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imagineclaireandjamie · 7 years ago

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Flood my Mornings: Climbing

Anon said: This is a prompt for Bonnie & FMM: since BabyBree is becoming quite the strong minded little lady, can we see her get into some antics at the worst possible time?

Notes from Mod Bonnie

This story takes place in an AU in which Jamie travels through the stones two years after Culloden and finds Claire and his child in 1950 Boston.

See all past installments via Bonnie’s Master List

Previous installment: Vermont (ii)

Fernacre, July, 1951

“JESUS, lass!” Jamie hissed as he lunged to snatch Bree mid-stride and prevent what would have been a flying leap off the picnic table. He forced himself to exhale before setting her onto her feet and asking, “Why in the name of all that is holy and right do ye turn demon the instant we go out in public?”

The demon giggled.

“Brianna, hear me, it’s no’ a game, this.” He dropped to a crouch before her, trying to keep his already-worn temper in check. “I mean it. NO climbing up upon things, d’ye hear?”

“Okayyyy!” she trilled, beaming with joy, already turning on her heel.

“Wait just there, we’re not—”

But she was already out of reach, scampering off to join a pack of other children headed toward the play-slides.

“Stay within the yard!” he called after her. “Heaven BLOODY help me,” he groaned under his breath in Gaelic, getting back to his feet and his conversation. “I’m terribly sorry for that wee hooligan, Tom.”

“It’s alright, bud,” Tom Harper laughed, handing him back his bottle of terrible American beer. “Kids will be kids, no harm done.”

“Perhaps it’s some great test of parenting, to see how well I cope wi’out Claire to hand....or how poorly, as the case might be.”

It was the annual Fernacre employee summer picnic, or as Bree saw it, a battlefield ripe for the carnage her impish soul apparently craved. Scarce an hour the two of them had been there, and she’d already knocked over a pitcher of Lemonade, bitten another child who had bumped into her, squirted tomato sauce all down her front, and managed to get a lollipop stuck in her hair. This was to say nothing of the tantrum on the car ride about not being able to see the clouds (it being a hot, blue day and there being no clouds), and several outbursts of language he was more than grateful Claire had not been present to overhear. Nine days out of ten, Bree’s heartbreaking sweetness outweighed the net destruction (though there was plenty of the latter in any given day, and no mistake); but there would be a full moon brewing in the sky this evening, certainly, for Brianna Fraser had come out IN FORCE.

“Really, though, she’ll grow out of it,” Tom said with a veteran’s confidence. “Our Rob was just the same at that age. It’s your first kiddo’s job to put you through the wringer. It’s in their contract and everything!” His wink went suddenly sideways as both brows furrowed over his Sunglasses. “Speaking of which, Claire’s okay, I hope?”

“Oh, aye, she’s well enough,” Jamie assured him, taking what restorative strength he could from the watery excuse for a draught. “The babe kept her up all through the night, and she didna think she could manage being out the heat, besides.”

“Don’t blame her one bit.” He wiped sweat from his forehead before adding significantly, “Not long, now, huh?”

“No,” he grinned back, “not long at all.”

Earlier that morning

“Will you absolutely hate me if I stay in bed today?”

“Of course not, mo nighean donn,” He tucked the covers more securely around her and then stood, looking around to see what he might bring her.

“Would it be pressing my good luck to beg you to take the monster with you?”

He kissed her, then Ian. “...Which one?”

“Oh, I'd happily give you BOTH, if I could!” She rubbed her now-still belly ruefully and winced a bit. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, little one, you have got to give Mummy a BREAK when she’s trying to sleep. We can’t keep having these midnight drill parades!”

A whinnying horse galloped into the room and catapulted herself onto the bed next to Claire. “Mum-ma, you comin’?”

“No, lovey,” Claire said, pulling Bree close into a great, warm hug. “Mummy’s going to stay here and take a nap.”

“Nappin’ isna FUN!”

“Oh, it’s LOADS of fun for me! But you and Daddy will go and have a lovely time at the picnic, just the two of you.”

Bree grumbled for a minute, then brightened. “Can’see iffee’s ‘wake? If Beeyin’s ‘wake?”

Claire smiled that warm, sweet smile he loved so well. She pulled up the hem of her nightshirt from under the blankets, patiently letting Bree inspect the whole expanse of her with exuberant pats.

After a few moments, Bree glowered up and whispered in a confidential yell, “I dinna heer’im.”

