Chapter Text
2011
Claire makes the realisation that Jamie is a man who takes celebrations very seriously, when she comes home to a candlelit dinner one night, shortly after their very impromptu wedding. Weary after a day of assisting in the operating room, back-to-back shifts and not quite enough sleep, she can't quite figure out what the occasion is until he pulls her into his arms and whispers Happy Anniversary into her ear.
"Has it really only been a month?" she murmurs, sinking into his embrace, feeling the tension seeping from her body just from his touch.
"Weel, a month since ye became mine, Doctor Fraser ," he whispers, running his nose against the shell of her ear. "And six more weeks on top o' that since I gave my heart tae ye."
Claire resists the urge to pinch herself, because if this is all a dream, it's not one she wants to awaken from, ever. She does however, give Jamie a gentle shove when he begins to trail kisses down her neck, grumbling that she needs to take a shower before he can have his way with her.
"Go and get yerself clean, mo ghràidh. I'll finish up wi' dinner, and then…" he trails off, grinning wickedly.
"And then?" she asks, suddenly breathless.
"Time fer dessert."
Their next anniversary goes far less smoothly after she tries to surprise him for the occasion.
She nails the surprise part.
After spending her entire day off in the kitchen, improvising (sans-recipe) trying to assemble something vaguely edible, or at least not so disastrous that it might send her husband to the emergency room, she mistakenly causes a small explosion in the oven.
The chicken catches fire, as do her dish towels, but she manages to stop the flames before the spread. Her kitchen is left worse for wear though, and she sinks to the ground, head in her hands as the smoke alarm goes off, wondering how on earth she'll have the flat cleaned up before Jamie gets home. What she doesn't count on is a well-meaning neighbour ringing the fire department on her behalf, because not ten minutes later, the front door is thrown open.
"Claire!"
She didn't often have a chance to see her husband all geared up, not unless he'd gotten himself injured at work (a circumstance she would rather avoid), and she understands why men and women swoon at the sight of him.
"I'm fine," she calls back to him, standing and running into his arms. He pulls back, gently assessing her for injuries, and once satisfied that she truly is unharmed, bursts into an uncontrollable bout of laughter. She shakes her head and joins him, the hilarity of the entire situation finally settling in.
"The lads will ne'er let me live this one down," he says after he's recovered.
"I'm sorry," she tells him, but they're both smiling, not quite fussed that their kitchen looks like a post-apocalyptic warzone.
"How about ye leave the cooking tae me next time?" he suggests, cupping her face with one gloved hand.
"I knew I married you for a reason," she sing-songs, giving him a long hard kiss before he leaves to finish off the rest of his shift.
By the time he returns home, she's managed to clear up most of the mess, leaving every single window in their flat open to air out the smoke.
"It's still a little smoky I'm afraid," she tells him, gratefully accepting the bags of takeaway he'd picked up for their dinner after leaving work.
"Dinna fash, mo nighean donn. The smell doesna bother me."
He repeats the same words not long after, pinning her to their mattress despite her protests that she's still sweaty from having almost burned down their kitchen.
For two individuals who had very much enjoyed a solitary lifestyle before finding one another, married life comes surprisingly easy to them. They'll often go a day or two without seeing one another, schedules always changing, but the time they do spend together is very precious.
Her twenty-eighth birthday falls shortly after their fourth-month wedding anniversary, and they both manage to take a weekend off work. Jamie's hopes for a romantic getaway quickly fall through when he comes home on Friday night with a very high fever.
Instead of spending their days off at a wee cabin in the mountains, Jamie remains mostly passed out in bed while Claire tends to him. She diagnoses him with a very bad cold, and bustles around making sure he's taking his medicine and drinking enough water to stay hydrated.
Not wanting a repeat of the anniversary incident, she rings her sister-in-law and asks if the woman can give her step-by-step instructions on how to prepare Jamie's preferred comfort foods. Jenny, who had warmed up to her quite a bit since their rocky first meeting, goes much further than that and sends Ian over with enough food to feed a family of four for an entire week.
And so Claire diligently reheats soup and spoon-feeds her ailing husband, who is too out of it to protest being coddled. It's the longest amount of time they've spent together since their first date, when he'd inadvertently ended up moving in with her. She cherishes these moments, sitting in bed and reading on her phone, his head in her lap, her fingers gently carding through his curls.
Sure, they're surrounded by a mountain of used tissues and Jamie has sneezed and coughed on her more times than she cares to remember, but she finds she doesn’t mind it one bit.
In sickness and in health , they'd vowed to one another.
And when Jamie turns to her with a sleepy smile, haphazardly throwing one arm around her waist, trying to draw her closer, she curls right up to him.
"I love ye, Sassenach," he mumbles, before promptly falling right back asleep.
