A/N: I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm writing a Twilight Fic. It's tiny, I swear, it's going to be short. But for some reason I was daydreaming about Quil and Claire the other day, and decided that their story needed a bit of attention. I'm working an absolutely dead-end job for the summer and can't wait for college to start again. So guess what I'm doing in my cubicle instead of nothing? This, and my original manuscript, which still needs a lot more work... Anyways, enjoy!
00000
Little Flower
00000
The memory begins with his eyes. I should know; I relive it every time I see him.
As close as I can determine, it's my first memory. I have just fallen—scraped a knee, banged an elbow, tripped on a root: the details are no longer important. And then he is there. He was always there.
He lifts me up, hands strong and firm around my four-year-old distended belly. Even now, I remember the heat seeping from his hands to my ribcage. It's a comforting, warm sort of heat, not burning or scary.
He lifts me easily, face and arms barely registering any strain. "What's the matter, little flower?" He asks. But I barely hear, because my thoughts are consumed by his eyes. They are large and warm and brown, so deep that already, at four, I feel an immense sense of vertigo. Everything seems to spin: possibly it is the abrupt change of situation, the smooth ride in his arms, perhaps it is the tumble itself, probably I am four and disoriented, and it is difficult to focus. But his eyes remain clear, that patient, penetrating brown that I can never excise from my memory.
They are filled with love.
00000
"Hey, Little Flower!" Even without the nickname, I would recognize his voice immediately. Quil is knocking on the front door.
I have begun to hate that nickname, as it signifies everything that isn't.
00000
Quil has been everything to me. A father, a brother, a cousin. He has always been there, from that first fall to more recent teenager catastrophes.
My sophomore year of highschool I was chasing Olivia, my younger sister around the house. (How far away that seems now, four years ago). She had stolen my favorite dress, and I was livid. Livid for Livvy, ironically, but as I chased her around the house screaming bloody murder, no lucid thought crossed my mind. I was going to exact a price in blood, preferably hers, although side injuries to myself were also a realistic possibility. I could always find a sympathetic ear in Quil, who would help me bandage my scratches, pat the bruises, and snicker sympathetically at the bite marks.
Livvy, naturally, headed for out parent's room, the only bedroom in the house that had a lock. She bolted up the slick, wooden stairs, and I followed full-tilt. It was only a matter of time that my rage-clouded mind miscalculated a step. I slipped and fell, cracking my head open on one of the stairs on my way down.
Hardly able to believe her good fortune, Livvy locked the door and chortled to herself, unaware of my accident. I was completely unconscious, so I remember none of the next bit. But somehow Quil was there, and I got to the hospital.
The next thing I remember, I'm waking up in a hospital bed with a staple in my skull and Quil looking at me with an intensity that I last remember seeing when I was four. His eyes are drinking me in, as he stares at me as though I've arisen from the dead.
I laugh weakly. "I was never going to die, you know." He doesn't ask what I'm referencing. Quil and I have never needed clarifications like that. We know each other too well for normal social boundaries. \
He stands, saying nothing, but his eyes still burn. He takes my hand, pressing it into his face as though he intends almost to eat it. Quil has never touched me like this before, and I have no idea how to react. We roughhouse and play, and he will frequently muss my hair. But he has never held my hand, or embraced me in any way. There is a wall between us that I don't understand, and this is the first time he has ever broken it.
The strange look on his eyes and the grim set of his face scare me, and I tremble.
He feels the tremor, even as he squeezes my hand a little too hard, the pressure almost crushing. "Oh, Claire," he breathes, and it is the first time he has ever called me by my given name. The words run over me, and I shiver again, although for a different reason.
We are silent, as there is nothing more to say. When he releases my hand and looks at me again, the strange set of his face is gone, and the mischievous glint has once more returned to his eyes. My parents and sister rush in, then, swarming me with tears, exclamations, and kisses. Quil stands in the background, watching, his eyes warm.
But that haunted look remains in my mind's eye. I itemize it, placing the memory along with many others of Quil.
It is a look that speaks of decades of love.
00000
"Little Flower?" Quil's voice, questioning, draws me back to the present. I am home for the summer, having finished two-year nursing school and ready to apply for jobs in Seattle.
