#liv has been waiting to use the word 'shuck' in a fic for five months now

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Can we please have some more "Our story?"

What happens after Claire calls Jamie in “Our story?”

anonymous asked: When will we get a continuation of “Our Story”, this is a really great fic and I can’t wait to discover if Jamie and Claire will finally meet after all these years apart. Thanks to all the writers, you’re each doing a terrific job with your own world and creation. Keep up the great work :)

[December 24th, 2007]

When another deadline flies by, Jamie is flying at 10,000 feet, Boston-bound with a mouthful of pretzels. He can almost see Geordie in his Glasgow office, fat fingers typing misspelled threats into a text: droppING representaton, beach of contract, an etc. etc. dripping with career-ending venom. But no matter. How could anything matter, when the sea is a sheet of blue glass below? When a woman—his woman—is waiting for the sound of his knuckles on the other side of her door?

Later that evening, Jamie’s rental pulls up outside Claire’s home. He does not move from his seat, but waits, wanting to see what fragments of life he can snatch from the trees, the waft of peanut butter from the swaying pinecones. The house is large and painted brick, with a mismatched patch of white above the garage. Roman Column instead of Lily of the Valley. (He imagines a man, Frank, on a ladder; Claire looking up, shielding her frustration from him and the sun). The grass is freshly cut, and Jamie knows that if he wanders to the back, he will find a garden. Marigolds sleeping until spring.

Jamie thinks, with a certain sense of awe, This is the place. This is the place and that is the yard and that is the door. Inside, there is the kitchen where she has eaten breakfast, the table where she’s done her taxes, the mirror that has fogged with her breath when she leans close. (He remembers being that close, once.)

Finally, he gets out of the car.

The slats of thin metal clank when Claire pulls at the blinds. She sees Jamie striding up the pathway, looking as impressive as he does on glossy paper, or in the intricate webbings of her late-night brain. She smooths her curls and her skirt to tame whatever has burst inside her. (Loneliness, that old friend—just a puff of smoke.)

The first thing Claire says when she opens the door is, “You broke your nose.”

There is no intonation at the end, implying doubt, or criticism (“You broke your nose.”). Rather, there is only quiet evidence that Claire has not forgotten, still knows Jamie and the once-sharp bridge of his nose, through and through.

And Jamie, seeing Claire, says, “Aye, and you’ve gone a bit gray.”

Similarly, it is not a question or an insult (he thinks she looks wiser, wants to see what she’d look like in all white), but merely a quiet recognition that time has passed, they are older, and he does not care.

“I’m assuming there’s a story to go with it.”

Claire squints, trying to mine the story from his face. The possibilities: a horse, riled by the teeth of flies. An angry lover, whose palm soars, its heel shoved outwards and up. It’s unsettling, almost, how Claire can only fill these blank spaces with assumptions.

“Aye, there’s always a story,” Jamie says.

With her face pinched this way, Jamie can read the years in the crinkles of her forehead. He sees the spot where the furrow is at its deepest, the place where she probably wonders, “What other parts of you have broken?” He wants to put his lips there, tell her about every splinter and fracture without speaking them aloud. 

Claire’s eyes travel downwards until they sparkle. Apparently, she has found something in the cut of his jaw because she puts a hand to her chin, saying, “I’m going to assume…an unfortunate encounter with a mountain lion? No. A bear. A grizzly. Are there grizzlies in the Highlands?”

“Nay, unless ye count Rupert,” Jamie replies and, as if on cue, a roar comes from a nearby porch. A man staggers towards an idled taxi, all hairy haunches and pale flanks in the streetlight. “Merry Christmas!” he shouts to no one, voice ringing with booze. He draws up when he spots Jamie and Claire across the way, and his lips are spit-shined when he puckers them, cooing, “Now kissssssssssssss!”

Jamie laughs quietly, so that Claire must work to hear it once the engine putters awake. (When she moves a bit closer, she does; decides it is still the best thing she’s ever heard.)

“Well, there appears to be a small population of them in Boston,” she jokes. “Now’s your chance. I’ll hold those flowers while you two go at it.”

Christ, he’d forgotten the flowers. 

“Thank you,” he says, placing them in her arms (the pulse of an old grief when she cradles the roses). “Make sure ye dinna crush them, mind. The woman I’m taking to dinner wouldna appreciate crushed flowers.”

“Better crushed flowers than a crushed date. Not much you can do with that.”  

Whether either of them realizes it, the four feet between them have become one, and if Jamie were to extend his arm, he could wrap it entirely around Claire’s waist. Instead, he jerks his head towards the car, and she follows him.

“But if a ghastly beast did break your nose, I’d love to hear about it.” 

“The story’s not as exciting as all that,” he replies, opening the passenger door, taking an extra second to admire the clumsy way she ducks inside. “Just a rugby match against the Mackenzies.”

