This is the post that kicked the hornets nest of lore in my head so go give @gloura a high-five for that!
When I first sat down to work on this project, I realized immediately that this would require multiple parts to be even remotely digestible. I would have spent more time getting my thoughts organized, but I’m excited! I have ideas and I want to put them down in a document and share them! So this is the product of that desire. I’m unwisely getting started at 7:30pm on a Tuesday, but we’ll see when I manage to get “Part 1” published.
I also want to preface this by saying that for the sake of cognitive flow, I am going to be writing this lore down as though it is “fact” rather than my own personal worldbuilding and homebrew, but know that this is largely the fruits of my own mind. Fruits you do not have to eat or even like, let alone incorporate into any part of your personal interpretation of the drow and/or Underdark. It just makes things easier for me when I write to not constantly be couching my words in “I think they would-” and “in my opinion-” or “I had an idea that-” so I’m just going to skip that part and let you know the implication that this is all my attempt at fleshing out the world of the drow.
I just want to open up my toy box and you guys can play with anything that’s in there if you want – and I really hope you do.
Part 1: The Chemistry of Life in the Underdark
I could dive right in and start yapping about my favorite little bits of lore, but before I put my cart in front of the rothé, I want to take a step back and look at the bigger picture – and by bigger picture in this case I mean smaller picture. No, smaller than that. Microscopic.
Where does energy come from? If you’re as old as I am, you may recall learning about the food chain in science class, or maybe the food web if you’re a bit younger. The thing with our world the way we understand it, is that (almost) all energy that flows through our environment originates from the sun. The light of the sun is absorbed by plants and microorganisms and used to convert water and carbon dioxide from the environments into sugars and other… more complex arrangements of sugars. A portion of the sun’s energy is stored in the bonds of the sugars, which the bodies of every other creature uses to get energy. So what do we do when a world exists in total darkness, devoid not just of light, but of the energy provided by the sun?
There are a few ways for energy to flow through the Underdark.
1) The surface – A fraction of the sun’s energy can enter the Underdark in the form of bugs, and bats, and cave-dwelling animals, and foolish adventurers. Even dead or decayed matter from the surface that makes its way underground still contains valuable energy and nutrients that can used by the denizens of the Underdark.
2) Chemical bonds – Extremophile bacteria live in boiling hot chemical soup in deep ocean trenches near hydrothermal vents with no light get their energy instead through chemosynthesis. Similar microorganisms could exist in chemical rich environments within the Underdark.
3) Faerzress – Similar to those chemosynthetic extremophile bacteria, organisms native to the Underdark may derive energy from the ambient magic of Faerzress in a process I have decided to call “magisynthesis”. (interestingly plant-like creatures similar to corals called “magivores” exist in canon and fill a similar niche)
The vast majority of non-sentient life in the Underdark must be chemosynthetic or magisynthetic. Fungi already thrive in dark environments as detritivores, but those that propagate most extensively and successfully in the Underdark are both detrivorous and magisynthetic. Plants can only exist in the Underdark by making use of Faerzress, though this often gives them an alien appearance to anyone used to foliage designed to maximize surface area exposed to sunlight. (Put a pin in plants, I’m moving on for the moment but I want to circle back to them in a later post)
Once an energy source has been converted into sugar (or more complex structures made of sugars), then further up the food chain starts to look much more familiar. Omnivores and herbivores eat the plants and fungi, other omnivores and carnivores eat the other creatures, and the energy gets passed along. Faerzress is the source of energy that really makes life possible in the Underdark, and life is the keystone that makes the Underdark habitable by the drow.
The other important byproduct that is produced by plants in the process of synthesizing energy into sugar, is oxygen. Without a steady source of it, the Underdark would be just as uninhabitable as it would be without Faerzress. Plants, algae, plankton, and bacteria that convert Faerzress into sugar also make the subterranean biosphere habitable for organisms that rely on oxygen to breathe.
The chokehold VTMB2 has on me is real. And while I'm currently playing through The Flower and the Flame, I keep coming back to the main story. Specifically Fabian. I truly adore him. His little quips made me giggle quit a bit. I also like the take on his form of Malkavin insanity. In the first game if you play a Malkavin you speak in cryptic tounges that actually reveal more information then the player is initially given. Here we see the reverse. A Malkavin who's minds been messed with so much, he can't even trust his powers.
Malkavins disciplines or powers are based off Auspex, Obfuscate and Dominate. With Fabian focusing on Auspex, of course he doesn't suspect he's been compromised. In Loose Canon there's a flashback to 2020. Where Benny has already turned traitor and is meeting with then, Prince Campbell. After asking Benny if he's loyal and Benny responds yes- Campbell revels Fabian sitting in the corner and asks the Malkavin if Benny's telling the truth. Since all Benny's thinking of is different ways to lie about the same thing to Campbell, Fabian tells him that Benny's telling the truth. Because to him he is! That's literally all he can get from his mind reading. Why would he think Benny is anything but loyal 4 years later?
Fabian always wanted to do what he thought was right. He always put trust in a system he was taught to trust since the beginning. His disciplines were supposed to help protect him from this threat. But since he was a fledgling, his minds been warped as everyone took advantage of him. Everyone except for Phyre.
i feel so defensive and protective of people with ARFID like if i had a disorder that made my brain register 90% of food as poison for no reason and i had a bazillion people on the internet constantly calling me a manchild who needs to just grow up and stop being a picky eater i would start killing people
people with ARFID and people with very few autism safe foods and people with contamination OCD and people in ED recovery and everyone else with a complicated relationship with food that no one takes seriously GET BEHIND ME!!!!!!!
Poly!Buddie who are both equally protective of you.
Poly!Buddie who come home after shift to find you curled up asleep on the sofa with Christopher and Theo. They love to take cute pictures of you.
Poly!Buddie who also want a baby with you. Ideally two. They wouldn’t care who the father is because they’d both bring them up as if they were their own. But ideally they’d want one to be Buck’s and one to be Eddie’s.
Poly!Buddie who are both so possessive of you.
Poly!Buddie who love to compete in the bedroom. For example who can make you cum quicker.
Poly!Buddie who love fucking each other as much as they love fucking you.
Poly!Buddie who will do absolutely anything for you.
Poly!Buddie who constantly tells you how much they love you. And each other.
Poly!Buddie who love to cuddle with you after sex. Although Buck’s hands tend to wander and ends up with multiple rounds of sex.
Poly!Buddie who both propose to you. They know legally they can’t both marry you, but they’d settle for both of them being your fiancée. They also propose to one another. So you’re their fiancee, Eddie is Buck’s and your fiancee and Buck is yours and Eddie’s fiancee. It probably sounds crazy to everyone else but to you it makes sense.
Warnings: Mentions of swearing and getting a bruise from falling
all my work is fictional, purely entertainment related and belongs to me.
HAPPY LOWMAN WAS COMPLEX. SO OF COURSE, MEETING THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE WAS THE SAME.
Happy Lowman was a complicated and simple man at the same time. He constantly had that look that indicated he wasn’t one for unnecessary words or grand displays of emotion. To most people, he looked like a mean and harsh individual, and that’s all there was to understand.
However, that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Beneath that hard exterior was a life tangled in complications. Happy Lowman made everything look simple, even when nothing in his life ever was.
This included meeting you.
He had been sitting in the room of St. Thomas’ hospital for hours already. Tig had come in with an injury wasn’t life-threatening but serious enough to need stitches and bandages.
Happy stayed planted in the uncomfortable chair beside the hospital bed, one hand holding a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. His expression as impassive as ever. Loyalty had always been one of the few uncomplicated things about him.
The hospital was overflowing that night. Every hallway seemed lined with patients and nurses rushing from room to room, and there simply weren’t enough beds to go around. After a brief apology from an overwhelmed nurse, you were directed into a room and was told you’d have to share it.
You didn’t exactly mind it, it’s not like you required urgent medical attention but the swelling bruise that found its way onto your forehead still needed to be checked out.
You politely thanked her before leaning against the empty bed beside Tig. Happy’s attention shifted the second you entered.
You were absolutely breathtaking in his opinion.
Dressed far nicer than anyone usually was in an emergency room. You wore a deep teal bandage mini dress with a plunging neckline and a hem that ended just at your upper thighs. Obviously, you were dressed up for reason, considering the fact that your hair was also done, nails were painted and tall heels resided on your feet.
But that wasn’t what held his attention. It was how calm you were about the giant bruise. The dark purple mark bloomed across your forehead, standing in sharp contrast to your otherwise beautiful appearance. It looked fresh and painful.
He caught himself staring for a second too long. You looked embarrassed at the fact that you were even in the hospital right now. Your fingers instinctively brushed over the discoloured skin, causing you to slightly jump at the sudden pain that came from the touch.
“Jesus doll, what happened to you?” Tig speaks up from his bed, catching the glances Happy gave you and decided to be the greatest wing-man ever.
You let out a small huff before answering this strange man, crossing your legs as you continue to stand against the white bed. “Bad date. Like real bad.” you exclaimed as you smiled. Happy shouldn’t have cared, he usually doesn’t. So why was this time different?
Tig barked out a laugh “c’mon don’t leave us hanging, wha’ happened?”
Another nurse briefly stepped into the room, handing you a bag of ice before quietly slipping back out, leaving the three of you alone once again. You pressed the cold pack gently against the swelling on your forehead, grateful for the numbing relief it gave as you waited for someone to properly examine it.
“You tell me first” you said with a cheeky smile, tilting your head toward the two men. “What happened to you?”
“Dog bit him on the ass.”
The stoic man’s flat delivery made it sound as though it was an everyday occurrence.
For a second, you simply blinked. Then a laugh escaped before you could stop it. You quickly slapped a hand over your mouth, your shoulders trembling as you fought to regain your composure. “I’m sorry-” you managed between muffled laughs.
Against his own will, Happy’s mouth twitched upwards. A smile threatened to appear on his face at the sound of your laughter.
Tig let out an exaggerated sigh, folding his arms across his chest. “In my defence.” he muttered, glaring at his silent companion, “dog was losin’ it and attacked the first piece of meat he could find.” That only made you laugh harder.
Happy remained completely expressionless, though the faintest smile on his face betrayed him. He hadn’t intended to make you laugh but seeing your joy fill the otherwise depressing hospital room made the moment worthwhile.
The bitten man pointed an accusing finger at him. “He’s enjoyin’ this.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
You wiped a tear from the corner of your eye, finally managing to settle down. “Alright… I went on a date with this guy my friend set me up with. She failed to mention he travels by bike.”
A puzzled look crossed both their faces. “…what’s wrong with a bike?” Tig inquires. Happy felt a flicker of disappointment, assuming you meant a motorcycle. If you hated riding on two wheels, that would probably ruin any chance of taking you out for a ride someday.
You fell strangely quiet, your lips pressing together as if you were debating whether to admit it. After a long, awkward pause, you finally looked back at them.
“…A bicycle.”
Happys brows lifted slightly, the realization settling in. “like… with pedals?” You nodded, already fighting another laugh.
“He showed up in full cycling gear.” you mumbled. “Helmet, gloves, those little skin-tight neon shorts.” Your face cringed as you recalled the memory from earlier tonight.
The corner of Happy’s mouth twitched again.
“And then,” you continued, covering your face with your hands, “he looked at me and said hop on.”
“You… had to ride on the back of a bicycle…with that dress and those shoes?” Tig laughed loudly at just the thought of it.
“Yes!” you groaned dramatically. “what kind of man shows up to a date like that?”
“Not a real one.” The stone faced man speaks up, his appearance striking. His clearly muscular and large build was adorned with tattoos. Tattoos that you caught a glimpse of when he shifted in his seat and his t-shirt lifted. 
He was attractive, there was no way around it. The only thing you could think of thanking neon bicycle boy for, was the fact that he landed you in this room with him.
“wait- that doesn’t explain the bruise doll.” Tig asks again through laughs. You sighed dramatically before meeting their eyes again. “he uh- came to a stop. and i flew off the bike.”
For a second, no one else spoke.
Then Happy laughed. Not loudly or obnoxious.
Just one short, genuine laugh that escaped before he could stop it.
Your eyes widened. “You laughed!” you said pointing triumphantly at him with your idle hand.
“oh my god, you broke him.” Tig gasps dramatically.
“Shut up.”
His expression flattened again, though the ghost of that smile stubbornly lingered. You grinned again, taking deep pride in the fact that you made the expressionless hot guy, laugh.
“Am i the first?” He gave you an unimpressed look as you exclaimed. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Think i already did.” You gestured to the growing bruise on your head.
…
“Oh my God, just make out already.” Tig sighed dramatically as he rested on the hospital bed.
