Another Bag of Bricks

by JayoftheSea

Being the princess isn't nearly as easy as people seem to think, but we all gotta make do with the hand we're dealt, right?

Anabelle knows she'll catch a ton of shit from her mother later for this, but simply can't bring herself to care right this moment. Similarly, she doesn't care that mud is soaking into her good black jeans from sitting on the ground, staring at the headstone in front of her, leaning against the one for the plot behind her, relieved that they hadn't been able to get a plot for her father in the same section as that of her brother.

Thomas's date of death is seared into Anabelle's retinas, but she doesn't look away once, even as she listens to the distant sounds of the massive group of bikers a few hundred yards away, mourning her father. The turnout is record-breaking, even with Sons numbers down from the Mayan war that has been raging the past couple years. She vaguely thinks that it makes sense. JT had been the president of the first charter, after all. Each charter had left only the bare minimum of members at home to hold down the clubhouses, every other member turning out to pay their respects.

Eventually, she hears the sound of footsteps approaching her. The person is wearing boots, not moving in a hurry. The stride is long, but casual, and she immediately registers the smell of the nice cologne she got Opie for Christmas a couple months ago as he crouches down next to her, probably less uncaring about getting his own jeans soaked by sitting. He doesn't say anything immediately, and Anabelle appreciates it. He was one of the few people she knew that was alright with just being in her company without having to fill the space with chatter. Or, in her mother's case, constant criticism and derision.

After a few minutes, she is the one to break the silence. "How'd you sneak away?" She hasn't heard the massive roar of over a hundred bikes starting near-simultaneously to lead the procession back to the clubhouse for the massive party that is sure to follow after the funeral is over, so she knows that various men are still taking turns getting up and talking about JT over by his grave before he gets lowered into the ground.

"Not hard when everyone's paying attention to the services. Easy to drift to the back of the crowd and wander off." Opie's voice cracks slightly only once, in the middle of his statement. He just turned 14, and she'll be joining him at that age in a couple months.

People forget that he's actually more than a year younger than her other brother, Jackson. Ope has always been tall for his age, and had a relatively deep voice, even when they were little. Added to the fact that he and Jax spend so much time together, and people assume they are the same age.

Anabelle just keeps staring blankly at Tommy's date of death, which matches the month and day of her birthday. She has long since gotten over being mad at him for dying, and even for doing it on the one day of the year that was supposed to be hers. No, now, almost eight years later, she has been reduced to simply disdaining the day itself, because her whole family had died that day, not just him.

There is a sudden roar that tears through the cemetery, and the extremely large number of bikes slowly pull out, riding two abreast through the narrow roads, equally slowly followed by cars full of Old Ladies, kids, and a good portion of the citizens of Charming.

"You're not coming back to the clubhouse for the wake, are you?" Opie asks, half-turned to watch the long procession go.

Anabelle shrugs. "No reason to. It's not like Gemma or Jackson want me there. They still wish I had died instead of Tommy."

Opie is quick to try and argue. "They don't - "

"Yes they do." She cuts him off. "Jackson told me so this morning, and it's not like today is the first time. He's never kept quiet about it."

He doesn't try and dispute it again. Personally, Opie thinks Jackson doesn't *really* wish that, but he can't argue that Jax has *said* it enough times that whatever he really feels about Tommy's death doesn't matter anymore. With a sigh, the boy gives up on crouching and moves to sit next to the girl he's known his whole life. She scoots over so he can lean against the headstone too, leaning into his side as he settles and puts an arm around her shoulders. It's a comfortable position for them; despite him and Jax being as close as they are these days, that hadn't always been the case. When Thomas had still been alive, he and Jax had been inseparable. Both more than a year younger, and only months apart in age, Anabelle and Opie had been equally as close. They are still close, but Jax now monopolizes a lot of Opie's time.

"Why aren't you going?" She asks him.

Opie's arm tightens around her shoulder, and he lays his cheek on the top of her head. "There's plenty of people there to support them. My best friend needs me more." Before she can try and shoo him away, he continues. "Besides, someone's gotta make sure you go inside eventually. You can't stay here forever."

Anabelle feels a strange weight with his last statement. It had the feeling of being important, but she isn't sure how.

It's that night before she has the thought.

She and Ope had walked the 3 miles from the cemetery to the small, two-bedroom house where he and PIney live. He had subsequently heated up several slices of leftover pizza for the both of them for dinner, before handing her one of his tee shirts and shoving her into the bathroom to shower. He'd gone after her, and they are now cuddled up together in his bed like they are still five years old.

You can't stay here forever.

When he'd said it, he meant the cemetery, out in the cold, but, now, laying half on top of him, listening to his familiar, soft snores, she realizes that the weight she'd felt was a Bigger Truth.

She can't stay in Charming forever.

Part of her has always known this to be a fact, but she'd never really thought about it. Now, though, she begins putting serious consideration into what she needs to do.

The next morning, Opie is greeted with a massive, homemade breakfast. Anabelle had been up all night trying to scrape together a plan. She doesn't tell him, but he knows that something has changed. He doesn't push. She'll tell him when she's ready for him to know, and not a second sooner.

It's a year and a half later, and Opie is sitting in the Teller-Morrow living room, waiting for Anabelle so they can go to a movie. Jax is out on a date with Tara, and Anabelle has a rare Saturday evening off from working at the diner down on main street where she is a waitress, so he had jumped at the chance to hang out with her.

"NO! Go change into something presentable!" Gemma shouts from the end of the hall that lets out between the living and dining rooms.

"This is perfectly presentable!" Anabelle shouts back at her mother. He shifts slightly to see around Gemma and (silently, because he likes his balls) agrees with Anabelle. Jeans, a slightly loose Metallica tee, zip-up hoodie, her black, canvas messenger bag, and Converse seem fine for hitting up a movie and getting a burger after.

Gemma, obviously, has other ideas. "How many times do I have to tell you before it sinks in?! You represent this family, and, by extension, the club. You need to look the part!"

From Jax's bitching, this is an argument that happens at least once a day since Gemma had married Clay two months after JT's funeral, usually taking place in the morning while he's trying to sleep in until the last second before getting up for school. Jax mostly seems to be pissed about the length, frequency, time of day, and volume of the arguments, rather than the content, which is actually kind of odd. Normally, he'd automatically side with Gemma on any issue against his sister. Opie made a mental note to try and talk to his older friend about it. Maybe he is finally growing up a little and starting to let go of his bitterness about Tommy.

Opie hasn't heard Anabelle's thoughts on it, mostly due to her somehow finagling two part-time jobs AND a paper route around going to school, but he's pretty sure he knows what she'll say.

"I'm going to a MOVIE, Gemma, not a red carpet! With OPIE! We used to run through the sprinkler naked together, it's not like he's going to see me in a tee shirt and suddenly decide SAMCRO is horrible! And the only people that might take notice of me are people I go to school with, who see me like this EVERY. DAY."

Gemma lets out a scoff. "Don't remind me, or I might burn all those raggedy bum clothes while you're out tonight."

He can almost hear Anabelle's eyes rolling. "I'm going, mother. Like this. I'll be back in time for curfew." He thinks it's ridiculous that she even has a curfew. Jax has never had one, and it's not like anyone is usually here to enforce it, anyway. Particularly on Saturdays.

Before Gemma can object further, Anabelle pushes past her, moving quickly to avoid Gemma grabbing her by the hair to stop her.

Opie silently walks behind her to the front door, his long legs keeping pace easily with her slight jog. They don't speak until they're both in the cab of his beat-up pickup and pulling away.

"Do you mind if we ditch the movie and just hang out?" She asks, apologetically. "I know you've been wanting to see this, but I don't think I can concentrate."

"Of course, hon. I can go see it next weekend." Ope reassures his friend, shooting a smile at her before turning back to the road. "Pops is actually at home tonight, for some reason, so we'll have to go somewhere else for peace."

"How 'bout the clearing on the other side of the ridge? The little one, by the creek?" Opie nods his agreement and makes a turn to head the direction they need. "Anyway, you can ask Donna to go with you next weekend." Anabelle's tone switches to teasing.

At this, he shifts slightly, trying to fight down a blush. "I still think you're wrong." Anabelle had been teasing him through Algebra for weeks about a pretty girl in their class having a crush on him. She'd known without him saying that he thinks the girl, Donna, is cute, and that he is seriously considering asking her out.

Sometimes, he hates having a friend that knows him well enough to practically read his mind.

Of course, he can read her nearly as well, which comes in handy sometimes. "You need to slow down." he says after several minutes. When she doesn't respond, he keeps going. "You're exhausted. It's going to start showing in your grades soon if something doesn't let up. And we both know that that thing isn't gonna be Gemma."

His friend lets out a massive sigh, watching the trees go by as they drive up the winding road to the ridge overlooking town on one side and the Wahewa reservation on the other. "I can't."

He doesn't quite recognize the tone she says that in, and glances at her several times trying to figure it out. She's better at keeping secrets from him than he is her, so he has to think on it to work out what she means. She has cited money and time out of the house and garage, away from Gemma, as reasons that she has three jobs. Having now witnessed what the arguments are getting like, he can understand that part, but he doesn't think that would be a reason she CAN'T cut back, if only because she could simply not tell her mother and find somewhere else to spend time.

So that leaves money. She barely spends any. He knows that because, as soon as she'd gotten her first job, Gemma had begun refusing to buy Anabelle clothes that Gemma hadn't approved, so he periodically got talked into giving the girl a ride to Lodi or Stockton to shop in thrift stores or drive through the suburbs to hit up some garage sales. He doesn't mind, especially the garage sales, because he'd managed to find a lot of cool Harley memorabilia, and tools to fill out his toolbox, and, once, a motorcycle frame that he is now slowly turning into what will become his first bike. At least, once he saves up enough for the engine he wants to put in it.

It is thinking about that that makes it fall into place. Kind of. She's saving for something.

The next puzzle is WHAT. If it was just a car or something, she'd already have enough and have bought it. She has her learner's permit already, even if that had only happened because Otto had reached out from prison and asked Piney to take her to the DMV to get it. Since she is still riding around town on Jax's old 3-speed pedal bike and bumming rides off him, he doesn't think that's it. He knows she has no intention of going to college, either. She is smart, and enjoys learning, but hates school - not being able to choose what to learn, or at what pace, or in what way. Anyway, she wants to be a tattoo artist, which requires apprenticeship, not secondary education. He's pretty sure that she would only have to pay for her equipment and supplies and shit for that, trading shop labor for instruction in the art.

The only other thing he can think of is saving to move out.

By the time he makes this conclusion, he's parking on the edge of the clearing that is their destination. After they are both out, he flips the back of the truck's bench seat forward and grabs the blanket he keeps back there, along with a couple bottles of water, and one of Jack that he swiped from the clubhouse this morning in anticipation of them hanging out. He catches Anabelle up quickly, tossing the blanket to her to spread out in the semi-shaded spot under the handful of trees that grow on the edge of the creek. On the other side of the creek, and down the hill about 200 yards through scrub and trees, there is a much larger clearing that is frequently used for high school parties in the summer, but this spot isn't as well known, and not many people come up here in the fall or winter.

"So, do you have a particular number you are trying to hit?" Opie asks once they're both sitting cross-legged on the blanket, bottles between them.

Busy leafing through the sketchbook she has pulled from her bag to find an empty page, it takes Anabelle a minute to realize what he's talking about. "Not exactly…." she trails off as she finally gets to a blank sheet, and pulls a pencil case from her bag. There's another of those big sighs and she searches through the pouch to find the pencil she's looking for. "There's some specific things I need to do and buy, then, above that, I just need to save as much as possible to keep me until I can start earning by tattooing."

.

He watches as she adjusts the book on her knee and looks up to study him for a moment before bending over to start drawing. He's accustomed to this, having been her subject matter for years. "Anything I can help with?" He watches her start chewing on the inside of her cheek, and knows that the answer is yes, but she doesn't want to ask, probably thinking that it would somehow be a burden. "Belly. Just tell me. You know I will do anything I can."

It's playing a little dirty with that one. He only calls her by her childhood nickname when absolutely necessary, for a couple reasons. Chiefly, it makes her think about when things with her family were still good, which makes her sad, and he hates seeing her sad. Also, though the nickname came from her actual name, it's also a body part that he has noticed girls can be pretty sensitive about, and she is insecure enough without him publically and frequently calling her it. So, it is reserved for in private, during either very important or very silly conversations.

Opie's beginning to hate these sighs, but this one, at least, is clearly resigned, which means he's getting his way. "There's a wrecked '77 Bonneville at the junkyard in Stockton. The frame and engine are still solid, and I think I can salvage a lot of the other parts…. But it's going to take time for me to rebuild. And space. And possibly my giant of a best friend and his pickup to move it."

There's no hesitation in his answer. "Dumbass. You know you can do it all at our place. There's not a ton of room in the shed, but we can make it work. Pop never goes out there, all his shit's in the garage." The friends make eye contact and share a smile, but hers falls quickly as she turns back down to her sketch. "What else?" he insists.

"You can't tell Jax. Or any of the guys."

"Obviously."

"Not just about the bike - they wouldn't be happy about that, but they'd get over it. Eventually. I hope." A pause to erase something and re-shade it. "I'm leaving."

The tall boy's brain goes blank. "Huh?"

"Graduation Day. After the ceremony, before the party. I'm getting on that bike, and leaving Charming."