“Beasts enough,” she says, once he’s in his seat. “Was it worth it?”

Already, the new-car smell has been replaced by hers: that fertile spring scent, moss and rain and opening flowers. Jamie rubs his nose and wonders if, after all these years, Claire’s green thumb would set it straight by simple touch. Crunch, click, wholeness.

“A broken nose in exchange for Dougal on his arse, doing the splits for all king and country? Worth it, I’d say.” 

“Oof.” Claire cringes. “Think I could die happy without that one.” 

“Aye, there’s a few other things I’d rather see…” Suddenly bold, Jamie lets his words become a suggestion. A flush blooms across Claire’s cheeks as she reaches toward the dashboard. 

“Easy there, lad.” 

Jamie notices how her fingers waver in the air, seem to yearn for the knob of his knee. But Claire freezes, suddenly self-conscious, and only turns the radio dial. When Joni Mitchell sings through the speakers, she hoots, “You’re still listening to this stuff?”

“Always,” he wants to say. 

“Better than what’s on nowadays,” he says instead, tapping the cracked CD case on the consul. “And my iPod broke.” 

“Broken nose, broken iPod…” Claire looks out the window and hums. (What other parts of you have broken?)

It’s as though the music is dragging them from Jamie’s car, pushing them into a crooked Edinburgh flat where a needle crackles and the record spins. The soundtrack of their newlywed bliss, “Blue”—forever playing in tune with the creak of their cot, the groan of the pipes behind their heads. Lying awake at night, they had dreamt aloud of the 70’s—of history—believing they’d both been born late, two souls adrift. (“If you could be anyone, who would you want to be?” they had asked each other. But whatever time or place, the answer was always, “Yours.”)

“So where exactly are you taking me?”

“That’s for me to ken and for you to find out.” 

“I do hope it’s at least remotely interesting,” Claire replies. 

“Jury’s still out. Awaiting yer judgment.”

“Hope you remember I’m a difficult one to please.”

“Not as difficult as ye think,” he says. Another suggestion. Suddenly, Claire remembers bubble wrap and a weightlessness where there was nothing but the flutter between her legs. Jamie remembers her face, gone slack, and her heavy-lidded sighs above him.

“No,” Claire says, “maybe not.” 

And when she smiles, it is just as Jamie remembers (the most beautiful, the best thing). He feels himself wrap and wind, like a red string, around her finger.

Jeanne’s, the place is called, a tiny French joint where a glass of water costs $2 and the tablecloths feel like spider silk. It is a short walk from Jamie’s hotel and a much longer drive to Claire’s home, out in the suburbs. Both of them silently agree to ignore the implications of these distances, shunting away thoughts of alabaster shoulders and muscled calves under a hotel bedspread. 

“So tell me,” Claire says, their meals ordered, “why this place?”

“You have to promise ye won’t laugh.”

“Promise,” she says (though she will giggle halfway through, a teenager’s star crossed giddiness). “I won’t laugh.” 

So this is what Jamie tells her: that he’d once looked up restaurants in Boston, and found this one. That he’d used it as a reference—a stage set in his mind, which he could place Claire easily inside, see her occupy. That, in knowing the menu and the wine list and the painting near the bar, his memory of her could be something more than memory. Something just short of real because there she’d be, ordering from the menu and the wine list, sitting beneath the painting that he’d memorized from the bookmarked Yelp page. (This, Claire understands. It’s why she used to read the articles, why Frank shredding her collection seemed like the greatest theft.)

There’s a synchronicity to their movements as they eat. When Claire reaches for the salt shaker, Jamie’s hand is already there, passing it to her. And when Jamie spills his whisky, Claire is already advancing with a napkin, blushing as she grazes his lap and feels a hardened promise in his trousers. At one point, there is a crumb at the corner of Claire’s mouth, and Jamie does not feel shy about telling her it is there, about flicking it away with his finger (but God, does he wish it was his tongue) when her own cannot seem to find it. 

“There.” 

They talk about everything: Sorcha the horse, the online forum, Laoghaire, Frank. The random moments when they were reminded of each other: a particular slant of light on a penny, a navigation system set to British English. They smile, they laugh, and begin to think that a span of fifteen years is no significant thing. No time at all.

But for all their honesty, they are skirting around the great, fat elephant. It squats in the middle of their table, fattening itself on the bread basket, until it grows too large to ignore. A breathing wall that Claire considers hopping, sticking one brave limb over the edge; testing, testing. Are ye sure about this, Claire? 

Their conversation halts when a fight breaks out beside them. A couple, much younger than they, lips curling with their fists. Everyone—Jamie and Claire included—braces for the smack of a cheek or the slosh of drink, but a waiter intercedes and guides them out. The combatants rush into the night, huffing a trail of hate that only lovers know.

