i am sixteen going on seventeen

[lucked]

Claire can't quite remember when birthday parties got to be a pain. It's probably, she thinks, balled up with all of the other stuff that started losing its luster once she made it into high school, once Jackie told her clearly that high school was Claire's chance to make something out of herself rather than just sit idly by and daydreaming,

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Claire <3

[quileutejacob]

The kid was new. Claire, of course, Jacob was familiar with but he hadn't seen the kid before. There were a handful of kids on the island, some that showed up from home and some who were born here, and Jacob didn't know which category this one fell in.

"Someone conned you into babysitting, I guess?"

She looked like she was having fun so maybe it wasn't a con job after all.

[lucked]

If Nate had felt Claire tall, he stopped completely in his struggle to stare high, high, and even higher up at the new man who was standing in front of both of them, his lips parting a bit. This man was even taller than his dads.

Seeing the wondrous expression on Nate's face, Claire only laughed, rubbing at the corner of his mouth to keep any drool from sliding down the side of his face and pulling him closer to her. With her chin resting peacefully on Nate's shoulder, Claire grinned widely up at Jacob.

"Not a con. I actually asked to borrow him for the day," she explained, beaming. "He's my cousin. Nathaniel Petrelli, who is the cutest kid I've ever seen. Nate, this is Jacob."

Still marveling at Jacob's height, Nate failed to react with anything but a stare.

[quileutejacob]

"Hi kid," Jacob said, bending down a little to be a little less intimidating. Bonus, he was closer to Claire's own height and felt a little less like he was booming down from the clouds.

Jacob never really felt that way with Belle even though she was still a good deal shorter than him. Maybe it was because Claire had the whole gymnast thing.

"Cousin Claire treating you right?"

[lucked]

Claire glanced at Jacob with quiet approval at the way that he was engaging Nate in conversation, even if the little boy was still rather shy, wrapping his small arms around Claire's neck and murmuring something unintelligible against her cheek. With a soft laugh, she ruffled her cousin's hair and kept him held close, brushing some of the sand off of his pants as she grinned up at Jacob. (Slightly glad for the way that he'd lowered himself enough that her neck wouldn't hurt from the strain.)

"He's a shy one," she whispered conspiratorially, receiving a yank of her hair from Nate in turn and yelping just a tad. "Okay, okay, not shy. Just needs time to put himself together, that's all."

Smiling toothily, Nate finally emerged to give Jacob a small wave. "Hi," he greeted, before burying his face in Claire's shirt.

Giving up on trying to get the toddler to talk, Claire leaned back slightly. "So, what brings you over to this part of the beach?"

[quileutejacob]

"I was going to go swimming and then I saw you guys, so I decided to stop and say hi instead," Jacob admitted, grinning at the little boy as he buried himself in Claire's shirt. Kinda cute, the way he was so shy.

"Not much else to do in a tropical paradise, I'm afraid. You would think, after over a year of it, I would be sick of it by now. I'm not."

[lucked]

"Swimming's always good. I've been meaning to try and get a little better at it, but I hear that's the sort of thing you wait to have instruction on, when the waves are as bad as they can get further out," Claire considered with a quirk of her lip, still ruffling Nate's hair with her hand until the static caused it to stand on end. "But, well, I don't know. This island has so much mysterious stuff that I never find myself bored, exactly, because I know that if I want excitement, it's just over to the east and past that big fence. It's my island aspiration to someday see a living dinosaur and... you know, live to tell the tale."

[quileutejacob]

"I ended up over there by accident a couple months ago," Jacob said, pulling an awkward little face. He'd been with Cyd and Davos and Alexis's dad and now only Castle was still around. It was a little discouraging.

"We had to fight our way back over here. It was cool to see them up close but I never ever want to go that way again. I want it on my terms."

[lucked]

Claire cursed herself inwardly for not being more careful with the way she'd phrased it all, having momentarily forgotten about the difficulties so many of the islanders had faced some time ago. Lips quirking wryly, she looked down at the palms of her hands, running a thumbnail along her life line curiously before looking back up at Jacob. "When about a third of the island population suddenly disappeared and ended up over there, right?" she asked quietly. "I remember that, yeah. I wanted to go out and help search, but they told me that I was too young and too obviously untrained, so."

Rubbing the back of her neck, Claire thanked her stars that Jacob wasn't the type of person to hold that lack of forethought against her. "Obviously, I don't want to get tossed over there like that, but it's just still kind of amazing, you know? On a scientific level, or something, that dinosaurs are still living here even though they've died out so many years ago in other places."

[quileutejacob]

"It was pretty cool," Jacob agreed, grinning. "I liked getting to see them up close. It was just...Alexis's dad kept trying to get himself killed and that was a little frustrating."

Jacob had gleaned most of his survival skills from camping and, later, from laying low as a wolf but he didn't think many of them were something other than common sense.

[lucked]

In spite of herself, Claire had to smile just a bit; it sounded exactly like something Alexis' dad would do, venture out into dinosaur territory with too much bravado and too little sense. She couldn't have said the same of her father, who would have probably gone out guns carefully ablazing, carefully coming up with strategies to get them around the threat without drawing too much attention. As much as the thought of her father coming to the island still made Claire feel conflicted for the most part (because he didn't deserve to be trapped on an island like this, and she wasn't sure he'd like it besides), there was no doubt that he would have made her feel safer by far.

"Oh god, you were caught together with Alexis' dad?" Claire asked incredulously, brow furrowed in sympathy. "That must have been... I mean, don't get me wrong, I think he's an awesome guy and hilarious to talk to, but I don't think his sense of self-preservation is all that great. I don't know how he managed to raise someone as practical as Alexis."

[quileutejacob]

"Yeaaaah. It wasn't really the team I would have organized," Jacob said carefully. "He's a fun guy and pretty grateful when I got him back but he wasn't my first choice. I think Alexis would probably have been more cool-headed out there. Or maybe that chick they hang around with."

[lucked]

"The one that his books are written about?" Claire grinned from cheek to cheek, admittedly a bit satisfied by the way that she had been able to weasel so much information just by hanging around the kitchen and talking to Alexis on occasion. Maybe she should have felt a bit of shame over the way she overheard conversations so often (and most of the time, she really did), but at least in this sense, Claire didn't think that the people involved would take too much offense.

Not when she was pretty sure that Richard Castle still stalked Buffy Summers about the island.

"I actually snuck one of his books off from the bookshelf and read it, though..." Claire wrinkled her nose, embarrassed, cheeks turning red. "Some of the writing was a bit, um. It was too weird to read it, knowing it was based in someone real."