Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to SMeyer.

Author's Notes: My first shot at Quil/Claire, but I might come back to this. They're such a fun, almost angst-free couple to write!

It's official. Life should go die.

Because that made sense.

Y'know, now would be a great time for Quil to pop up and say something completely unhelpful about my melodrama. But you know what? I. Don't. Care. Quil can go fall into a ravine and get eaten by hungry foxes, okay? Okay.

...Except that I love him, and that would totally suck.

Whatever. My mind's internal paradoxes are not going to bother me today. Because today I really have to concentrate on not, you know, stabbing myself in the brain with a fork. Trust me, it won't work. I tried it once when I was three, just to see if I could touch my brain by shoving a fork as far up my nose as it would go.

No, I was not an intelligent child. And Quil refused to let me anywhere near forks for awhile after that.

Sigh. Oh, that simple time when all Quil had to do was keeping me from giving myself nosebleeds with a kitchen utensil.

--

All right-y. I'm a tad bit more sane now. And yet, on the Claire-scale, this means that I'm still utterly insane, basically. Why does Lizzie never seem to have this problem?

Hmm. Speaking of which... I wonder if my dear, wonderful sister Lizzie has left any brownies hiding somewhere in the kitchen? God, I'm like a squirrel. On crack. I will never get to my point at this rate. Point! Right! That thing that keeps disappearing in the middle of my sentences. Slippery little bastard.

And Quil thinks a foul word hath never touched thine lips. Psh.

...Yeah, whatever, I really don't have time to think about Quil right now. Brownies are a few notches above him on my list of priorities at the moment.

I mean, no, never. Quil, I love you!

Repeating this in my head about a million times, I hop off my bed and wander into the kitchen, which Mom has apparently done a cleaning binge on. Shine, sparkle, Clorox. Ew. Trying not to choke on the cleaning fluid fumes, I spin around on the tile a few times, doing what I pretend is a competent eagle eye of the entire room for a possible brownie hiding spot, when really it's just me having to grab onto the side of the stove and leave finger-streaks on the glass when my socks slide out from under me and I fall deliriously backwards.

Somehow, I manage to steady myself while doing some kind of demented sexual move with my hips to keep from tipping over again. I have no clue what Mom and Dad were thinking when they named me "Claire Grace," since from the way they tell it I was always falling off my bed in the middle of the night when I was a kid, I was such a spazz. Even when I was asleep.

Having successfully (ish) caught myself from sudden death-on-tile, I decide that it's safest to retreat to the carpet. From there, with my fabulous eyesight (and by that, I mean my fabulous contacts), I am able to see that the brownies are on top of the refrigerator. Lizzie isn't terribly original, I'm afraid. Apparently, all of her originality got shoved into me, causing the total awkwardness of my life.

Yeah, that's what I blame it on.

Anyway. Brownies! For a second I contemplate getting a chair, but that would require dragging it from the dining room into the kitchen, and in my current fragile state (read: incredibly suckish period, hence the need for brownies), that would not go well. So instead I just revert to the age of six and clamber up onto the counter near the fridge, seeming, as Quil would quip annoyingly, like a demon spider monkey.

Okay, time for my inate sense of balance to kick in. I can see the tin where Lizzie always sticks the things she bakes, the stupid yellow one with a blue porpoise on it. I have no clue why the hell she has a tin with a porpoise on it, but I learned a long time ago not to question her logic. I stand up on my tiptoes, wincing as I step in some spill that Mom missed, dripping down the side of the fridge. With my luck it'll be, like, tetanus in liquid form or something.

Maybe if I attempt Jedi mind powers, the brownies with magically hover towards me? Yeah, yeah, I watch Star Wars, shut up. Quil doesn't mind. But then, I don't think Quil would mind if I had sixteen heads and green scales. He's just awesome like that. He's the only guy I can think of who would willingly stay up until three in the morning with me to watch a marathon of all the Star Wars movies on TV. Sigh.

Mmm, Quil...

Suddenly, there's a click from the back door, on the other side of the kitchen. Oh, shit. If it's a psycho burglar, I am so screwed.

But then I hear, "Claire?" in a worried yet totally sexy voice, and I know it's Quil. Because Quil equals sex in my mind. It's the only kind of math I'm good at. Quil plus Quil equals the sum of sex plus sex.