Claire seems to wilt then, her shoulders and eyes lowering. The last bite of coq au vin is left untouched.

“I suppose we should….” She pauses, bullying a lone mushroom onto the table. “We should talk about some things.”

It is then that Jamie realizes what is to come and that—no matter how hard he wishes it wouldn’t—it must. He straightens himself in his chair, gives a noncommittal, “Mmm.” And only after Claire’s lips tremble does he realize his mistake: like so many years ago, he has not said the right words. 

“Ironic,” she says. “You seemed to have a lot to say about it in your books.” 

He stares at his plate. 

“You’re not going to say anything?” 

“Not here, no.”   

“Ever?” 

Jamie’s gaze falls further, to the floor. The hardwood is darker than in the pictures, he thinks. More mahogany than chestnut. Suddenly, he feels betrayed, like his picture-perfect stage was built from rotten planks all along.

When he finally looks up, he sees Claire’s empty chair, spots her back as she spins through the revolving door. 

“Wait!” he shouts (A word! A word!). He slams $100 onto the table and weaves his way to the entrance, rattled nerves rattling wine glasses. Once he’s outside, he finds Claire leaning against the building. Eyes like smothered coals in the full dark. 

“Mo nighean—” 

“Don’t say it,” she barks, so fiercely, that he shuts his mouth. “You don’t get to say that. Not yet.” (He had forgotten her fury, how her tiny body could hold so much of it, wield it carefully or recklessly whenever she wanted.) “You know, I’ve never heard you say her name since that day.”

Jamie thinks his gut has been sliced open. Believes that, if he looked down, he would see his liver, his intestines, his kidneys—a collection of his organs—soaking into the sidewalk. Streams of his blood trickling into five letters. 

No, he hasn’t said it. Can’t.

“Of course I remember,” he grumbles.

“Then what else do you remember?” she asks, but she gives him no time to respond. “Do you remember that morning, Jamie? The half-empty church? The too-full cemetery?” She shakes her head, laughing. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Because you weren’t there.” 

“How was I to know what to do?” he yells, his own grief-rage pouring out. “I was 23, just a kid!”

“And I was your wife. You know, that person whose side you promise to stand by? But you weren’t standing by me, Jamie. You were in a bloody prison cell.”

“I did it for you. For her! We had no money, and I thought—”

“Which part did you do for us? The prison part? The not being at the funeral part? The let’s-just-make-another-child-and-things-will-be-better part?” 

“Jesus, Mary, and Bride. I’m trying to explain myself so that you can understand, if you’ll only give me the chance.” 

Claire takes a staggering step forwards, drives her index finger into his chest. She cranes her neck to look at him, unafraid. “No, I want you to understand first. I want you to understand what it was like, standing there, surrounded by “Beloved Mothers” and “Devoted Fathers.” All these people who’d lived long enough for that kind of stuff.”

She whirls away again, caught up in memory.

“And the priest, the damn priest! Jamie, he couldn’t even say your name right. Faith Eraser. Like some sick joke. I didn’t know who I hated more. Him, for not being able to pronounce it right. Or you, for having that stupid name.” She pauses, catches her breath so that her words don’t break when they hit the air. “In the end, I remembered: it was you who I hated more. Because at least the priest was there.”

“You’re the one who left. You’re the one who didn’t even try.” 

“I tried. I—” 

“Nay, give me just one second, because I think you’ve got it in yer head that ye somehow own this grief. The grief of—” He swallows. “Of Faith. But ye don’t. Ye werena there when I finally took the crib down, or when I brought all the wee clothes to the charity shop because I couldna look at them. I pretended—Christ—I pretended they were my niece’s because I couldna allow myself to think I had a daughter. That I was ever a father.” 

“You were a father. You still are.” 

“Aye, I ken that now,” he says. “It was too painful, though, at the time. To think of what I had, to remember what I’d lost. And then there were the phone calls, all the questions: Where’s Claire? Is she all right? When is she coming back? The worst of it all, really, because I didna ken the answers. Wasna sure you’d ever come back.”

Claire looks down, but he can see the beads on her lashes, the thin stream flowing down her neck, inside her collar.

“Why did ye leave? How could ye leave?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “Back then I thought I did. You couldn’t look at the crib or the clothes? Well I couldn’t’ look at myself, or you, without seeing her. Remembering everything: how she felt, what she smelled like. What it was like to hold my entire heart in my arms, just for a moment, and then watch it break.” 

(She wants to tell him about the butterfly ears and about the sheets—Please, please just to remember—but is afraid of them, even now.)

“The day I came home, she was everywhere—on the walls, in the little flower mobile—and you weren’t. And then when you were, I would look at you and there’d be a split second, just a blink of time, where I’d forget. Because how could she be dead if she was still there, in the bones of your face?” Claire is sobbing now. Streaks of mascara under her eyes and snot from her nose. (Grief: such an ugly, ugly thing.) Jamie steps forward, waiting for her to shrink away, but she doesn’t. Welcomes his arms. “The moment after that—where I remembered again—was more painful than anything else. Y-y’know?” 