Heat crept up your neck as you shot him an exasperated glare before your eyes drifted to the man sitting across from you. He remained unfazed, as though the comment hadn’t embarrassed him in the slightest.
A few beats of silence passed before he finally spoke.
“You like Harleys?” You blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the question. Then realization dawned on you.
“…As in Harley-Davidsons?” He gave a single nod to confirm.
You couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah.” you admitted. “Cooler than a bike.”
His gaze lingered on you for a moment before he reached into his pocket, pulling out a small set of keys as he stood from his chair.
“After you get checked out.” You blinked at his motion.
He tilted his head toward the door. “I’ll show you the difference.”
Your eyes widened before an excited grin spread across your face.
“Unless you’ve got somewhere to be.”
You stood straighter, closing the distance until you were facing him directly. That cheeky tone from before arose in you. “You gonna be a better date then bicycle boy?”
He looked down at you, completely composed. “I’ve got a Harley.”
You let out a quiet laugh, shaking your head. “That’s not what I asked.”
A beat of stillness passed.
Then, in the same calm, matter-of-fact tone, he answered.
“…Yeah, I will.”
So perhaps, this night wasn’t a complete waste of time after all. Because despite how complicated Happy Lowman’s life could be, there were moments he was thankful for it.
AN: yeah i really don’t know what this is 😣. Just a random drabble bc im fixating on Happy rn and have no motivation to write anything else.
These are the very first paintings I made for Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. I designed the art style for the Sonam and Tagah scenes throughout the film! I want to thank PD Jake Panian and AD Aaron Loftis for trusting me so much with these parts of the movie; their incredible leadership and support carried our entire team.
i like how they had gemma react after her rape. like obviously she wouldn't tell anyone. that's not who she is. not how she does things.
she has spent her entire life surviving by controlling the narrative. of course she would control this.
but she also couldn't hide how it effected her. the physical pain at first yeah, but the lack of sleep, the not wanting to be touched. her trying to keep the lie of it being a car accident and it eating at her. the flinching.
people notice she's…off. nobody can quite put a finger on why, but this woman who normally dominates every room she's walks into suddenly seems distracted, disconnected.
she's still loud, still sharp-tongued, still capable of tearing someone apart verbally—but it feels forced, like she's putting on Gemma Teller every morning instead of simply being her.
and i think that's what the show got so right.
they never suddenly made her into a completely different person. she doesn't become openly vulnerable overnight or immediately confide in everyone around her because that's not gemma. if anything, the trauma makes her double down on the coping mechanisms she's relied on her entire life. she buries it. she lies. she tries to carry it by herself.
the tragedy is that those survival instincts are exactly what isolate her. she can convince everyone else that she's okay, but she can't convince her own body.
the sleeplessness, the flinching, the hypervigilance, the aversion to being touched—they become the truth that slips through the cracks no matter how tightly she tries to hold everything together.
He finally works up the nerve to kiss you. It was supposed to be one quick kiss. Instead, he forgets literally everything else exists.
look man, i just wanna kiss this man.. a lot
By the time Happy Lowman admitted to himself that he was going to kiss you, he had already spent the better part of two years convincing himself he absolutely wasn't.
It wasn't that he didn't want to.
That was the problem.
He wanted to with a terrifying, relentless certainty that made a man who had faced federal agents, rival clubs, prison cells, and enough gunfire to last several lifetimes feel strangely, absurdly afraid.
Forty-nine years old.
You were twenty-four.
He'd spent months trying to reason himself out of it. You deserved someone younger. Someone easier. Someone who smiled more and carried fewer ghosts beneath their skin. Someone who hadn't built an entire life around violence and loyalty and blood. Every time those thoughts settled into his head, though, you would appear beside him with that soft little smile you reserved just for him, hand him a coffee exactly the way he liked it without asking, thank him for fixing something around your apartment, or simply stand close enough that your shoulder brushed his arm as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
You trusted him.
That somehow made everything worse.
Because Happy would have gladly died for you.
Living with wanting you every single day was proving much harder.
The clubhouse was unusually quiet.
Most of SAMCRO had gone into town for dinner after wrapping up club business, leaving only a handful of bikes outside and music playing softly somewhere deeper inside the building.
Happy had volunteered to stay behind.
Mostly because you had.
You were sitting on one of the picnic tables outside with your legs crossed beneath you, absentmindedly peeling the label off a bottle of beer while the evening settled over Charming in shades of amber and fading blue.
Happy stood leaning against the railing.
Watching you.
Again.
You eventually looked up.
"You know staring is generally considered rude."
"I know."
"...You gonna stop?"
"No."
That made you laugh.
God.
That laugh.
It was warm enough to make his chest physically ache.
"You've been weird all day," you observed.
"I've been me."
"Worse than normal."
"...Yeah."
You tilted your head.
Concern immediately replaced your teasing smile.
"You okay?"
He should've lied.
Instead, because you deserved honesty if nothing else, he shook his head once.
"No."
You stood immediately.
No hesitation.
No questions.
Just crossed the space between you until you were standing barely a foot away from him.
"What happened?"
"Nothin'."
"Doesn't look like nothing."
"I know."
Silence settled comfortably between the two of you.
You never rushed him. Never demanded words he wasn't ready to give.
You simply waited.
Happy had discovered months ago that you were one of the only people alive capable of waiting him out.
Eventually you sighed softly.
"You know..." Your fingers lightly brushed the sleeve of his kutte. "You don't always have to carry everything yourself."
Jesus Christ.
Did you have any idea what you did to him?
Probably not.
Your hand stayed resting against his arm.
Small.
Warm.
Trusting. So trusting.
Happy looked down at it.
Then back at you.
Your eyes searched his face with that impossible gentleness that always made him feel like someone had peeled away every layer of armor he'd spent decades building.
He thought—
Just one kiss.
One.
He could do one.
One kiss to finally answer the question that had haunted him for years.
One kiss so he could finally stop wondering what it would feel like.
Then he'd apologize.
Tell you he'd crossed a line.
Accept whatever happened afterward.
Simple.
His hand came up slowly, almost cautiously, as though he expected you to disappear before he reached you.
His knuckles brushed your cheek.
You didn't move away.
Your eyes widened just a little.
"Happy..."
"If you don't want—"
Instead of answering, you leaned into his hand.
Just enough. Barely any movement.
But it was enough to completely dismantle whatever fragile self-control he'd brought with him.
He bent down.
Slowly enough to give you every opportunity to stop him.
You didn't.
Your eyes slipped closed.
So did his.
And then—
Finally—
After years of wanting—
He kissed you.
It was soft.
God, so soft.
Nothing like the desperate fantasies that had tormented him during sleepless nights.
Reality was infinitely worse.
Or better.
Your lips were warm.
You made the smallest little surprised sound against his mouth before melting toward him, one hand finding the front of his shirt almost instinctively.
Happy's entire world stopped.
That was it.
Nothing else.
No motorcycles.
No club.
No California.
No violence.
No responsibilities.
Just...
You.
You kissing him back.
His brain, normally so painfully alert to every sound and movement around him, simply ceased functioning.
One kiss became another.
And another.
His thumb slid gently along your cheek.
You sighed against his mouth.
His other hand found your waist.
Pulled you closer without even realizing he'd done it.
The kiss deepened naturally.
Not rushed.
Not frantic.
Just impossibly intimate.
Years of longing poured into something that neither of you had words for.
Happy forgot to breathe.
Forgot where he was standing.
Forgot his own damn name.
The only coherent thought left in his head was you.
You smiled into the kiss.
Actually smiled.
Which immediately made him kiss you again.
Then again.
He tilted his head slightly.
Your fingers slid upward to the back of his neck, nails raking gently over the ink crawling over his scalp.
Happy made a low, involuntary sound that he would've denied making until the day he died.
He kissed you harder.
You answered without hesitation.
His forehead bumped yours briefly.
Neither of you laughed.
Instead he stared at you from inches away as though he couldn't quite believe you were real.
"...Hi," you whispered.
"...Hi."
"You were only planning one kiss, weren't you?"
"...Yeah."
"Mhm..." You barely brushed your lips against his again. "...How's that going?"
He answered by kissing you.
Again.
Longer this time.
His hands settled more confidently around your waist, carefully, reverently, like you were something infinitely precious.
Time disappeared.
Completely.
"So..." Tig's voice echoed from somewhere nearby. "...Should we come back later?"
Happy didn't hear him.
Didn't even blink.
You certainly didn't.
Juice snorted.
"I don't think they know we're here."
"They definitely don't know we're here," Chibs muttered, folding his arms with an expression that bordered on smug amusement. "Look at him."
Jax looked genuinely fascinated.
"I have literally never seen Happy ignore his surroundings."
Bobby chuckled.
"I don't think he's capable of noticing anything except her."
Tig watched the two of you continue kissing beneath the porch light.
"...Is..."
Another kiss.
"...He..."
Another.
"...Seriously..."
Happy gently rested his forehead against yours.
You smiled.
He immediately kissed you again.
"...Still going?"
"They've been standing there ten minutes," Juice informed him.
"Twelve," Chibs corrected.
"Twelve?"
Happy brushed your nose with his.
You giggled.
He looked completely captivated by the sound.
Then kissed you again.
Tig threw both hands into the air.
"I have seen this man shoot someone, eat a sandwich, and reload a gun without changing facial expressions."
Another kiss.
"I've seen him sleep sitting upright."
Another.
"I've seen him threaten a cartel lieutenant while calmly discussing motor oil."
Another.
"And this is what breaks him?"
Chibs grinned.
"Aye."
Happy finally opened his eyes.
Only because you had quietly whispered his name.
"What?"
Your smile had become impossibly fond.
"I think..." You nodded toward the increasingly entertained audience. "...we have company."
Happy turned.
Saw the club.
Staring.
Silence.
A beat passed.
Happy looked back at you.
Shrugged once.
Then kissed you again.
Behind him, Tig groaned dramatically.
"Oh, come on!"
Laughter erupted across the porch.
Happy ignored every single one of them.
When he finally pulled away, your cheeks were flushed, your lips were slightly swollen from entirely too many kisses, and your eyes held the same dazed happiness he suspected was reflected in his own.
"You know," you murmured, fingers still curled around the front of his shirt, "that definitely wasn't one quick kiss."
"No."
"You forgot everything else existed."
"...Yeah."
"And now the entire club is making fun of you."
Happy glanced over his shoulder.
Every single one of them was still watching.
Tig was gesturing dramatically.
Juice was laughing so hard he had to lean against Bobby.
Chibs simply looked pleased in the deeply irritating way only Chibs could.
Happy looked back at you.
Then, with absolutely no shame whatsoever, cupped your face once more.
"Worth it."
Your smile was brilliant.
You leaned up onto your toes and stole another gentle kiss.
"...What happens now?"
His answer came without hesitation, the certainty surprising even him.
"I take you home."
Home.
Not your apartment.
Not his place.
Just...home.
Somewhere, eventually, where mornings meant coffee together and evenings meant you tucked safely beneath his arm. Somewhere he no longer had to pretend you weren't already the center of his world.
You slipped your hand into his.
He laced his fingers through yours immediately, like he'd been waiting years to do exactly that.
Behind you, Tig shouted something about "finally" while the others laughed.
Neither of you paid them the slightest bit of attention.
Happy had intended to steal one quick kiss.
Instead, he'd found the woman he loved smiling up at him, her hand warm in his, and realized he'd happily spend the rest of his life forgetting the rest of the world every time she looked at him like that.
Happy is intense. That is a fact universally acknowledged by literally everyone who's ever known him.
Happy also, apparently, kisses you like you're the most precious thing in the world. Gentle hands, soft caresses, nose nuzzling yours, arms holding you flush to his chest.
yall can thank the gif at the end of this fic for inspiring me to actually edit and post this
The first time someone from another charter caught sight of the two of you together, he actually stopped in the middle of his sentence.
Happy had one broad palm cupping the side of your face, thumb brushing slow, absent circles over your cheekbone while you stood between his knees in the clubhouse garage. He wasn't even saying anything. Just looking at you with that same unreadable expression he wore before violence, except somehow softer around the edges, his forehead resting against yours while you laughed quietly about something completely insignificant.
The visiting Son blinked.
"...That's Happy?"
Chibs didn't even look up from cleaning his glasses.
"Aye."
"...The Happy?"
"Aye."
The man watched as Happy nudged his nose gently against yours.
"...Huh."
Happy was intense.
That was simply a fact.
He walked like violence had learned to wear boots. He spoke in short, clipped sentences that made people nervous even when he was discussing something as harmless as coffee. Prospects straightened their backs when he entered a room. Rivals looked for exits.
People who didn't know him assumed he would kiss the same way he fought.
Hard.
Demanding.
Possessive.
You had assumed that too, once.
You had been spectacularly wrong.
