“I’m going to take this job,” Claire informs Jamie, sitting on her bed, glasses on, laptop in hand. He’s been putting together her most recent purchase, a table she can put her TV and cable box on top of.
“Which one? The clinic job?” he asks her, pausing to drill before glancing back at her.
“No, not that one.”
“The pediatrician’s office?”
“No,” she says, wetting her lips and looking over the email in her inbox. She’s nervous and isn’t sure why; it’s just Jamie, but what she wants to do is such a divergence from the career she’s had—the career she went to school for, went into debt to pursue. The hesitation shows on her face, and she knows it when Jamie puts down his tools and sits beside her, reaching out to tilt her face up by the chin.
“What is it, then?” She has to know, he hopes, that whatever she wants to do, he’ll support. Even if, for a while, what she wants to do is nothing but settle into life in Scotland.
So hard to believe (after this chapter) we only have THREE chapters left in this arc!! Thanks to @notevenjokingfic for beta’ing this story and to everyone who has supported me along the way!
The night was long but somehow felt like it lasted no time at all. There was something otherworldly about it— something holy. For Claire, holding Jamie while he cried— while he sobbed out every fragmented piece of his tattered heart— made her feel unspeakable things. She felt the whispers of it, deep in her chest as his body racked against her. Whispers of devotion that knew no limits, bore no conditions. Of a love so deep she was drowning in it.
Folded against the warmth of Fraser’s leather jacket with her legs on either side of his hips, it was easy for Claire to pretend. That they were not going home (to the Queen’s summer residence), that they were just out for another ride. That the rest of the world just existed as transient wax figures, melting and insignificant. That their world existed solely in the cabin and that it waited for them just around the bend (the bed, the kitchen, the spot for two in front of the fireplace, the shower with the slightly mildewed curtain, the soft planks of the small deck off the rear of the structure).
They were a couple meant not to be seen, not to be heard, but just to exist together as one. Claire indulged the fantasy as she closed her eyes, felt his fingers wind through hers when her grip slackened around his waist.
“Ye alright?” he asked, grip pulsing as he slowed to let another vehicle pass on the narrow road. She turned her hand so they were palm to palm. She pressed the very tip of her index finger to the thin, throbbing skin of his wrist.
“Better than just fine,” she said, attempting to sound strong, reassured, confident (and failing in actually being any of those things).
He lifted her hand, kissed the place where a fortune teller’s thumbs would divine a destiny for her if she were the kind of woman to frequent such a place, and then carefully situated it over his stomach. “No’ much further.”
She closed her eyes, drawing herself to Fraser’s back as tightly as possible. The nearness of home was precisely what she feared most.
Tori