By early December, it becomes apparent that she and Jamie have very different views on how the holiday season should be spent. The truth is, she'd lost her parents so early on that she has no memories of hanging stockings by the fire, stringing lights around a tree or opening up presents on Christmas day.
Jamie on the other hand still observes his boyhood holiday traditions, and those she doesn't quite understand them all, she allows him to drag her around the farm, searching for the perfect tree.
They settle for one both small enough to fit inside their car and their flat, and dress it up with tinsel and baubles and colour-changing fairy-lights. Jamie sets a star on top, one he'd crafted himself as a child, and they sit back, admiring their little tree.
"Weel, it'll have tae do fer now," he says, draping an arm around her shoulders.
"For now?"
"Aye Sassenach. 'Tis a fine wee tree, but there were barely enough branches for ye and I tae decorate. We'll need a bigger tree eventually, so the bairns willna fight o'er who gets tae hang the ornaments."
She burrows into his side, resting her head upon his shoulder, arm slung across his middle and fingers curling into his terrible Christmas jumper. They'd discussed this early on, before the wedding even. He wanted children, as many as she was willing to give him. It was something they were both firmly on the same page about. But they weren't quite prepared just yet, not with their respective careers and still slowly learning one another. A definitive date had never been set, but they'd promised to wait until they were both ready for it.
And she knows she isn't.
"Not yet though," she tells him, closing her eyes and simply enjoying being in his arms.
Just the two of them.
"Not yet," he agrees, hand moving in slow circles over her shoulder.
They both have shifts on Christmas Day.
It's the price they have to pay to spend Hogmanay up at Lallybroch with the entire family, and Claire really doesn't mind it so much, but she knows that Jamie is disappointed.
"I thought we'd get tae open presents together at least," he'd told her, a small pout forming on his face.
"We'll have plenty of chances for that in the future," she had reassured him, all the while thinking about how she might make his Christmas wishes come true.
It turns out that it's really not so difficult.
A phone call here and a favour there and she manages to clock off half-an-hour earlier, giving her just enough time to head home and change before driving to the station to surprise Jamie.
They’ve decorated for the holidays. Well, decorated, is putting it lightly. It looks as though Father Christmas himself has decked the halls, the festive spirit having very much taken over the entire place.
Claire waves hello to several familiar faces as she makes her way through, ignoring the shit-eating grins on their faces as they all point her upstairs to where the bunks are located. She doesn’t manage to surprise Jamie so much as run headfirst into him as he turns a corner without looking.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”
“Sassenach?!”
She barely has a chance to react before she’s being swept into his arms, twirled around like the leading lady in a romantic comedy, and she cannot help but laugh at his antics.
“I cannae believe ye’re here,” he says, gently setting her down and capturing her lips with his. She melts into it, arms winding around his neck as his hands span her back, insistently pressing forward, paying little mind to their surroundings. When they pull apart, they’re both a little flushed and breathless, giggling like children.
“I don’t want to distract you from your work, but I thought it would be nice for us to actually see one another on Christmas Day,” she tells him as he leads them over to his bunk. “I know we said no presents but...” she trails off as he reaches over, fingering a button on her heavy winter coat, one brow raised.
“I dinna think whatever gift ye have planned is appropriate fer the workplace, mo ghràidh,” he teases, ducking easily when she tries to swat him over the head.
“Don’t you worry, lad. You can take all the time you need unwrapping me when we’re at home. But that’s not quite what I meant.”
“Is it no’?”
She shakes her head, cupping his jaw in one hand, feeling the smooth skin and yearning for the familiar roughness of his stubble.
“There’s something I wanted to tell you,” she says, trying to stay calm as she sees the panic in his eyes. Not quite able to find the words just yet but wanting to reassure him all the same, she leans forward, brushing her lips against his, pressing their foreheads together and bumping his nose with her own. “It’s nothing bad I promise,” she whispers.
They sit in relative silence for a bit, her fingers tracing nonsensical patterns over his palms, as she tries to muster up the courage to tell him something so simple, yet monumental. Not wanting their moment to be interrupted by sirens and alarms, she takes a deep breath and comes right out with it.
“I love you.”
Her husband, usually a man of many, many , words, sits there like a stunned mullet, just staring at her, blinking, almost disbelieving.
“Did you hear me?” she asks, nudging his knee.
“Aye, I did, Sassenach. But do ye think… could ye say it again, maybe?”
She laughs, shaking her head and then lunging forward, throwing her arms around his neck.
“I love you, you idiot.”
He returns her embrace with fervour, holding her tightly against him.
“Tis the best Christmas gift I’ve e’er received, mo ghràidh.”
He changes his mind two years later when she presents him with a wee stocking to hang between their own on the mantle.