Anabelle is quiet while he absorbs that. He finally stutters out a "But - what about - how will….?"

"It's still three years away, Ope. There's plenty of time to prepare. I'll get the bike fixed up, learn everything I don't already know to survive out in the world."

It's Opie's turn to sigh. "Where?"

He watches her shrug one shoulder. "Dunno. I'm thinking I'll just ride for awhile, on my savings. See the country, get my head straight on the road. Find somewhere I like, talk my way into an apprenticeship."

She pauses in her drawing to reach forward and grab the whiskey, take a drink, and pass it over to him. They're silent for a long time - long enough for her to finish drawing him, then turn the page before rotating and beginning to draw his truck against the trees that block the view of the clearing from the road. The bottle of booze goes back and forth between them a couple more times, but neither of them is really drinking in earnest, just taking sips mostly for the hell of it, and they both stop once they've had the equivalent of a couple shots each.

The bottles of water are gone, the whiskey is out of their systems, and the sun is beginning to set before Opie breaks their silence. "I don't like it, but I get it." And he really does. He knows he'll be happy with joining the club, settling down with a wife someday, having a couple of kids, probably never living outside of Charming, unless something horrible happens that makes him leave. Anabelle's situation is very different. She and her remaining blood family barely tolerate each other, and frequently not even that; she has loads of bad memories here; she'll never be allowed to join the club, and the guys would all give her a VERY hard time even just for riding. And not the teasing uncles kind of hard time, either. There's a disturbingly real possibility that she could be banned from the clubhouse, and many of the guys would severely ridicule and/or completely alienate her. Growing up in the club life isn't easy for any kid, but boys have it SO much easier than girls. Their world is a harsh one, and there's no such thing as equal-opportunity.

A tomboy at heart, Anabelle's always loved bikes, getting greasy, boxing, shooting guns, and going for rides just as much as all of the boys, but she has been forced to love those things in secret simply because she doesn't have a dick. Opie is pretty sure that he and Otto are the only people that have any idea about most of it. Instead, she has been forced into the role of Old Lady In Training by Gemma. Cooking, cleaning, first aid, party planning, cash management, PR, scheduling, organization. Not that Anabelle hates those things - many of them will come in useful throughout her life - but the lack of choice she has in the matter grates on her.

All she wants is the freedom to be herself and make her way through life earning things on her own merits, and you would think that outlaw bikers would at least understand that, if not respect it. Unfortunately, life in this 1% is even less fair in many ways than that in normal society.

As it gets dark out, Opie and Anabelle shake out and fold up the blanket, collect their garbage, and move back to the truck. They stop to split a pizza on the way back, quietly discussing the various things she will need to have and learn by graduation. Opie promises to get as many stories from the members as he can about long hauls, and grill any Nomads that roll through. In the driveway, they make plans to go to Stockton after school on Thursday - her next day off - to pick up the Bonneville from the junkyard and get it stowed and set up in the shed next to Ope's in-progress bike.

Anabelle walks through the front door three minutes before curfew and is completely unsurprised to find the house empty. Grabbing a soda from the fridge and heading into her room, she wonders why she even bothers adhering to the damn thing.

It's spring break of their junior year, and Anabelle has managed to negotiate trading shifts and routes with her coworkers to get three whole days off. In a row. It's the longest break she's had since she had started working at age 14.

There's even plans for those three days. There's a couple guys down from Tacoma for the week, visiting, and one of them is a tattooist. Opie, working in the garage after school and on weekends, had been listening avidly to all the guys as they talked about what they want to get, and tipped her off that there was going to be one particular day that the guy, Happy, would probably be tattooing for a good chunk of the day. Anabelle has every intention of sitting nearby and watching this guy's every move that day. Rumor has it that he isn't much of a talker, so she wants to keep her questions as minimal and intelligent as possible, so he won't get annoyed and kick her out.

That day is a Sunday, and Anabelle lets herself sleep in until 6:30 - a luxury compared to the usual 4:30 wake-up time to go on here paper route -, before getting dressed in something Gemma would actually approve of and going to the grocery store as soon as it opens at 7. Half an hour later, she's parking Opie's truck, borrowed for the morning, in front of the garage, and hoofing bags of groceries across the lot, into the clubhouse, and over/around various people wearing not much clothing that are passed out around the main bar area to the kitchen. Between Gemma and Bobby, the kitchen stays the cleanest room in the place except maybe the Chapel, and Anabelle's glad she doesn't have to do more than wash a couple dishes to get started.

By 9, people are up and moving around; the women, except the most senior croweaters and the Old Ladies, vacating the premises, while the guys pull up their jeans and collect any other shed clothing before stumbling into the kitchen, where Anabelle makes sure the coffee pot is always fresh, to grab a cup and comment that breakfast is smelling good, then shuffling back to their rooms to wake up and get cleaned up for the day.

It does, indeed, smell good in the kitchen. From-scratch cinnamon rolls were the first thing to come out of the oven, to cool enough to be iced. After that came pecan rolls, then sheet pans of sausages and bacon had gone in. Sizzling away on the griddle is a mix of onions and peppers, which will be mixed into the hash browns and thrown back on the griddle once they are sweated out.

During a break while everything cooks and before she can start the eggs, Anabelle pulls out the little bag of makeup she brought and throws on some shadow, liner, and mascara, before taking her hair out of the simple ponytail it is in and quickly maneuvering it into two French braids. It isn't much, but it's enough to keep Gemma off her ass for the day. They still butt heads regularly, but a certain amount of peace has been negotiated. Anabelle has agreed to put some effort into her appearance most days, and Gemma grudgingly agreed to lay off as long as her daughter doesn't look like a slob.

Anabelle is done with this just in time, as Gemma walks into the kitchen just as she has put her cosmetics away and is washing her hands and a few dishes before going back to tending the griddle.

"What's all this?" Gemma questions skeptically, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow as she pours herself a cup of coffee and automatically starts making a fresh pot to begin filling the carafes they keep for exactly these days.

Going back to the griddle beginning to flip sections of the hash browns, Anabelle responds. "This is my first Sunday off in like three years, am I not allowed to spend it with my family?" By 'family', she means the club, not her mother and brother, but Gemma doesn't need to know that.

A couple of the croweaters that have been around for years, Susie and Carol, come in at that point, greeting the other women and asking what they can do to help. They've cleaned themselves up from the night before, and even changed into clothing that covers them decently.

Gemma takes charge immediately, pointing Susie towards the big black trash bags and telling her to start collecting bottles from the night previous, and having Carol start wiping down tables so they can be eaten upon.

As the hash browns keep cooking, Anabelle begins cracking eggs into two big frying pans that are sitting on stove burners for that precise purpose, and Gemma evaluates the kitchen quickly before yanking the fridge open and grabbing the bowl of cream cheese frosting that is in there and moving off to the side where the cinnamon rolls are waiting.

At 10 o'clock, precisely, the ladies start coming out of the kitchen to set platters of food on the bar, where paper plates and plastic cutlery have already been set out, as well as carafes of hot coffee, and jugs of milk and OJ, which are joined by bottles of whiskey, Irish cream, and vodka for anyone who needs some hair of the dog, or just wants Irish coffee or a screwdriver with breakfast. Inside 15 minutes everyone has food and is settled around at tables, or on couches, working on their first plate.

Anabelle accepts several hugs, compliments, and kisses on the head or cheek as she moves through the throng of people, taking her plate and glass of juice outside to the empty picnic tables, wanting fresh air after spending hours in the hot kitchen. She's surprised to be joined by a few of the guys, and she smiles widely at them as they settle at the table around her. She recognizes Donut, the SAMTAC Secretary, and Quinn, the Nomad VP. There's two other guys from Tacoma that she doesn't recognize, but one of them - a blond-haired, blue-eyed playboy type that looks to be in his mid-late 20s - introduces himself enthusiastically.

"Hey, dollface! Thanks for breakfast! It's great! I'm Kozik. Just Kozik. I didn't see you around last time I was here. Are you new? I really like it here. Not that Tacoma's not great. But eating breakfast outside? In April? Totally rad. Other than club stuff, is there anything cool to do around here? I ha-"

"Let the girl answer, Herman." Donut interrupts the other man's chatter. "And eat your damn breakfast. She didn't spend all mornin' making it just for you to let it go cold 'cuz you can't shut your trap."

Kozik immediately starts stuffing his face in a way that tells her that 1) he's used to this and 2) he's ex-military. About half the guys in the club, nationally, are vets, and you can always tell which ones they are by how they eat. Soldiers scarf their food in a particular fashion, eating as fast as possible without choking, but also very neatly. As JT and Piney once explained to her, it comes from only having a very specific amount of time to get through a long line in the mess hall, and having to keep their uniforms pristine or suffer the consequences.

Quinn picks up the conversation at that point. "Koz, Happy, this is Anabelle Teller - JT and Gemma's youngest. So, obviously, no, she's not new. She just wasn't around last time you were here." Making eye contact with her and taking a swig of his coffee, he asks "How you been, sweetheart? It's been a minute."

They catch up around eating, her telling them about her jobs and school, and he shares a couple road stories, then Donut updates her on his family, telling her his Old Lady, Tiffany, is pregnant again. "Jesus, Donut, what number is this, 4?" is her response to that.

The guys all chuckle, and he answers her, "Actually, it's twins, so 4 and 5."

Anabelle waves her fork in the direction of the two men she doesn't know as well. "What about you two? Old Ladies, kids, bratty siblings, embarrassing stories?"

Kozik pipes in "Na, no Old Lady or kids. Got a brother down in Phoenix, and my folks just moved to Orlando."

The girl looks to the other man, properly taking him in for the first time, despite the fact that he's been sitting right next to her. He's the guy she's expecting to be spending most of the day staring at, and she can't say she's upset about it. He's hot, in the slightly worn, road-warrior way that bikers tend to be. He looks to be a few years younger than Kozik, and his head and face are both freshly shaven, and his eyes are dark brown and intense. He's muscled, but not in a bulky way, and she has the passing thought that those lips are practically made for girls to fantasize about. His voice sounds like rust as he answers her question, breaking her out of her examination. "Just my ma and her sister down in Bakersfield."

"You're the tattooist, right?" she gets a single nod and a raised eyebrow in response. "I know a few of the guys are getting work done today. Would you mind if I watch? I want to pick up an apprenticeship after I graduate, so anything I can learn before then…" she trails off as his gaze sharpens on her.

After a moment of evaluation, he rumbles a low "Show me."

Before Anabelle complies, she turns to the others and says "If any of you rat me out to my mother, expect revenge." They look confused until she pulls her right leg up onto the bench and unties her sneaker, pulling it and her sock off, and pushing her pant leg up. Starting on her foot and winding up the outside of her calf is a delicate looking fairy, lounging among some flowers and vines that trail around her ankle and curl over her foot.

Examining the work, he asks, "Homemade rig?" and she nods her confirmation.

She'd looked up how to make one online, at the library, and tried it out by inking herself. There's spots that the lines are raised where she went too deep, and the shading is very basic, as she doesn't have access to proper needles, but she doesn't think she did too bad overall.

Happy confirms her thoughts. "Not horrible. Got your sketchbook?"

"Yeah."

"I'm settin' up in the weight room. Bring it."

Anabelle holds herself back from cheering, having the feeling it would lose her whatever regard she'd just gained, and puts her sock and shoe back on before finishing off the last few bites of her breakfast and collecting everyone's now-empty plates and dumping them in a nearby oil drum that serves as a trash receptacle as the small group disperses.

Happy sets his empty coffee mug in the dishbin that has been set on the bar and moves behind it to grab a few bottles of water, and hunts around for a fresh roll of paper towels. Behind him is the door to the kitchen and he hears the girl, Anabelle, telling Gemma that he's going to let her watch him work today. Gemma lets out a noise that makes him think she isn't thrilled with this, but doesn't say anything to argue.

As he's standing up from hunting around the cabinets, Anabelle emerges from the kitchen carrying her bag, and, seeing him, asks, "Need anything?"

"Paper towels."

A hum of understanding, and she motions with her her head to follow and leads him down the hall. She ducks into a door he had never paid much attention to before, which he sees opens into a small room - more like a large closet, really - that houses a washer and dryer, as well as shelves that hold sheets, towels, and cleaning supplies. "How many rolls?"

"Two."

The weight room is at the end of the hall, and one corner is given over to storage. He sets to work, grabbing a couple folding chairs from the corner, and arranging the one adjustable weight bench in front of them before he starts unloading the backpack of gear he'd left in there earlier. Rather than a chair, the girl grabs another weight bench and settles it against the wall off to the side where she'll be out of the way, but still be able to see, and he's glad she's smart enough to not be all up in his shit while he's trying to work.

It's quiet while she takes out two sketchbooks from her bag and a pouch of pencils, then gets comfortable and observes him as he unpacks, checks over, and meticulously arranges his equipment and supplies, including a sketchbook of his own. Once he's ready, he says "Tig's up first." and she immediately hops up to go grab him without being told to.

The hours pass steadily, and he finds that the girl actually makes for a damn good assistant. She talks to those who feel like chatting, and is quiet for those that don't. Any time he's starting to run low on something, she has a refill sitting on the bench next to her, ready to hand him when he needs it. She doesn't pepper him with questions, and the few she asks are smart. She'd even reworked one of the rough designs he had based on what his brothers had told him they wanted to make it fit better in the space it was going in.