“I don’t feel him ei—Oh! There he is!”

Bree shrieked in delight, dissolving into insane giggles as she poked the heaving mass back to and fro. At such a degree of intensity, it was rather like the game Jamie had seen the Fair where you clubbed the stuffed groundhog with a mallet only to have another pop up on the other side. ‘Clubbed’ indeed, for Claire was obliged to grab Bree’s hands and croon, “Gently, Bree, baby, *gently*...”

After a long, peaceful while, Claire happened to glance up and catch his expression. She was a canny one, his wife, and she gave him a gimlet eye at once. “And just what are you smirking at like a cat in the cream?”

In truth, he WAS grinning, so widely he must have looked positively deranged. “You. are. SO. BIG.”

“You ARSE,” she laughed, managing to land him a kick in the belly even through the blankets.

“Ye ARE! I mean, LOOK!” He came to sit on the edge of the bed and joined Bree in outlining just how massive she was. “Big as a—a—”

“A HOUSE!” Bree finished helpfully, “or A ‘POTTAMUS!”

“I do hope wee Ian comes out a fair shade more polite and complimentary than YOU lot,” Claire said, splitting a glare between the pair of them.

“And just think, you’ve *two weeks more,* forbye.”

“One and a half, thank you very much,” she corrected primly.

“But let’s just stop and consider.” He raised a significant brow. “Should wee Ian see fit to bide his time…”

“Don't EVEN suggest it.”

“....It could be THREE weeks more...” He was having trouble speaking normally through the bubbling laughter. “....or even FOUR, until—”

“You wish four more weeks upon me, Jamie Fraser, and I will make you wish otherwise.”

Bree turned her coat in a flash. “Don’ wisp that at Mum-ma, Da.”

“Oh, verra well, if ye say so,” he said, mock-abashed, with a wink at his wife. Glancing at his watch, he groaned and straightened with a yawn. Claire’s tossing and turning in the night from Ian’s acrobatics hadn’t done him any favors, either. “Alright, a leannan, let’s see to your clothes and get along to the picnic.”

“You really do delight in seeing me as huge as a beached whale, don't you?” Claire asked sardonically as Bree scurried from the room, cheering.

“Aye, I do,” he admitted freely, wrapping both his arms around her and nuzzling his nose against hers. “Truly one of the happiest sights I’ve ever seen.”

In the cave, he had many a time wondered—longingly—what Claire might look like at the time of her full term; and what he had imagined paled in comparison. She was full and lush in every single inch of her. Hair thick and glossy. Skin softly glowing like sunlight on a flower petal. Whisky eyes seeming to sparkle with the same light, heavy with a soft, sleepy happiness. Claire was absolutely exquisite in this height of her bearing, and he would happily spend all his days glorying in the memory of her, this way.

“I never imagined...” He bent and laid a kiss on her straining navel, reflecting that spending a fair number of those days in good fun and laughter would *also* be greatly rewarding. “...that anyone could get even bigger wi’ child than JENNY.”

“Bree!” Claire shouted, swatting him with a pillow as he lunged up to kiss her cheeks and neck ferociously, “tell your Da to take his imagination and shove it up his—”

A crash sounded from the other room, followed by a ‘whoops-eeee’, which, in retrospect, had not boded well for the rest of the day

“MISTER FRASER!!!”

His head whipped around so fast he heard his neck crack.

She was on the top rung of the fence separating the yard from the adjacent pasture, and he felt his heart stop as she fell from it headfirst.

The next moments as he sprinted toward her seemed to pass as slowly as in a dream. He could hear shouts and cries behind him, but he didn’t stop for an instant until he was vaulting over the fence and snatching her up off her back. He didn’t remember what words he may have uttered, or in what language, but a few moments later, he was exhaling in great gasps of relief seeing that she was conscious and not injured, just badly scared with the breath knocked out of her.

Dazed, she began to cry with great long wails that drove away the two mares that had come to investigate the visitor to their pasture. Thank the Lord she hadn’t chosen the next paddock over, where the true brawlers were kept.

“You’re alright?” he demanded once more as he got back to the right side of the fence, vaguely aware he was speaking in Gaelic. “You’re not hurt?”

She coughed and gasped for breath, considered, then showed him, lips trembling, a slightly-red patch on the fleshy part of her palm.

He laid a fervent kiss in her hand—silently praising heaven she hadn’t broken the wrist, for all that she was still crying like a banshee—and then could contain himself no longer.

