Linger - Sons of Anarchy Chibs/OC - Chapter One: Special Delivery
A/N: I am so so nervous to post this as I haven't written for a new fandom in an age but you all have been so kind and encouraging that I'm deciding to take the plunge. I hope you all love the chaos of my brain!
Rating: Explicit - MINORS DO NOT INTERACT
Warnings: Everything generally associated with SOA, honestly dead dove do not eat
Summary: Some things stay with you longer than they should.
Linger is a slow-burn Sons of Anarchy story about trauma, restraint, and the dangerous comfort of being understood — even when neither of you are ready to admit it.
Pairing: OC x Chibs Telford
My writing is entirely fuelled by coffee! If you enjoy my work, feel free to donate toward my caffeine dependency: will work for coffee
The sharp tap of heeled boots on asphalt drew every head in the garage. Every step caused Delphine’s heart to race a little faster. She was fully aware of the mistake she was about to make, but like any natural disaster she was powerless to prevent its inevitable path of destruction. Her hands shook as she stepped into the lion’s den, but her commitment to the infiltration plan did not waver.
The jangle of tools laid aside rang from every direction as various jobs came to a sudden halt. She could sense the lustful gazes on her back as he stepped over the threshold beneath the open shutters and into the workspace, becoming enveloped in the scent of motor oil. It was as if time itself stopped, workers glancing up or turning around from their tasks to watch her as if hypnotised. She cleared her throat, unsure which staring face to address or what the hell to say first, when she was approached by a remarkably pretty guy with scruffy blonde hair.
His words were light and teasing as he wiped his hands on a rag, but his eyes roamed their way from head to toe, pausing at the shortness of her skirt, as if searching for any weaknesses he could utilise to charm her. She was sure that the roguish smile he wore kept him popular with the ladies, but her hardened heart knew better than his tricks. When her gaze fell onto the name tag on his grey shirt, her strained smile eased and her act became easier as she chuckled to herself about the accuracy of the description she’d been given of Jax.
“I have a delivery.” Delphine answered in a curt manner. “It’s for Juan Ortiz.”
Jax’s brows shot up in surprise, before giving her another long accessing look that indicated he didn’t believe she could possibly be a delivery woman. Sensing the growing tension as others listened in, she held up a brown paper bag in silent justification and Jax’s expression fell into an amused smile. Without another word, he slunk over to the door and leaned against the frame as if this would shield her from hearing him.
“Yo, Juice! It your birthday or somethin’? You got a smokin’ hot delivery.”
Several sniggers followed this announcement, pulling the attention of any workers who remained unaware of her arrival and she overheard a litany of crude comments floating around the garage. She had to physically battle to prevent herself from rolling her eyes, or displaying any signs of discomfort. Jax returned to the front of the space, leaning against a nearby counter as if he couldn’t wait to see how this played out.
Barely a second later, frantic footsteps pounded the floor before someone practically fell around the corner who she hadn’t expected. A middle-aged man with curly black hair and a dark goatee watched her with an excited expression and she found herself squirming under his invasive gaze.
“Oh, please be a stripper-gram.” He breathed the words out like a prayer, causing a shudder of disgust to pass through her.
Before she could decide whether it was time to cut her losses, another set of footsteps announced the arrival of a familiar face at last. When he first turned the corner he wore an expression of confusion, which quickly flicked to disbelief, and then pure joy.
“Delphine!” Juice exclaimed, surging forward to wrap his arms around her and sweeping her from the ground. He twirled her in the air, prompting a squeal before he finally settled her back down, his hands gripping her shoulders as if he feared that she might vanish. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was passing through.” She breathed, hoping he didn’t notice how inauthentic her words sounded. “I thought I’d swing by and meet these outlaws you raved about, see how they measure up to your stories.”
“How are they doing so far?” He asked quietly as she glanced back at the dark haired man who was listening intently.
Juice chuckled heartily, a fondness in his eyes as he took in her presence before he suddenly seemed to remember where he was. He glanced back at Jax, who now watched the two of them with fascination, then towards the outside and cleared his throat.
“Hey man, this is Delphine. She’s a very old friend.” He explained, allowing a second for her to grace him with a polite smile. “You okay if I take my break now? Give us a chance to catch up.”
“Sure, but don’t take too long. Your fine ass friend’s causing a distraction.”
