For all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you - Cecilia and the satellite
————
Summary: An exploration of Claire & Jamie’s story if their firstborn had lived and they had the chance to be parents together of wee Faith Fraser before the Battle of Culloden.
Chapter 19
“‒And so I stole coins from those filthy bast‒”
“Fergus. Watch your tongue.”
Jamie worked hard to suppress his smile as Fergus shot Claire a look that clearly said she’d taken the wind out his sails with her chiding ‒ right at the height of his story. Claire was none the wiser, having hardly looked up from her work to scold Fergus.
“Mind that Faith is listening too, aye?” Jamie added.
Fergus sighed but gave a small nod of agreement before continuing with his story. Faith, while no doubt listening, gave no indication that she was aware of the conversation happening around her. Instead, she was busy trying to climb all over Jamie while he was sitting up in bed.
Not that Jamie minded one bit. He had Faith in his arms and Fergus nearby, talking a mile a minute about his journey from Lallybroch to France. Claire was preparing clean bandages to change the dressing on Jamie’s wound and Murtagh was tucked out of the way, sitting contently in a chair, completely at peace with the world. Jamie had everything he needed right there.
Claire turned and their eyes met. His breath left him in a rush. She was here with him, smiling softly when she found him watching her, and some part of him worried he would wake up any moment and find this all to be a dream.
She came around to the side of his bed and his hand reached out to touch the rounded bump where their bairn was growing healthy and strong.
God, the bairn…
He’d missed the evidence of it in the immediate aftermath of realizing that Claire was very much real and here with him. But when his senses fully returned to him, the proof of Claire’s pregnancy was obvious. And then came the sweeping sense of relief that nothing had happened to her, that she was still with child. On top of everything else he’d gained back, the promise of another bairn felt too good to be true.
Claire paused and let one hand cover Jamie’s. They shared a smile and his heart leapt to his throat. Every look, every slight touch was much-needed reassurance and they were both basking in it.
“Baby’s pretty quiet just now but you should be able to feel her moving soon.”
“Her?”
Claire shrugged almost shyly, and her gaze dropped. “Just… just a feeling. I don’t know. Or ‘him’. Could very likely be a boy.”
He felt the urge to share something but dismissed it — that he’d dreamt of the bairn while Claire was gone, more than once. A nameless child, about a year of age, and he never knew if it was a boy or a girl, only that it was his and Claire’s. But it had felt like a gift at the time, the only way he might know their next child.
Now, his thumb caressed the baby bump through Claire’s layers of skirts. It still hadn’t quite sunken in yet… all that was restored to him.
Melissa’s team was just scratching the surface, and they still had plenty of digging to do before uncovering anything really worthwhile. Nonetheless, a couple of things piqued Melissa’s interest. She didn’t share the finer details with Jamie and Claire in the audio recordings, preferring to do that face to face over a Zoom call, but she did mention that there were a handful of active dating apps on Frank’s phone, including Friendsy, an app geared at college students.
Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser Characters: Jamie Fraser, Claire Beauchamp, some others Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Slow Burn, Fluff and Angst, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Strangers to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Eventual Smut, Falling In Love Summary:
What happens when someone wrecks all your plans in the best way?
Tori