At 2:30, he is cleaning up after finishing up with Bobby's new Old Lady, Precious, and his stomach growls. Happy watches out of the corner of his eye as Anabelle gets up from her post on the bench and calmly walks out and down the hall. He knows without asking that he'll have lunch in front of him shortly. He reaches over to her space, grabbing the two sketchbooks she'd left there, having periodically been drawing in them, and flips the top one open. The first page is not an artistic drawing, but a deconstructed schematic of what he thinks is a camshaft. Raising a brow, he flips on in the book, quickly getting to the more artistic stuff. She's good at portraiture, and seems to have a good eye for proportions.

Halfway through the second book, something catches his eye. So far, there had been a wide variety of stuff, of course including various weapons and skulls and such, but this was the first blatantly SOA themed thing. It's a Jolly Roger, but the grinning skull is detailed, correctly shaded and anatomical instead of kitschy or flash, and has the anarchy A carved into the forehead. Instead of crossed bones or swords underneath, it's one of the club M16 scythes crossed over an old-fashioned skeleton key, scaled up to the appropriate size. It's black and white except for the red of the blood covering the edge of the scythe and dripping off the end, and down the handle, and Happy makes a snap decision based entirely on his gut, carefully tearing that page out and tucking it into the back of his own sketchbook.

A few minutes later, Anabelle walks back into the room with two plates, forks sticking out of something, and two cans of Coke. Passing one of each off to him, she sits down and they both dig into the roast beef sandwiches, coleslaw, and chips she has brought.

Happy takes this time to observe her. She knows all the guys that have been here awhile well, but, from the conversations she's had with people so far, she hadn't been around the clubhouse much the last few years, and she isn't as close with newer people. Despite that, she is still perfectly comfortable there, seeming to be in her element, and he supposes that makes sense if she grew up in the club. There was every possibility that she has spent more time in this clubhouse than some members. No one could possibly mistake her for a croweater or sweetbutt if they tried.

He doesn't know exactly how old she is, but he'd guess near the end of high school from what she's said so far, so maybe 17 or 18. As far as appearance goes, he'd say she's pretty, in an average sort of way. He estimates she's around 5'6", neither tall nor short. Light brown hair falls down a bit past her shoulder blades; he's not sure what color her eyes are, but they are dark, and shaped like JT's in the handful of photos Hap has seen. Her cheekbones are high like Gemma's, her nose is proportionate, and her slightly-too-big lips are balanced out by a strong jawline. She doesn't have much in the way of tits, at least in comparison to what he's used to seeing around clubhouses, and her waist is tiny, which makes the wide flare of her hips look more pronounced.

As she makes a face at the single window in the room, she unbuttons the plaid top she has on, pulling it off to reveal a tank top underneath. She drops the discarded shirt on her bag, and he notices the muscle tone of her arms appreciatively. Girl's not afraid of work, which shouldn't really surprise him, since she had been telling the guys at breakfast about multiple jobs in addition to school.

Happy finds himself respecting her.

His musing is interrupted as Quinn walks into the room, saying, "Hey, brother. I know said I wanted a reaper, but I think I will save that for another time. Do you mind drawing up something else for me?"

"What and where?" Hap asks, taking the last few bites of his food before handing the plate back to Anabelle, which she stacks with her own and sets off to the side to take back to the kitchen the next time she gets up.

Quinn plops himself down on one of the empty chairs, replying, "Something for my mom, on my right shoulder. Maybe five or six inches? She likes lilies, and she's fucking obsessed with this koi pond she had put in awhile back."

Happy opens up his sketchbook. "Lettering?"

"Nah."

With a look at Anabelle, Happy says, "Draw something up. He can pick the one he likes better." and her face is stretched by a grin as she grabs up her supplies.

A few minutes later, they have both slowed down. Hap turns his book around to show a rough sketch of the edge of a pond, with a single lily bent down on its stalk over the water with a koi swimming underneath. As Quinn examines it, Anabelle finishes by pulling a couple colored pencils from her bag and very quickly shading in different spots, just to show what colors she's imagining. She flips it around and both the guys know which one Quinn is picking. It's a pond from above, dotted with lily pads, a couple of the bigger ones with water lilies on them, and the outlines of several koi swimming in line, swirling around them.

Quinn points to it and declares "Perfect."

In short order, Happy is preparing to start tattooing again after handing the girl a disposable razor and a marker and telling her to prep the area and draw the outline on Quinn, who has shed his kutte and shirt and is laying facedown on the bench in front of Happy.

They go on in this fashion for a few more hours, him having her take a more active role; prepping the person, wiping down the necessary places and equipment with the antibacterial liquid, even showing her how to change the needles, and hold the gun as he puts his hand over hers to guide her through some shading technique. Happy surprises himself by enjoying teaching her, and the guys get a kick out of their little princess "inking" them, though they seem to think she's just being a curious kid and he's indulging her or something.

After a break around 8 for them to go out and grab a bowl of chili from the pot that had been left on the stove for people to grab as they got hungry, Anabelle asks how many more there are for the day, and he replies "One." before stripping off his kutte and shirt. Sitting on the bench, he pulls out the page he'd ripped from her sketchbook hours ago and hands it to her, before pulling out transfer paper and telling her to make a stencil, same size as she had already drawn.

Anabelle follows Happy's instructions with a slightly dumbstruck expression. Not only is he saying she is about to tattoo him, after having only done a single piece on herself and one day of instruction with him, he wants her to put something SHE had drawn on him. She had been fully expecting to just sit and watch all day, maybe picking up some of the very basics. She is also fully aware that, if this had been her first day learning in a shop, those expectations would've been accurate. For the first time in a long time, she is glad to be part of a world that is less than diligent about obeying most rules.

Happy watches her slowly get everything ready. He appreciates that she's going slow and making sure everything is correct rather than being cocky or trying to impress him by rushing. It means she respects both him and the process. Once everything is ready, he sees her look over all the equipment and supplies and almost visibly run through a mental checklist before she turns to him. "Where do you want it?"

Happy spins himself around on the bench, making sure to sit up straight and relax his shoulders so the stencil goes on straight. "Centered on my spine, between my shoulder blades." She diligently dry-shaves the area and spreads a thin layer of gel over it. He smirks, pleased, when he feels her using her hands to measure against his back and adjust the stencil a couple times to make sure the placement is correct before carefully pressing it down to transfer the outline to his skin.

Two minutes later, he's on his stomach, listening to her take a couple deep breaths, obviously nervous, excited, or both, before he feels her lean over him and his skin is gently pulled taut before she presses her foot down on the pedal and carefully begins etching the outline into his back.

She's about two-thirds of the way through the outline and had thankfully stopped for a moment to stretch her hand when Kozik appears in the doorway. Loudly.

"Hey, man! How much longer are y-" he cuts himself off as he registers that Hap is, in fact, GETTING tatted instead of inking others. The next thing he registers is that Hap is trusting a barely-trained teenager that they just met this morning to ink him.

Happy only barely trusts fully qualified professionals. What the hell had happened today?

"Did you need somethin', Koz?" the other man asks, not moving from his position on the bench as Anabelle leans back over him to keep working.

Koz watches her work for a minute, noticing that she's moving the needle carefully, but not extremely slowly, and steps forward to see what the piece is. "Not really, just wondering when you'll be done. That's a fucking sick piece, man. It's looking epic."

"Good." Koz isn't sure if it's good he doesn't need anything, or good that the ink he's getting isn't completely fucked. After a moment, he settles on 'probably both'.

Kozik leaves after watching her for a few more minutes, and Anabelle and Happy both ignore the sudden stream of people walking down the hall and pausing outside the door to the weight room to get a peek, disbelieving that the notoriously grumpy and untrusting man is doing this.

Happy doesn't blame them. HE'S having trouble believing he's doing this. But, he'd had a gut feeling about this girl, and his gut never steers him wrong.

Well, except that one time in Tiajuana. But he generally blames the tequila for that fiasco.

Anabelle lets out a sigh of relief as she pulls back from finishing the last of the hard lines. The hardest part is over with, and he had only made one comment, which was that she needed to go slightly deeper. She feels herself relax as she switches out the outlining needle for a shader and sets the gun aside, folding a paper towel and squirting it with the anti-bac liquid and gently wiping the area on his back down while he rolls his shoulders for a minute to stretch before she finishes.

It's a little after 10 when she declares the piece complete, giving it a final wipedown and spreading Vaseline over it before handing him one of the mirrors and holding the other behind his back for him to inspect the work.

After looking, adjusting his position slightly, and looking again, Happy says, "Good job, girl. You're gonna make a hell of an artist." which makes Anabelle smile and blush slightly. She's not embarrassed easily, but she can tell that Happy isn't someone that hands out compliments unless they are very well-earned. He motions for her to not bother as she picks up the plastic wrap, and they work together to get everything cleaned up, and she bags up all the garbage as he packs his stuff away.

The next morning, most of the guys take off on a run. The handful that are left behind go to work in the shop, and Anabelle is making the most of this opportunity. With practically no club members in town until Wednesday afternoon, she is free to take her baby out for a ride. She tells her mother that she's staying at Donna's that night and Gemma doesn't even question it, simply telling her to not get arrested.

Anabelle and Opie had snuck her and her bike out a few times before - she had to learn and get used to riding it after all - but this is her first solo trip. Her first stop is Stockton, because Otto's visit rotations are Monday and Thursday, and she hasn't seen her godfather in FAR too long.

After the one-hour visit, she makes her way to the coast, intending to just enjoy the ride down PCH to San Diego, getting a cheap motel room for the night, then getting up early and taking the long way home up the east side of the state, through Joshua Tree and Death Valley, before cutting back over to Charming by way of Yosemite.

There is a close call at a gas station, where a few guys from the San Bernardino charter are not only there fueling up at the same time, but also talk to her briefly, commenting on her bike. Thankfully, the don't recognize her, and aren't too pigheaded about a female riding, probably assuming she is a weekender, and she's suddenly glad that her drive to set herself up for when she leaves next year means that she is hardly at the clubhouse anymore.

Other than that, her ride goes off without a hitch, and she can't wait for the next year to be over already.

Anabelle's 18th birthday falls on a Saturday near the end of May. There is some noise around SAMCRO about throwing her a big, blowout birthday party, but Gemma shoots the idea down immediately. Some think she's being harsh, but Anabelle gets it. It's the anniversary of losing Thomas.

Instead of a big party, Opie makes sure she has Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off by personally speaking with her bosses, and surprises her well before the asscrack of dawn on Saturday by crawling in through her window, waking her up, and throwing clothes and her riding boots at her before telling her to get dressed. While she does that, he shoves the oversized SOA shirt and cotton sleep shorts that she takes off into his backpack, along with clean underwear and socks, before opening different drawers to pull out a seldom-used bikini, some cutoff shorts, and a couple tank tops, and stuffing it all in his bag as well. He then grabs some flip-flops from the pile of shoes behind her door, then opens said door and steps across the hall to the bathroom, grabbing her tooth and hair brushes, making sure there are a few hair ties on the handle. These things are put into her messenger bag, which he loops over her head.

Still half-asleep, Anabelle idly muses that many teenage girls might be weirded out by their very large, male friend sneaking in through their window at 3:30 in the morning. Then she realizes that it's probably even more weird that they have no problem changing in front of each other, or with him going into her underwear drawer and packing for what is looking like some kind of weekend away.

Half their school is convinced they are together, despite the fact that Opie has been with Donna for two and a half years, and Anabelle suddenly gets why they think that. Oh well. Donna knows the deal and is cool with it, and no one else really matters.

Her best friend's final act before shoving her out the window before him is to tear an empty page from the binder on her desk and use a Sharpie to scribble the words "OPIE KIDNAPPED ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY - HOME MONDAY EVENING" on it, then grab a tack from her cork board and pin the note to her door, which he closes, so that Gemma will see it when she gets up.

His truck is parked a block away, and, once they are in it and moving, he reaches over and pulls the hair brush from the top of her bag and tells her to braid her hair for riding.

At the WInston house, he parks the truck on the street, and she slides out, noticing that only his bike is in the driveway, but both their helmets are hanging from the handlebars. "Are we not taking Bonnie?"

Yes, she is unoriginal enough to name her Bonneville 'Bonnie'.

"We're heading for another clubhouse." Opie tells her, making sure he has everything out of the truck before pulling her over to the bike, taking her messenger bag to put in the saddle bag, then handing her the backpack to put on.

It doesn't take her long to figure out where they're going. Once they stay on the 5 through Sacramento, Reno is out, leaving only Rogue River and Tacoma on their current trajectory that are also close enough for a weekend trip. Rogue River is only about six hours from Charming, so they wouldn't have needed to leave at 4 in the damn morning to get there at a decent time.

Tacoma, on the other hand, is about 13 hours away from home, which means they'll get there around dinnertime. Or, knowing the club, cookout and party time. Opie will have called ahead to make arrangements - he's not even officially a prospect for 6 more weeks, but, as a second-generation Son, many view the the prospecting period as a formality for him and Jax. Since Lee, the Tacoma president, will have approved them coming up and probably staying at the clubhouse, and he knows the reason for the trip, there is bound to be a party.

Not that Sons really NEED a reason to party, but, if they have one, they'll take it. Enthusiastically.

At the gas station in Weed, just before the Oregon border, they both get tie-dye keychains that say 'I LOVE WEED' in psychedelic, '60's style bubble letters. Anabelle gets a matching patch to sew on to her leather jacket.