With one last smirk in her direction, she allowed herself to be led back into the sunshine, leaving the curiosity of their audience to only grow. She could hear the whispers behind them, sense the stares as work continued to be halted despite Jax’s best efforts to direct them back to their tasks.
“Before I forget, here’s your delivery.” She offered, placing the brown bag onto the picnic bench that was still clearly in view of the garage. “I know how much you love these. Time to finally follow through on my promise.”
“It’s not, is it-” A wide smile filled Juice’s face before he fell into a nostalgic laugh. “Churros! These had better be worth the wait, Dell. Two years just for a withdrawal craving is some serious patience, you know.”
In an effort to disguise her nerves, she tried to force herself to be present in the moment. Despite the fear of the confrontation to come, she had dreamed of finding Juice again for years and she reminded herself how quickly things could change. Battling her churning stomach to enjoy the easy company, she focused on the sun warming her skin, the new scents in the air and basked in Juice’s innocent smile.
In her comfortable silence, Juice eagerly tucked into the baked goods, commenting on their quality and her excellent choice of local establishment that she had purchased them from. Soon, however, she could feel his suspicion building at her uncharacteristic quietness.
“So, why are you really here?” He asked before she could prepare for this change in conversation, wiping the sugar from his hands and face. “I know you didn’t drive all the way from Nevada to deliver on a promise to someone you haven’t even spoken to in two years. I might not be the smartest guy, but I’m not that dumb.”
Delphine’s chest ached with guilt, despising his belief that she viewed him that way. She gulped, a tiny indication of her nerves that she knew he had caught, but she couldn’t bring herself to be as direct with him in return. Although she had trusted him with her life once, years had passed and she couldn’t be certain of the depth of his loyalty to the club. In particular, to the man she was searching for.
What if it was greater than to her? What if he warned him?
Pushing down the sense of disgust that washed over her for this decision, she knew that she had to continue with this act, at least until she achieved her goal. The consequences could be dealt with in the aftermath, though she hoped that he would understand.
“Things have been messy lately. Nevada is dead to me.” The cryptic answer seemed to only increase his curiosity and she forced a smile before quickly redirecting the conversation to something lighter. “I need something new and I thought maybe you could hook me up. You know how I love a bad boy.”
For a moment, Juice was clearly unconvinced. He seemed to consider challenging her, but after a tense silence he decided to play along, smiling fondly as if he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed her particular brand of chaos.
“Oh I remember. How is Jack?”
“Still an asshole.” She scoffed, surprised that he remembered the name. “After my latest little trip to rehab, I realised that he had been dosing my coffee. Apparently I’m no fun sober. I told him to be gone before I get back.”
“That son of a bitch.” He hissed, his jaw clenched. “I’m guessing that trip sent you down memory lane. Straight to me?”
After a quick nod in confirmation and avoiding his eyes, he visibly forced a mask of calm
“I’ll have to check our stock if you want me to hook you up. I can’t promise anything good for you here, but I don’t think that’s your type.” He mocked, earning a light laugh and flutter of excitement in her chest. “Think we’re flat out of bad boys in your decade. How do you feel about a vintage?”
“I like my men like my whiskey: warm, smooth and perfectly aged.”
“Oh, I’ve fucked up.” He groaned, running his hands over his graded hair with an obvious regret.
“How about a straight scotch, burns a little, warms you up and makes terrible decisions feel correct?”
“Wow, that's actually worrying, Dell.” He laughed, shaking his head with concern as he stood from the bench and glanced reluctantly at the garage over his shoulder. “I should’ve known better than to give you such a good setup. I forgot you never know when to stop.”
“I have so many, Juice. I could go for days.” She breathed, moving to follow him as they fell into a banter that finally felt authentically like them.
“One more, one more please! It’s so good.” She pleaded, earning a long suffering look back, but no objections. “I’ll take a homemade moonshine, rough around the edges, illegal in at least three ways and absolutely set to ruin me.”
“Are you done?” Juice asked in an attempt to look irritable, but she caught the smile hiding in the corners of his lips as she cackled at herself.
“You’re all fucked up, you know that right?” He drawled, before beginning his path toward the garage as if he were walking to the gallows. “Fortunately for you, you’re in good company here.”
