Notes: This is the first of 6 one-shots that I've already posted to Ao3. Originally posted 09/17/2013.
I have fallen for a ship so obscure that there isn't even a tag on Tumblr, but I've fallen fast and I've fallen hard; and this is the poorly written result. Their love may have been inspired by my own blogging-fueled rage (and a dash of spite and fan-crafted revenge), but this unlikely pairing (in my mind anyway) is anything but.
It's strange! It's uncommon! There's a bit of an age gap! I'm almost certain the world has seen weirder but I'm posting a disclaimer none the less. Will I write more? Probably! Even if no one reads and/or cares.
My beautifully scarred, medically trained babes with hearts o' gold.
A few technical things: As far as the timeline is concerned, I'd say this takes place after Tara's hand is pretty much healed but before the jail crap, obviously. Also, someone please tell me if Chibs' "accent" is atrociously written. I tried, but not too much as I am so NOT Mark Twain, y'all.
One last thing before this turns into a novel, any questions, comments, or complaints can also be directed to my Tumblr starlessness.
9/25: The title of this work is a line of dialogue from Margaret Atwood's novel, MaddAddam.
The morbid zapping that rang constant and sharp from the lantern above her head had become a surprisingly soothing hum that wound its way in and around the cacophony of the late-night suburban street. There were crickets chirping along in the distance, and the occasional screeching tires or honk of a car horn. That terrifying sound of burning against asphalt always brought an unpleasant jolting to her heart, like she was a moth or a fly; engulfed in the hot, electric blue of the light that had flooded the porch and imbued everything around her with a stain of the surreal.
It was both pleasantly cool and intolerably muggy that night, the air felt heavy and made it hard to breath, but there was still a slight chill in the air. The sleeve of her sweater rested lightly against the skin of her hand, but it was still an uncomfortable weight, the skin still sensitive to the slightest touch. When Jax would reach for her hand these days she would flinch, and then immediately feel horrible and reassure him that of course she loved him, that it was nothing to do with what had happened.
"It's healing," she would respond softly, "I swear, it just feels strange."
—
She was used to having the guys hanging around the house by now, especially when Jax was out taking care of one thing or another. She had been alone for most of the night; one of the prospects had left around 8, and considering it was now almost midnight, she hadn't been expecting anyone else until she heard the unmistakable sounds of a bike making its way down the street. The sound reverberated familiarly through her head and seemed to blend almost seamlessly with the sounds of the dying insects, near misses, and the slamming of her neighbors' back doors.
The bikes headlight momentarily blinded her as he turned carefully into the driveway, but she only squinted instead of looking away. She couldn't be certain of the visitor in question, as she had long stopped supposing that any old man on a bike at her house necessarily meant that her husband was coming home on time for once, or that it was her husband at all.
Graying strands of Chibs' hair tumbled loose over his forehead as he unbuckled and removed his helmet. Secretly relieved, she smiled and raised a hand in greeting, resuming her comfortable front row seat on the porch steps.
"Can I get you anything?"
He politely waved her question away, although he could have simply been trying to keep the bugs away from his face. He settled down on the porch beside her.
"Nah, darlin', I just wanted to stop by; make sure you were doin' okay."
"And that was your decision?"
He smiled and clasped his gloved hands together between his knees, a complicit surrender to the club. She sighed in frustration, wondering when needing freaking bodyguards became the norm, but knew that getting worked up over the fact just wasn't worth the effort. Tara turned towards him to say something else, to keep it from getting too awkward and silent, but ended up getting distracted by the scars marking his face instead. Never really taking the time to examine them before now, she paid special attention the dips and contours of his face.
She looked back down at her own hand, at the ugly, raised, thing glaring back at her amidst its ocean of perfect, unblemished flesh.
"Don't worry," he confided quietly, "mine's worse."
A blush rose in her cheeks and she mentally scolded herself at her rudeness, "I'm sorry," she answered quickly, "I didn't mean to..." stare, she finished silently.
He brushed it off easily, but there was still a part of her that couldn't help but wonder if it hurt. If the subconscious glances of people looking his way saw only those scars instead of his smile, his eyes, or, hell, anything else.
