Chapter Rating – Soft M for non-graphic married nookie
Two Fools
I back up under the stream of water as far as I can without getting my hair wet. I let the shower beat against my shoulders for a long few minutes while I reflect. We leave for our next stop tomorrow, which also happens to be our last stop before Inverness. In fact, tomorrow night we'll be staying in the same little town where the Rover broke down three months ago, where Murtagh and Angus brought me after rescuing me from Black Jack.
Strange, the things I remember about that day. Single images and feelings that will stay with me down the years.
The smell of the earth. The impact of stone on flesh. The feel of stun-gel making contact with my skin. The look in Black Jack's eyes as he prepared to shoot me.
Strange what I have forgotten too.
Ask me what I said to Murtagh, or what Angus said to me all that day, and I don't know that I could.
In the end, that day, and those events, were merely the last in a long, long line of days and events, each compounding to bring me finally, inexorably, miraculously, to Jamie.
Strange to think that more has happened to me in the past four months of my life than in all of the three and a half decades prior. And those hadn't exactly been empty.
It's not everyone who can say they've had two hundred years happen to them in a single day. . .
I step out of the shower and dry off, wrapping a large towel around myself.
It's not everyone who can look forward to a life married to James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser as a consequence, either. . .
I open the bathroom door, and he is the first thing I see.
I stand stock still, drinking him in.
He's sitting in an easy chair next to the coffee table, reading one of the paper-bound books I brought from Leoch. The warm light from the lamp spills across him like a golden mantle. His broad, sinewy hands hold the book like a goblet of fine wine, and his lips mouth the occasional word as he reads it.
His personality fills the room. It is only an ordinary hotel room in a thoroughly common Scottish B&B, but his presence makes it a mansion. A castle. A palace.
I no longer know what to call the feeling building up inside me. Love itself seems too weak and simple a word. I feel the need to either redefine it, or redefine myself.
I could kneel before him in this moment. Pledge my fealty. Take the Oath. Promise him the moon, or the very stars. Spill my own heart's blood.
Nothing would be enough. Everything wouldn't be enough.
Whatever this is, it is more than all of it.
I'll never be able to prove it to him. Because there's nothing to prove. It simply is. We are. There's no proving what is already so fundamentally understood. The only thing to do now - the only thing - is to live. Live our lives together, giving each other honor and truth every day, for the rest of our time in this world. . . and whatever time we have in whatever comes next.
All of a sudden, saying it is easy.
"I love you, Jamie."
He looks up slowly from his book.
His eyes take me in, the burning blue of them raking me up and down a half a dozen times. He looks at me as though I am the ghost of someone he loved long ago, and also like he's seeing me for the first time. Then he stands with one great lunge, casts my book aside, and takes two strides towards me, before stopping with a jerk, as though caught in an invisible Safnet screen.
An utterly forlorn hope enters his eyes, and his voice comes out low.
"Are ye real, Sorcha?"
I don't blame him for his disbelief. I do feel rather less than real just now. . .
"Yes. I love you, Jamie."
With one more step he's on his knees before me, his arms wrapped around my body, his face pressed hard against my stomach, and shuddering, wracking sobs running through him.
I rest my hands on his head like a coronet, then stroke his hair gently, speaking all the love-words I know.
"Shh, my love, I know. . . I know. . . all will be well now, I promise. . . all will be well. . ."
I go on and on like that, and slowly but surely, he calms, nuzzling into me, and stroking with his hands up my sides and down my legs.
Suddenly, I feel like a queen, and that this is a most inequitable position.
"On your feet, Lord Fraser," I say, all of my Central nobility in my voice.
Something in him reacts automatically to the sound of the title, and all at once he is taller than me again, looking down into my eyes, and cradling my face in both hands.
"Say it again, I beg ye."
"I love you, James Fraser."
His eyes slide closed, "Again."
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you."
He kisses me, so carefully it's like he's afraid I might break.
Or like he might. . .
"When, Sorcha? When?"
His voice still wavers with emotion, but he has himself in hand now.
"When did I love you, or when did I know?"
"Both."
"I loved you the very first time you kissed me. But I didn't know it until last night, right after you fell asleep for good."
He gives a long, gusty, groaning sigh, "An' said nothing all day? Why, my heart? Why?" He kisses me again, reproachfully.