"Porch!" I call. He knows where it is. Things are different between us now—things can never be as they were, and I find myself hoping that he will walk slowly.
I shift on the rough wood of the porch, feeling my dress stick to my skin. Forks is undergoing a summer heat wave, and everywhere is miserable. We don't have air conditioning; not that it would matter. There was a massive power outage all across town earlier this morning proabably due to overuse of air conditioners and fans, and the inside of the house is dark and warm.
The air outside is stubbornly refusing to cool with the setting sun, and as dusk settles, so does the thick layer of heat.
I am lying motionless in the thinnest summer dress I own. My parents are in Seattle with Livvy for a swim meet, lucky dogs, and I am left alone in the heat. The sweat beads on my skin, and with the sound of Quil's approaching footsteps I am drawn back in to the past.
000000
I left for nursing school of my own volition and suggestion. My parents wanted me to stay, go somewhere close to home. Instead, I went to Boston, visiting home only once in my two years away. I needed space.
I needed to get over Quil.
It all began early in my senior year of highschool. I was eighteen. The staples had long been removed from my head, and I had finally grown into my height. Although I will perhaps never be the definition of grace, I was functional and beautiful, and I finally knew it.
He had come over after school and tennis practice, and we were fooling around in the yard as usual. I had ignored any indications of changes in our relationship. Quil was such a familiar figure in my life, I still considered him as a brother or cousin-like figure. If I cherished a few memories where I made-believe his eyes held more than mere brotherly emotion, what of it? And if his face appeared in my dreams, they were, after all, beyond my control.
I still had my racket and he had pitched a couple balls at me in the yard. I, naturally, deliberately hit them all at him, and finally one landed, smacking him in the abdominals. He responded predictably, diving for my ankles with such speed that if I hadn't been anticipating exactly that response, and began to run right as the ball struck, I would have been a tumbling heap. Instead, I was sprinting to the left, and he missed, rolled, stood, and dove for me again.
He moved like lightning. I had managed to get about ten feet away from my original position and that in itself was a gigantic victory.
Quil hit my ankles and I started to go down, but as usual he somehow twisted as we fell, so that I landed almost softly, cushioned against him. When people were actually tackled they fell hard, heads smacking the ground. I always landed lightly as a feather, cradled almost delicately against Quil's chest.
It was a skill he had perfected as I had grown (though never near as tall or wide as him,) and I sometimes found myself irrationally wishing that he would stop treating my like a porcelain doll, and allow me to bang my head, or yell at me, or something.
I felt this tide of unfamiliar anger that day, and as we fell, jammed my elbow into his ribs. It bounced off, sore, but his nanosecond of surprise was enough for me to rip slightly out of his grip, falling partially on my shoulder.
"Ouch," I announced proudly, showing him the grass-stain on my T-shirt. "You're a brute."
Quil gave me a long, unwavering stare, and then burst into laughter. "That's a new one," he chuckled, and I jumped on him and started to pound him with my fists. "Help, oh, please, stop!" He cried mockingly, his only concession to my raining of blows to shield his face with his forearms.
"You," I muttered in between punches to his immoveable stomach and pectorals "are," he was still laughing "the worst," I finished, and he finally grabbed my hands.
"The worst?" He asked darkly, and suddenly we were flipped. I was pinned under him, and he was holding my arms lightly, but in a grip I knew would be impossible to break, should I attempt it.
"The worst," I affirmed, tilting my head to look into his eyes. A jolt went through me as I realized our situation. We had been like this a thousand times before, playing, wrestling, punching each other, and it was Quil's queue to begin tickling me until I begged for mercy. These thoughts passed through my mind in an instant, and then another sensation took over.
A curl of heat wound its way through my stomach, and I was abruptly aware of every point on our bodies where we were touching. His thighs clamed around me in a straddle, and he was lying above me, supporting himself on his elbows and he casually held my hands in a deadlock.
He was looking at me, with those unfathomable brown eyes. Did I see desire in them too, mirroring my own? Whatever the cause, we were both silent.
One of my hands broke from his unresisting one, and I brought it to his shoulder, sliding it along his neck in what could only be termed a caress. He froze under my touch, eyes darkening to reveal the rimming of gold around the pupil.