“I understand, Sassenach. I do.”

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I—I don’t think I should have left. Jamie, I really shouldn’t have left.”

“I’m sorry too. And I wish you hadn’t.” 

“God, we fucked everything up, didn’t we? Made a real fucking mess.” 

“Aye, perhaps we didna do—or say—the right things. But it’s nothing we canna fix.”

Claire’s laugh is mirthful when she says, “Fix? How can we ever be the same?” 

(Jamie was asked a similar question, years before, in a cabin up in the Grampians. He had doubted it too, then, thinking of nothing more irreparable than a speechless husband, a fleeing wife, and a baby who never cried. But that was long ago and before this night, where he is hugging Claire and feeling a ring beneath her blouse.)

“We can’t, Sassenach—but I dinna want to be the same. I dinna want to make the same mistakes.” His head bows, an oath. “I willna make the same mistakes.” 

“You’re really willing—”

“Yes.” 

“And even though—“

“Yes.”

“Will you stop bloody cutting me off?”

Jamie’s silence. Claire’s pointed look.

“Oh sorry. Wasna sure if ye were going for a dramatic extended pause or no’.”

Jamie grins, and it pulls at the corners of Claire’s mouth.

“You’ll forgive me?” she asks, then. Shy. “And trust me enough to know that I won’t run off? Because that’s what I do, Jamie. I disappear.”

“And I get too quiet, and I dinna say the right things—or anything—when I should. Too prideful, too ashamed.” 

“But you do, eventually. Say the right thing. The perfect thing.” 

“And you come back, Sassenach. Eventually.” Jamie tweaks her chin, brings his forehead to hers. “Can ye no’ see it? You are my courage, and I am your conscience. We canna be whole if yer no’ here to bring the words out of me. If I am no’ here to bring ye home.”

Claire rubs a sleeve across her eyes.

“Bloody writer,” she chokes, and he kisses her. (A second passes where they are 21 and 22 again, two young things dashing through the streets of Edinburgh. All this life ahead of them.) When Claire tries to break apart, he keeps her to him as if wanting, somehow, to fall into her.

“Are you going to write me into your bed tonight?” she asks, breathless.

“Is that a proposition?” 

“Merely the question of a curious reader.” 

“I thought I might drive ye home first and see where the story takes me. Dinna like working from an outline.”

“All right. Spontaneity’s nice. I like a good plot twist.”

“Are ye ready, then?”

Claire reaches for his hand, and he gives it to her. Jamie squeezes, she squeezes back. She leads him toward the car. He follows, holding the keys and her heart. 

“I’m ready,” she says. “Take me home, Jamie.”

(At her doorstep, Jamie will give Claire a Christmas gift: a vase wrapped in old hopes, tied up with a sweater ribbon. Because of this, she will say, “Want to come in?” and will allow him to shuck his shoes on the rug, kiss her in the moon-drenched foyer. It will be immediate—the dissolution of their separate mouths and the resurgence of a familiar knowledge—once Jamie’s shirt parts and Claire’s skirt drops. Blue stripes and liquid gold on the floor.

She will let Jamie lay her down—gentle, so gentle—in front of the fireplace. And Jamie will bend—reverent, so reverent—and lick the pale tributaries of her inner thighs, inching towards the most tender part of her. “Please,” she’ll say, and he will make her say it again.

“Please.”

There are old lines. Ones they will know, remember as a soft curve or a particular bulge of muscle. Theirs to re-meet, reclaim and own.

There are also new lines. They will cut their teeth on them, tasting each other’s now-bonier spines or the looser skin of their upper arms. Jamie’s hands will still be larger—so much larger—than hers, and he will grasp the soft side of her knees, spread, and sink. “God,” Claire will think he says, and then wonder if he’d ever prayed in an empty church. Found some kind of grace in religion, as she had done, during those lonely, intermittent years.

Claire will kiss Jamie’s jawline, remembering that he likes it. Jamie will nip Claire’s neck because he knows it makes her shiver. And they will both be happy when they see that they’ve remembered correctly, that he does, yes, still like it when she kisses his jawline and that she does, yes, still prickle with goosebumps when he nips her neck. Please. God.

Jamie will begin to move faster, pushing Claire up and up until stars fall into her open mouth, then pour out again onto his shoulder. The bite marks there will glisten. 

Not long after, Jamie will follow, the fullest kind of breaking. And this time—oh, oh, oh this time—she will hear his whisper. Not “God” at all, but: 

“Claire.” 

And maybe, she will think, her cheek finding his steadying beat. Maybe this is what God is. The sound of your name in a lover’s mouth. Your face inside his heart.)