I work my hands underneath his shirt, and caress his scars, "Well, it was such a shocking thing to discover, Jamie. Not only that I loved you, but that I loved you so much. I've never loved anyone as much as this. Nowhere close. I didn't know love like this was real. And it was doubly shocking to realize that I had loved you this much, from the start. It's quite a thing to realize you've been feeling without knowing it."
He half smiles through the tear-tracks still on his face, "Aye, it mus' be."
"I was waiting until I'd gotten a little used to the idea before I said anything definite. You see, I. . ." I look down, and a fearsome blush overtakes me, "I thought I might have to convince you. . ."
He wipes furiously at his eyes, "Mmm, aye, Sassenach, please, please convince me."
I hug him closer to me, "I love you. With all my heart and soul I love you, my husband, my darling. If any gods exist, may they forgive me for not saying it every hour, every second since I knew you existed. I love you. More than mere words can say, I love you. I'll never stop. Never."
"God in heaven save me. . . ye'er so much more than I evar dreamed. Kiss me, Sorcha."
I pull his mouth to mine, and convince him that way for a while. . .
"Are ye sure ye'er real, my heart?" he murmurs, some minutes later, "But nae, ye must be."
I smile, wryly, "And why is that?"
"Even the wantingest dreams of a hungry lad couldnae possibly have delivered the taste of ye, Claire. . . the taste of ye. . . gods, ye'er sae sweet I could die of it. . ." He gives me several hot, nipping kisses to the neck. I can't help but moan.
"I love you, Jamie."
He grins, "No dream could make my heart beat sae fast at the sound of those words, mo Sorcha. Pretend I'm still no' convinced. What more were ye going tae say?"
I lean my head on his chest, "If this life was ten thousand years it wouldn't be long enough to start to live a life with you, Jamie. One life isn't enough, however long. A million lives wouldn't be enough. I insist on infinity. That might just satisfy me."
He is smiling now, but he is also crying again, "I'm such a fool for ye, Sassenach."
"And I for you."
His expression darkens a little, "For a minute there. . . when ye said it first. . . I thought ye'd read my mind. Near scairt the life out ov me."
"What do you mean?"
"I was readin' yer wee book of poetry there, and had jus' got tae John Donne. . ."
I frown little, "Absence, hear thou my protestation?"
"No. "I am two fools, I know. . ."
"Oh, that one."
"Aye."
"I see. . ."
His arms tighten a little around me, "Mmm. Come tae bed, Sassenach. Jus' tae sleep, taenight. . ."
But I smile softly, and shake my head.
I pull away from him, go over to the coffee table, and reach into the jewelry case. I slip the freshwater pearls around my neck, and let my towel fall.
I look at him, as a queen might look at a god.
"Make love to me, Jamie."
Eyes warm with rapt astonishment, he picks me up, and lays me down, all slow tenderness and gentle fervency.
We've done this slowly a few times by now. But this is the first time neither of us is hesitant or nervous, nor searching, nor exploring.
For the first time, we're doing this for its own sake.
For the first time, it's not sex. It is worship.
"I am two fools, I know," I quote while gently kissing my way down his neck, "For loving, and for saying so."
Touches flow between us like cool, pure water, when it runs along underground, the fruit of endless secret springs, clean, essential, and true.
"But where's tha' wiseman, tha' would no' be I? If she would no' deny?"
His kisses are as intoxicating as ever, but there is no hunger in them this time. There is only immortality. Only so much life we neither of us can contain it all.
We are bright with it. Replete with it.
We are suffused with it. . .
"And I, which was two fools, do so grow three. . ."
The brilliant blues and greens of his soul envelop me, so completely, so perfectly, I am astonished I ever doubted we were meant for this. . .
This time the pleasure doesn't burst, or break, or crash, or explode. It wells up silently, and inexorably, and lasts what feels like an age.
I have never felt sacred after making love before. But holding him now, my fingers tangled in the copper gold of his hair, his fingers entwined with my pearls, I feel something important is bound up in us. Something pure. Something essential. Something sanctified.
Something holy.
I don't ask questions. I just open my heart to love as much as I can, and hope.
And hope. . .
And hope. . .
Before sleep claims us, he whispers the last line of the poem into the curls above my ear.
"Who art a little wise, th'best fools be. . ."