Opie pulls off the freeway in Rogue River, and she thinks, for a minute, that she had miscalculated. Then, once they pull into the lot of the clubhouse, she realizes that further arrangements must have been made. Kozik, Happy, and Monk - one of the older Tacoma guys that she remembers staying in Charming for awhile after her dad died - are waiting for them in the lot, along with several of the Rogue River members and Old Ladies.

After a round of hugs and birthday wishes, they are herded inside for breakfast by Andi, the old lady of the RR charter pres, Bowie. Inside the clubhouse, Anabelle is gently pushed into a seat at a table and a croweater drops a plate loaded with food in front of her and asks what she'd like to drink. Anabelle asks for water, and looks around with interest. She's never been to another charter before, and it somehow feels both foreign and familiar. The setup is very similar to Charming, just rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, and she feels disoriented looking at photos on the walls that are so like the ones at home, but with different faces looking out at her.

Opie nudges her, which causes her to snap back to reality, to find Happy and Bowie looking at her. "Sorry, what?"

"Bowie's asking after Clay and Gemma." Ope repeats the question for her.

"Oh, they're both fine. Things are pretty quiet right now, so I think they were talking about taking a trip to check in on Belfast this summer if it stays that way." she tells them somewhat distractedly.

Bowie has an odd look on his face as he replies "That sounds like fun. Gemma probably hasn't had a vacation in years."

"Nearly 13…" Anabelle trails off slightly. She thinks about the last vacation anyone in her family had been on, the summer after she turned 5. Gemma and JT had taken their three children to Lake Tahoe for two weeks of exhausting themselves in the sun and the lake. Opie's hand rubs her lower back in comfort.

Happy and Bowie, across from them, now have blatant looks of worry. "You alright, honey?" Bowie inquires. "You seem out of it this mornin'."

She tries to put a happier face on, and thinks she only partially succeeds. "Yeah, I'm alright. I just… This day sucks every year anyway, then SOMEONE surprised me with a 3:30am wakeup call, and then being in another clubhouse for the first time is kind of weird…"

"This is your first time in another clubhouse?" Andi questions from a bit further up the table, sounding surprised.

Opie explains on her behalf. "Mother charter. It's usually other clubs coming to visit us, and Gemma takes her hostessing duties VERY seriously. Even me and Jax have only visited other clubhouses a couple times on charity runs and stuff."

This, thankfully, derails the conversation, everyone's attention switching to asking them about growing up in the club, and Charming in particular. Only Happy seems to remember that there was something wrong, and Anabelle tries to act normal with him watching her.

By 10 that night, Anabelle is ready to drop. She'd worked the night before, only getting a little over four hours of sleep before Opie dragged her out her window. Then, riding all day, even if it is bitch, isn't a walk in the park, and getting either introduced or re-introduced to two full charters, their Old Ladies, and their clubhouses on top of it? She's wrecked. But she also knows for a fact that, if she were to try and go to bed, neither Opie nor Kozik would let her make it as far as the stairs up to the dorms.

Moving through the party to the bar, she sees that the current Tacoma prospect has been sent to do something that is probably disgusting and/or humiliating. Instead of waiting, she goes around the bar and grabs a pint glass, filling it up a third of the way with vodka, and the rest of the way with orange juice, not even bothering with ice. Winding her way back through the drunken revellers, Anabelle makes her way outside and skirts around the crowd at the boxing ring, meandering around the corner of the building. The parking lot is on this side, and she remembers seeing some benches against the side of the building when they had come in.

Sinking down on the bench halfway down the building, the birthday girl chugs half her drink and sets it down beside her, then leans back against the side of the clubhouse and stares into the night sky as best she can. Tacoma is a bigger town than Charming, with a correspondingly larger amount of light pollution, which makes it harder to see the stars.

The faint beat of the music in the building, and the chatter and occasional cheers of the crowd make a background noise that makes her feel almost like she's at home. But… home in some other dimension. One where she can pretend that her oldest brother and her father are still alive. It's probably Thomas and Jackson climbing in the ring. They're both total hams, and always put on a show for the crowd. Opie's inside with Donna, playing doubles pool against Chrome and some sweetbutt. Gemma's in the corner by the dart board, holding court with the other old ladies plus Otto, who still hates leaving Luann's side if he can help it, even after 14 years together. Dad's in the office, tapping away on his old typewriter, determined to finish this one section before he makes an appearance at the party. He'll probably be out here soon, asking me to come for a ride with him. Neither of us is very into partying. We're the low-key ones, who are happiest with a bike and an open stretch of highway, or a good book.

Someone sits down beside Anabelle, pulling her from the daydream. Is it a daydream if you have it at night, though? Maybe she should call it a waking dream. Without looking, she knows it's Happy. She's surprised to realize that she knows his smell. This is only the third time they've met. He'd been in Charming again in early February, stopping in for a day and night on his way home from visiting his mom for her birthday. Beneath the universal Biker(™) scent of leather, oil, and open road, she can smell a hint of something woodsy, and a sharp metallic note.

She picks her drink back up, taking a few long draughts, emptying the glass.

"What's wrong, girl?" his rust-covered voice asks. She knows most wouldn't hear the inflection, but she can make out a tinge of worry.

He watches her move the empty glass from resting casually on her thigh to set it almost gingerly down on her other side. She turns her head toward him, and they lock eyes. Happy has to keep from flinching. That startles him, because, the shit he has been learning to do to people, and even enjoying it… he's not a man that flinches.

They just stare at each other silently for a moment, and he wonders to himself how he had missed this amount of pain that must have been swirling just under the surface in both of their previous meetings. Before he can figure out why it bothers him so much, she breaks their silence.

"How many of those have you had?" Anabelle asks, gesturing to the beer in his hand.

Happy's brow furrows without any input from his brain, and he holds the bottle up to a nearby light for a moment. "Two and a half?"

She gets up surprisingly smoothly, pivoting to stand in front of him and taking the beer bottle from his hand and setting it on the bench where she'd been a second before, then takes his hands in hers and pulls him until he stands. She's right in front of him still when he makes the motion, so they end up standing front-to-front, her still holding both his hands, now craning her neck back to look up and meet his eyes. "Take me for a ride."

Despite having always had a bitch seat on his bike, this is the first time he's actually had a passenger riding behind him. He muses that, as far as first passengers go, she's probably one of the best options he possibly could've had. From some stories older members have told about SAMCRO, and JT in particular, Happy knows that she's been on bikes nearly as long as she's been alive. One of the pictures in the Charming clubhouse by JT's restored bike is of JT, at a stop sign in the middle of town, with one of those baby wrap things around him, holding an infant Anabel to his chest. By all accounts, she'd been a complete daddy's girl, and riding was built into her DNA just as much as the second-generation boys.

All that is to say that it's easy having her on the back of his bike. Other than having to take some extra weight into account, and keep himself from getting distracted by the arms wrapped loosely around his waist, he may as well be riding alone. They are cruising along the forested foothills of the nearby Cascade mountains, not going particularly fast, both for safety (deer) and because there's no need. The point of this excursion is riding, not getting somewhere.

Though a destination isn't the point, Happy does, eventually, turn off the road onto a more narrow lane, which shortly opens up into an empty, packed-gravel parking lot, beyond which is what looks like a park on the shore of a small lake. Both of them dismounting and leaving their helmets on handlebars, they wander, unhurried, into the park, eventually sitting down against the trunk of a big tree near the middle, facing out towards the water.

It's awhile before either says anything.

"Down in Oregon, you said that this day is hard every year." Anabelle's only response is a gentle sound to indicate she's listening. "Your birthday?" Happy questions further, turning to look at her.

Her face softens, but he doesn't think it's in a good way. He can see her swallow hard a couple times, apparently trying to get under control.

"My oldest brother died on my 6th birthday." She must sense his confusion, because she explains further. "Jackson is technically the middle child. Ten months and two weeks younger than Thomas. Another year later, along came me. I was an accident. One Gemma still wishes had never happened." He doesn't know what to say to that. "My birthday that year was at the park. Us kids, the three of us and Opie, were running around playing tag. I didn't even really notice when Tommy wasn't with us anymore. Thought he'd just gone to the bathroom or to get something to drink from the adults. The next thing I remember is my godfather, Big Otto, telling me that Tommy wasn't coming home. That he's up with the angels now. The only angel I had ever seen was on top of the Christmas tree, so I thought that meant he was hiding up a tree in the woods and we had to go find him."

Happy is still watching her face as she stares toward the water. Eventually she starts talking again. "After the funeral, I basically started living with Otto and his Old Lady, Luann. Gemma had never been secretive about the fact that she didn't want me - says all little girls are evil - and Jackson kept trying to hit me, telling me that it should've been me. Dad…. he turned into a robot. Completely shut down, with all of us. I don't remember spending more than a couple nights a month with my family until Otto got arrested and sent to prison when I was 11. By then, dad may has well have patched over to SAMBEL for all the time he was spending in Ireland, Gemma was already fucking Clay, and Jax still hated me. I lasted about three weeks before I started sneaking out at night and walking halfway across town to Piney's house, where Opie was alone most of the time."

"Please tell me I didn't just take off with a future brother's Old Lady?" Happy is somewhat distressed. He'd seen how close the two were, but somehow he hadn't even considered they might be together.

Anabelle giggles, breaking the tension of the conversation. "No. Just best friends. His Old Lady is back in Charming. He plans on slapping a crow on her ass the same time as a wedding ring, but isn't sure when exactly that's going to be yet."

Now he's curious. "What about you?"

She giggles again, and Happy realizes that the sound, somehow, isn't as obnoxious as he usually finds it when women let it out. Maybe because she's genuinely amused instead of just trying to move up the food chain from sweetbutt to potential Old Lady?

"No, I don't have an Old Lady."

His eyes roll and his shoulder knocks against hers. "You know what I meant."

The amusement dulls. Through a sad sigh, Anabelle answers, "I'm the SAMCRO Princess."

When no other answer seems forthcoming, he asks, "What does that have to do with you having an Old Man?"

She turns to him, this time looking at his kutte instead of his face. Again, this isn't the same as when bitches around the clubhouse do it. "It means that every guy in a hundred mile radius of Charming knows that, if he so much as touches me, much less hurts me in any way…." her voice trails off, but the sentence is finished as her hand moves down to touch his leather, fingers trailing along the edge of the patch near the bottom that reads Unholy One.

"Why not a member, then?"

The sound this time is somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. "How many patched members do you know who would be willing to risk pissing off the mother charter for the sake of being tied to me until one of us dies, when y'all have pussy on tap?" Happy silently concedes the point. No member would ever get away with having a casual relationship with her. It would be Crow or nothing, run rules would be out the window, and breaking up would mean going from near the top of the pecking order to lower than a prospect. And that would only be if the separation was amicable. Unless it was her that went against the club - impossible as far as Happy can tell - then breaking it off could mean anything from excommunication to torture and death.

They lapse back into comfortable silence for several minutes.

"This may be the vodka talking - I don't think so, but I have to acknowledge that the possibility exists - but can I ask you for a favor?"

When Hap turns to look at her, her eyes are already on his face, and their eyes lock as he says, "Sure."

He watches as she chews on her cheek for a moment, clearly working up to asking him for whatever it is. When she gets around to asking, he's floored.

"Be my first kiss?"

He bites back his knee-jerk response to say that there's no way she hasn't been kissed. He can see she isn't bullshitting him, and they had literally just discussed the fact that no guys with half a brain for two time zones would touch her. Which means that he shouldn't. But…. they're alone, in the middle of a forest, and he can see how she would interpret the no-one-wants-to-be-with-her-because-of-her-family situation as her not being worth the trouble, or whatever…. And the thought of being another person in her life that she should be able to trust who hurt her makes him sick.

All that aside, now that the idea has been put in front of him, kissing her sounds reeeaalllyyyy appealing. So, he does.

The kiss is not exactly soft or sweet, because he isn't that kind of guy, and she doesn't think she's that kind of girl, but it also isn't rough or harsh. He's firm, slowly moving his lips over hers as his hand finds her waist, wrapping his arm around her to pull her closer, so she is sitting almost sideways in his lap. It takes a minute, but she figures out how to respond, and her hands slowly slide up his chest, over his thermal shirt, one stopping below his collar bone while the other moves up to cup the side of his jaw and back of his head.

There isn't fireworks, or losing themselves in the kiss, but they do lose track of time. Eventually they stop to catch their breath. Anabelle stays where she is on his lap, just shifting one arm to around his waist and laying her head on his shoulder.

"Tell me something about you?" She asks.

He tells her about growing up with a single, latina mom in Bakersfield. Getting in with the gangs in town, and being sent to juvie for stealing cars. Getting out and apprenticing at a tattoo shop in San Bernardino, getting to know some of the Sons there. Moving up north for a girl who ended up cheating on him a month later, and coming to the Tacoma Sons, asking if he could crash on a couch for awhile in exchange for ink, and ending up with a prospect kutte a week later when there was some punk ass Mayan that decided a solo drive-by of the clubhouse was the way to win the war. He'd been walking back down the street from the convenience store and seen the guy pull out a gun as he cruised by on his bike. So, he'd tackled the fucker right off his ride and beat him half to death by the time the Sons had come outside to see what the crash was.

The pair sits, exchanging stories, asking questions, and periodically kissing, until Happy realizes that the sun is coming up.