Because Happy kissed you like you were something fragile he'd never forgive himself for breaking.
It had taken you by surprise the first time.
You had expected rough hands.
Instead, he'd lifted one slowly toward your face, almost hesitating before his fingertips brushed a strand of hair behind your ear.
"You sure?" he'd asked quietly.
You had laughed.
"Happy."
"You sure."
"Kiss me."
He had.
And it had stolen every coherent thought from your head.
Not because it was overwhelming.
Because it wasn't.
His lips had barely pressed against yours at first, soft enough that you could have leaned away if you wanted to. He waited, giving you room to close the distance yourself before kissing you again, a little longer this time, his thumb absentmindedly stroking your jaw as though he couldn't help touching you gently.
By the time he finally pulled back, you had simply stared at him.
"What?"
"...Nothing."
"What?"
"I just..." You smiled helplessly. "Thought you'd kiss differently."
He frowned.
"...Bad?"
"No."
You reached up and rested your hand against the side of his neck.
"Better."
His ears had gone just faintly pink.
Months later, it hadn't changed.
If anything, it had become even worse.
Or better.
Depending on who was asking.
Happy wasn't affectionate in public in any obvious way.
He wasn't climbing into your lap or making speeches or calling you sweetheart every thirty seconds.
Instead...
He'd walk past you, his fingers brushing your lower back for the briefest second.
He'd straighten the collar of your jacket without thinking.
He'd tug your beanie down over your ears if it was cold.
He'd quietly move you to the inside of the sidewalk.
Tiny things.
Practical things.
Until he kissed you.
Then every ounce of restraint seemed to disappear—not into passion, but into tenderness.
He always held your face.
Always.
Sometimes with one hand.
Sometimes with both.
As though he wanted to memorize every inch beneath his palms.
His thumbs never stayed still.
Slow circles against your cheeks.
The edge of your jaw.
The spot just below your ear that made you melt every single time.
And he had this habit—
This tiny unconscious habit—
Of brushing his nose against yours before every kiss.
Every.
Single.
Time.
The first few times you'd giggled.
"Did you just boop me?"
"...What?"
"You keep doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Nuzzling me."
"I ain't—"
"You literally just did."
"..."
"...Happy."
"...Shut up."
He'd kissed you again just to stop you talking.
You had laughed into it.
He'd smiled.
Just a little.
Barely enough for anyone else to notice.
Enough that you felt it against your mouth.
Late evenings were your favorite.
The clubhouse would finally quiet down, the television would still be playing somewhere, someone (Tig, maybe Bobby) would inevitably be snoring, half the lights would already be off.
You'd find Happy sitting outside on the steps and you'd settle beside him without asking.
Sometimes neither of you spoke for twenty minutes.
He liked silence.
You liked silence with him.
Eventually he'd look over and lift one arm.
You'd immediately slide closer until you were tucked against his side.
His arm would wrap around your shoulders automatically.
Like breathing.
Like muscle memory.
"You tired?" he'd ask.
"A little."
"You should sleep."
"In a minute."
Another few quiet moments.
Then you'd tilt your face toward him.
He always noticed.
Always.
His hand would come up beneath your chin.
"So demanding," he'd murmur.
"You love it."
"...Maybe."
You'd grin triumphantly.
"You admitted it."
"I admitted maybe."
"Counts."
"It doesn't."
"It absolutely does."
He'd sigh with exaggerated patience before leaning forward.
The kiss would begin exactly the same every time.
His forehead against yours.
His nose brushing yours with that familiar little nuzzle.
Then his lips finding yours in an unhurried, lingering kiss that never felt rushed, never felt like he was trying to prove anything. Just warm, careful affection, his fingers threading into your hair while the other arm pulled you a little closer until there wasn't even an inch of space left between your bodies.
You could always feel the steady beat of his heart through his kutte.
Always.
Sometimes the kiss deepened naturally, lingering as you smiled against his mouth and kissed him again before he'd even fully pulled away, your fingers curling into the fabric at his shoulders while he let out the quietest breath through his nose, almost amused. He would rest his forehead against yours again, eyes still closed, his thumb brushing over your cheek as though he couldn't quite stop touching you.
"You know," you whispered one evening.
"Hm?"
"If people saw you like this..."
"Hmm."
"They'd think I'd kidnapped the real Happy."
"...Probably."
You laughed softly.
"They'd never believe you spend half your time just holding me."
"I like holdin' you."
"I noticed."
"You complainin'?"
"Not even a little."
His eyes finally opened.
There was that same expression again.
The one nobody else ever seemed to see.
Quiet.
Warm.
Almost impossibly gentle.
Then, without a word, he nudged your nose with his one more time.
"You did it again," you whispered.
"...Did what?"
"The nose thing."
"I don't do a nose thing."
"You absolutely do."
"..."
"..."
"...Maybe."
You smiled so brightly it made something inside his chest ache.
"My soft biker."
A long pause.
"...Don't call me that."
"You love me."
"...Yeah."
It came out so simply you almost missed it.
No hesitation.
No embarrassment.
Just quiet certainty.
"...Yeah."
Then he kissed you again, slow enough that the rest of the world seemed to disappear, his hands still impossibly gentle, holding you as though every scar he'd ever earned had taught him exactly how precious it was to protect something soft.
Nobody in SAMCRO reacted anymore.
That was perhaps the strangest part.
Not because Happy had become less terrifying.
He absolutely hadn't.
He was still the man who could silence an entire room by walking into it. Still the one everyone instinctively gave space to when tempers started climbing. Still the enforcer whose reputation had spread far beyond Charming.
The only difference was that now there was a very specific exception to every single rule anyone had ever learned about Happy Lowman.
One afternoon, a prospect walked into the clubhouse carrying a box of parts and froze halfway across the floor.
Happy was sitting in one of the battered armchairs, you sideways across his lap without a care in the world, your book forgotten on the armrest. One of his arms was looped securely around your waist while the other hand lazily stroked up and down your back beneath your sweatshirt in slow, absent passes.
You were talking.
Happy wasn't.
Just listening.
Every now and then his free hand would slide over the expanse of your thigh, squeezing slightly before settling back over you knee.
The prospect looked around.
"...Uh..."
Nobody else looked up.
Bobby kept reading paperwork.
Juice was losing a game of solitaire he'd somehow invented himself.
Chibs was making coffee.
"...Guys?"
Juice glanced over.
"What?"
"...Happy."
Juice followed his gaze.
"Oh."
"..."
"...What?"
"...He's..."
"Kissing her?"
"No—"
Happy had leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss against your temple before resting his forehead there for a second.
"...That."
Juice shrugged.
"He does that."
"...All the time?"
"Pretty much."
The prospect stared.
"...Doesn't that seem..."
Juice frowned.
"What?"
"...Weird?"
Now Bobby looked up.
"No."
"...Really?"
"Nah."
"You get used to it."
"I don't think I could ever get used to Happy being..." He gestured vaguely. "...that."
From behind the bar, Chibs snorted.
"Lad."
"What?"
"We've watched that hard bastard stop in the middle of an argument because she yawned."
"..."
"He tucked a blanket around her once during Church."
"..."
"Dinnae even interrupt the meeting."
"..."
"He just stood up, found a blanket, tucked her in, kissed her forehead and came back."
"..."
"...Finished discussing gun shipments."
The prospect blinked several times.
"...None of you think that's insane?"
Five blank stares answered him.
Because none of them did anymore.
It wasn't strange.
It was just...
Happy.
With you.
The only people who continued finding it astonishing were visitors.
One Tacoma brother actually choked on his beer.
Happy had walked over while you were talking to Gemma, quietly slipped an arm around your waist from behind and rested his chin lightly against the top of your head.
You smiled without looking.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"You eat?"
"Mhm."
"What?"
"Pasta."
"You lie."
"I had garlic bread."
"...Better."
Then you'd turned around inside his arms.
Without saying another word, Happy cupped your jaw, his thumb gently rubbing across your cheek.
Nudged your nose with his.
Then kissed you, soft and unhurried.
The Tacoma member whispered to Kozik, "...Does he always do that nose thing?"
Kozik took a drink.
"Every damn time."
"...Seriously?"
"If he doesn't, she's legally allowed to complain."
"I am," you called without opening your eyes.
Happy huffed the tiniest laugh against your lips.
Two weeks.
Fourteen days.
Three states.
Too many miles.
Too many motel rooms.
Too many nights where Happy woke reaching across cold sheets before remembering you weren't there.
Phone calls helped, but they weren't enough.
Your voice through a speaker wasn't enough.
Pictures weren't enough.
Knowing you were safe wasn't enough.
He simply...missed you.
In the quiet, relentless way Happy did everything.
He didn't complain.
Didn't tell anyone.
But Chibs noticed him staring at photographs on his phone longer than necessary.
Tig caught him absentmindedly rubbing the ring you wore on a chain around his neck.
Bobby heard him mutter,
"Two more days."
As though he were counting down prison time.
The bikes rolled into Charming just after sunset.
The sound alone reached the clubhouse before they did.
You were already outside before engines had completely died.
Happy spotted you immediately.
Everything else...
Just disappeared.
The bikes.
The club.
The noise.
The conversation.
There you were.
Standing at the edge of the lot with the smallest smile already breaking across your face.
He was off his bike before anyone else had even removed their helmet.
You met him halfway.
You barely had time to say—
"Hi—"
Before he was there.
Both hands found you at once.
One spread across the back of your neck.
The other around your waist.
Firm.
Certain.
Like he'd needed to reassure himself you were really there.
Then he kissed you.
Not rough.
Never rough.
Just...
Desperate.
As though every mile he'd spent away from you had gathered itself into that single moment.
His mouth found yours with a quiet, shaky exhale that you felt more than heard, the kiss lingering immediately, unhurried and yet somehow urgent all at once. His fingers flexed gently against the back of your neck before sliding into your hair, careful despite the unmistakable need behind the movement, while his other hand drew you closer until your bodies were completely flush, leaving no space for doubt that he was home and you were exactly where he had wanted to be for fourteen endless days.
You answered him just as eagerly, one hand curling into the front of his kutte while the other settled against his jaw, feeling the familiar roughness of stubble beneath your fingertips. He kissed you again before the first kiss had fully ended, forehead brushing yours for the briefest heartbeat, his nose automatically nuzzling against yours—because of course it did, because even now he couldn't seem to forget that tiny habit—and then he was kissing you once more, slower this time, deeper only in feeling, not in urgency, lingering as though he were trying to make up for every goodnight kiss he'd missed.
His hands never stopped moving.
Not wandering.
Just...checking.
One smoothed slowly down your back before returning to your waist.
His thumb brushed your cheek.
His fingers threaded through your hair with extraordinary care, despite how tightly he held you against him.
You felt him breathe.
Felt the slight tremor in the exhale.
When he finally drew back it was only far enough for his forehead to rest against yours, both of you still catching your breath, his eyes closed as if opening them might somehow make you disappear again.
"You okay?" you whispered.
A long silence.
Then, quietly—
"...Missed you."
Two barely audible words, but from Happy Lowman, they landed with the weight of a confession.
You smiled, your eyes already shining.
"I missed you too."
His thumb stroked beneath your eye.
"You been okay?"
"I have now."
That earned the smallest, almost disbelieving shake of his head.
Then, because two weeks had apparently left him with affection still stored up inside him, he leaned in once more.
Another gentle brush of noses.
Another lingering kiss.
Softer this time.
Slower.
The frantic edge melting away now that he'd convinced himself you were real, warm beneath his hands, smiling into the kiss exactly the way he'd imagined on every lonely mile home.
Around them, no one interrupted.
Jax simply climbed off his bike.
Chibs lit a cigarette.
Bobby started carrying gear inside.
Juice smiled to himself.
The new prospect looked between the couple and everyone else.
"...Shouldn't someone..."
Chibs raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"...I don't know...say something?"
Chibs glanced toward Happy, who was still standing with his forehead resting against yours, one large hand cradling your face while you quietly laughed at something only the two of you could hear.
"Nah," Chibs said with a fond smile.
"He made it home."
As far as the club was concerned, that was exactly where he belonged.
Leaving your house in the mornings for work required skill. There was always a careful balance involved when it came to lugging everything you needed to bring with you to Iron Pulse, especially since you stubbornly refused to take multiple trips out to your car.
With your gym bag slung over one shoulder, you carried a pale green tumbler filled with coffee in one hand while your car keys were looped through one of your fingers. Cradling a white shaker bottle filled with your protein shake pressed to your chest with an arm, you always struggled not to drop it and let its contents splatter all over your driveway. In your opposite hand you carried a forty ounce blue water bottle, the handle of which you held with your ring and pinky fingers so that you still maintained the ability to open and close your front door when you left.
