Tale Time #1
I’ll be sharing some of my favourite passages from Outlander fics in the next few weeks (months...? There are so many!). Hope you enjoy them as I do.
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.
Our Story, at Chapter 8, @westerhos
