the hotel, they're ambushed.

It happens in the elevator. They get into it, after agreeing to go down and see what's on offer for breakfast, Owen decidedly unromantically announcing he needs something to eat after 'a night like that'. The moment before the doors slide closed, someone (a perfectly innocent looking young woman) rushes in. There are a few seconds of silence once the doors have closed, and for a minute Claire thinks they've been lucky, this woman hasn't been watching the news, or she somehow doesn't recognise them. A few seconds, and then the woman's fingers press the emergency stop button, and she turns to them, with eyes suddenly of a predator.

"How does it feel to be responsible for the deaths of so many people, Ms Dearing?"

She's got a little notepad and a pen in her hand, and she's darting her eyes between the two of them. She knows exactly who they both are, and she has them cornered.

Claire freezes. Which is ridiculous, because her whole time at this job, she's dealt with so many unwanted reporters, appropriately quelling their questions before they've hardly started asking. But never like this. Never with words almost straight out of her nightmares. She freezes.

She feels a hand against the small of her back, a large, rough, suddenly so familiar hand, and she hears Owen's voice whilst still frozen.

"No comment." There's ice in his tone, and something of a fight. It comforts her that it's there, there needs to be someone with all the battle in them when she's falling short.

The girl with the notepad's too gutsy for her own good. She doesn't even glance at Owen.

"How does it feel to have survived when so many didn't? What are your plans for acknowledging that the whole Jurassic World problem stems from a number of poorly made decisions by members of management staff in the park? When will there-"

"No. Comment." Owen says through gritted teeth, and reaches past the girl suddenly to release the emergency stop button. There's something of a threat in his tone, and it's as if the girl who knows exactly who they are suddenly remembers eleven years in the Navy followed by being the alpha to a group of dinosaurs. She flinches as he moves towards her, and she doesn't say another word, hurrying out of the elevator when they reach the ground floor.

As the elevator doors slide back closed and she hasn't moved, Owen manages to make eye contact with Claire, seemingly breaking her out of her reverie.

"You want to go back up and get room service?"

She manages a nod, and Owen presses the button of the top floor again, taking a deep breath.

His hand comes back to rest on the small of her back.

They hardly leave the room, the next few days. Shortly after breakfast, Karen arrives, running hands absent-mindedly through tousled hair, barely raising her eyebrows at Owen in the room with her sister.

"How were the boys overnight?" he asks, with something of an age-old understanding in his tone that suddenly makes Claire think eleven years in the military, and realise although there's so much about Owen Grady she doesn't know, she wants to know and try to understand all of it.

"Not too bad, given everything." Karen sounds ineffably tired. "I don't know that they slept, though. They insisted on taking the bedroom together – they haven't wanted to sleep in the same room since Gray was about five… and they shut the door… I wouldn't sleep, if I was them."

Owen doesn't answer that, just says, "The press are everywhere. You should keep them out of the public eye for a while, until it's all died down."

Until it's all died down. Like it's some unexpected celebrity romance, and something else better will crop up soon enough. Like it's not some hideous reciprocal to the Jurassic Park scandal of nearly twenty years ago.

But Karen nods, anyway. She looks at her sister for the first time.

"How you holding up, Claire?"

Claire shakes her head, suddenly looking bitter. "Don't be nice to me. I don't deserve it."

Karen looks as if she's about to start to say something, and then looks slightly desperately to Owen, something of a pleading glance in her eyes.

"We're doing alright." Owen breathes, and Claire bristles, and for a moment he thinks he's thrown it all away, he thinks he's taken one step too far, too soon, but then she takes a deep breath.

Moments later, he feels her cold hand in his.

That night, he looks as if he's planning on settling on the hotel room couch, and she laughs. He looks up, abruptly, from where he was laying his blanket. It's such an alien sound he wasn't expecting.

There's a tiny smile on her lips, but there's that disapproving look behind her eyes, slightly reminiscent of when he wore board shorts.

"We're really going to have this conversation?" she asks, frowning slightly.

For all his charm, for all his confidence, Owen Grady starts bumbling. "I… I didn't want to assume anything… I… last night… we'd a had a difficult day and-"

That gives him another laugh, because 'a difficult day' is the biggest understatement of the century, and she steps towards him, suddenly looking at her feet, and if he wasn't certain Claire Dearing did not blush, he'd be certain there was a pink tinge to her cheeks. She looks up at him, and the honesty in her eyes takes his breath away, if only for a moment.

