22. Holiday Drabble: Corrie/Quinn
The snow was pelting down: the roads were already completely covered and underneath the thick white layer was a sheet of ice. The storm had hit before anyone could exactly prepare for it. Quinn stood by the window, occasionally pulling back the curtain so he could stare longingly outside into the cold winter night. The wind picked up again; it was blowing so hard that it made the house shielding them creak and crack with its force. He let the lacy curtain fall from between his fingertips. He turned his back to the window and leaned against the frame, his lips set in a firm line, his arms crossed protectively against himself.
"Well, see there? Way too fuckin' cold to go out if you ask my opinion," someone said from the opposite room where a warm fire crackled.
Laughter followed it and someone threw a handful of popcorn kernels into an old fashioned fireplace popcorn maker. Quinn listened to the shaking of the tin over the fire and then the careful
pop pop pop! of the kernels. He was so caught up in it that he didn't even see her step into the room. Corrie, dressed comfortably for the holiday 'party' at Eddie's place, which mostly consisted of eating and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, appeared next to him. In her hands was a small green package with a gold bow.
"I thought you might like it," she said, albeit a little coldly.
"I didn't get you anything," he said in reply. "I didn't--"
Corrie didn't say much, just shoved the box into his hands. "That's not why I got it for you." She bowed her head as she started to leave the room, traveling back to where Eddie was nestled happily in front of the fire, a bottle of booze in one hand and a muffin as big as her face in the other.
Quinn waited until she had disappeared to rejoin Eddie before he touched the bow. He nimbly untied the ends, coming to the cleanly wrapped present with uncertainty. Slowly, he pulled the paper from the cardboard underneath and found himself looking at a matching set of gloves, a hat, and a scarf. Underneath, however, he found a picture frame of all three of them when they had just gotten out of school. They laughed and smiled, hugging, as they waved at the camera. Shortly after waving, all three seemed to get in some sort of a fight and Quinn's picture reflection fell out of the frame as Eddie and Corrie seemed to loudly brawl over something.
He sighed and found himself looking out the window again. He missed that. But nothing would change the fact that Corrie had left -- not even the fact that she'd returned.