Shuffling your way carefully down the walkway that led from your front door to your driveway with your hands completely full, you made your way towards your silver Toyota which Teller had so chivalrously forced his minions to return to you late last night. After their unexpected visit, you’d tossed and turned in bed struggling to fall asleep because the entire ordeal had left you with countless questions.
Why had Jax so stubbornly and irritatingly refused payment for his garage’s services? Was it simply because he wanted to insult you to the point of stating that even your money meant nothing to him? Or had your first instinct been correct in assuming that he was planning to hold this little “good deed” over you as if you now owed him a favor in return? A shudder ran through you at the idea of owing that asshole anything.
Stopping beside the driver’s side door of your car, you carefully shifted your hold on everything you were carrying, managing to place your water bottle, tumbler of coffee, and shaker bottle onto the top of your car. Glancing down at your car keys, you pressed the button to unlock the doors before sidestepping to the back door and pulling it open. Bending down, you slipped the gym bag off your shoulder and tossed it into the backseat.
Returning to the driver’s side door, you opened it and began moving the three different drinks from the roof of your car and transferring them into the cupholders in the center console. Once you’d finished, you settled down into your seat with a tired sigh, annoyed that Teller’s stunt last night had kept you awake for so long. It was already bad enough that the Sons’ sudden appearance last night had initially scared the shit out of you, you hated feeling like Jax had also succeeded in causing you to lose sleep, too.
Pressing the ignition button, you heard the Toyota quietly rumble to life beneath you. But just as you’d begun shifting in your seat, trying to stick your car keys into the side pocket of your biker shorts, something along the dashboard caught your eye. After sliding the keys into your pocket, you reached forward and grabbed the white sheet of paper that’d been sitting innocently there. You suspected it was just an invoice from Teller-Morrow for the new tire and their services, so you were baffled when you saw that it simply contained one line of typed text.
You’re collateral bitch
Brows knitting together as you stared down at the sheet of paper in your hands, you became confused at the three words staring back at you. You were collateral? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Collateral for what?
“What is this?” you muttered to yourself.
The longer you stared at the few typed words on the page, the sooner you began to realize that this must’ve been some stupid little message left to you from Jax. He and his guys did have your car last night, so it only made sense that they’d have been the ones leaving you notes. Apparently sending his minion to deliver his message last night wasn't enough, he needed to leave you this bullshit, too.
But was this meant as some sort of a joke? Was he trying to scare you by leaving cryptic and creepy notes in your car? Or did he somehow mean that you were collateral for the labor and parts he hadn’t charged you for?
“I shouldn’t have taken my car to your stupid garage,” you grumbled at the paper. Crumpling it up into a ball in your hands, you shook your head in irritation. “You just can’t be a civil human being for one second. Fucking jackass.”
You carelessly tossed the crumpled up ball of paper over your shoulder, letting it fall onto the seat behind you. Buckling yourself in, you chose to ignore the pointless message, having every intention to forget about it. Whatever he meant by it, you knew that it was just another way for his dumbass to harass you, and you weren’t in the mood to play into any of his little games with him.
“Slow and controlled,” you encouraged, standing just off to the side of Miriam's reflection in the gym mirror behind you. “Don't focus on the extra weight, focus on the movement. Just give me two more reps.”
Eyes locked onto the steady rise of the dumbbells in Miriam's hands, you watched as she worked through the strain of her muscles and pushed through to finish two more of the bicep curls. A proud smile broke out across your lips when she’d finished, turning and setting both fifteen pound dumbbells down onto the bench beside her with a satisfied huff.
“Now how many almost seventy year old women can do that?” Miriam gloated, slightly breathless.
“Not many,” you agreed, still smiling. “You're doing so well. You've made so much progress in these past few months already.”
“I've noticed my back isn't bothering me like it used to, either,” she said. “And it’s all thanks to you.”
“Oh no,” you replied, holding up a hand and shaking your head. “You're the one putting in all the work, I'm just here bossing you around.”
Miriam hummed a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat as she picked up her water bottle from the floor. She tipped it back and took a long drink while your attention drifted over to the digital clock mounted on the wall. You had a few hours left at the gym before you could go home, and you planned to throw in a quick run once you got back. You'd been slacking on cardio lately because it was your least favorite thing to do.
“How is it that you're still single?”
The corner of your lips twitched into a smile at Miriam's question, your focus returning back to the older woman as she pushed some tufts of white hair away from her sweaty forehead. In her first training session with you, she'd relentlessly tried to set you up with her grandson. She'd gushed about how smart and successful he was through the first three sets of exercises before attempting to seal the deal by showing you his Facebook profile picture. Admittedly he was hot, but you still weren’t interested.
“Because I'm not mentally in a place for relationships,” you reminded her. “And no, I don't want to go on a date with Kevin. You’ve already tried hard enough to push that ship and it has sailed right on by.”
A cheeky grin met your immediate refusal before it faded from her lips, something serious taking its place. “As much as I wouldn't mind you for a granddaughter, I wasn't talking about him,” Miriam said, slowly bending over to set her water bottle back onto the floor. “I just don't understand why you're so adamant to be with anyone.”
“Charming isn't exactly teeming with quality men,” you pointed out. “I'd rather be single than date a cheater, an alcoholic, or an abuser. Or any of the countless men in this town who embody all three awful qualities.”
Turning to look across the gym towards the large windows at the front which overlooked the Sons’ compound, you spotted a handful of leather vests crowded around a table. Smoke rose up in heavy plumes from their cigarettes, creating a gray cloud that hung ominously above the tops of their heads. One golden blonde head in particular was shining blindingly bright beneath the late morning sunlight, and your lip curled back in distaste just as a hand slammed down onto your shoulder.
You startled at the touch, gasping loudly in surprise as your pulse skittered in shock. Miriam covered a hand over her mouth to stifle her quiet laughter as you whipped your head to the side. Dominic–also known to you and everyone around the gym as Beast–grinned gleefully back at you, amused at how he'd managed to startle you. Your shoulders sagged when his hand fell away, your heartbeat beginning to calm when you realized it was just him.
“Was the sneak attack necessary?” you asked him.
He shrugged his shoulders. “You're the one who's jumpy today, Peach. What's with that?”
“I'm not jumpy, you just move far too quiet for a man of your size,” you disagreed. “And you're interrupting my session.”
Miriam turned at the waist, picking up the set of dumbbells again before positioning herself in front of the mirrors. She smiled back at you and Dom, though it was a bit strained from holding the weights.
“I don't mind the interruption,” she assured you. “Ten reps, right?”
“Yeah,” you answered. “At least eight, but I know you can push this last set to ten again.”
Attention returning to Dom, something about the way he was still smiling at you gave you pause. It wasn't his casual, easygoing smile, there was something almost giddy about it, and it raised your suspicion. Glancing back at Miriam, you monitored her form as she worked on her last set of bicep curls before shooting Dom a sidelong look.
“What?” you demanded. “You look like you won a year's worth of free Chipotle. What's with the face?”
He shrugged again as if playing it off, but the smile continued to stretch wider over his mouth. “Nothing,” he answered innocently. “Just seems like you haven't looked at tomorrow's schedule yet. Figured you'd be in a mood by now.”
You blinked slowly back at him, trying to decipher what he was getting at. He wasn't wrong, you hadn’t checked the schedule for tomorrow yet. All it told you was who was working what shifts, which generally never changed since you all had set schedules, along with information about the scheduled group classes and training sessions. You usually gave it a look at the start or the end of your shift depending on the day, but since you'd gotten distracted this morning talking to Donnie–an older gentleman who came in and did quite a few miles on the stationary bikes every morning–you hadn't looked at it yet.
“No,” you said. “Why?”
Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed Miriam's interest had been piqued. You could tell by how she'd paused between repetitions, the dumbells lingering at her sides as she craned her head towards you both. All it took was one flick of your brow in her direction before she continued on with her exercise, but she shamelessly continued eavesdropping as she did.
“You've got a new trainee on the books,” Dom informed you, that smarmy look still on his face. “Will booked them last night. They specifically requested you for a trial session tomorrow morning.”
Miriam let out a curious noise low in her throat as she continued her bicep curls, her eyes wide with intrigue, but your lips dipped into a disapproving frown. Dom being this gleeful about a new booking who specifically requested you would only be for one of two reasons. Either Will had booked a really hot girl who the whole gym would want to prey on, or it was one of the perverted gym bros thinking he'd shoot his shot while working out alone with you. Which had unfortunately happened a few times already.
“Who is it?” you asked.
“Apparently,” Dom began, slinging an arm over the nearby shoulder press machine and leaning his weight against it, “Juice was raving about how great you are and it sparked some interest from some of the Sons.”
The second you heard Juice’s name, your eyes narrowed into annoyed slits. Dom didn't even need to tell you who'd signed up to train with you after that, because the sinking feeling in your gut already did. There was only one Son who'd request you specifically, and not because they actually wanted to train with you, but because they wanted to torment you.
“The murderous look on your face says you already know it's Jax Teller,” Dom observed.
“I refuse,” you stated, firmly shaking your head. “I'm not doing it. No way in hell will I take him on as a client. Absolutely not.”
Dom tipped his head towards one shoulder, his lips pulling to the side as he shrugged off your tenacious rebuff. Miriam wasn't even hiding her interest now, her eyes darting back between you both as she finished her last few repetitions.
“It’s ultimately your call,” he said. “You've got the right to decline him. And he is a dick. But…”
Your frown deepened as he trailed off. “But what?”
“This is your territory, Peach,” he pointed out. He swept a large hand around the gym to accentuate his point. “I say take him on and put his ass through hell. Run ‘em into the ground. Don't back down to him just because he’s trying to get under your skin. You gotta speak to that asshole in the only way he understands, which means showing him that this place is yours and not his to take from you.”
Crossing your arms over your chest, your lips thinned into a disapproving line as you turned your head, looking back out through the front windows of the gym. Teller’s blonde head was always easy to spot among the others, and you glared so hard through the glass at him that you hoped he could feel it.
Dom unfortunately had a point. Teller only understood the language of the streets, and he was intentionally trying to encroach on your territory as if to prove to you that he still owned every part of Charming–including this gym. Running and hiding from him wasn’t the answer, you needed to show him that you wouldn’t back down when he stepped a toe over the line.
So you needed to forget about not playing his stupid games. If he wanted a fight, you'd push back against him.
“Fine,” you bitterly replied, still glaring at the back of his head across the street. “I'll put him through the paces. Doubt his ego would let him back down no matter how hard I work him.”
Dom pushed off of where he was leaning against the workout machine, a triumphant grin spreading over his face as he crossed the distance towards you. He tipped his chin at you, pride gleaming in his dark eyes as he reached out and lightly knocked a fist into your shoulder.
“That's our Princess Peach,” he said. “Fuck ‘em up.” He shot Miriam an apologetic look when she frowned at him, a sheepish expression quickly taking over his face. “Sorry, Mrs. Whitman.”
Miriam huffed as Dom turned and headed back towards the front desk in the gym, shaking her head as she carried the dumbbells back to the weight rack next to you. Quirking a brow at her, you wondered what that'd been about. She wasn't usually so affected by swearing.
“Shame about that Teller boy,” she said, setting her weights back in place. She turned back around, a dip in the corner of her mouth. “He never used to be so…combative when he was younger.”
“I find that rather difficult to believe,” you muttered.
“He was kinder,” she pressed. “Had this sweet girl he used to date, too. And, well,” she paused, laughing a little to herself, “they were a little wild back then, got into some trouble. But what teenagers don’t?”
Miriam quieted, her eyes narrowing as she stood in front of the weight rack suddenly studying you with a strange intensity. You shifted uncomfortably beneath her scrutiny, not particularly wanting any further discussion about Teller. Especially not anything to do with his love life–past, present, or future.
“You remind me a little of her, you know,” she said after a moment. “The way you push back against him. Not something you usually see around Charming.”
“Well someone needs to knock him down a few notches,” you said. Gesturing your head to the side, you motioned her towards the cable machine across the gym. “C'mon, tricep extensions are next.”
Miriam followed after you, picking up her water bottle as she passed where it sat on the floor by the bench. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw her wiping sweat from her brow with her forearm, noting how even her breath still sounded. You'd been honest earlier, she was improving.
“Just a shame,” Miriam repeated sullenly. “That club changed him. Turned him into something nearly unrecognizable from the young man I remember seeing around town.”
You snorted in response, walking past a row of chest machines. “I'll be honest,” you told her, “I've got no sympathy for the devil, Mrs. Whitman. Now let's talk about upping your weights on tricep extensions, because I think you're on a roll today.”
By the time you reached the bottom of your driveway, you were entirely out of breath. Sweat rolled down the back of your shirt in multiple trails, each one tracing a damp line down your spine. Your sports bra was drenched after your run, the fabric clinging uncomfortably snug against your skin with each gasp you took for air.