It is almost 7 by the time they walk back into the clubhouse and make their way to the second story, where the dorms are. Happy kisses her one more time at the door to the dorm she and Opie have been given, before moving further down the hall to his own room.

Three hours later, the cheap alarm clock at the side of the bed is blaring, and Opie stops her from throwing the fucking thing out the window. Instead, he tosses her the bikini, shorts, tank top, and flip-flops that she only vaguely remembers him packing for her.

She confusedly glares down the small pile of cloth in her lap, and Opie laughs at her. "You didn't really think I dragged you all the way up here just to hang out at the clubhouse ALL weekend, did you?"

By 10:30, they and a small group of the younger members, including Happy and Koz, and a few sweetbutts have shovelled some cold cereal down, collected a big stack of towels from the linen closet, and are piling into one of the club vans. It's not too long - maybe 20 minutes - before they are piling back out again, in a massive packed-dirt parking lot, and the group merges in with the stream of people heading into what looks like some kind of theme park.

As they get closer to the entrance, Anabelle sees that it's a water park. At least, with a name like Wild Waves, and everyone in swim gear, that is what makes sense. Several minutes later, they are standing in a wide, open-air corridor lined with various sizes of lockers, a couple combination locks appear from one of the guys' pocket, and everyone is stripping down to bikinis or swim trunks, with towels, kuttes, clothes, and bags all getting shoved in a couple "Family Size!" lockers. The park is filling rapidly with groups of teenagers and families with small children, and the group of bikers all quickly decide on meeting back there in a couple hours for lunch and break off into several groups of two or three to hit up various rides. The smaller groups are in constant metamorphosis as the meet up walking away from one ride and towards another, people hopping groups, or pairs combining to change trajectory, and Anabelle finds herself getting to know the Tacoma group rather well as they all chatter while waiting in lines.

For lunch, they all grab burgers or chicken strips and fries from one of the food vendors, along with plenty of sodas and bottles of water, and settle on the plastic lounging chairs by the wave pool. The people that didn't already have some level of a base-tan coming in are looking a bit sunburned, and Anabelle, Happy, Opie, and Kozik - California natives all - tease them good-naturedly as they slather sunscreen on themselves or each other.

At 5, they all concede that they are exhausted and gather their things to rinse off in the big shower rooms on either side of the lockers before heading back to the van. The guy driving, Jake, makes a detour on the way back, stopping at a diner for food. Once back at the clubhouse, the sweetbutts and a couple of the guys that have apartments say their goodbyes and head home. The remaining guys argue over who gets the first proper showers in the two bathrooms upstairs, and, while they're deciding to pair off and play pool for them, Anabelle and Happy share a look and walk upstairs with their towels for the day still in hand, each ducking into one of the bathrooms. They both walk back out at the same time, too, with Anabelle having not done much more than quickly wash her hair and scrub down, while Happy had taken the time to shave his head and face. Both wrapped in towels, they make eye contact and share a small smile.

As Anabelle is turning away, Hap says, "Hey…" so she stops and looks back questioningly. He steps forward and reaches out, circling an area on the inside of her left bicep. "You got plans for here?" She shakes her head in the negative. "Get dressed and come over." he tells her, motioning towards his room even as he turns that direction.

Minutes later, she's perched on the edge of his bed, watching him set up his tattoo gun, holding a piece of paper. On it, sized to go in the area he had indicated, is the skeletal hand of the Reaper holding the SOA crystal ball with the anarchy A, the ball topped by a delicate crown of filigree surrounding three gemstones.

Heart sinking, she sets the paper down. Happy stops what he's doing, seeing that she seems less than thrilled, and asks, "Do you not want it?"

"I do. I love it. But….." she looks intensely at him for a minute, then gets up to close the door that had been left open. Sitting back down, she tries to explain and still be vague. She wants him to have plausible deniability. "Soon, the club might not be okay with me having it." Hap stares hard at her, not understanding and silently demanding she continue. "I'm leaving." He still doesn't seem to comprehend what she's saying. She sighs. "Graduation day. As soon as the ceremony is over. Over the next couple weeks, I am emptying out my room, donating all my shit, and by that day, all I'll have is what fits in my saddle bags."

"Saddle bags?" He's beginning to get it.

She smiles a little. "A few years ago, I rescued a '77 Bonneville from a junkyard and restored her."

Happy's both surprised and not. He's aware of the general attitude in their world towards female riders, but he's never personally given it much thought. And yet, hadn't he just been thinking last night that she is a born rider? She knows the life as well as or better than any club member, and he honestly can't picture her being happy following in Gemma's footsteps, settling in to take care of the club, driving a cage every day, filing paperwork at the garage. Almost never leaving Charming.

"Guess I will give you your graduation present now, then." He says, reaching to the set of drawers on the other side of the chair he's in, and pulling out a large backpack very similar to the one he keeps his gear in. Handing it to her, he goes back to prepping to ink her.

Slowly opening the bag, she finds a setup like his. A gun, two big boxes of needles, a think plastic biohazard box for used needles, a box of gloves, a big bottle of the anti-bac concentrate, and a squirt bottle to mix it with water to dilute and use. A giant tub of Vaseline, a bag of disposable razors, rolls of tracing paper, plastic wrap, and tape, two non-toxic markers, a bag of little plastic cups, rubber bands, and bottles of ink. Anabelle is stunned silent straight through him finishing his preparations and moving her to lay down on the bed and positioning her arm on a pillow in his lap.

When he's done and cleaned up, he is pretty sure the tears in her eyes aren't from the pain, and he wraps her in a hug and ignores the couple drops of water that hit his shoulder.

8 seems bizarrely early to be going to bed, but Opie joins her not long after she has crawled under the covers, and she watches him set the alarm by the bed for 5:30. It's been a couple long and surreal days, and Anabelle is dead asleep by the time Opie notices the plastic wrap on her arm. She doesn't even twitch when he tries to ask about it.

Anabelle has trouble tracking how, exactly, she had gotten to this point. She had been through the whole experience so far, and still isn't sure. Yet, here she is, settled into an apprenticeship in motherfucking Bakersfield.

She had pulled off her escape easily. Gemma had gone straight to the clubhouse to finish cooking and setting up for the graduation bash slash patch party, and most of the members had taken off citing some business to take care of before the party that night. Anabelle had driven Opie's truck back to his place while he rode his bike, she'd changed out of the dress she'd borrowed from Donna for Opie to return, they'd said their goodbyes, and she'd ridden off on her bike. It was hours before anyone else had any idea she'd gone, and Opie had defended her leaving, calling the club out on some of it's sexist bullshit. A few full patches had argued to strip him of the prospect leather he'd barely had on for three hours, but others had conceded his points. It was the first time he and Jackson had gotten into the ring together in anger, and it had been stupid of Jackson to call Opie to the mat. Her brother had gotten the snot beaten out of him, and he and Opie hadn't spoken for weeks. Gemma also gave Opie the cold shoulder, but Bobby and Piney had played mediator and peace had been restored.

Meanwhile, Anabelle had been riding around the country's smaller highways with no particular destination in mind. Sometimes, she sprung for cheap motel rooms, for the sake of getting a shower more than anything else, but most nights were spent on the thick woolen bedroll that used to belong to JT, which she had filched out of storage. Nine months had become a blur of endless roads and gas stations, with the occasional pause for the various majestic sights she may be near. It was the most at peace she had ever felt.

She'd been stopped in some town she doesn't remember the name of, somewhere in New England, to duck into a laundromat. She'd called Opie to check in. When he told her that Happy was serving some soft time for hunting down and beating a pedophile to just this side of death, she had been neither surprised nor upset. The conversation had moved on, she'd finished her laundry, changed back into now-clean riding clothes, and turned toward southern California to check in on his mom. She knows he worries about her living alone.

That, somehow, had turned into Anabelle staying with Ms. Lowman, who insisted Anabelle call her Rosa. A few days later, she was officially taken on as an apprentice at the cleaner of the two shops in town.

Four months later, she's in the middle of putting a Chinese dragon on a guy's shoulder when she hears a Harley pull up in front of the shop. She knows it's him without looking, if only because this is cholo country. The preference here is low-riders, not motorcycles, and anyone who happens to have a Harley is a weekender - definitely not pulling up to a slightly sketchy tattoo shop at 2 pm on a Tuesday.

The front door opens, and Jack, the middle-aged white dude who owns the place and had taken her on, starts to get up from the next station over. "He's here for me, Jack." Anabelle says, not looking up from her work. Slightly louder, she says, "I'm out of here early today; I'll be back for dinner." The only response she hears is the sound of his boots on the floor as he turns around and walks back out, and his Dyna roaring back to life a moment later.

"Dude, you know a SON?!" She knows from checking his ID that this guy is 23 - 4 years her senior - but she can't help but think of him as a kid as he says this.

She pauses and leans back to run the needle in water to clean it and switch colors. "I know a lot of Sons."

"Is he your boyfriend or something?" the guys asks as she puts her needle back to his skin.

"No."

"Oh, so you're one of those chicks that hangs out at their clubhouse and fucks whichever one wants you?" She hears Jack let out a snort at this idiot.

"No."

"But I thought the only women they will talk to are their girlfriends and the house whores."

Jack apparently can't take it any longer. "You're lucky you didn't say that while he was still in here."

"What do you mean?"

Anabelle answers him before Jack can kick the kid out with a partially finished piece. "My father was one of the founders of the club. I grew up around all the guys. They're a little…. Protective…. Of me."

"... oh." The guy seems to finally get that calling her a whore was maybe not a great move.

"You're not in trouble or anything, right?" Jack asks her a half hour later, after the little fuckboy is gone and she is cleaning up her station.

Anabelle chuckles. He'd asked her about any possible trouble that may follow her in when he'd agreed to take her on as an apprentice, so she had given him the basics of her situation. "No. Happy - the one that came in - is fine with me riding and being away from the club. He's the one that started teaching me to tat and gave me my rig. He just got out of jail up in Washington; he probably came home to see his mom and found out that she talked me into staying with her through my apprenticeship. Don't think he was expecting me to be so close to Charming."

Rosa goes to bed around 9, citing work tomorrow, but it is obvious she is trying to leave them alone.

After she hear the bedroom door shut down the hall, Anabelle turns to Hap and asks "So…. what, exactly is she angling for?"

"Grandbabies." is the reply as they continue washing that night's dinner dishes.

Anabelle pauses only for a moment to take that in. "Well. OK, then."

They work in silence for a few more minutes, Hap washing while Anabelle dries and puts away. He surprises her by speaking again on the matter as he drains the water and washes out the sink basin. "I'm not against the idea, in general, but finding a woman to raise 'em with isn't easy in our life, and I don't know if I am ready anyway."

She's silent for a minute before replying. "I get it. I can't imagine having kids for years yet. I am barely 19, living off the charity of my friends' mom while I try and establish a steady career. And I don't even have club stuff to deal with like you do."

He grabs them a couple beers from the fridge while Anabelle gives the counter a final wipe and folds the towel before hanging it on the oven door.

After a minute, they are sitting next to each other on the top step of the small back porch, enjoying the slowly cooling night air. "I can't say she's entirely wrong, though." Happy says.

"About?"

"You. And me." Anabelle doesn't understand what he's talking about, so she doesn't say anything. "I mean, if I built a woman to settle down and pop a couple kids out with…. She'd be your clone."

Anabelle takes another swig of her beer as she thinks 'My clone…. But not me. Naturally.'

He doesn't think she realizes he's watching her reaction. Her face falls slightly, and he realizes how that probably sounded - like he was saying his perfect woman is just like her, but that she specifically wasn't good enough. Without thinking about it, his hand moves out to gently grab her chin and turn her head to face him. Meeting her eyes, he says, "That's not what I meant."

She keeps her expression under control, but the quiet "okay" tells him she doesn't believe him.

He tightens his grip slightly as she tries to turn away. "I said your clone, because you don't want the MC life. And…. I can't stand the thought of pulling you back in and putting you back in a place that you'll be miserable."

She's surprised. "Hap… I LOVE the life. It was Gemma and Jax that made me miserable. Besides… it's the MC life that doesn't want me. You know how it is….. I don't think I could ever give up riding, and, if I end up with someone in a club…. you know how they'd treat a man that lets his Old Lady ride."

"Yeah" he sighs out, letting her go. They both turn back to the darkening night and their beers, neither ready to make any declarations, but now having an idea how the other is feeling, and not knowing where any of this leaves them except this odd limbo that they've established.

Happy is added to the phone calls she makes to check in every couple weeks, but it's another seven months before she sees him again.

She's in Charming for Opie and Donna's wedding. She'll be the maid of honor, and have to deal with Jax a certain amount due to his status as best man. Additionally, she'll be doing Donna's Crow at the reception, which will be at the clubhouse. Donna's father is a minister at one of the local churches, which is where the ceremony will be.

Despite both their protests, Anabelle has booked a motel room for the two nights she'll be in town. Piney had signed the little house he and Ope had lived in over to Opie as a patch-in gift, so it is now the couple's house. They had tried insisting that she stay in the spare room - what used to be Ope's room - but she had put her foot down, insisting that she isn't going to listen to them on their wedding night.

Everything had gone exactly as Anabelle expected, right up until she is done tattooing Donna.

As she is cleaning up, Jackson, who is sitting nearby, apparently decides that their temporary truce for the day is over. "Crows are only supposed to be from SONS."

"Yeah… Donna got Opie's Crow." she responds neutrally.