Juice toured the entire garage, seeking out everyone regardless of age or relationship status. Although they had joked about setting her up, she could tell that he was enjoying showing her off as they all clamoured for her attention and she indulged him as she absorbed the names and sleazy comments in search of the one she was desperate to hear. With each introduction, she held her breath only to be disappointed. By the time she’d met Piney, Clay, Lowell, Jax again, Bobby, Half Sack, Happy, and Opie, she felt herself becoming fearful and the feeling only intensified as Juice led her to the last remaining person.
“And this creeper over here is Tig.” He teased, indicating to the dark haired man who had been staring at her like a meal that he couldn’t wait to devour since the moment she arrived.
“Finally. Had to leave the best for last, huh asshole?”
Tig threw an arm over the back of her friend’s neck, mockingly pulling him into a headlock and causing disruption amongst the others who somehow still hadn’t returned to work. Delphine, however, couldn’t bring herself to react to their childish behaviour as the blood drained from her face. In all of her nightmare imaginings of this moment, she could never have anticipated an outcome as terrible as this.
“Anyway, baby. Now that we’re finally introduced, how about I take my break and you hop on the back of my ride and I’ll give you the real outlaw tour?” Tig suggested, stepping closer to take her hand. “Or we can skip all that and you can just ride me.”
He moved to bring her hand to his lips and she snapped out of her trance, stepping back so quickly that she almost fell over her own feet. She stared into his sneering face a few seconds longer, taking in the sick enjoyment he seemed to get out of her discomfort and her stomach lurched. The conversation before her felt larger in the shadow of her disgust, her words catching in her throat.
“Tig, you said?” Her voice emerged meeker than she’d ever heard it. “Last name?”
“You move fast. You want to make sure it’s got a ring with yours?” He drawled, prompting a grimace to break through her facade.
For a split second, his smile faltered and she panicked that she might be caught out. Tig looked from her, to Juice, and back again, some kind of realisation dawning on him.
“Oh, shit. You’re here to serve me, aren’t you?” He gasped, his demeanour growing fractic in an instant. “You can tell that bitch Colleen that she’s not getting another penny of spousal support, no matter what she threatens me with- I mean, shit. I ain’t telling you shit! That’s just like her, sending a babe to throw me off-”
“Tig! Stop fucking talking!”
Jax’s rough voice cut through his rapidly spiralling panic as he ushered him, Juice and Dephine into the garage office. He pushed Tig into the far corner, forming a physical block in front of him that communicated that this conversation was over until he said otherwise.
“Sack, go get Clay. Tell him I need him in here now.” He called out of the room before slamming the door closed and rounding on the two friends with a newfound intensity.
“Juice. How do you know her?” He questioned as he stared into his face with a pressure that caused him to squirm.
“Rehab.” He confessed, earning a frustrated hiss from Jax. “Trust me, man. She’s cool. She wouldn’t use me to get to anyone.”
The trusting look he threw her way caused her stomach to turn into knots. She couldn’t stand the pressure of it all, the deceit, and rushed her next words out to avoid crumbling.
“She’s also still standing right here, thank you.”
“His last name’s Trager.”
Juice’s confirmation sent her into a frenzy that blocked out Jax’s following low warnings about loyalty and consequences. Her mind filled with so many emotions at once that she couldn’t even begin to recognise them all, weighed under her panic, disgust, denial as she tried to process this information that she wished she had never received.
Oh shit. Oh no. Oh, god no. It can’t be him.
“You look like you’re going to pass out, Dell. What’s going on?” Juice pressed, stepping into her space and pulling her from becoming lost in her own mind.
Her attention turned back to the newly identified man before her, who watched her from the corner with a frenzied expression that almost matched her own. She struggled to wrestle her imagined version of how this conversation would go, wishing she didn’t have to face the reality that she had found herself in. With a deep breath, she forced herself to proceed. After all, she’d caused enough damage already.
“Look, if you’re about to serve him, we can have a lawyer down here-”
“Did you ever party in Indian Hills?” She blurted, cutting off Jax mid threat and she levelled Tig with a look that demanded a direct, honest answer.
“Sure, plenty of times, just like every other senior member out there. Probably not for a while though. What does that have to do with anything-”
“There was a crow eater there, Sally Thomas. You remember her?” She pushed, receiving a blank expression in return and he glanced at the other two men present in the room in disbelief. “She went by Seraphina back then.”
A flicker of recognition crossed his face, before he quickly covered it.