Panting as you tried to even out your breathing, your hands landed on your hips while you started up your driveway. You craved the spray of a cool shower and a chance to get your mind right for tomorrow morning since you’d be stuck training Jax Teller for an entire miserable hour. You needed to go through a nice haircare and skincare routine, eat a good dinner, and watch something relaxing before you went to bed tonight. You would do whatever it took to get you in the mindset to let all of his taunts and disgusting comments roll right off of you. Because come tomorrow morning, you wanted the upper hand against him.
Shuffling up the driveway past your Toyota, your tired feet struggled to carry you up towards the front door. The muscles in your legs might’ve begun steadily losing that burning sensation you always got at the peak of your run, but that was just slowly easing into a persistent dull ache instead. But as you passed the driver's side of your car, something white tucked beneath your windshield wiper caught your attention.
Stopping just beside the side mirror, your face scrunched up in confusion at the folded slip of paper that hadn’t been there when you’d left. Leaning over the hood of your car, you plucked the paper out from underneath it. Still breathing heavily as you straightened, you unfolded the page to discover another note with a single line of typed print.
Time's almost up gym whore
Eyes narrowing down at the paper in your hands, you recalled the note you'd found inside of your car earlier this morning. Was this another stupid prank message from Teller threatening you?
“Two in one day?” you muttered irritably to yourself. “Seriously man?”
Beginning to crumple the paper into a ball in your hands, you shook your head at the absurdity. Would he really stoop so low as to leave you threats like this? Was this truly his twisted idea of a joke?
With the paper balled up in your fist, you continued the rest of the way up your driveway and towards the front door. You slipped your keyring out of the pocket of your sweaty biker shorts, chest still heaving as your breathing gradually began to even out. But as you slipped the key into your door, you were surprised to see that it was already unlocked. Brows creasing together, you hesitated for a minute, staring down at the doorknob. You usually never forgot to lock your door, even if you’d only just gone on a run for a few minutes.
Shaking your head, you figured maybe this time you'd rushed out the door a little too fast because you’d wanted to get your cardio out of the way. You'd need to be more careful next time and make sure that you locked the door after yourself. As you stepped inside and turned around to shut the door after yourself, you paused when you spotted a black, windowless van parked down the street.
You hesitated in the doorway as an unexplainable prickle of fear bristled the hairs along the nape of your neck. That van had been sitting there when you’d first left your house, and so had the man sitting in the driver's seat. You'd been gone for only fifteen minutes on your run, so it seemed rather strange that he was still just sitting in a parked car not doing anything. A parked car that you'd never noticed on your street before today.
Nervously wetting your dry lips, you quickly closed the front door the rest of the way, making sure to immediately lock the deadbolt afterwards. Maybe this was all just a part of some elaborate prank from Teller, or maybe you were just overreacting because of the stupid notes you’d found from him today, but something about that van left you feeling unsettled.
Warning/tags: 18+; Canon-divergence, canon-typical violence, angst, humor, fake dating, forced proximity, slow burn, eventual smut, magical elements (thanks to the homeless woman), Reader is from a different reality
Death is supposed to be the end–a conclusion. But for some reason, you didn’t stay dead. After a car accident killed you and ended your budding success as a romance author, you wake up in a world that’s supposed to be fiction. Except it’s not, and the violence and danger–along with the far too handsome Jax Teller–are very real. Grieving your previous life and struggling to find a purpose in the new one, you can’t help but wish you’d woken up inside of a romantic comedy instead of the Sons of Anarchy, especially living through multiple romantic tropes with him. But the real Jax Teller isn’t your typical romantic lead, and all you want is to find the strange homeless woman and get some answers.
Pairing: Jax Teller x fem!Reader Word Count: 5.6k [Series Masterlist] [Jax Fic Masterlist]
Warning/tags: 18+; Canon-divergence, canon-typical violence, angst, humor, fake dating, forced proximity, slow burn, eventual smut, magical elements (thanks to the homeless woman), Reader is from a different reality
a/n: I'm ill this week and this has been my comfort series to work on, so I figured y'all should have a fun update. Feedback and reblogs are always appreciated!
Lifting open the flaps of another inconveniently unlabeled box, yet another cloud of dust flew into the air. You abruptly waved a hand in front of yourself, trying to swat away the particles now floating around, but you could already feel the tickle in the back of your nose growing stronger. Seconds later, your eyes snapped shut and you unleashed another harsh sneeze into the crook of your arm. From a few feet away, an amused snort followed afterwards.
“Doin’ alright over there, Michigan?” Jax asked. “I've lost count of how many fuckin’ times you've done that now.”
You wriggled your nose, trying to alleviate the nearly permanent itch in it. All of the boxes and pieces of furniture piled in Gemma's storage unit were coated in such a thick layer of dust that you assumed no one had stepped a foot inside of here in years. Unfortunately for you, all of that dust kept making your eyes water and your nose tickle, causing you to sneeze constantly over the past twenty minutes that you'd been here searching for John Teller’s manuscript.
You hoped you’d find the thing, too. Not only were you assuming that was the sole reason why you were even in Jax’s world, but maybe you’d stop catching him occasionally staring at you as if you were as deranged as he sometimes thought. Feeling like you were losing your mind was bad enough, you didn’t need Jax suspecting the same.
“How'd you even get the keys to your mom's unit anyway?” you asked him. Tentatively trying to open the flaps of the box in front of you again, you attempted not to scatter more dust into the air. “Did you just swipe them from her house without her knowing?”
“No,” he answered.
The slow, almost cautious sound of his voice had you pausing, glancing away from the box of what appeared to be Jax’s old clothes from when he was a teenager judging by all of the graphic tees tossed together. After uncovering all of the useless junk that Gemma kept stored in here, you’d wondered if she was either more sentimental than she let on, or if she was just a closet hoarder.
Turning to look over your shoulder, you stared at Jax’s back while he rummaged through a box, the reaper on his kutte staring right back at you. The slope of his broad shoulders shifted and moved as he dug through what looked like a box of loose papers and photographs, and you temporarily grew distracted with the way his biceps and triceps flexed beneath the sleeves of his white t-shirt while he sifted through everything.
It’d been almost two full weeks that you’d been staying with Jax ever since he’d found you reanimated on the side of the road. In the past few days he'd spent more time at his house, which meant you'd both had more interactions with each other than when you’d first moved in with him, even if you rarely ever talked about anything serious. And you certainly avoided discussing your massively declining mental state which you only kept loosely held together whenever you were around him. Though the conversations you did have with him lately had helped you warm up to him a little more, causing you to feel slightly less like he was about to pull a gun on you without warning at any given moment.
You’d also shamefully found yourself admiring him when he wasn’t paying attention lately. Especially in the mornings when he’d shuffle down the hallway in a pair of sweatpants, his bare chest gleaming in the honeyed morning light. You’d stopped pretending to be asleep on the couch and instead had started joining him and his decrepit coffee maker before he headed off to the clubhouse.
It was impossible not to stare at each perfectly contoured line of muscle on his torso when he was distracted with making a cup of coffee in the mornings. You were mesmerized by the pull of muscles under his skin as he reached into cabinets and stirred sugar into his coffee. You even quietly studied the different shades of blue in his eyes lined with those pretty blonde lashes whenever he was scowling at some text on his phone while he drank his coffee.
But whenever those weird little nervous flutters twisted in your stomach as you silently observed him, you forced yourself to remember who was actually in front of you. Real Jax–the one who’d probably carved someone up with that knife he always carried at his waist. Nothing sent the butterflies in your stomach away faster than picturing Jax stabbing someone.
“Why does it feel like there's more to that ‘no’?” you hesitantly questioned.
Jax lifted up the box he'd been searching through and set it off to the side, stacking it on top of the other boxes beside him that'd he'd already looked through. He glanced over his shoulder afterwards, something slightly guilty in his eyes when they met yours. The look on his face set you on edge.
“Told my mom I was lookin’ for a dresser to borrow for a bit,” he told you. “Guys already told her that I had a girlfriend livin’ with me, so I lied and said you needed some extra space to store your shit in while you were redecorating my place.”
Mouth falling open, you gaped at Jax with wide, horrified eyes. A few days ago Jax told you he’d casually let it slip that you were staying with him to the other Sons, and while realistically you knew that meant the news would inevitably reach Gemma, you hadn’t realized how it would make you feel. Because learning that she now knew of your existence in Jax’s life sent a chill up your spine and made you want to disappear.
Jax’s lips tugged to the side in a half-grin as he caught the look on your face. “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re that scared of my mom,” he said, turning more fully towards you.
“I am,” you replied, ignoring his chuckle. “She’s fucking terrifying. And she’s even more terrifying when it comes to you.”
“Relax, Michigan,” Jax soothed, the grin lingering on his lips. “She ain’t gonna do anything to hurt you. My Ma ain’t stupid enough to harm my old lady.”
Something between a hysterical laugh and a strangled cry fell out of you, and Jax’s face screwed up in confusion at the sound. The image of Tara’s bloody body laying on the tile of his kitchen floor–tile that you were now personally very acquainted with as more than part of a television set–flashed through your mind. Even if Tara had never come back to marry Jax and become his old lady in this reality, you knew precisely what Gemma would and would not do to someone even if Jax genuinely loved them. And you were simply a fake girlfriend, so you knew she’d have even less qualms about offing you.
“I think we have separate opinions on that,” you said, voice wavering.
His eyes narrowed curiously back at you, clearly wondering what you must’ve witnessed in the television show of Fake Jax’s life that would make you say something like that. You expected him to question you further about it like he often did whenever you made strange comments, but instead he shook his head as if to shake off the thought.
“Anyway,” he continued, that slightly guilty expression returning, “I may have forgotten to mention earlier that Gem is having a barbeque at the clubhouse now because she wants to meet you. So do the guys.”
You tensed at the new information, your arms quickly hugging themselves around your chest. Turning away from the box of his old clothes, you faced Jax in the cramped storage unit, anxiously chewing on your bottom lip. Meeting the rest of the Sons and Jax’s mother was an unavoidable situation, one that you’d known was coming. But you’d hoped that you could somehow manage to meet everyone for the first time in a less stressful setting than a party, and possibly without being forced to meet them all at once.
“When’s the barbeque?” you asked.
Jax paused for a long moment, his grin growing a little sheepish. “Tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?” you repeated, panicked. “Like, tomorrow tomorrow?”
“Don’t think there’s another kind, darlin’,” Jax replied. “Look, all you gotta do is show up with me. Just eat some food and talk a little with everyone and then we dip out.”
“You forgot the part where I need to look like your girlfriend,” you pointed out.
Jax’s expression faltered at the reminder. His head tipped slowly to the side as he studied you through partially narrowed eyes, and you ignored how the sunlight flooding through the opened garage door of the storage unit somehow made him look a little softer than usual.
Hugging your arms tighter around your chest, nerves flooded you at the knowledge that you’d finally have to put this whole fake relationship into practice sooner than you’d anticipated. You had absolutely no idea how to be that comfortable with Jax in a public setting while acting like you were truly with him, especially when you knew that your life quite literally depended on making it believable.
If anyone thought there was something off about you or the relationship, you had a feeling the Sons or Gemma herself would start digging into who you were to figure you out what was actually going on. And what happened when they learned you didn’t exist in this world? Or if they found out Jax paid to have forged documentation made for you? Or what happened if Juice couldn’t find any history linking you in this world and they started to think you were an undercover federal agent dropped into their territory just to spy on them? You doubted Jax would be able to find a way to save you from the wrath of his club, because there was no way they’d believe the truth.
“No one’s going to look at me and realistically think I'm the girl you liked so much that you let me move in with you,” you told him, nails digging anxiously into your palms. “Your mom is going to take one look at us together and know the whole relationship is bullshit.”
A heavy sigh fell past Jax's lips as one of his hands smoothed back his blonde hair. He nodded his head slowly, lips thinning into a straight line.
“Yeah, you’re not wrong, Michigan,” he grimly agreed. “But that’s only ‘cause you always look terrified of me.”
You frowned at his rather unsympathetic response, a little disappointed at how easily he agreed with the sentiment that you looked nothing like a girl he’d be serious with. It didn't exactly build confidence. Your mind quickly tried to conjure up alternative solutions that would allow you to avoid attending the party altogether, wanting to find some way to get out of the entire situation. While you began contemplating how difficult it might be to fake having a bout of food poisoning, Jax stood across the storage unit deep in his own thoughts, his tongue distractingly dancing back and forth along his bottom lip.
“A’ight,” he finally announced, “I got an idea.”
