i hear the river say your name, part I
anonymous prompt: I just want a new smutty Jamie POV of him having a dirty dream about Claire before they married. It can take place at Leoch, maybe after his oath or something. Have his interactions with her the next day be super awkward, but charming. 😆 I live for this.
I am living for this prompt, anon. I like smitten puppy!Jamie.
show!verse, Episode 01x04 (The Gathering), 01x05 (Rent)
At least one more installment is yet to come of this one.
Soundtrack: ➥ Lord Huron - When the Night is Over
i hear the river say your name, part I
Jamie Fraser has been in hiding for awhile.
Away from his family – though he supposes the only Fraser he has left is Jenny. And the Lord knows he can’t ever face her again. He’s been away from home for awhile now – first to France, then to Castle Leoch. How long it’s been, he’s not sure. Though they don’t comprise the most upstanding cast of characters, Colum and Dougal could be worse, and the machinations of life at Leoch are, to say the very least, interesting:
One, a boy who calls Letitia “mam” and calls Colum “da,” but looks like Dougal, provides a source of suspense he hasn’t known since he saw King Lear acted on stage as a lad by a traveling theatre troupe.
Two, the obvious pandering of Dougal to Arthur Duncan’s witchy blonde wife, made him laugh into a mug of ale two nights earlier. Geillis Duncan’s figure is decidedly less and less waif like with each passing week, and her bones are so obviously shifting to accommodate Dougal’s bairn that Jamie wonders if he’s the only one with eyes, ears, and common sense.
These observations aside, though, Jamie’s heart is not split.
He does not share love for Castle Leoch with his home.
For now at least, his heart lives in one place alone.
A place he hardly lets into his subconscious for the ache the distance causes him.
But now he’s hiding again – hiding within his hiding place.
The Gathering thrums along at some distance, the smell of roasting meat making his stomach ache with hunger and his mouth water, and causing the prospect of her (in some borrowed gown with her bonnie pearlescent breasts hitched up to kingdom come) to flit stomp carelessly through his mind while engaged in other more survival-oriented pursuits.
He’s in a pile of straw and probably smells of horses.
Of course that’s when he thinks of her.
He’s half asleep and half hard at the thought of her – changing his bandages with too-soft hands and nail beds as pink as petals, asking him about his back without pity, looking at him like maybe-just-maybe her lips would part and she would arch into him if he kissed her.
The sounds of the Gathering have blended and merged with the assistance of a few drams, his subconscious is urging him to just stay put. He decides not to do anything about his cockstand, figures that it’s easier if he just lets it ache and ache until he falls asleep, waking with the Sassenach far from his mind.
And that’s when the mysterious healer who has driven him absolutely mad with wanting trips over him.
Of course, he doesn’t know it’s her right away – the source of that uncomfortable swelling tenting his kilt, the ringleader in his mind’s afternoon distractions. It is his protective instinct to draw his blade, to rise up over the unsuspecting, fallen target, adrenaline making his fighting spirit soar, and suddenly he’s invincible. It isn’t until the interloper makes some exclamation (“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”) that he realizes it’s her that is about to be speared by the sharp tip of his dirk.
He can’t help his smile (“no, Sassenach, just me” – though she makes him feel like God himself).
She looks so damned pretty in the dress Mrs. Fitz has found for her.
Her cheeks pink, her mouth letting out little frustrated pants, her breasts heaving as her own adrenaline surge blows her pupils to kingdom come.
Aye, she’s a pretty lass all dressed for the MacKenzie Gathering.
Even if she is about to flee.
Oh, he realizes, the Sassenach’s going to flee.
Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, to adopt her turn of phrase.
As a prisoner in his own identity and living under an assumed name, he can’t say he hasn’t thought of fleeing himself once or twice. By the venom in her eyes alone, he knows she’s a scrapper alright. He is holding his dirk steady still, still poised to strike.
And as the adrenaline fades, he shakes his head, smirks. He sheathes his dirk, gets to his feet, and helps her do the same. He teases her a little – her satchel of apples and already-hardened bread – his condensation-laden breath coming in pants.
“How far do ye think ye’d get, lass, on a dark night wi’ a strange horse, and half the MacKenzie clan after ye by morning?” he asks, not expecting an answer.
She’s thought it through – the logical wee thing she is. Where she will go, how she will get there. He was walking and found a scrap of cloth, and he suddenly realizes her game. She’s planned.
Ban-druidh, he wonders, the superstitious Highlander that lives in his gut teases for a moment before he consciously, decisively shuts down the notion. No. Not a witch. She is a woman. A smart, cunning woman, ready to survive.
And a dhia, she looks positively enraged that he has foiled her plan to flee.
Later, as he is waltzing through a conciliatory speech without swearing an oath to Colum MacKenzie, he wonders about her.
He wonders if she’s watching.
Claire had left Leoch with them, getting further and further from the echoing stone chamber she called a “clinic” one evening as she checked his wound one last time. They have been sent away by the MacKenzie to collect rent. He can’t help but think that her scheme to flee is somehow both more within reach and further away from ever now that they’re on the road.
He watches her – she’s standing at the edge of a loch, separate from everyone, her thin arms crossed over her waist. While Geillis is growing with Dougal’s bairn, Claire is shrinking with Dougal’s oppression.
Before the rent collectors departed Castle Leoch, Dougal had boasted about how he told that Sassenach bitch, that redcoat spy, a feral cat was coming along. Dougal gave the old lawyer a look, and explained that no, he didn’t tell Claire Beauchamp anything, lads. Dougal finished a tankard of ale, wiped the foam from his beard on his sleeve, boasted that he commanded her to come along. Claimed that he’d have her English thighs spread and his cock roosting before they returned with a handsome tithing from the MacKenzie lands. Jamie had risen to his feet, fists pulsing at his side, aching to splinter bone and make his uncle’s nose collapse with a nasty, crunching sound.
For more than a moment Jamie entertained punching Dougal – making his adulterous uncle spray blood and spittle spectacularly across the walls of the hall where they were eating a final meal before departing, watching his mother’s brother drop like a stone, where a boot could easily make home in the softening gut of his aging uncle and close in on a throat.
Then Jamie had realized that such violence was no way to protect her.
To protect my own, his heart hammering at his own reference to her.
Jamie paused his shaking fists, shook his head, decided to take Dougal’s challenging look on the chin, to let the man think that he’d bested his stupid nephew. Jamie knew better.
“Do ye see that lads? Jamie fancies the traitor bitch.” Jamie sat, clasping his hands beneath the table not in prayer, but in an attempt to keep the violent fantasy from becoming a reality. He stayed silent. “That’s what I thought. Sit, pheathar. Ye stinking jealous fool. Ye’ll find somewhere for yer cock to roost for yerself.”
Now, out here on the road, they are at a quiet gathering. Not the kind that they’ve just left. Not one to swear fealty to a laird, unless of course one is to consider the pillaging of each resident of their entire livelihood and savings.
Dougal chants it first: “Bragh Stuart!”
Jamie’s eyes catch Claire’s as he fights to pull his shirt on over his head.
There is no mystery left in what is happening. She is a smart woman, the realization crosses her face slowly, like she can’t quite believe it at first. That they’re betraying Colum MacKenzie, that the gold they’re collecting will fund rebellion, that they’re engaged in something traitorous against their Laird and the crown. She steps out of the too-warm, too-smoky shed, hair falling across her cheek and her small fist knotted in the cloak around her shoulders.
Jamie wonders what she’s thinking.
If she would just face him, he could tell, but she doesn’t turn around.