Tara knew the lesser spoken of history; about how he had gotten those permanent half-smiles etched onto both sides of his face. Wicked souvenirs from a painful time in his life that anyone with a brain would kill to forget, but there they would always remain, unabashedly staring right back at him every time he glanced in a mirror (or maybe when he noticed the curious expression on a woman's face). When she forced herself to look down at her hand every morning all she could think about was Abel, and his young, barely there heart, beating in her capable hands; and how if that had happened now she wouldn't have been able to save him, he would have died in the hands of anyone less capable than herself. She knew it may have been arrogant, but that was surgeons all over wasn't it? If they weren't emotional train wrecks with God complexes, then they probably weren't very good surgeons.
"You're not…?" She took a breath, "It doesn't... remind you...?"
"Oh," he smiled to himself, "it sure does."
His eyes met hers and a sudden feeling came over her, like from when she was a little girl, when her mother had tucked her into bed and was about to tell her a story to coax her into sleep; that feeling of relaxed anticipation. She had been excited, but not so much that her heart felt as if it were fit to bursting with giddy enthusiasm, or her mouth spread so wide that it hurt – it was more of a settling in her bones, like the words that were about to come out of her mother's mouth were akin only to the settling of her blankets around her shoulders.
"Sometimes I look in the mirror and all I can think about is what I've lost," he turned to look out at the empty street, "but it's not all that I see."
That was all she saw when she looked at her hand – the potential loss of a child, her dreams of being a surgeon, shattered. Only what she had lost.
"I know it's hard," his voice hummed along with the sounds of the street, and if her mother had seen fit to drop a blanket around her shoulders, her eyes may have closed, "…but one day you'll take a look at tha' hand of yours and it won't remind you of what you've lost."
He looked back into her eyes, "It'll just remind you of how far you've come, how you survived."
It felt somehow wrong that he was indulging her feelings of regret and self-doubt, as if their mutually traumatic pasts were at all comparable. The loss of his family and his home, a hideous and violent facial scarring – but he didn't seem to see a difference between them at all. A now-forgotten stirring started somewhere in her gut; that determined, brave feeling that she didn't always have to spend hours coaxing to life, while the past few months it had just been a whisper at the back of her mind that she would politely consider for a few moments before shoving it back into the crawl space of her head where it belonged.
She returned his intense stare, seeing a vulnerability there that she had never thought to even look for in the past. Her breath stopped short in her chest when the door in her head decided to creak slowly open; loudly, and with the dust of a room barely used clouding the forefront of her thoughts. The steady sound of the insects had suddenly quieted, and for just a moment the heaviness in the air seemed to lift. Her fingertips were just barely brushing the slightly distorted skin of his face, and her lips were gently pressed against his own before she could take a moment to ponder the consequences of her own hands, their scars and their stories.
When she pulled away his eyes were staring unblinkingly into her own, and when she opened her mouth to apologize the chirp of a cricket came out instead and she would have started laughing if it wasn't so mind-numbingly horrifying; if her palms hadn't started to sweat or her heart had decided to drop so nauseatingly quickly into the burning acid of her stomach. Get back, she thought, slam that door shut and lock it. Never be brave again.
The sudden wail of Thomas' cries snapped her out of her self-indulgent stupor and she would have started stuttering if Chibs (Filip, because that was his name, wasn't it?) hadn't stood up and offered her his hand.
"Best tend to the boy, eh?"
If she didn't know any better she would have said that his smile wasn't at all indicative of the kiss they had shared only moments earlier, and before the cricket could steal her words yet again, she rushed out, "Yes! Thank you." She returned his smile but hers was full of confusion and anxiousness and this odd tugging on her heartstrings.
"Thanks for stopping by."
"Not at all," with a reassuring smile, "anything for Jax's Old Lady."
It wasn't meant to be biting or malicious but she couldn't help the wince that obnoxiously mortified one half of her face. He finally managed to look as uncomfortable as she had felt at the sudden silence yawning between them. Clearing his throat he turned to go, but before she could turn towards the house he gently grasped her hand and just barely grazed his thumb over her own scar.
"You've still got the loveliest hands I've ever seen."
He had said it softly, without a second glance, and her heart had ceased its relaxed beating and had instead started to pound so hard she thought it might jump up and out through the space between her lips. He nodded decisively to himself, walking slowly, deliberately, down the steps towards his bike.
—
As she held Thomas to her chest moments later, with the sounds of the bugs and the tires resuming their performance together in the hazy distance of the city, should couldn't help but feel the itchy fibers of her sweater, once again lightly tickling the raised skin of her hand; about the strange sensation of his skin against hers, and how easy it had been to keep from flinching.