His voice broke through the tension in the room, pulling you out of your thoughts as you eyed him warily. “What is it?” you cautiously asked. “Does it involve me having a very credible excuse to miss the entire thing? Like maybe I’m allergic to sunlight? Or grilled food?”
Jax shook his head, a little glint of mischief sparkling to life in his eyes. “No,” he said. “We just need to get you comfortable with touchin’ me so that you don’t look so nervous tomorrow.”
You immediately balked at the suggestion. “What?”
He lightly rolled his eyes. “Not like that,” he said. “Just like…kissing and holding hands and shit. Stupid couple things. That way it won’t feel so fuckin’ weird for either of us tomorrow night when we're around everyone, and then hopefully you won’t keep flinching away from me like I’m gonna hit you whenever I get close.”
Your frown deepened at the accusation. Admittedly he still made you a little uncomfortable and nervous when he was around because of who you knew him to be from the show, but you doubted you flinched away from him whenever he got near you.
“I do not flinch,” you moodily countered.
“Yeah, you do,” he disagreed. “So we're gonna fix that. Right now.”
“And how exactly do you intend to do that?” you asked.
A smirk gradually crept across his lips, the type of smirk that had your pulse unevenly thudding beneath the arms wrapped around your chest. He’d never looked at you like that before, not in the almost two weeks since you'd been staying with him, and the shift was so abrupt that you fell silent. Jax tipped his chin at you in a manner that you’d only ever witnessed from Fake Jax on the television show, and unfortunately you found out that you were quite easily affected by Real Jax despite his also very real criminal history.
“You’re gonna come over here and kiss me darlin’,” he stated simply. “That’s how.”
Hearing Jax Teller command you to kiss him was quite literally something straight out of one of your fantasies–and your fanfiction stories that he still thankfully was none the wiser about. But that was before you'd died and wound up meeting Real Jax. Now your body was a complete mess of desire, entirely turned on by the idea of getting a free pass to make out with him, while the conflicting issues of morality based on who he actually was kept trying to cast doubt on your attraction towards him.
And the irony wasn’t lost on you that you were now quite literally standing in the middle of a very overdone trope. The fake dating trope always came with one of these situations where the two characters were forced to be affectionate towards each other, often as a way to practice for when they needed to publicly put on a show for whatever reason they were faking the relationship in the first place. You'd written it a few times yourself in the past, so you absolutely shouldn’t have been as blindsided by this situation as you felt.
But somehow being told to go kiss him had your feet locking up as if they’d melted into the concrete slab beneath you. Instead of doing what he’d said, you could only stand there gawking at him like an idiot, which Jax seemed to find amusing judging by how much more wicked and wolfish that smirk on his face grew. Suddenly your heart was thumping wildly like a cornered animal, which was certainly how you felt under the weight of that look on his face.
“What’s the hold up, Michigan?” he teased. “Never kissed anyone before? Because I thought you were the one defending women exploring their sexuality and all that shit the other day.”
Heat crept up the back of your neck. Now he was making fun of you for your hesitation at just giving him a kiss. Maybe if you just turned and snorted up some of the dust on a nearby box like it was a line of coke you could enter into a sneezing fit and distract him from this entirely mortifying situation.
“I’ve obviously kissed people before,” you defended yourself, ignoring the slightly elevated and awkward pitch of your voice. “I just–just haven’t gone around kissing people to the extent that you have.”
One of his brows casually quirked up onto his forehead, his teasing smirk not helping the skipping of your pulse. You decided Jax Teller’s charm was absolutely not a figment of a television show in that moment.
“Callin’ yourself inexperienced then, darlin’?” he questioned.
“No,” you quickly replied. “I’m just saying it’s awkward to kiss someone I’m not really dating who up until two weeks ago wasn’t real.”
The corner of his lips twitched like he was trying not to laugh. The cocky little shit found this whole situation highly amusing and you desperately wished you'd found another cover story to hide behind now than the one which forced you to be his girlfriend. He took a step towards you, beginning to close the distance between you both in the small storage unit, and you stiffened before backing into the stack of boxes behind you.
“What’re you doing?” you demanded.
Jax shrugged a shoulder, sauntering towards you with all the confidence in the world. “Breaking the tension between us. Someone’s gotta do it if anyone is gonna believe we're together.”
Your brows dipped together, your heart beginning to batter itself against your chest. “What do you–”
He didn’t give you the opportunity to finish your thought. With nothing you could describe as anything other than the pure swagger of Jax Teller, he closed the distance between you before grabbing your face in both of his warm palms, thumbs tucked just under your jaw. Without hesitation he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to yours, and everything else that came after was entirely instinctual.
Unwrapping your arms from around your chest, your hands flew forward and latched onto his t-shirt beneath his kutte, fingers twisting into the soft cotton. Your lips moved in rhythm with his as you unconsciously eased forward into his body like you were drawn to him against your will, and those mindless butterflies returned to your stomach at the delicious scratch of his beard against your skin.
This kiss wasn’t exactly what you’d expected from Jax Teller. While he tasted of coffee and cigarettes and a bit of the spearmint gum he’d been chewing earlier, he wasn’t devouring you in some heated, rough and hungry way. Nothing about it made you think he was about to shove you over a stack of boxes and take you right there like you were some croweater. The way he was cradling your face in his calloused hands seemed almost tender, and despite the teasing way he’d initiated the kiss, he suddenly seemed uncharacteristically gentle as his lips molded over yours.
Whether it was due to the crush you'd always had on Fake Jax, or how touch starved and desperate for comfort you'd been while trapped here for these past couple of weeks, you lost yourself in the kiss. There was nothing else but Jax, the frenzied hammering of your heart, and the strange way his mouth was making you grow dizzy.
When he finally pulled away, your eyes remained closed for several drawn out seconds. Your mind felt like ice cream left to melt in the sun, and your insides were just as soft and warm. Never before had a single kiss left you this weak and senseless, and you stood there dumbfounded while struggling to get a hold of yourself in the surprising aftermath.
Eventually you blinked your eyes open, half out of it from whatever strange sensation was buzzing through your bloodstream, only to be met with Jax’s face mere inches from yours. A shit-eating grin was drawn straight across it, and you realized how visibly dazed you must've looked. Embarrassed at your reaction to him, you abruptly released the tight grip on his shirt and took a half-step backwards as his own hands returned to his sides.
Apparently, only you had felt whatever that was. Which shouldn't have surprised you or dampened your mood, yet it still did. Real Jax was the same as Fake Jax–both had slept around plenty. Of course he wouldn't have been affected by a single kiss from a girl who meant nothing to him even if somehow you’d been idiotic enough to feel something on your end.
“Didn't seem so afraid of me doin’ that, Michigan,” Jax teased, entirely unaware of your sudden internal conflict. “Wonder why that is?”
“I think we both know you're not exactly unattractive,” you muttered.
Tomorrow night might be more painful than you initially realized if you were going to be this damn sensitive about his fake feelings towards you. You needed to get your head on straight after that kiss, but you couldn't do that with him staring at you. Jabbing your thumb awkwardly at the boxes behind you, you were desperate to get past this entire situation and return to the reason why you were here.
“Now can we get back to searching for the manuscript?” you asked.
Jax shook his head, a lopsided grin sliding onto his face as you internally squirmed beneath his stare, your insides still liquified mush after that kiss. While you'd hoped to make it through your time in Charming without ever giving away the fact that you absolutely had a crush on Fake Jax, that knowing glint in Real Jax's eyes had you wondering if he'd started quietly piecing that together already.
“Nah, not yet,” he answered. “Still gotta make sure you're comfortable kissin’ me before tomorrow night. I played my part, now it's your turn, darlin’.”
If you could die a second death from absolute mortification, you'd have dropped dead on the spot. Was he expecting you to initiate now? After how he already knew he'd visibly rattled you?
“No one's gonna believe my old lady is someone this timid, darlin’,” Jax pushed.
He was right and you knew it. Jax was a born leader, he was charismatic and outgoing. That man commanded a room when he stepped into it. It was also longstanding public knowledge that he was a manwhore, so no one would expect him to be drawn to a woman who wouldn't just openly grab him and kiss him. Especially knowing that his old lady would want to publicly mark Jax as hers in front of everyone, because Tara had certainly done that in the show.
Fuck it. Just bite the bullet and go for it. What's the worst that can happen?
“You're gonna have to be a bit more–”
Taking a step forward, you reached out and grabbed the back of his neck before sharply yanking him towards you, instantly shutting him up when you crushed your mouth to his. There was no hesitation from Jax afterwards, his mouth moving against yours as if there'd never been an interruption from the first kiss.
Heat flooded you once more, causing you to melt back into him as his hands rested on your lower back. He pulled you against his chest, pressing you flush to him and eliminating every gap of space between you both. Completely losing your head at the feel of his solid body against you, the faintest groan slipped out of your mouth against his. Jax took that exact moment to slip his tongue into your mouth, and your nails dug into the nape of his neck as it tangled with yours, your knees going weak at the intensity of whatever was happening here.
This didn’t feel like any other kiss you’d had before in your past relationships or hookups. This was the kind of kiss you wrote about in your silly romance novels, the kind that left you breathless. The kind that you filled up pages with ridiculous metaphors in an attempt to grasp a fraction of what it truly felt like. The type that made your head spin and your heart ricochet around your chest, the type that you’d replay over and over in your head while alone later.
But just when things started heating up a little too much, your sanity and reality came crashing back down on you. Because this wasn't real. This was just practice, a way to break the ice so that you two could realistically play your parts for the duration of the time Jax helped you get back onto your feet in his world.
Abruptly breaking the kiss, you pulled away from Jax, staring at him as your breaths came in heavy and ragged. There was something unexplainable burning behind his blue eyes that you hadn’t seen after the first kiss, a flicker of confusion as if maybe he wasn’t sure why you’d broken away because he hadn’t wanted you to. But maybe you were just imagining that with how fast his expression morphed into an arrogant grin again.
“Suppose we don't gotta worry ‘bout faking any chemistry, Michigan,” he teased. “Kinda surprised you had that in you with how you used to avoid me.”
A frown creased over your lips. Did he expect you to be a bad kisser? That stung.
“Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I can't kiss,” you bitterly muttered.
You caught the dip in the corner of his mouth before swiftly turning around, returning to searching the boxes. As you closed up the open box in front of you filled with nothing more than just clothes, you tried to swallow down all the heat and desire burning through you from getting close to him. How dare he have that much of an effect on you and not nearly be as affected in return.
“Don't do that, darlin’,” he said, tone softening. “Wasn't trying to insult you, you just always seem nervous around me. Didn’t think you had it in you to just grab me like that.”
You began tearing open another box, ignoring the tickle in your nose when the dust flew up into the air again. Baby clothes filled this one, stacked in neat little rows as if they’d been packed away with care. As you slipped your hands inside, gingerly looking through a few of the onesies, your fingers brushed over a baby blanket with the name ‘Thomas’ stitched into it and a harsh ache slammed into your chest.
This was Jax’s younger brother’s baby clothes. The younger brother who’d died at the age of six because of a congenital heart defect, the same one Jax was born with.
“And you're very much not dead, Michigan,” Jax continued behind you. “I can vouch for that myself after the way you just kissed me.”
Your throat felt tight as you sifted carefully through a few of the onesies in the box, your bitter mood quickly fading. Jax was just trying to help you when he truly had no reason to, and yet here you were getting upset because he wasn’t romantically interested in you for real. Which was stupid since you didn’t want to get caught up with a criminal in a motorcycle club anyway. You were just lonely, that’s the only reason as to why you'd been affected by him a minute ago.
After skimming through the box, you realized it was simply filled with baby clothes. There was no manuscript hidden inside of this one. But as you’d gone to close it back up, you stopped when Jax’s arm appeared beside you, reaching around you and into the box. He picked up a small gray onesie covered in tiny motorcycles. Glancing sideways, you saw Jax standing beside you examining it, his brows pinched together and all the teasing gone from his features.
“Guessin’ you know who these belonged to 'cause of that show,” he said softly.
You nodded slowly, trying to get a read on Jax. Fake Jax in the show never really discussed his brother or his passing, but he’d named his second son after him. Obviously his brother had meant something to him, and beneath that slightly guarded look in his eyes, you could see the hidden pain.
“Your younger brother Thomas,” you confirmed. The mood in the storage unit immediately shifted at the mention of the name. “What was he like?”
Jax’s fingers went still on the onesie, his blue eyes locked onto the small piece of worn cloth stained with spit up in his hands. A muscle began to feather in his jaw, and you weren’t certain if you’d asked something that you shouldn’t have until he spoke.
