Loss Jamie and Claire’s first Christmas together –– this is only very shortly after they moved in together. Pre-engagement. Pre-home ownership. Pre-wedding. Pre-Buffalo Bill. Inspired by a series of texts that I woke to from @sassenachwaffles about how she needed a Loss ficlet where Claire strips to Eartha Kitt’s version of Santa Baby. If you are not into NSFW, I think it’ll be pretty obvious to you where to stop reading. 🎄I hope this gives you a little holiday season glow. ❤️
The First Noël
December 2016
We spent an entire weekend decking the halls of our new flat.
Still slick from a Saturday morning of lazy, prolonged, and teasing sex, Jamie announced that he had agreed to meet the Murray clan at a tree farm near Lallybroch. The annual Fraser selection and chopping of a tree for Christmas. In response, I confessed something that I held incredibly close to the vest.
I had not had a Christmas tree since the year that my parents had died.
He maneuvered me away so he could look at me from arms length.
I was sure that my explanation sounded defensive, but at its core, it was defensive.
Lamb and I were nomads.
Bachelor pads are not conducive to Christmas decorating.
It was just not that important.
Rarely home, and then only a handful of nights every few months.
“I canna believe ye’ve no’ had a Christmas tree since ye were… what?”
“Huh?” My mind, still faltering a few steps was replaying the accident that took my parents. (Metal and fire, blood and loss. Imagery I gleaned from a microfiche at a university library when I was thirteen.) I was not keeping up with him.
“When yer parents died. How old were ye?” Jamie’s brow was furrowed and I returned to his chest, nestling my face against his throat. His skin was tacky –– sweat, musk, scented with the last moments of our joining. Even beneath me, he was armor –– a sturdy presence to draw me back to the present. “Five, right?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled faintly, pressing my lips to the button rise of his left clavicle. I could envision, behind closed eyes, a slim book of fragmented, greyed memories. My first four Christmases were gone. Only the scarred edges of missing pages remained. No memories, save one (a Christmas bow, my hair in a braid, my mother’s violet perfume, sucking candy canes down to sharpened points with bits of plastic wrapping flaking off onto my tongue, and midnight mass candle smoke). “Five. Don’t get me wrong… Lamb was great, Jamie. Better than great, actually. He was just not much of a traditionalist when it came to holidays.”
You know why her interviews keep getting boiled down to a few words that come out of her mouth? Because she’s consistently stuck her foot in it so often when it comes to fans during promo. This isn’t a one off. Maybe someone on her team or the show’s team should sit her down and chat with her about that. Based on her comments about how she feels she can never do anything right, she knows the impression many are getting. The onus is on her to not say things about fans that people interpret as belittling and insensitive.
Tori