"But it's supposed to be a Son that does the tattoo." There's no rules about that - plenty of guys take their girls to parlors.

There's no response that isn't going to start a fight, so Anabelle keeps her breathing carefully even as she finishes packing up and stands to head out.

It's her first time in the clubhouse since she'd left, and her reception had been a mixed bag. Most of the guys didn't say anything, whether they are okay with her being there or not, because she'd been specifically invited by Opie for his wedding and Opie wanted HER to do the tattoo. She, in turn, had been as quiet as possible, responding politely to the guys that greeted her, and even parking her bike down the street rather than pulling it into the lot.

It happens as she is pulling the backpack with her stuff onto her shoulders - Jax reaches out and grabs her arm, hard, exclaiming, "What the fuck is THAT?" and gaining the attention of the surrounding people.

He's referring to the tat Happy had done on her up in Tacoma the weekend of her 18th birthday, which had become visible when the sleeve of her tee had ridden up as she put on the backpack.

Before anything else can unfold, a large body steps between her and her brother, roughly grabbing Jax's wrist and hitting a pressure point to make him release her. She would've expected Opie, but the scent of woods and that metallic tang tell her it's Happy.

His rough voice says "I designed and put that on her. If you have a problem with it, then you need to take it to the ring. Brother."

"Let's go there then." Jax declares.

Anabelle, once outside with the flow of the crowd, tries to turn and leave, but Happy's much gentler hand wraps around her wrist to stop her, pulling her behind him to the ring. There's croweaters gathered, all hoping to be one of the ones chosen to hold the men's kuttes and other things, as that usually means that's the member they'll be spending the night with.

Instead of picking one of them, he shrugs out of his leather and turns, placing it in Anabelle's hands. He smirks as she looks at him, shocked, and pulls his shirt over his head and dropping that in her hands as well, before following suit with his rings and grabbing one of the rolls of tape and winding it around his hands.

Jackson has gotten better at boxing, but his anger, and probably a decent amount of whiskey, is making him sloppy.

Anabelle watches the fight, one hand wrapped around the couple rings Hap'd handed her while she hugs the stiff leather of his kutte to her chest, surrounded by his scent. Many of the girls are new, which isn't surprising, and they glare at her openly. She ignores them as her attention is captured by watching Happy's lean muscles move under his skin.

Referee for the night, Chrome eventually breaks the guys apart and declares Happy the winner, and Jax is even more infuriated than before. But Happy is already out of the ring, hand on her lower back underneath her pack, steering her back inside as he says "Come clean me up."

Before they make it to the hall, she breaks off into the kitchen, and he waits in the door, watching as she shoves her fist full of his rings into a pocket to free up her hand, gets a clean washcloth and a cereal bowl, which gets filled with lukewarm water, then reaches into a cabinet to grab one of the small first aid kits there. In his room, he sits on the corner of the bed, still watching her as she unloads her arms, arranging the supplies nearest him on the dresser and carefully setting his leather off to the other side, neatly folding his shirt and dropping his rings on top of it before taking off her backpack to free up her movement.

Happy is once again smacked with the reality that she knows this life so much better than any of the bitches that hang around, evidenced in how she takes the small pair of scissors from the med kit and uses them to cut through the tape on his hands down the outside edge of his pinkies. It's such a small thing, but it sets her apart. Sweetbutts don't know little shit like that, they always unwind it the long way.

After throwing the tape in the little trash can and putting the scissors away, she deftly checks his knuckles for damage, before turning and grabbing the washcloth from the bowl of water and wringing it out. She starts at his face, cleaning up a few streaks of blood and quickly determining that the small cut above his brow doesn't even need a bandage, and the split in his lip doesn't need stitches.

Her gaze moves down to his torso. He's not dripping sweat, but there's a definite sheen of it covering his skin. She doesn't see any blood, but, as her hands move over his ribs, her attention is captured by on tiny bead of sweat slowly making it's way down his sternum. Before she even thinks about it, her body is moving of it's own accord, ducking her head down and licking up the trail of sweat up his toned, tan chest. Being this close to him, without his kutte on, the scent that she knew as uniquely him is almost overwhelming. As the slight taste of salt registers on her tongue, she feels a shiver go down him even as he pulls her head back up and kisses her harder than he ever has before.

The tang of his blood from the cut on his lip only adds to the intensity and she's letting out a moan into his mouth as their tongues tangle.

Lost in sensation, she next becomes aware of herself when they both pull back for air, finding that they have somehow moved to both be laying on the bed, on their sides, with one of her legs hooked up over his hip, and one of his hands up her shirt, under her bra, while the other cups around the back of her head and neck.

Pulling in ragged breaths, she meets his dark eyes and thinks they must have forged a temporary telepathic connection as they simultaneously remember who and where they are, and that they need to stop. They lay there for a couple minutes, still wrapped around each other, eyes locked, until both of their breathing is under control. Leaning in for one final, comparatively gentle, kiss, they both let out resigned sighs as they untangle from each other.

Happy rolls onto his back, watching as she adjusts her clothes and pulls her hair back to hide how mussed it now is, before collecting her bag and the supplies to return to the kitchen and moving to the door. After a final, wordless exchange, she's gone and he makes himself run through the list of reasons that he can't go after her. 15 minutes later, he knows she's gone by now, and knows he should probably back out to the party, if for no other reason than appearances, but he finds himself suddenly hating SAMCRO a little. He's tempted to pack what few things have made their way out of his saddle bags and simply head back up to Tacoma now, but he knows that they would all think he was following her to the motel they all know she's staying at because Opie had been griping about it for days.

So, not wanting to face his brothers, and unable to leave, he instead gets up and collects his toiletries, making his way to the lesser-used bathroom at the end of the hall for a shower. It's the first time he's had to jack off in years, but he doesn't mind, if only because any croweater or sweetbutt that he would grab from the main room can't hold a candle to the woman that has left him in this state. So, he takes a long shower, imagining that she's in her own shower right now doing the same thing, then goes to bed and falls asleep, fully intending to get up long before anyone else is conscious and head home.

The next morning, dawn is breaking as he gets dressed and double-checks he hasn't left anything, before shouldering his saddle bags and making his way outside.

Everyone inside is still unconscious, but, outside, he finds Tig, probably still awake, sitting on a picnic table and smoking. The slightly older man comments, "Odd time to go after her." as Happy walks by, causing Hap to stop and turn to him.

"I'm not stupid, man. I know better. Pisses me off though, so I am heading home, 'fore any more shit gets stirred."

Tig looks at him for a minute, evaluating, and says, "I don't give a damn how she gets from place to place, brother. But we both know this is way bigger than the older guys being stuck in the '60s."

"Yeah, I know." Happy replies, turning back to his original trajectory. "That's why I can't be in Charming right now."

"Ride safe, bro." Is Tig's oddly quiet answer.

Three years later, they have seen each other another handful of times, but never let themselves get carried away again.

It's been two years since Jack had declared her apprenticeship complete, sending her back out into the world with a decent portfolio in hand. Anabelle had thanked Rosa gratuitously and hopped back on her bike, heading out to join the convention circuit. Between conventions, she rents chairs at well-known shops for a week or two at a time, and, sometimes, spends a few days at a time in clubhouses. Some are SOA clubhouses, some are allies, others are neutral clubs.

None are on the west coast.

Everywhere east of Nevada, clubs are… not as accepting of women riding overall, exactly, but seem to accept HER. Many know her basic story, and consider her something of a novelty. 'SOA's little rebel girl? Yeah, she's a tattoo artist, she'll be nearby for that convention, we should have her in for a weekend, see what she's like!'

Now, the summer after the turn of the millenium, Anabelle is at her third Seattle Tattoo Convention. She's not surprised to not see any familiar kuttes on Friday, since that's Church day for Tacoma, and she's equally unsurprised that the guys from there that she's friendly with stop by to say hi in a steady stream through Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Kozik is the only one that has made an appointment with her, the rest of the guys more than content to stick with Happy or a favored local parlor for their ink. She also thinks his appointment may have something to do with the sentimentality of the piece he wants - a portrait of Missy, the German Shepherd that he and Tig had raised and trained together in the Marines, who had passed away recently in a tragic accident while under his care.

She's almost done when Kozik's chatter turns from catching her up on what's been going on around Tacoma to saying, "Hey, brother! Here for some ink?"

A brief glance reveals Happy, standing at the edge of her small booth, watching her etch the image into his friend.

"Haven't decided." Happy answers, beginning to flip through her book, which is next to him on a tiny, borrowed table.

Wiping Koz down and handing him a mirror to take a look at the new addition to his ribcage, she dutifully doesn't notice when he tears up, and only charges him the minimum, waving away the extra bills he tries to hand her, but accepting the big hug he gives her.

The convention is dead on Sunday evening, and she doesn't have any more scheduled appointments, so she cleans her booth up and packs away all her equipment, listening as Koz takes off and Happy moves to sit in the borrowed chair. They both know that, if he wants something, it'll be done in private. On their last call a couple weeks ago, he'd told her to plan on staying with him for at least Sunday night, so, once her gear is all in her backpack, he reaches over and picks up her saddlebags before she has a chance. After stopping briefly at the coordinators booth to check out, they walk to the nearby lot where her bike is parked, and she's unsurprised to see his Dyna sitting next to her Bonneville.

45 minutes later, they are pulling into the driveway of a small house in Tacoma. He'd mentioned, awhile back, that he'd finally gotten tired of living at the clubhouse and found a rental, and she thinks the small house suits him. There's a carport off to the side, which they pull their bikes under, and the small front lawn is perfectly tended, if not as pretty as his mother's with all her flower beds.

They go in through a side door, and she follows his lead of pulling off boots in the mudroom that also houses his laundry area. The inner door opens into a short hall, with an opening to a narrow, galley kitchen on one side, with a breakfast bar between it and the living room. Towards the rear of the house are two doors that obviously lead to the bed- and bathrooms.

Happy pushes one of the doors open and tells her to put her stuff in there. Knowing well by now that he's a stickler for tidyness, she piles her bags neatly in an open space next to his dresser that will be out of the way. That done, she goes back out to the living area and has a look around. It's obviously a guys' home, with simple, minimal, dark-colored furniture, but she sees some of his mother's influence in the other decorations. There's the mandatory few pieces of Harley memorabilia hanging around, but the rest of the wall space is broken up by framed photographs. Many are of him and his mother from throughout his childhood, and she knows they are copies of some of his favorites from Rosa's house. Others are of the the club, and she doesn't know why she's surprised to see a couple of her. She had, after all, been part of his club life before she'd taken off.

The first one that catches her eye is from that first day they'd met. Evidently, one of the many people that had streamed down the hallway to witness her tattooing him had snapped a picture. She moves on and, several feet later, there's one of those big frames with multiple spaces for smaller photos. Anabelle vaguely remembers one of the sweetbutts having a camera that day at the water park, and, indeed, in front of her is nine photos of it. She sees herself in six of them and tries not to read into that. It had been her birthday outing, of course she'd be in a lot of them.

Sounds from the kitchen pull her from her examination, and she turns around to find Happy in the kitchen, chopping some carrots. Rosa had insisted on him learning how to cook when he was younger so that she wouldn't worry as much about him eating alright when he left, but this is only the second time Anabelle has witnessed it. Instead of asking if she can help, she sits at the breakfast bar and reaches over, grabbing the bowl with a few potatoes in it and the paring knife that is next to it, settling them in front of her and getting to work on peeling.

Soon enough, he is joining her in sitting after putting a plate of food for each of them on the bar. The dinner is simple - steak, mashed potatoes, and some steamed veggies, with a beer for each of them - but tasty, and they are both done eating rather quickly. Anabelle moves into the kitchen to do the dishes, and he doesn't argue. They'd both lived with his mother, and the rule is that the cook doesn't clean if it can be helped.

When she's done, he leads her to a corner of the living room that she's surprised to not have noticed before. It's set up as a tattooing station, with one of the nice adjustable chairs that you'd find in a shop, and everything laid out neatly on a wheeled set of drawers, which is next to a wheeled padded stool. He sits in the chair and pulls off his kutte, hanging it on a nearby hook that is screwed into the wall for that exact purpose, then strips off his REAPER CREW tee shirt. Looking at her, he hesitates for a moment before reaching into the top drawer and pulling out a piece of paper, handing it to her.

Anabelle's stunned, and her mind flashes back to two or so years ago. She'd come up a day early for her first time at the convention, and she and Hap had met at what they considered 'their' place - under the tree, in the park, by the lake, half an hour outside of Tacoma. The day had been overcast, so the park was otherwise abandoned, and they had hung out there for hours, talking and sketching. He had joked about her needing a logo and business cards and shit for the convention circuit, and they had fucked around with a couple ideas, each one getting shot down as playfully as it had been brought up.

The page in her hand is a finished version of probably the silliest of those ideas - a pun on her name, featuring a thick outline of an ampersand symbol, slightly reworked to also resemble a bell. She looks back up and searched his face for any trace of joking, and finding none. His hand simply reaches back into the drawer and pulls out another piece of paper, thinner, and hands her the outline he'd already put on transfer paper, before pointing to the side of his ribs on the left side - the physically closest place to his heart.

Blinking back tears, Anabelle moves the stool and drawers into position, pulling out a few to find and gather the things she needs, as he adjusts the chair and settles on his right side, laying his left arm in front of him to give her access.