Mrs. Hermes would be proud.

Or as proud as an insane cat-lady pre-calc teacher can be.

"I'm right here!" I yell back. I don't add, balancing precariously on the edge of a recently Lysol-ed counter, because, well, Quil tends to overreact just a teeny, tiny bit.

"What the fuck are you doing?!"

Oh, and he swears a lot, too.

"Um," I answer to the Quil-shaped shadow that's being cast on the cabinet nearest me. "I'm standing on the counter, dearest. And you?" Reach, reach, tiptoe, tiptoe. Come on Claire, the porpoise tin is so near--

"Claire, get down from there, now!"

"No, that's okay," I say quickly, inching faster. I have no idea why, since Quil is like, eight foot nine, and could just get the goddamn tin for me. Ah well, I have too much pride for that.

"Claire..."

I hear footsteps stomping up behind me, and, for some inexplicable reason (what the somewhat reasonable back of my mind contributes to the aforementioned suckish period hormones), I start to get seriously annoyed. God, I'm just on the counter getting something from the top of the fridge! Christ, he makes it seem like I'm swimming in a meat bikini in an ocean full of food-deprived sharks. Not that I would do that. Ever. I think.

Then I feel something hovering over my waist, and I realize that it's Quil's hand. And at first I start to kind of grin stupidly in front of me and fall back into him, but then, and I have no clue why, I shriek, "Don't touch me!" as though he was trying to molest me or something. Because fuck if he thinks I am incapable of retrieving a simple tin of brownies! Oh shit. I wonder if this is what he felt like before he phased for the first time-- so effing pissed at everything?

It's really sad when I can truthfully say that my period makes me act like a werewolf.

And I think my little outburst is kind of shocking to Quil. (Especially because when we first started dating, I basically mauled him every chance I got. I'd liked him for years, all right, and he didn't seem to mind all that much!) I hear him step away from me again, then a quiet sniff, and then my thoughts are pretty much, Oh my God, wolf senses, holy crap it sucks so freaking much when your boyfriend can smell when you're on your period, oh my God, wolf senses-- in pretty much an endless loop. Well, endless for about four seconds. Because four seconds is how long it takes for me to attempt to turn around and glare at him, get my foot caught in the hem of my jeans, scrabble to hold onto the bare edge of the refrigerator, fail miserably, flail my arms around, and then fall completely off of the countertop.

Because then, my thoughts boil down to, Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. And then I flail my arms some more, as though what? I can sprout wings and fly away? Obviously, that doesn't happen, so I keep flailing and falling and I squeeze my eyes shut and tense up my whole body--

I'm still flailing even when I stop falling.

And by "stop falling" I don't mean, "ram into the kitchen floor and bash open my skull." By "stop falling" I mean, "am caught."

In mid-fucking-air.

Jesus. He's like an acrobat.

I'm still tensed up everywhere, but Quil's arms are wrapped around me in a way so that I can't help but relax. Somehow, one of my contacts managed to slip across my eye during that freakish fall, so when I look up at him he's all blurred-- yet still hot, in a concerned, annoyed, I'm-about-to-hyperventilate kind of way. He's just staring down at me, possibly making sure I'm still breathing, and I'm just watching him and thinking, Holy shit, wow, he's really hot, in a temperature kind of way, and I should really fix my contact and did that insane fall force me into to shock of something?

I realize that the entire kitchen is dead silent. I can hardly hear myself breathing, and for once there isn't rain pounding on the window. Quil is still watching me, all intense, and it's so incredible, just the pure, utter silence...

BANG!

...Until the porpoise tin chooses that convenient moment to slam onto the floor.

Quil jumps, which means I jump with him. We both start breathing really heavily, panting almost, and stare at the tin where it's splattered a crumbled brownie mess onto Mom's recently-mopped floor. I look up at Quil again, squinting slightly over my askew contact. Then I toss my foot up in air, a la cheesy romance novel heroine in the arms of her prince, and pull his face down to mine for a tad belated hello-kiss. When he pulls back (looking a bit dazed, to my intense enjoyment), I grin at him and nuzzle my nose against his chest. Then I glance up at him again and smirk a little.

"So Quil," I ask casually. "Want a brownie?"

Unshockingly, he's much more content to make out with me in the middle of the kitchen.

Not that I mind.