I sucked in a breath, but the tension between us was too thick to be broken, and my hand remained on his neck, directly over his carotid artery.
My eyes fluttered shut, and I pushed my chest and neck forwards, reclining my neck, and then, finally, brushed his lips with mine.
The kiss lasted barely longer than a second. I felt a vein pulse in his throat, just once, and then he was gone.
00000
Lying on the back deck, I felt the door slide open as his footsteps neared my position. I squeezed my eyes shut, against the heat and darkness, against the onslaught of memories that his nearness excited, against the pain and the anger and everything else besides.
But it was of no use, naturally, and I was thrown back into the past, into that painful moment, as rapidly as post-traumatic stress victims experienced flashbacks.
00000
I was lying, boneless and breathless, on the ground, alone. The cold I hadn't previously registered sunk in. The back of my T-shirt was damp.
Quil had gone, and there was no sign of him.
I didn't see him again for four months, and by then, I had already applied for nursing schools in California, determined to get over Quil Atera.
000000
"Claire?" I sit up at the sound of my name, still so unfamiliar coming from his mouth. I haven't seen him in two years.
He sucks in a breath, and I realize with chagrin that he looked exactly the same as always. Same soft black hair, same smooth brown skin, same bottomless chocolate eyes. In my more poetic days I used to compare Quil to an oak tree: broad, solid, dependable.
"Quil."
He comes and sits beside me, gracefully lowering himself into a cross-legged position. He is, of course, shirtless, and I hold my breath at his proximity. His presence excites the familiar mixture of longing and frustration, and I ache with the desire to lay my head against his shoulder like I would have when I was a child.
But children don't lie awake at night, sweating beyond what's merited by the temperature, dreaming about warm hands sliding over—
I cut off that line of thinking, but it was too late. The air crackles with heat and tension and something else besides, and I feel as if I were drowning, drowning in Quil.
"You're blushing," he comments.
"Am not," I retorts.
"Are too," he says, and grabs my chin. Warm hands turn my head, showing him both cheeks, as his piney, forest scent envelops me. "Are too, indeed."
I blush even more. "No I'm not," I snap. "I'm flushed, it's a million degrees out here."
"And in there," he says neutrally, nodding at the house.
I turn to look at him again. "Why would I be blushing, anyways?" I demand, the old hurt making my voice harsh.
He recoils as if I'd struck him. "No reason," he backpedals, but then looks closely at me, and I see that old-familiar mischief in his eyes. "Just, me being here shirtless and sweaty in this heat, so close to you—that wouldn't have anything to do with it, right?" He leans towards me a little bit, and I suppressed a gulp.
"Nope, nothing."
"And this," he edges forward some more, placing his hand on my calf. His voice deepened, and he flicks his eyes up towards mine, as the fateful word slides off his tongue like syrup. "Nervous?" He asks, and my heart begins to pound.
"Around you?" I choke out, determined to keep my dignity this time. It's been two years, and for God's sake, I am not a sex-starved animal, to melt in a puddle at Quil's feet. "Never."
His hands trail up my legs, reaching the hem of my pastel pink dress. "Little Flower," he breathes, "in a pretty pink dress, true to your name."
Any other time I would have laughed and shoved him, but my lips are glued shut, my entire body focused on the butterfly touches of his hands on my thighs. He slides his hands further up my dress, and I'm sweating again, but not from the heat. The material bunches around my hips, exposing my long, pale legs in direct contrast to his dark tan.
"Still nothing?" He queries. I lie back against the deck, trying to slow the racing of my heart. His hands trail further up the sensitive skin of my thigh, nearing the most sensitive place of all, and I find the words somehow.
"Not a thing."
He looks at me, those eyes I'll never understand boring into mine. His hand slips under the cotton band of my underwear, and I reach up to pull him over me, his body covering mine, and even with the heat I don't mind at all. Our stomachs mold together and electricity runs through me as he slips my underwear lower, then stops.
"Nervous?" I ask.
"Last chance," he whispers, lips hovering above mine. My arms slide further around his neck, hands sinking into his hair, and we both know I'll be making no protests.
00000