The stencil he's made is big, nearly six inches square, but it's simple and doesn't take long. When she's done, he watches her clean up, then looks on curiously as she lays out more supplies, and puts a fresh needle in the gun.

Turning back to him, she strips off her own tee shirt, and makes a motion for them to swap places. When they have, she reaches a hand forward and caresses one of the little smiley faces on his side. Looking up at his face, she then traces an area on the left side of her neck, slightly to the back, skirting up her hairline, under her ear, and down to her collarbone. It's approximately the same size as the one she had just put on him, but visible for the whole world to see.

Now, it's Happy's turn to try and locate a single smudge of doubt. Finding none, his gaze turns smouldering, and he visibly restrains himself from taking her then and there, more eager to see her marked as HIS.

Once again, it doesn't take long, being a rather simple design. He's both frustrated and grateful that she stops him from leaving the mess to haul her off to bed with a "You know you'll be pissed later when you realize you left dirty needles in your gun and caps full of ink out."

That in mind, they both make short work of properly cleaning and disposing of everything, before grabbing their clothes and making their way into his bedroom, where all bets are now off.

Despite being obviously and knowingly attracted to each other, that night in Charming at Opie's wedding is the furthest they've ever gone, not daring more than an occasional kiss in the handful of times they've seen each other since. With this moment being years in the making, Happy doesn't waste any time in dropping their shirts in his laundry basket and cradling the side of her neck that doesn't have fresh ink on it, roughly kissing her, thrilled when she responds with enthusiasm.

Neither is fully aware as they finish stripping each other and move to the bed, far too busy exploring the new territory in front of them. It's only a few minutes before he's sliding into her, and they both pause, realizing they've forgotten something.

"You clean?"

"Yeah."

"Same and I'm on the pill."

"Good, because you feel fucking fantastic." and, with that, he slowly pulls most of the way out of her, before thrusting back in, hard, and he knows he's never going to get enough of the little gasping moans she's letting out. Breaking eye contact after several more thrusts, he moves to the side of her neck that doesn't bear his mark, sucking and biting from behind her ear, down her jugular, to the sensitive spot where shoulder and neck meet. There, he takes more time, sucking harder after every bite to leave another mark on her soft skin.

Anabelle's moans get louder and he responds with a growl as the nails of one of her hands drag over his scalp and down the back of his neck, while the fingers of her other hand pinch at his nipple.

Happy pulls slightly away from her, adjusting his position before slamming back into her at a different angle. Instead of gasping moans, her back arches sharply, pressing her into his, and her head is thrown back as she lets out a low shout of "Fuck! YES!", as one of her hands clasps reflexively at his sheets and the other does the same to the back of his shoulder, nails biting into him deliciously. Feeling the tingle at the base of his spine building quickly, he goes back to darkening the already-forming hickey and speeds up his thrusts, loving the perversely wet sounds of their hips slamming to gether and her cries getting louder. Before long, the legs that had wrapped around his waist at some point tighten, her nails dig into his skin harder, and, next to his ear, she half-gasps, "Oh fuck HAPPY" and her pussy pulses around him, seemingly impossibly tight.

He barely makes it two more thrusts before he joins her, vaguely hearing himself growl "Ana…" before it trails off.

Eight months have passed since they'd marked each other, and almost no-one knows. Kozik, cheesy as he is as a person, had figured out the pun in a couple weeks, the first time since it was done that he happened to see Hap without a shirt on. Opie knew, because he'd been at the San Bernardino clubhouse for something when Anabelle had stopped in Bakersfield to see Rosa nearly two months later, and they had met in the middle to get breakfast one day.

The only other Sons she seen had obviously commented on it, but Hap isn't as well known on the east coast - yet, at least - so they didn't know what it meant.

Three months ago, Happy had petitioned and been granted permission to go Nomad. Tacoma has plenty of guys, and he had cited wanting to be on the road more.

Suddenly, their paths started crossing every few weeks. She keeps him updated on her schedule, and he makes detours whenever he has time, sometimes sticking with her for days if there's nothing pressing that he is needed to help with. By mutual understanding, his mother's house is the closest they get to Charming together.

For her part, Rosa is thrilled. She knows better than to press for the grandbabies that she so desperately wants, knowing they are both still young, and that neither is eager to be anywhere but the road at the moment, as evidenced by the boxes of her son's things in one corner of her garage, and the fact that all of Anabelle's earthly possessions - with the exception of a single bottle each of shampoo and conditioner that live in Rosa's guest bathroom - fit on the girl's bike.

It's the end of February, a slow time for tattoos universally, so Anabelle had decided to spend a few weeks in Bakersfield, missing spending time with the older woman. Happy is up in Charming handling something, and had said that he will come down after he is done to spend as much time as he can with them before Quinn calls to send him off somewhere else.

Anabelle sees Opie's name on her ringing cell phone and doesn't think much of it, answering cheerfully, "Hey you! What's up?"

His tone immediately sends her mood plummeting. "You need to bring Hap's mom up to Charming."

"Lockdown?" She asks, knowing that's not it.

"Happy's in St. Thomas. They need to do surgery, need his next of kin to sign off."

She wouldn't get any more information over the phone. "We'll be there in two hours." Up in Tacoma, Tiff had had his power of attorney, as she did for most of the guys without Old Ladies or nearby family. This far south, they'd need Rosa's signature.

Rosa had taken the news well, by now more or less at peace with the fact that her son lives a dangerous life. She packed a bag and hopped in her car as Anabelle secured her bags to her bike, before leading the way up to Charming, going straight to the hospital.

She'd forgotten to secure her hair before they left Bakersfield, so it hangs over Anabelle's shoulders in a tangled mess as she leads Rosa into the hospital, bypassing the front desk and heading straight for the ER waiting room. As they walk into the room, Bobby immediately gets up and walks to the nurses desk to tell them that Happy's next of kin is here, while Clay makes his way over to them.

After making a brief introduction, Anabelle goes silent as Clay extends his apologies to Rosa, gallantly settling her hand in the crook of his arm to walk over and meet the doctor that is coming out. Opie's not here, so Anabelle sits in a chair slightly apart from the group, but near enough to be able to hear what's going on. Bobby and Tig nod sombre greetings to her, which she returns, but they don't come over. The only other people there are her mother and a guy she doesn't know, so everyone else must be cleaning up.

After all of the necessary paperwork is signed, Rosa is escorted back to the middle of the group and encouraged to sit. She doesn't, instead looking calculatingly between Anabelle and the group before thanking Clay and making her way over to sit with the girl that may as well be her daughter in law.

Anabelle tries to get the woman back over to the group. "Rosa, you should - "

"Nonsense." Rosa shuts her down immediately, rummaging in her handbag, and pulling out a comb. "Now, let's see to this mess of yours. The doctor said his shoulder won't take very long to fix up, and we don't need you scaring him when he's just come out from surgery." Rosa takes a handful of Anabelle's hair in hand and begins gently combing out the tangles from the bottom up.

Anabelle is suddenly emotional, realizing that this is the first time someone has done this for her since Otto went away. Fighting back tears, she unthinkingly gathers the rest of her hair up to move over to the side Rosa is sitting on.

"Would you be 'ap's lassie, then?" A smooth voice with a Scottish brogue cuts across the waiting area.

Anabelle looks up to the new guy, examining him. His leather is slightly worn, so he'd had it for years, but his Redwood patches are new. A transfer, then, probably from Glasgow with that accent, but maybe Belfast. "Something like that." The others had looked over at his question and immediately spotted the smiley face on her neck. Bobby looks surprised, but has a small smile on his face, while Clay is as calculating as ever, and Gemma is pursing her lips as she formulates the lecture that is sure to be forthcoming. Tig is grinning lecherously, and she doesn't want to know what he's thinking.

Nearly two hours later, Rosa had finished detangling Anabelle's hair and handed her a hair tie, which Anabelle had used to pull her mass of hair into a ponytail. The group is sitting quietly, periodically chatting, when another group of Sons walk in. Anabelle's eyes skitter over them, evaluating the well-being of even those she doesn't know. Scrapes, bruises, and exhaustion seem to be the order of the day, and she gets up to hug Opie as he walks over to her.

His hug is fiercer than normal. "Belly…" he says softly into her hair.

Anabelle pulls her head back to look at him, then back at the group, doing a headcount. "Piney…?" she asks.

Shaking his head, he says, "Chrome." and her heart sinks for him. Despite many considering his prospect period to be a formality, all of the rules had been followed, and Chrome had been his sponsor. She pulls him back in for another hug. He returns it for a moment before releasing her and directing her attention to the doctor walking through the swinging doors towards them. After a minute, Rosa turns and motions to her to come, but Anabelle looks back to Opie. He musters up a tiny smile and pushes her toward Rosa, saying "Go see your Old Man, I'll be right here."

Only two people at a time are allowed back to see Happy, and Clay is annoyed that Hap's mom had insisted that Anabelle be the one to come back with her and wait for her son to wake up.

The doors are barely closed before Jackson blurts out "The fuck is that thing on her neck."

Those that have been around awhile pretty much ignore him. Gemma grunts a noise of general agreement. Chibs' eyebrows are in his hair.

"Ya mean her Old Man's mark?" he questions ignorantly.

"If she was his Old Lady, it'd be a Crow." This answer is from Gemma.

Before Chibs can ask more questions, Bobby lays a hand on his shoulder, saying "You look like you could use some coffee." Taking the cue, Chibs stands and follows him down the hall.

"Why do I feel I've jus' stepped innit right proper?"

Actually getting himself some shitty hospital coffee, Bobby heaves a sigh. "It's a complex situation with that girl. She look familiar to you, at all?"

Thinking, Chibs realizes there is something about her face that he seems to know from somewhere. "Aye, but I could no' say where from."

"She's Gemma and JT's little girl." He'd been a prospect in Belfast when JT had last been there, and he abruptly sees the relation.

Rubbing his neck, Chibs says, "I can see tha', but what's the great problem of her an' Hap bein' together? I'd think they'd be glad she were stayin' in tha family."

Nodding and leaning tiredly against the wall, Bobby says, "Most of us are, brother. But Gemma never wanted a girl, and wasn't quiet about it. Her and JT had another boy, older than Jax, died when he was 8. Jax decided it was Belly's fault, and, well, I don't know what JT was like across the pond, but here… he may as well have been over there. The rest of us all pitched in as much as we could to look after Anabelle, but….. I don't even know man. There's a lot of anger in the blood, and Anabelle is JT all the way through. She'd happily devote her life to the club, but not in the way that women are suppose to, and that don't sit well with a lot of members. All of it together means that her and Hap are frowned at. They keep it well out of Charming when they can, and most of the charters east of Reno have no problem, but when shit like this happens…." he trails off with a shake of his head, taking a gulp of coffee and refilling before he ushers them back to the waiting room.

Eventually, Rosa comes back out to give them the regular room number Happy is being moved to, and asks Clay if he wouldn't mind her staying the night in Happy's room at the clubhouse. Gemma chimes in offering their spare room, but Rosa studiously ignores her, keeping eye contact with Clay, still waiting for an answer. He eventually nods and tells the prospect, Kyle, to escort her to the clubhouse and show her to Happy's room.

Most of the guys and Gemma leave once Rosa is gone, only Chibs staying with Clay as they take the elevator up to the third floor and turn towards Happy's room. Walking in, they find Anabelle sitting on Happy's good side leaning over the bed as his hand cups her cheek and he smiles dopily at her, obviously under the influence of some good painkillers. The sight makes Chibs grin, and even Clay's hard expression softens slightly. Once they are noticed, Anabelle stands, kissing Hap on the cheek and saying she'll be back when they are done, removing herself from the room and closing the door behind her.

The visit is short, with Happy only confirming what they already know - that Hap had been outnumbered once Chrome went down and managed to still take the three Mayans down even after being shot. Once Clay tells him to rest with a brotherly kiss on the head, he walks out, leaving the door open for Anabelle to re-enter.

"Ah've got tha first shift o' guard duty. If ya need anythin', jus' let me know, I'll be ou' in tha wai'in' room." Chibs tells them.

"Thank you," Anabelle says, smiling tiredly and watching as he walks out, shutting the door gently.

A few hours later, she sinks down in a chair beside Chibs and he marks his place in the cheesy paperback thriller he'd found on some random table. They sit in silence for a couple minutes, and Chibs is about to ask if he can help with anything when she speaks.

"Was he happy there?"

Confused, Chibs says, "I'm sorry?"

She seems to be staring into the middle distance when he looks at her. "JT. Was he happy over there? In Ireland?"

He thinks lying to the girl may be kinder, but he also thinks she would know and not appreciate it. Bobby had said that she's just like JT, after all. "Aye, lass. He was." More silence. "Hap tell ya I knew 'im?" He'd only seen her exchange a couple words with Opie, otherwise, the only person she'd spoken to was Rosa, who certainly had no idea.

The girl smiles a bit and he sees little Trinity for a moment. "No. I could tell by how you watched me after Bobby filled you in. Like you were looking for all the bits of him in me."

His answering smile is a bit sheepish. He hadn't realized he'd been doing that. Taking a deep breath, he decided to be out with it. "Gemma's likely to kill me for bringin' it up, but did she or your da ever tell ya aboot Trinity?" She looks at him with a furrowed brow, shaking her head. "Well, I'm sorry tha' you're findin' out from me then, girlie. You've a little sister." Her face shows shock for only a split second before understanding sets in. "She don' know who her Da is - her mum, Maureen, refuses ta tell 'er, and Trini's got Mo's las' name. The Belfast boys keep an eye on 'em on yer da's behalf. I think she'd figured ou' it's a Son, but not who."