“What did I say about climbing?” His teeth were gritted tight and his hands were shaking even as they strove to remain gentle. “AND about wandering off??”

“I din’knowww,” she wailed, hearing his tone and trying to hide her face in his chest.

“Ye DO know.” He pulled her up and made her look at him. “Brianna Ellen, ye must listen to what I say! Don’t ye understand ye could have gotten very badly hurt? Lass, look at me.”

She was sobbing, now, working herself up into hysterics. “C—can—na—”

“Why not?”

“Cause—mad—dit—m—meee—”

He went completely still at that. Closing his eyes, he took a deep, deep breath.

Help me, Da.

With gestures and apologetic looks, he shooed the well-meaning onlookers back to their picnic and made for the big oak tree in the opposite corner of the yard. It was well-shaded, and he sat down against the trunk, holding his daughter to his chest as she sobbed against his shoulder.

Thank God she wasn’t hurt. Thank GOD.

“Bree, cub?” The walk had calmed him, and he was glad to hear his voice was gentle and soft. “Look at me, aye?”

After a moment, she glanced timidly up (face red as an apple and covered in liquids of all description) and he smiled at her, stroking her cheek and her hair. “I’m here, a leannan. It’s just me...just Da... I love you.”

“Love—” she hiccuped through her tears, “—too.”

He kissed her and held her close for a minute before setting her on his legs facing him and saying gravely, “But ye made me verra afraid today, a chuisle. Ye disobeyed and could have hurt yourself.”

“I did’nint mean to,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Aye, I ken ye didna mean to get hurt,” he said, gently pulling her fists away from her face, “but ye meant to be climbing the fence, even after I told ye not.”

“...It was fun, though,” she offered with a shrug, voice tremulously defiant.

“Aye, well...”

Come on, Da.... How would ye have explained this to me?

A shrill whinny sounded in the distance, then another, and Jamie glanced around to see the two sorrel foals playing together in the south pasture, teasing and prancing about one another.

He smiled and felt peace whispering through the grasses. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.

“Ye ken, when wee Ian is born, Bree, he’s going to grow up fast. Before long, he’ll be as big as you and running about on his own! And you’ll want your wee brother to be safe, aye?”

She straightened at that, no longer crying. Bairn safety was no small matter, in her book. She nodded.

“Say there were something like a great, nasty snake crawling about in the grass about to bite your brother on the foot.....Would ye just stand by and let him be hurt?”

Brianna looked up at him in absolute affront. “NO, I’d kill dat snake!”

He very nearly choked, but managed to keep a moderately straight face. Call upon a Fraser, and a Fraser ye shall get, he supposed; but he cleared his throat and plunged on, determined to make his point. “But what if wee Ian didna understand the beast was dangerous? What if he went running to the snake because he thought it would be fun to play wi’ it?”

“Well...I jus’tell him not.”

“Aye, just so,” he said, “because we have to protect the people we love, d’ye see?”

“Uh-huh.” She was staring up at him, rapt but not quite understanding.

“So when I tell ye not to do things like climb the fence, mo chridhe, it’s only to keep ye safe, to keep ye getting hurt because I love you so. And when the bairn comes, it’ll be your job to keep him safe, too.”

She nodded emphatically. “I’ll do him safe, Da, promise.”

“But that means ye have to keep yourself safe, as well. Elder sisters have to be the best at obeying Mam and Da so the smaller bairns ken what’s the right way of things. Can ye do that?”

“Aye,” she said at once. “I’ll ‘bey.”

For precisely sixty seconds out of every hour, he predicted.

“Hear me, though, Bree: the next time ye disobey like ye did today, I shall have to strap ye. I dinna want to do it, not one bit, but it’s how you’ll learn. Are we understood?

“....What’s s-tuh-rap?”

“Getting smacked hard on the bottom wi’ a belt.”

“Hard?” she clarified, shocked.

“Aye, hard enough that it hurts.”

“But ye said—” She scrunched up her face and gestured with both hands. “NOT do things to KEEP me of getting hurted....”

A Dhia, Da, he laughed silently, how by all the saints did ye raise three—

“JAMIE!!”

His head snapped up and he saw Marian rushing down from the house, beckoning wildly, with a look of—

“Da—ddy—” Bree gasped out from where she bounced against his shoulder. “Why we runnin’?”

His heart was pounding.

“Because your brother has decided he’s going to arrive early.”

#;mod bonnie #Flood my mornings