“He was quiet,” he answered solemnly. “Never said much, usually ‘cause my ass was always causing trouble. But he was funny. Always liked makin’ everyone laugh.” His teeth sunk into his bottom lip like he was struggling to fight down his emotions. Carefully leaning past you, he lowered the worn onesie back into the box onto a stack of others. “He really liked Hot Wheels cars. Made little tracks for them with sticks and rocks so they could race. He always liked cars, not bikes.”
Jax roughly cleared his throat before he stepped away, heading back over to the boxes he’d been searching through initially. Your eyes followed his retreating back as you blinked down tears, suddenly intensely aware of just how human this Jax actually was. He wasn’t just Real Jax as you’d been referring to him in your head for these past two weeks, he was an actual person. And while you technically knew that, it hadn’t fully hit you until that moment.
Jax wasn’t just some guy you’d watched in a television show and written fanfiction about, he wasn’t simply some character that you’d studied and discussed and drooled over. He’d lived through the very real loss of his brother and father, he’d truly grown up entrenched in the Sons of Anarchy and everything that came with it, and his mother had really kept him ensconced in the idea that he'd be at the head of the table one day. Tara had actually broken his heart when she’d left Charming as a teenager while failing to save him from this fate, which caused him to put a real barrier between women and his heart in the years since. He was someone who’d loved hard and lost just as severely, and that was just as unscripted and real as the violent parts of him that you’d spent all your focus on ever since he’d found you.
“I’m sorry about what happened to him,” you whispered, closing the box back up.
“Wasn’t your fault, darlin’,” Jax replied from across the storage unit. “Besides, probably better he didn’t grow up in all this shit anyway. He wouldn’t have been cut out for it.”
A heavy silence settled over you both after that, the weight of it only broken by your occasional sneezes and Jax’s deep voice asking if you were alright. You’d dug through five more boxes before starting to lose faith in the fact that you’d find John’s manuscript at all. What if it just didn’t exist in this world? Maybe John never wrote it. Maybe this was all just pointless and there was no rhyme or reason as to why you’d died and woken up in this world.
And if there was no manuscript, maybe there was no homeless woman. Maybe you’d never find the answers you were searching for because they didn’t exist. What if this was just how the multiverse worked–you died and your essence was just recycled somewhere else for no reason? Or maybe you’d somehow cheated death by accident and someday you just…wouldn’t wake up on Jax’s couch as everything righted itself.
“Darlin’?”
At the uncertain tone in Jax’s voice, you stopped digging through the box of Ninja Turtle plates and cups. “What?” you asked, turning around. “Did you find something?”
Jax stared down at a thick stack of papers clutched in his hands, his mouth partially agape. The pages were held together by a large binder clip on the top, and you instantly recognized them for what they were. A surge of excitement and hope shot through you as the past few minutes of doubts washed away in an instant.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Jax replied. “The manuscript my dad wrote. ‘The Life and Death of Sam Crow’,” he read the title with a faint tremble. “‘How the Sons of Anarchy Lost Their Way’.”
Jax’s gaze rose from the papers he was holding in his tight grip, shock and bewilderment etched onto his features as his stare met yours. You imagined the same look was mirrored on your own face right now, because even though you’d known it was real in the show, you weren’t certain the manuscript was real here. Yet there it was, the few hundred pages which caused so much trouble and death were now held in Jax’s hands.
“You were right,” he said, still stunned. “It does exist. Which means…”
“Maybe Jesus Ghost is real?” you nervously supplied. “And there really is something wrong with the crows in this world?”
“And maybe you really are a long way from home, Michigan,” Jax added carefully.
He was eyeing you slightly differently than he usually did and it was making your stomach try to burrow its way towards your feet in an attempt to hide. Because gone was that familiar skepticism he always wore at who you’d claimed to be and where you claimed to be from. Instead it was replaced with something you didn’t quite have a name for, something that looked a lot like terrified awe, and it had you shifting uncomfortably in front of him. Until a bit of dust tickled your nose again and you released another earsplitting sneeze into your arm. As you sniffled and twitched your itchy nose, Jax cracked the smallest grin.
“Let's get you outta here,” he said, gesturing his head at the open garage door. “I'll get a prospect to drag a dresser to my place to keep Gemma from askin’ any questions.”
You rubbed the heel of your hand against your nose, trying to alleviate the itch. “Trading annoying dust for your scary bike,” you deadpanned as Jax chuckled. “Great.”
Pairing: Jax Teller x fem!Reader Word Count: 4.5k [Series Masterlist] [Jax Fic Masterlist]
Warning/tags: 18+; Canon-divergence, canon-typical violence, angst, humor, fake dating, forced proximity, slow burn, eventual smut, magical elements (thanks to the homeless woman), Reader is from a different reality
a/n: Been a little bit since we got an update for this strange fic, but this one is fun. Feedback and reblogs are always appreciated!
Series tag list: @kmc1989 @puffins-muffins @the-jer-bear @secretlysamcro @xx-lostgirl-xx @hereforchifuyu @menofletters-and-mayhem @rebelwrites @stevie75 @wittyogredemon @avengersfan25 @samcrosfaith
Leaning over towards the coffee table in front of the couch that had become your bed for the past week and a half, you picked up the burner phone Jax had given you to keep. Checking the time on the screen, a slight frown settled onto your lips as you noticed that it was nearing nine in the morning already. Eyes drifting over towards the hallway, your frown further deepened as the worn plaid blanket slipped down past your shoulders.
Usually by now Jax would have already woken, showered, made a quick pot of coffee, thrown a cup back, and then disappeared out the front door as he lit up a cigarette. It was what he'd done every morning that you'd been here so far. And you'd only known that because you were usually just pretending to be asleep on the couch while watching him through partially opened eyes, waiting for him to leave for the day so that you could get up and avoid him.
He'd done that every single morning except for this morning. You hadn't heard him get out of bed yet, so you figured he was still in his room asleep. Did he not have to get to the clubhouse for once this morning, or was he just accidentally oversleeping today? Pushing yourself upright to sit on the couch, you knew that whatever the reason was, you were not about to go bother him and find out. If he overslept and was late to deal with something with the Sons or Teller-Morrow Automotive, that was his problem to deal with. You weren't his alarm clock, and you could only imagine what horrors would await someone that dared to wake Jax.
But you were desperate for a cup of coffee after having barely slept for the ninth night in a row. Not that Jax had any good coffee–it was passable at best–but it was better than nothing at all. With a sigh, you shoved the blanket off to the side, leaving it bunched on the couch cushions as you accepted the fact that you'd have to interact with him this morning.
Getting up from the couch, you headed into the kitchen and straight over to the coffee maker on the counter. Setting it up to begin brewing a pot of coffee, you found yourself wondering if Jax also spoke in short grunts in the mornings. That’s what he usually did whenever he came back late at night from the clubhouse before he usually disappeared to his bedroom.
It wasn't that you didn't necessarily like Jax, because you’d absolutely loved his character on the show from your reality. You’d binged all seven seasons more than once. You felt like you could relate to the way the world always seemed to be against him at every turn–especially now in this impossible-to-believe situation you'd found yourself in against your will. And you'd felt sympathy for his character, watching him steadily become the thing he never wanted to become while he slowly lost everything he ever loved because of his club.
He was a complex and tragic character, one beautifully fleshed out with flaws and hopes like anyone else. You'd cared about his character enough that whenever you'd hit writer's block on your actual work, you had written fanfiction about him. You gave him stories with far better endings than the one he'd gotten in the show–endings you felt he deserved instead.
But Real Jax was not a fictional man on a scripted show where the story was fake and the stakes weren't real. This Jax didn't come home with prop blood from a television set splattered on his sweatshirt and his face, or a dulled knife holstered at his side with a gun in his kutte that fired off blanks. Everything about him was real and dangerous and hard to accept.
Despite how he'd been taking care of you since he'd apparently found you dead on the side of the road before you’d miraculously reanimated, along with the few short conversations you'd had with him a couple of times over the past nine days, it was difficult to look past the violence he'd perpetrated to see a man you could trust and feel safe around. It was one thing when you were looking at the Jax on a show–the one you’d written about in your stories–but it was a completely different thing altogether when the man came home marked in the sins and transgressions of his life on a daily basis.
So you'd found it easier to just avoid him as much as possible rather than to try and process how you felt about all of that, too. You already had enough on your mind with trying to accept the strange predicament you were stuck in while trying to figure out what you needed to do in this world, you hadn’t wanted to also grapple with issues of morality. He was helping you get your footing here and that's as far as you'd let yourself look at it.
A presence at your back pulled your mind from your exhausted thoughts, causing you to startle when a hand reached up towards a cabinet near your head. Taking a couple of steps backwards, you saw Jax’s hand pause before the door of the kitchen cabinet where the coffee mugs were stored, his face scrunched up in confusion at your reaction.
“‘S just me, Michigan,” he soothed in a far too delicious morning rasp. “Don't needa be so jumpy.”
“Sorry, you just–”
You broke off as you watched him continue to reach into the upper cabinet and pull down two plain black coffee mugs as he stood there wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung gray sweatpants, the muscles in his arms visibly flexing as he moved. You had to forcefully tear your eyes away from him and onto the pot of coffee that was steadily and noisily filling on the counter beside you. Even the way his hair was mussed from sleep instead of within its neat style was doing something to you this morning, something you also did not want to think about when it came to Real Jax.
“You startled me,” you finished lamely.
“Well, maybe if you weren't so busy pouting at my coffee maker,” Jax teased, turning towards you and handing you an empty mug, “you would've heard me talkin’ to you.”
“I wasn’t pouting,” you disagreed as you accepted the mug. “I was just…thinking.”
“The pout on your face says otherwise, darlin’,” Jax countered. “You got somethin’ against my coffee maker?”
He turned and rested a hip against the counter, the small grin on his tired face making all the warnings in your head about him dull and quiet. The hard curves of his chiseled pectoral muscles coated in the warmth of the morning sunlight in his kitchen wasn’t exactly helping to make you want to bolt from the room, either. He was just so unfairly handsome, and maybe it was due to having watched seven seasons of Fake Jax’s life multiple times, but whenever he looked at you like that, you felt as if you knew him. As if maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you trusted him.
“It’s hardly a coffee maker,” you answered before you could stop yourself.
His head very slowly tipped to the side at the insult to his kitchen appliance. One of his brows rose onto his forehead as the object of discussion struggled to noisily finish filling the pot on the counter beside you both. If it wasn’t for the amused twist of his lips, you'd have thought you'd just genuinely offended him.
“Look, I mean it with the utmost respect,” you began to defend yourself, “but your cheap coffee maker is almost as dead as I was the other day. And your taste in coffee is deplorable.”
“Oh, it’s deplorable, is it?” he repeated, grin widening.
Whenever you two fell into one of these rare, lighthearted conversations, you found yourself trying to ease into it and let your guard down. Spending a week and a half mostly by yourself left you feeling rather lonely, and your loneliness helped make it easier to forget just how scary Jax could be. Considering the adorable lopsided grin on his tired face this morning, he currently seemed rather unthreatening, so you found your initial desire to avoid him quickly melting as you continued.
“You drink pre-ground Folgers,” you said, gesturing a hand to the canister on the counter. “I don’t think there’s anything lower than that, Jax. It’s like you’ve been brainwashed by what I’m assuming also existed as commercials in the nineties here to think that it’s actually coffee when it’s absolutely not.”
He snorted in amusement at the comment. “It’s not real coffee?” he questioned. “So what is it then? Fake Coffee? Just like Fake Jax?”
A faint frown crossed your lips at his teasing. You’d told him the other day how you’d begun to separate both Jaxs’ in your mind. He was Real Jax since he was the one solid and breathing in front of you, while the other Jax from the television show in your world with the slightly different timeline was Fake Jax.
“No,” you replied. You turned around and grabbed the pot of coffee from beneath the coffee maker when it finally completed its death knell. “It’s just shitty coffee. I’m sure Charming’s stores have something that’s at least marginally better quality than this.”
“Didn’t realize you were that goddamn picky ‘bout your coffee, Michigan,” Jax teased, accepting the pot from you.
Beginning to spoon a bit of sugar into your cup from the container on the counter, you attempted to cover the bitter, burnt flavor of the coffee as you shrugged a shoulder. “I took my coffee seriously,” you told him. “I used to go to this coffee shop to work at when I didn’t feel like messing with my own espresso machine for the day.” You looked up, eyes landing on the oak cabinet in front of you as a wistful expression passed over your face. “They had the best croissants, too.”
A faint chuckle rumbled out of Jax beside you at the counter. “Yeah, you ain’t finding that shit in Charming, darlin’,” he assured you.
“I know,” you muttered, deflating a bit as you slid the sugar over to him on the countertop. “I found the single cafe in downtown Charming already. No croissants and subpar coffee. I’m more doomed in this world than I initially thought.”