“What’s with the storytime? What does any of this ancient shit have to do with-”
The words prompted a heavy silence in the room, eyes turned on her from every direction. She swallowed a lump in her throat, hoping that this statement might be enough for him to realise what she was trying to tell him, that he wouldn’t make her spell it out. Horror filled his features, ghosts dancing in his eyes as his brain raced to connect the dots.
In the background, the hum of a bike announced another arrival, muffled conversation breaking the concentration of the men outside still attempting to figure out what was happening in the office.
“Wait a goddamn second. How-how old are you?”
“I’m thirty, two weeks ago.”
“No, cuz that would make you-” Tig cut himself off abruptly, his eyes the size of saucers now. “This is horseshit. I don’t believe it. I—I need to talk to your mom.”
“You and me both, but you’re about three months too late for that.” She breathed, swallowing the sting of rejection that rose in her throat. “You can direct all enquiries to the Dayton Cemetery, plot 1138. It’s the one awaiting a headstone. Although, given your record I’m not sure I’d trust you near a grave.”
“Jesus Christ!” Tig snapped—then paused, as if he’d only just registered the crack about him near the grave. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Juice took the opportunity to step forward, his hands landing on her shoulders to draw her attention. She noticed Jax over his shoulder, glancing back and forth between her and Tig with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.
“Dell. Why didn’t you tell me your mom passed?” Juice breathed, his brows furrowed deeply in concern. “Seriously, what the hell is going on here?”
Jax’s amusement only grew at Juice’s blatant confusion, but he still seemed to struggle to decide how to address the situation that he had clearly already figured out. Delphine sighed, before reaching into her bag to pull out a piece of paper that would help to wrap this conversation up for everyone. She was ready to focus on apologising to Juice for pulling him into this mess and was already growing sick of the judgemental looks Tig kept throwing at her between his erratic ramblings.
“Mom always made me promise not to look for my dad. I went through her files after she died and found all her old journals from her time at The Devil’s Tribe. She left eight months before I was born, cut all ties.” She recounted, placing the results sheet on the desk in front of Tig. “I paid for a private DNA test and got a match. You’re in the system after your last arrest. Which, by the way, a necrophilia charge is exactly the first impression anyone would want of their dad.”
For a few fleeting beats, the room was silent, stiflingly so. Tig lifted the results sheet into his hands as if it was a grenade, staring at it in bewilderment as he ran a hand through his messy curls.
Just as he opened his mouth to speak, the door clattered open to Clay’s arrival.
“Jax, I told you I had that VIP in. What was so goddamn important to pull me away from-”
“Dad! I’m your dad!” Tig bellowed, as if his mind had only just assembled all the pieces into this conclusion and his voice carried through the open door behind Clay, echoing through the garage. “Jesus fucking Christ, man. You’re my kid? I hit on my own kid! What the fuck?!”
The previously silent workspace fell into chaos as his words made their way out. Some workers scrambled away as if they hadn’t heard anything, others descended into hyena-like laughter. Clay and Juice both observed the situation as if they couldn’t comprehend what they were hearing, whilst Jax stepped out to apparently tell their audience to return to work, although Delphine still caught a smirk filling his features as he crept past her.
“This is fucked! This is so fucked! I mean, how fucking accurate even are these things?” Tig continued to curse, knocking furniture over and tugging at his hair, and Delphine watched awkwardly, unsure whether to focus on comforting him, or herself.
“Chibs! Get this little honey trap out of the way whilst I try to bring Tiggy back to Earth.”
Clay’s stern voice called out of the office to summon someone whose name wasn’t familiar and even in her shock she found her back straightening.
“That’s okay, Clay. I can take her-”
“No.” The older man’s authoritative tone cut through Juice’s attempts to assist his friend in escaping. “You’re gonna stay right here and answer some questions for me, help fix this mess you’ve made.”
Juice seemed to visibly shrink beneath the weight of this instruction and the guilt threatened to crush Delphine. It had never been her intention to cause any friction between him and his brothers. She knew how difficult it had been for him to earn his place here and hated the thought that she could do anything to jeopardise that.
She opened her mouth to argue on his behalf when a handsome older man stepped into the room, reaching for her with amusement filling his rugged features.
“Come on, Lassie.” He spoke as he gripped her arm gently, the lilt to his accent smoothing his words. “Let’s give Daddy Dearest a wee bit o’ time tae go off his nut. Ye look like ye could do wi’ a coffee and a breather yerself, aye.”