"I thought we were sticking together. For survival." She breathes, and she looks so vulnerable, and she's asking him so much without asking him anything at all. He leans forward and kisses her.

It's gentle, it's nothing like either straight after the shooting of a pteranodon or the night before, and she loops her arms around his neck, the smile not leaving her lips. He considers that a victory – if she's smiling, after everything, he must be doing something right.

"Come to bed." She breathes, and he doesn't need asking twice.

It's a lot slower, that night, a lot gentler. He presses light gentle kisses against every inch of her he can get his mouth on, and she finds herself almost sobbing into his shoulder as he finally enters her, out of finality, desperation and something of utter hopelessness. Her hips buck weakly towards him, the exhaustion beginning to show, but she holds and lets him push forward, tantalisingly slowly, and despite not thinking she has it in her, not tonight, he has her screaming.

He lets her finish and whimper slightly against his skin before he comes crashing down around her, and then they lay, breathless, in one another's arms.

He goes to start to roll back to his side of the bed, but she catches his arm.

"Hold me." She breathes, and he pulls her against him and buries his face in her hair.

They sleep like that, however fitfully.

They live on slightly mediocre room service and late night visits to a deserted hotel bar for the next week or so. One attempt to go outside – Claire attempted to go a few doors down to buy some clothes from a local store – resulted in press hounding her from a few feet outside the hotel lobby. She rushed back into the cheap and cheerful hotel they were staying in, and sent Owen for some clothes for both of them the following day. Despite everything, he was still more capable of going incognito.

She didn't even comment on his bland, safe choices of black and grey pants and shirts – that echoes change more than he'll ever know.

So they survive in near enough solitary confinement, occasionally mixing with Karen, Scott and the boys. Zach and Gray have become inconceivably closer since the event; there's nothing like coming face to face with a deadly predator to bring out the protective streak in an older brother. They spend a lot of time with Claire and Owen, and she thinks Zach and Owen have written their own seemingly wordless language – they hardly talk, but Owen seems to be the only person other than Gray he's interested in spending any time around. He seems to have less time for his parents, and particularly their still-existent quarrels, than he did when he was a grumpy, rebellious teenager – because one of the biggest changes she's noticed since 'the incident' is how suddenly Zach seemed to have grown up.

It almost breaks her heart – she never saw him enough in his childhood, and she took it away from him, however indirectly.

A week and a half down the line, a week and a half since, Karen and Scott decide they can agree on one thing – they're taking Zach and Gray home. Claire doesn't have that option – she's been told, in no fewer words, that she needs to stay close and easy access awaiting the start of the legal case by the Masrani Global officials and lawyers.

But she decides that maybe she should look and see if there is a suite at a nicer hotel. Owen gets out of the shower and finds her flicking through two hotel brochures, the only hotels with any available space in a Costa Rican town still packed with worried relatives, grieving relatives and close survivors.

"Where we going, then?" he laughs, rubbing his head absent-mindedly with a towel.

She looks up at him, "Oh you don't have to-"

His eyes flash. "I'll pay, Claire. Raptor trainer left me with quite a decent bank account, once I can get my hands on it…"

She shakes her head, looking slightly outraged. "No, it's not that! I just meant… people are getting away now, and I'll be alright on my own, don't feel you need to look after me… you don't really have anything holding you here."

Somewhat in shock, he sinks onto the edge of the bed. When he speaks, he doesn't raise his voice, but there's an anger in his tone she's never heard before.

"I don't really have anything holding me here?" he spits, and looks away from her. "What have I been, then, something warming the other side of the bed whilst you were stuck in this hotel?"

She bites her lip, realising how she sounded. "I didn't mean… I just thought-"

"Well you thought wrong, Claire." There's still acid in his tone. "I don't think you need me here. You're a big girl, you're perfectly capable of looking after yourself. I… I was hoping you wanted me here."

"I do."

He scoffs. "It doesn't sound like it."

She sighs, and spins on the chair to face him, her toes almost touching his. "I'm sorry. I just meant… I don't want to hold you here, if you wanted to escape for a while… I'd love to get away, if I could…"

He turns his eyes back to hers, and he reaches out, takes her hand.

"I want you to want to hold me here. I want you to understand… you're the only thing holding me anywhere, now. I might need you to hold me here." His voice is quiet, so much behind his eyes. She strokes a finger over his hand.

"I want you here, then." She gives him a little smile. "For survival, right?"

So it looks like this turned into two parts… Expect the other half in a few days! Hope you've enjoyed, would love to hear what you think!