A/N: (IMPORTANT!)
Alright, you wonderful things you. I got SO MANY lovely reviews and comments on my last two stories for Outlander, I just had to publish this little thing I've been thinking about. I'm also a very inspired, jobless college student in the summertime which means I have NOTHING BUT TIME ON MY HANDS, so don't be surprised if we get a few more visits from Claimie! That's what I'm calling JamieXClaire. Or Jaire, although I don't like that as much. Bottom line: I'M TURNING THIS INTO A MULTICHAPTER FIC. I'll get past the Frank stuff and on to JAAMF soon (don't worry!) but I really want to explore Claire's relationship with touch and the intimacy, romance, etc. that accompanies that. It's... a subject that hits very close to home for me. Apologies for any OOC! This is a fic for those who are fans of my writing. I think I'm more proud of some of the prose in this chapter than most of the stuff I've already done. Enjoy!
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I had never really thought of myself as a "physical" kind of person.
I have faint memories of my parents picking me up or kissing me on the cheek, and later on, Uncle Lamb would occasionally ruffle my hair or pat me on the back (usually amidst praise in which I was repeatedly referred to as "clever.").
As I travelled with Uncle Lamb around the world, people from different cultures would be physical with me in their ways- a distanced bow from a perpetually smiling old Japanese man, tight hugs from each member of an Argentinean host family, a kiss on each cheek from seemingly every woman in Greece who responded to "Yaya." I never initiated any of it, but I was numbly happy to receive.
I'd also been on the receiving end of many a fumbled romance, internationally. A hasty kiss that actually only caught my chin in India when I was twelve. A rebellious fling at fifteen with a twenty-one-year-old frenchman who clearly didn't know how to french. A ridiculous affair when I was seventeen, in the Philippines, with a boy who didn't speak a word of English, nor I of Tagalog (which lead to a confusing altercation after some unwelcome groping of my waist. Fortunately, being slapped in the face and spit on relays the same message universally.).
After a while, physical contact became something foreign and off-putting. Something I never initiated and only sometimes wanted. Something either too warm, sweaty, and therefore uncomfortable, or too cold, clammy, and therefore uncomfortable.
It wasn't until Frank entered the picture that the negative connotation was reversed, albeit slowly.
We met when he came seeking Uncle Lamb for some research or other. He was a historian, and a good one. A college professor. And, despite being considerably older than me, desperately infatuated from the moment we met.
I was eighteen (nearing nineteen, as Uncle Lamb persistently reminded me. Of course, I was happier to sit on the window seat and read Tolstoy than to think about my "next move," as he kept referring to my wavering lack of decision to become a nurse or not.). It was summer, which didn't hold the same meaning for me as it did for anyone with a traditional upbringing. For me, it simply meant that I would continue doing exactly what I did the rest of the year, except it would be perhaps two or three degrees warmer.
We were in the midst of an El Nino year, and the summer had been a welcome respite. Our home in England wore the sun like a newly starched cotton dress: beautiful, but a bit rigid. It wouldn't look right until the house bared her shoulders and let down her hair, settled in the sunshine after she shed her winter armor. We always returned here for a week or a month, at a stretch; once even a whole winter, between trips.
There's a saying that people tend to look like their dogs or romantic partners, but I always thought Uncle Lamb looked like his house. Mostly stone, and shingled wood on the roof, the house echoed the browns and grays of Lamb's travel-tanned skin, his salt-and-pepper hair. The roof sprouted lichens and moss that reminded me of his springy curls, sticking up at odd angles. And his eyes, a deep blue with a darker ring around the iris, mirrored the indigo morning glories that hung, lazily nodding, on the fence.
We had a forty-three day running streak of days without rain, so it came as both a shock and a disappointment when we ended up on the receiving end of a very angry thunderstorm toward the end of July. It had kindly waited until the afternoon to arrive, starting to come down in sheets just after I had arrived home with groceries. I took it as an opportunity to curl up on the window seat with a book and the one living thing I reveled in touching: the stray cat who had adopted Uncle Lamb and me. We had named her "Her Royal Highness Catherine de Medici, Queen of France." but we just called her "Cat" for short.
Uncle Lamb thought it was far funnier than it was, although it did afford me a smirk now and again.
It was a lazy afternoon like many, intermittently dozing, daydreaming, staring into space, and reading.
Uncle Lamb sat at his nearby desk, drinking tea and staring at the door.
And then came Frank, bursting in with rain beads rolling off the brim of his fedora, laughing wildly and gesticulating at the open door as if he had never seen rain before.
"Can you believe that?" He said, pointing at the rain. "Forty-four whole days without rain, and it starts pouring the second I leave on my way here. I think I'm cursed."
"Forty-three, actually." I muttered from behind a copy of Anna Karenina.
He noticed me and softened, his face amatory, stunned, and petrified all at once.
He didn't have a chance.