Picking up your coffee, you carried it across the small kitchen and over towards the table. You pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, raising the steaming cup to your lips as your eyes drifted out of the window next to the table. It overlooked the street in front of Jax’s house, but your eyes were quickly drawn to the little black figures sitting on the roof of the house across the street. It looked like three crows were perched on the rooftop and your brows furrowed faintly.
What the hell was with all the crows in Charming?
“Think you got bigger problems than coffee and fuckin’ croissants,” Jax pointed out, finishing making his own cup of coffee. “Should be more worried ‘bout why the hell you’re here.”
Taking another sip of the bitter coffee, your nose wrinkled as the warm liquid passed over your tongue. Eyes still lingering curiously on the crows across the street, you knew Jax had a point, but it wasn't as if you hadn't been trying to make sense of that for the past nine days.
Swallowing down the coffee, you tore your eyes away from the birds, surprised to see Jax settling down into the chair across from you at the table instead of running right out the door and heading to the clubhouse. But your initial nerves of having to interact with him this morning had already dimmed with the conversation, even if you were still struggling not to stare at his bare chest.
Jax took a sip from his own mug as he settled into the chair, lazily leaning back in it. As he drank, his eyes drifted out of the window before they gradually narrowed. His mug hesitated by his mouth for a second, gaze clearly locked onto something. He swallowed his coffee before lowering the mug back to the table, his head tipping towards the window.
“You keep seein’ all these fuckin’ crows lately?” he asked curiously.
Your head turned back over to the window, eyes landing on the three dark shapes across the street. You couldn’t see their faces at this distance, but you swore the birds were watching you both. Which felt ridiculous to even think let alone admit. But you had been seeing a lot of crows around here since you'd shown up. Usually on those mornings that you couldn't sleep, when you were sitting outside in Jax’s backyard because another nightmare about your death had kept you awake, there’d be crows circling around nearby. Or perched on something just watching you.
“Yeah,” you answered, attention returning to Jax. “I just assumed they were common to the area. I never really saw them that much in Michigan. Not like this, at least. Why? Is that not normal?”
Jax shook his head, shifting in his seat as he continued lounging back in it. “No,” he answered. “Been seein’ them a lot more lately. Ever since the day I found you on the side of the road.”
He paused for a moment, tongue running slowly along his bottom lip as he sat in silent contemplation. The gesture made your body heat as your eyes followed its path, watching the way his lips glistened with saliva in the wake of his tongue. You shifted awkwardly in the chair before tearing your eyes away from his mouth, mentally chastising yourself for even noticing.
“A few of them appeared right before you woke up on the side of the road,” he told you, his voice drawing you back to the conversation. His gaze flickered to the window before it returned to you. “You think they got somethin’ to do with why you’re here?”
You made a face at the question, your hands wrapping around the warm mug of coffee on the table in front of you. “The crows?” you clarified. “I doubt birds brought me here, but I don’t know. I suppose they appeared in the show from my world often, so…maybe they're related to it somehow?” you answered him. “At this point, I’d believe almost anything.”
“Did they mean anything in the show?” he asked, studying you. “Anything important?”
One of your shoulders rose and fell at the question. “Death?” you answered. “Isn’t that usually what crows represent? Though,” you continued, glancing across the street at the trio of birds, “they don’t necessarily give me a bad feeling, they’re just unsettling.”
Jax leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on the table beside his coffee mug. “Feels like they’re watchin’ you right?”
You nodded in agreement. “It’s like they’re oddly sentient for crows. More than they should be.”
He hummed a thoughtful noise as he raised his mug of coffee to his lips again, side-eyeing the birds out of the window as he took another drink. Raising your own mug to your mouth, you settled back in your chair and sipped on the bitter coffee that tasted nothing like what you were accustomed to.
It was strange that he was seeing the crows now, too. Even stranger that he acknowledged the odd feeling they’d been giving you over the past week and a half. Almost as if there was something supernatural about the birds, just like your appearance in this other reality. But what did the supernatural have to do with the Sons of Anarchy? It was just a show about a motorcycle club and their illegal activities, there wasn’t anything–
Your eyes widened the moment it hit you, shocked at how it had taken you nine whole days to think of the most glaringly obvious element in the whole show that wasn’t normal. Abruptly sitting upright in the chair, you practically slammed your mug down on the table, the liquid sloshing dangerously close to the edge of the cup.
“Oh my fucking God!” you exclaimed, the loud noise causing Jax’s head to snap in your direction. “I don’t know how the hell I forgot about her!”
Jax's brows drew together at your outburst, his eyes narrowing at you. “The fuck are you talkin’ about, Michigan?” he asked, concern and suspicion coating his words. “Forgot about who?”
Trying to rein in your enthusiasm, you planted both hands firmly on the kitchen table like it was the only thing keeping you from jumping out of your skin in excitement. Because it sure as hell felt like you'd just figured something out.
“The homeless woman,” you explained, the words falling out of you in a rush. “The homeless who appeared throughout all seven seasons of the show. The one who looked like the woman your father accidentally killed in his motorcycle accident. Except she’s not exactly a ghost because other people can see her.”
His blonde brows shot up onto his forehead, clearly not following much of what you said. He looked as if he was probably contemplating your sanity once again.
“You tellin’ me there’s not only weirdly sentient fuckin’ crows, but an undead ghost lady wandering around Charming now, too?” he asked. “Is that what you're sayin’?”
You waved a hand dismissively through the air in a rush as you shook your head. You felt like you were onto something here, as if you’d found some piece of this entire strange puzzle of your unexplainable existence in this world that you were now desperate to solve. That alone had you forgetting about how nervous he often made you.
“No, she’s not some ghost lady,” you corrected him. “She was this supernatural element in the show from my world. She just looked like the woman who’d died in the accident that took your father’s life, but I don’t think it was the actual woman.” You waved your hand through the air again, as if brushing off the irrelevant information. “This homeless woman kept appearing to you and sometimes your mom–she even showed up in Belfast when you guys were in Ireland. At the end of the series, you asked her who she is, but she never really answered you.”
You slapped your hand sharply down onto the table, the solid noise ringing through the kitchen. Jax eyed you warily, the morning light flooding through the window making his eyes a prettier shade of blue.
“I bet she’s the one who brought me here,” you stated. “She has to be behind it.”
“The dead lady?” Jax repeated skeptically. “You think the dead lady brought you here?”
“There’s a lot of speculation about who she’s actually supposed to be because it’s never confirmed,” you told Jax. “The creator of the show, Kurt Sutter, straight up claimed she was Jesus Christ in a video, but I think he backtracked that later.”
Jax stared blankly back at you from across the table, that hard look on his face causing heat to creep up your neck. Two weeks ago, if someone would’ve told you you’d be sitting in Jax Teller’s kitchen talking about Jesus, you’d have thought you’d gone insane, too. But after dying and coming back to life in a different reality, you had no idea what the hell to even think about anything anymore.
“Yeah, I get it,” you agreed, that hard stare of his making you uneasy. “I sound insane. I know. But somehow I'm here, so maybe she is real in this world. And maybe she’s death itself like some people speculated, or maybe she really is Jesus, I don’t know. But whatever she is, she’s the one thing that stands out in that whole series as abnormal.”
You paused, teeth sinking into your bottom lip as Jax’s expression remained stoic and impossible to read. That self-conscious feeling you often got around him was slipping in past your excitement over feeling like you'd figured something out.
“If anyone could have brought me here, it’s probably her,” you finished. “Which is most likely why you found me and not someone else. She probably wanted you to find me because she’s linked to you somehow.”
Jax’s face pinched tight in confusion as he eyed you across his kitchen table. “You think I found you because Jesus Ghost wanted me to find you?” he questioned.
The corner of your lip twitched in amusement at the name he'd given the homeless woman–Jesus Ghost. But when his expression remained serious and unchanged, the amusement vanished.
“She always showed up during important moments of your life,” you told him. “So maybe that’s what this is now? Maybe I’m supposed to help you with something. Maybe that’s why I’m here in your world.”
Jax’s face only pinched tighter as he threw an arm over the back of his chair. “The fuck do you mean she wants you to help me with something?” he asked. “No offense, darlin’, but I think you’re far too soft to help me with anythin’.”
Gaze dropping down to the coffee in front of yourself, you stared at the dark liquid. His comment stung, but he wasn't wrong. You weren't built for his life. It made no sense as to why you would be here to help him, but if the homeless woman–or Jesus Ghost–was involved in this, then there had to be a bigger reason. Something Jax needed help with.
So maybe there was something in the differences between Real Jax and Fake Jax that would give you the answer. In the show, Jax’s life had gone completely off the rails after Opie’s death, but Opie wasn’t dead in this world. Things hadn’t gone quite the same way in this reality as they had in Fake Jax’s life on the show. So what was missing? What could Jax possibly need help with that might involve you?
As you sat there absently tapping a finger against your coffee mug, a thought struck you. It was one of the glaring differences you’d learned right when you’d first woken up in this world. Head darting back up, you met Jax’s stare again.
“You said you never married Wendy or Tara, right?” you asked him. “You never had children?”
Across the table from you, Jax tensed at the questions. “Yeah,” he answered in a clipped tone, like you were touching on something you shouldn't. “Never married. No kids.”
“Which means you also never went looking through Gemma’s storage unit for baby items,” you pointed out. “Meaning that you never found John’s manuscript about the club. About how the Sons lost their way.”
“The what?” Jax asked, brows knitting together.
That had to be it. This had to be why you were brought here, right? Even though why it was you specifically still made no sense whatsoever. But if Jax never had a reason to go through Gemma’s storage unit in the past in this reality, he’d become president of the club without ever having read the manuscript. He’d never read any of the things his dad had written, never read what the club was supposed to be from the man who’d created it. Jax had just been blindly following in Clay’s footsteps because that’s what he’d always known in this world.
Maybe the manuscript was somehow meant to change his trajectory in this life. Maybe he needed to find it and read it. Maybe that’s what the homeless woman wanted?
“Your dad wrote a manuscript before he died,” you explained to Jax, your terrible coffee entirely forgotten with how focused you were on this conversation. “You finding it in your mom’s storage unit was literally the catalyst for everything in the show. You’d wanted to get the Sons out of running guns, to find a way to save the club. To make things legitimate and less bloody and dangerous, especially after your son was born.”
It felt like you were vibrating with energy as you sat across the table from him. For the past nine days, you existing in this world had felt entirely depressing and pointless, but maybe it wasn’t in the end. Maybe you had a purpose here–though you had no idea what would happen to you whenever you fulfilled it.
“I bet you that manuscript exists in this world,” you continued, ignoring the uncertainty on Jax’s face. “Finding it would prove that I really did watch a show about your club in some other reality and that I’m not delusional and crazy. And maybe that’s how we figure out why I’m here.”
With a heavy sigh, Jax raised the arm from off the back of his chair, running his hand across his face which looked far too exhausted for a man who'd just slept in. Having been so engrossed in all of these sudden realizations, you’d temporarily forgotten that he was sitting there half-dressed in his kitchen looking far too good for your liking, and you fought to not blatantly stare at the spot on his chest. The one missing Abel's name.
“You do realize how fuckin’ crazy you just sounded spouting all that shit off, right?” he questioned, his hand dropping to the table.
“I’m aware, yes,” you answered. “But I’ll sound less psychotic if we find that manuscript. And afterwards, maybe I can track down that homeless woman.”
“So lemme get this straight,” Jax said, holding your stare. “You wanna go raid my mom’s storage unit, and then you wanna go look for Jesus Ghost?”
“Yes,” you answered firmly. “I think that's what I need to do, yeah.”
He shook his head, his gaze shifting back out of the nearby window and landing on the crows still sitting across the street. “Guess we’ve got ourselves a fucked-up little plan then,” he muttered.
“With one little detail,” you added awkwardly.
Jax’s head turned back towards you, a flat, unamused look on his face. You had a feeling he'd be chain smoking a few cigarettes to deal with his stress after this conversation.
“What?” he asked gruffly.
“In the show, your mom wasn’t too thrilled with you finding that manuscript,” you slowly explained. “I have no idea how Gemma in this world would react considering you’re already SAMCRO’s president, but maybe it’s better you don’t just ask for the key to the unit? Because that manuscript…started a lot of problems. It might be better if no one knows you have it if we find it.”
“Right,” he sarcastically replied. “Because breaking into my mother’s storage unit with Jesus Ghost’s miracle girl is definitely what I needed to add to my list of shit to do this week.”
Lips drawing back in a sheepish smile at Jax, you really wondered why the hell the homeless woman had chosen you to handle all of this with him. You and him working together made absolutely no sense. But maybe you'd eventually figure that out.
“I prefer ‘quirky dead girl’,” you attempted to joke, picking up your mug as Jax arched a brow at you. “Fits me better.”
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