smashing-teacups:

A/N: Making decent progress on this next chapter, so figured I’d go ahead and give you a wee preview!

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The warm, steady weight of Jamie’s hand on her thigh squeezed gently, and Claire’s cheek smeared against the windowpane as she woke in a daze, completely unaware that she’d even fallen asleep. Blinking a few times to try to orient herself, she squinted around the interior of the car before her gaze settled on Jamie.

“Sorry to wake ye,” he said with a lopsided smile, then jutted his chin at the road ahead. “I just didna want ye to miss this.”

With a furrowed brow and bleary eyes, she looked to where he was gesturing, and slowly felt her features smooth into tenderness.

As they crossed the border into Scotland, Jamie brought her knuckles to his lips.

“Welcome home, mo chridhe.”

Claire let herself sit with the word for a moment. Turned it over and over in her heart like some old relic of childhood rediscovered many years later — nostalgic and familiar, yet strange, somehow, after such a long absence.

“Home,” she echoed quietly. Little by little, a smile unfurled across her face, and when she looked over at Jamie again, it bloomed into a genuine grin. “You know, I… I actually feel like it could be. Like I could belong here.”

Sparkling blue eyes cut back and forth from the road to Claire, and he exhaled a soft breath of a laugh. “Ach, lass. I knew you belonged here wi’ me almost since the first time I laid eyes on ye.” 

She hummed, her smile growing wistful as she looked out at the horizon. While she’d visited Scotland once or twice on holiday as a child, her memories were vague at best; she remembered that it was very green and hilly, and so it was — and she remembered quite clearly the pudding her Mum had shared with her at a bed and breakfast one evening. Beyond that dimly pleasant introduction, the overwhelming sense of fondness she felt for the place came from the born-and-bred Highlander sitting to her right. He’d made it come alive for her, woven descriptions and stories and memories so vividly and with such passion that they were knitted into her own heart now, binding her to him and to this land where — ironically — she didn’t feel like a sassenach at all.

It was Jamie’s home. And he was hers.

Leaning her temple back against the smooth, cool glass, she readjusted their hands so that they rested palm to palm, fingers entwined.

Ours, Jamie’s voice echoed in her mind.

Her eyes misted over as she watched the rolling green horizon, nodding to herself. 

Ours, she agreed.