I grew toward him more slowly, although I was aware of his affections. I noticed that meetings between him and Lamb, usually confined to the local university library, or Frank's home, were moved almost exclusively to our parlor. Every time Frank would leave, Uncle Lamb would wait a moment and say to me, jokingly, "You've got an admirer, dearie." Even when there was no meeting arranged, Frank would find a reason to stop by: returning a book he hadn't borrowed, the "just happened to be in the neighborhood" excuse, that sort of thing. Twice, he actually came knocking on our door with a stray cat in hand, thinking Cat had gotten outside, only to be foiled when the description of our all-black, blue-eyed Queen of France didn't match the overgrown orange tabby or gangly siamese he found.
I was quite sure that his interest in me was just that: an interest. Nothing to be acted upon, just the detached fascination of an academic type who preferred to watch and study, rather than become involved. I'd seen it a thousand times in Lamb's colleagues, although Lamb himself was quite the opposite, and often referred to such types as "prats." Frank and I had made casual conversation, if a bit flirtatious, but he often did try to shake my hand, touch my shoulder, or kiss my cheek, and definitely noticed when such attempts were thwarted by one of my many tried-and-true contact avoidance techniques. Ever so slightly leaning back. The over-exaggerated air kiss. A wave instead of a handshake.
On my nineteenth birthday, he came by for his routine meeting with Lamb- they were studying some Russian literature or other- and gently handed me a small box. Thinking it was something for Lamb, I started to turn to put it in his study, but Frank caught my shoulder. It was gentle, but it jarred me. He noticed my sudden intake of breath and quickly withdrew his hand.
"Sorry." An uncomfortable pause ensued as I raised an eyebrow toward the box. "Ah, no, it's for you. Open it. Please."
I removed the lid to the decidedly feminine-looking box (it was printed with flowers. It must have come from a gift shop. I realized how ridiculous it would have been for him to have procured such a thing for Uncle Lamb and blushed.) and found a beautifully bound, first-edition copy of War and Peace. I blushed a little deeper, removed it from the box, and thumbed through the first few pages, careful not to crack the spine. It was a hardcover. It must have cost him quite a bit.
His clumsy words snapped me from my Tolstoy-induced reverie. "Ah... em, happy birthday. Claire."
At that moment, I decided that a first-edition Tolstoy warranted more than words in return, dropped my pride at my feet, and swiftly kissed him on the cheek. He stood there, stunned. I coughed. "Thank you. Frank."
I could hear bloody Uncle Lamb sniggering at his desk.
Embarrassed, I retreated to the kitchen with the pretense of making tea for everyone. I brought out the tray, covered in mismatched items from several different countries that comprised a nearly complete tea set. We were missing a creamer, but the Thai teas we generally drank didn't really warrant cream anyway.
"Is there anything else you'd like?" I demurred, trying to emanate the nonchalance I had so recently lost possession of.
Uncle Lamb gave a hearty laugh, "Don't be daft, you silly girl, it's your birthday! I won't have you waiting on us. Come and join us, we were just discussing-"
"Yes, Claire, there is something I would like." Frank interjected, clearly and urgently. He looked anxious. "I have tickets. Tomorrow. No, I mean, I don't have tickets tomorrow, I have tickets today, and they are for tomorrow... Jesus Christ. Sorry, that's confusing, Jesus Christ isn't- I mean, I said Jesus Christ as a sort of- the tickets aren't for anything involving Jesus. Bloody hell. What I mean to say is, if- if I haven't completely and utterly sabotaged my chances at this... Ehm. I have... philharmonic tickets. For tomorrow. And I would like, very much, for you. To. Go. With. Me. Claire." He accented that last word with a light tapping of the table and a hesitant smile at me.
Uncle Lamb, still sitting there, grinned like the Cheshire cat. I had also recently read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and saw the similarities between the two of them quite often.
I agreed, and he picked me up the next day in a convertible with the top incomprehensibly stuck down. It wasn't an issue, as the weather was pleasant. We made casual conversation on the way there, and I found him to be patient, caring, considerate, intelligent... and a bit boring, actually. Where I had travelled and seen and heard and experienced, he had only read and researched.
It wasn't until we were seated at the Philharmonic that I knew for sure he had noticed my disfavor for the tactile.
"Claire." He said, "It's a very long performance tonight. No intermission. And if I can't put a hand on you, I may well lose my mind. So, I am going to hold your hand now. And I would like very much for you to be alright with that."
Shocked, I nodded numbly. He carefully reached over and took possession of my right hand in both of his.
Warm.
Too warm.
I was afraid my hands would sweat.
But, altogether... not unpleasant. Rather sweet, actually, that he would want so much to just hold my hand.
The whole concert (a rather convoluted collection of Mozart pieces) Frank sat bolt upright in his seat, not touching the backrest. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept seeing him sneak glances at me, down at our hands, me, our hands, and smile like a child who's gotten away with eating an extra lolly.
I began to appreciate the contact for what it meant, instead of fixating on what it was.
The music was beautiful. Analytical. Mozart reminded me of those complicated, intricate clocks we came across in Switzerland. Uncle Lamb had offered me one when I was about eleven, but I declined and said, "If the villagers feel the need to come out of their homes, play a song, and dance with each other every single hour, they can do it here."
I always had a preference for Beethoven over Mozart, tending toward raw and emotional music instead of nimble and complicated.
But it was over the sounds of Mozart that I settled in to Frank.
A/N: THANK YOU FOR READING! Please review! MORE TO COME!