Thinking back, Anabelle makes some quick calculations based on when her dad started spending time overseas in earnest. "She'll be, what, about 15 now?" she asks.

Chibs is surprised, but only for a moment. It is really bizarrely like talking to JT again. "Aye, this comin' April." He watches the girl -no, he corrects himself, she'll be in her 20's, she's got an Old Man, and she's spent longer and harder times in the life than he had; she's a woman - absorb the information for a moment.

Visibly shaking herself out of it, she asks, "How 'bout you? Why Belfast, with that accent? Old Lady? Rugrats? What's your deal?"

They talk, mostly her asking questions about him and Chibs answering, for an hour or so until Ocho shows up to take over guard duty. Anabelle stands with him when he gets up, nodding a greeting to Ocho, who ignores her completely and sits down. Shaking her head, the young woman taps a kiss onto Chib's cheek and thanks him, telling him to go get some sleep, before she retreats back into Hap's room to sit with him. Chibs wonders, as he walks out of the building, how big a can of worms he might've just opened up.

It's taken the better part of a month, which is also Happy's recuperation time on his shoulder, but Anabelle has re-arranged her schedule to clear September and October. She knows she's not likely to be welcome in Belfast for that long, but the journey by ship from Boston to Galway is nearly a week, then the better part of a day to ride across the island and find her bearings in the new city. If she's REALLY unwelcome, then she can always get the ferry and ride around England, Scotland, and Wales for a couple weeks before making her way back.

She's busy through the late spring and early summer working and getting things arranged so she won't have any trouble overseas. Passport, registering her bike, vaccines, confirming she won't need a visa…. Most of it is governmental, and the red tape of getting through multiple governments is tedious in the extreme.

It's not ALL work, though. She and Happy both take two weeks over their "anniversary" and they ride down to Monterry for a vacation.

Eventually, though, it's time. She leaves her final convention for the summer in Vegas, rides up to Chicago, where Happy is for a few weeks, and stays overnight with him before heading hell-for-leather for Boston.

At the port, she meets up with two Saints who are also heading to Ireland for a visit that she doesn't ask specifics about and they don't volunteer. They are friendly with the Sons, but don't have an official alliance, and she has a few of their clubhouses through the northeast and midwest on her regular rounds. They keep each other company through the trip, and, six days later, they are waving goodbyes after guiding her to Dublin and pointing at the interchange that she needs to head north to Belfast. It's getting dark as she rolls in, though it's relatively early at only dinnertime, so she decides to do the thing that she had sworn she would never except in an emergency - walk into a SOA clubhouse where she isn't known, flash her tattoo and tell them her name for the sake of getting shelter.

The clubhouse isn't difficult to find, only a few turns off the A12 on the outskirts of an industrial area. There's a chill to the air, but she takes off her well-worn leather jacket at her bike, where she has parked on the street instead of the wide space off the back alley where she saw the brother's bikes. Chibs had told her some stories and mentioned that this charter sees a fair bit of action, and that they could be jumpy. She is already pushing her luck by showing up here like she is without them thinking she's going for a weapon when she's trying to show them proof of her identity. She's looking at her bags and backpack, wondering if she should leave them there or take them in with her, when she hears a door open behind her and a couple sets of footsteps come out.

Turning, she lets out a big smile as she recognizes a guy called McGee from old photos, and he seems put off by her reaction.

"Somethin' we can help ya with, miss?" the younger guys asks.

Anabelle looks at him and nods an acknowledgement before turning her gaze back to McGee. "Hi, I'm Anabelle Teller…."

"Teller?" The younger guys asks, like he knows the name but can't place it.

McGee, on the other hand, flashes through phases of incredulity, contemplation, then surprise. "Mary mother o' Christ, I aint seen you since I could hold you in me hand." He steps forward and Anabelle does the same, embracing him like a beloved relative that you haven't seen in years. Which, in their world, he is. "Hope you haven' paid fer a hotel room, litll un, cuz no way on God's green earth am I lettin' JT's litl girl stay in Belfast outside o' Sons protection. Angus, grab 'er bags."

With this, McGee turns her, keeping an arm the size of a log across her shoulders, leading her inside. "You still go by Belly or do ya prefer Anabelle?"

"Anabelle, please. I haven't been Belly since… Tommy."

He goes sombre as he holds open the door behind him for Angus, who has her bags and the jacket she'd left on the bike, telling him to go put them in an empty dorm. She knows they'll be searched, and is glad the only weapon she'd brought with her is a folding pocket knife that is in her boot.

"Aye, horrible thing, losing lil' Tommy boy like that." McGee continues, guiding her with a hand on her back down a hall, past an empty kitchen and a closed door that says 'Toilet' on it in spray paint and stencilled lettering, into the customary main bar area.

Members and Old Ladies do double-takes, while the sweetbutts look annoyed. Loud talking quiets to questioning mumbles. McGee looks at the prospect behind the bar and loudly says, "Well what are ye waitin' for, Paddy. We've got SAMCRO Royalty in! JT's lil' Anabelle came all the way from California ta see our ugly mugs, pour the girl a damn whiskey to welcome 'er!"

The murmuring gets louder, but doesn't go all the way back up in volume, as people crane to get a look at her. When Paddy the Prospect slides a shot across the bar to her, she makes sure to reach out with her left hand, clearly flashing her anarchy royalty tattoo for those nearby. Originally, Happy had left the gemstones uncolored, to indicate diamonds, but a few years ago, she'd decided that she wanted some color, and he'd filled them in with a deep green color for emeralds. "Don't suppose Paddy is short for Padraic?" She asks the prospect curiously.

He looks even more confused than he'd been before. "Aye…"

"Chibs mentioned you were looking to prospect, didn't tell me you'd finally made the grade, though."

They must've been close. Paddy lights up at the mention of his obviously favored uncle. "Are ye from Charmin', then?"

Smiling, she says, "I grew up there. I was there to… deal with an incident… a few months ago. We had occasion to talk quite a bit."

The volume level is steadily on the rise again, and she sees Angus appear at the edge of her vision, making some motion with his hands that must mean she's in the clear with her bags. As McGee turns her to start introducing her around, she tips her drink at Paddy and sends him a wink that has him blushing, which a couple of the guys immediately start taking the piss out of him for.

She's glad she sailed over, as it had given her time to adjust her sleep schedule, so she wasn't utterly exhausted when she got here, only mildly tired. Once she has been introduced to more or less everyone, the members decide that it's time they show her how to really party, Belfast style. All told, it's pretty much the same as a SAMCRO party, but with more singing and less public sex acts. Her drinks are always full, be them shot glasses of whiskey or pints of Guiness, and she's careful to pace herself. She hadn't eaten since Galway, and she didn't want to make an ass of herself right off.

Once the older members get the word around, discreetly, about who exactly she is, everyone's rather keen to talk to her. Just like in the states, tattoos are a common icebreaker.

"Is that the official one for club royalty? The second generation?" one guy asks, pointing at the partially cover crown and ball.

"No, we don't have anything official. My Old Man, back before he was my Old Man, gave this to me when I turned 18, for protection. So I could turn up at any clubhouse, even if I'd never been there and they didn't know me - like, y'know, one in Ireland" at this she grins and gives a wink to the audience around her "and automatically have protection, somewhere to sleep…" they chuckle and clink glasses as if it had been a toast. "Other second generation kids…. Well, my older brother, Jackson, and my best friend, Opie, both have their full patches tattooed on their backs. I think Wally's son, DoDo, did something similar when he patched in to Oklahoma City."

"You've got an Old Man, then? Where's your crow?" a curious sweetbutt asked. Anabelle's not stupid enough to think it's anything other than trying to confirm that this stranger is not competition.

"We didn't do crows - I ride, which makes things a little complicated - but we gave each other our symbols." At this, she taps her neck, indicating the sinister-looking happy face there.

"A smiley face?" someone else throws out incredulously.

"Do you know how club nicknames work?" Some nods, from members, and head shakes from the others. "He's about the grumpiest guy you can imagine, so, when he became a prospect, his sponsor started calling him Happy." The guys chuckle and the girls don't get it, not that she's surprised.

At this point, someone near the door yells "Time to FIGHT!" and she gets tugged along in the stream of people heading out into the back area, where a boxing ring is set up. One of the guys asks if Anabelle will hold his kutte, but she knows better, and playfully shunts the duty off on an eager-looking girl nearby, before drifting to the back of the crowd and hoisting herself up onto the top railing of a little fence that delineates some line or other.

The fight begins, and it's not really different than most others that she's seen, so her attention wanders, taking in her surroundings. Something snags at her mind, and she snaps her eyes back to a second-story window on the other side of the courtyard they are in, where there's a girl, arms crossed and leaning on her windowsill, looking down watching the fight.

"She's meant to be grounded, but since she's in her room and not talkin' ta anyone, I can't really have a go at her." a soft voice says from beside Anabelle.

Looking away from the girl, Anabelle sees a woman maybe ten years younger than Gemma, with pretty blonde hair and kind eyes. She'd seen her briefly inside, and thought she must be an Old Lady, because she's not dressed like a sweetbutt, or desperately hanging off any of the members.

They study each other for a moment, then the woman speaks again. "I imagine a lot of people must say you look like Gemma, but I see a lot of him in ya."

"Actually, no one ever says I look like Gemma." Anabelle responds, obviously amused. "Gemma would take it as an insult, and anyone who knows her to make the comparison is too scared of her to insult her." The woman chuckles. "You must be Maureen."

"Aye." She says. "Call me Mo."

Anabelle smiles at the invitation to be familiar. "Anabelle." Taking a breath, she begins to explain herself. "Look, I'm not here to cause trouble, I just…." her gaze goes back to the window where Trinity is still watching. "When Chibs told me about her…. I want to meet her."

Mo's eyes are understanding, but also firm. "She doesn't know…"

"I know. Chibs told me that too. And if you aren't alright with her knowing, I won't push it. But I'd still like to meet her…. She's the only blood I have that doesn't completely detest me, even if that's because she doesn't know me."

"Are dey still on about all tha' bullshite?" Mo's accent gets thicker, obviously angry. Apparently, her dad had been at least aware enough of Gemma and Jax's treatment of her to tell Mo.

A small smile plants itself on Anabelle's face. "I can see why he loved you."

This seems to draw Mo up short, and she flounders for a minute. Anabelle interrupts her before she can say anything. "I'm really glad he was able to be happy again." she grabs the hand that Mo doesn't have a drink in and looks her in the eye. "Thank you. For taking care of him. Being what he needed."

It looks like Mo's trying not to cry, so Anabelle, removes her hand and says, "I've had a long trip, I think it's about time I turn in. Good night." before turning away.

She doesn't see Angus or McGee outside, so she walks back into the bar. She still doesn't spot them, so she goes to ask Paddy if he knows which room she's been put in, and he leads her up the stairs, showing her a blackboard at the landing that has everyone's name and room number. Her name has been scratched next to the number 5, so she thanks him and wanders down the hall, Paddy calling after her that the unmarked door is the bathroom, and she waves her thanks over her shoulder even as she hears him clomping back down the stairs to get back to his post.

Walking into room 5 and closing the door, she hears a jangle and looks down to see a key in the inside lock, so she turns it - less for safety and more so that any drunk guys who aren't paying attention don't come in on accident and wake her. Going to the single window, she looks out and sees the party she's just left, then looks up to get a last look at her sister before she goes to bed.

Anabelle barely manages to change into her sleep clothes and crawl under the covers before she's out.

After the girl had gone up to bed, Mo retreated to her small office at the back of the store for a think. That's where McGee found her half an hour later.

Seeing tear tracks on her face, he leans against the desk and asks, "What's wrong, love?"

Mo's arms cross, and a hand comes up to cover her mouth slightly. "Nothin', really…. Jus'... Apparently, Fillip told Anabelle about Trini. Anabelle wants ta meet 'er, even if it isn't as 'er sister."

McGee sighs, his arms folding over his chest as well. "Well, that is a pickle."

"I can't even be upset wit' Fillip. The way Gemma and Jackson treat tha poor girl, I'd give her some hope for more family tha' doesn't hate her as well."

McGee's brows come together. "What does that mean?" he questions. Mo sighs and settles in for the story.

"WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING IN BELFAST?!" Gemma's shout rings out across the lot.

Chibs puts his head down and concentrates on his work, hoping to avoid the wrath of Gemma.

The next day, midmorning, Mo's eyes widen as Anabelle comes walking into the store. Anabelle notices and puts her hands up in the universal gesture for peace. "I didn't come to push. I'm just hoping there's tampons here I can buy. Mother nature is the one thing I always forget to pack for."

Heart rate slowing again, Mo points over to a corner with loo roll and such. "Over there, love."

Anabelle moves to the section indicated, then has a wander, grabbing a few other bits - a small jar of instant coffee, a few chocolate bars, a litre of juice - before making her way to the counter for Mo to ring her up.

"How're you findin' Ireland so far?" Mo asks conversationally.

Anabelle smile gently. "Beautiful. The ride up from Galway was stunning, and all the old buildings and churches in the cities are gorgeous."

Mo looks a bit confused. "Galway? Did you not fly?"

The younger woman gives a shake of her head. "Couldn't leave me baby behind, and it's a pain in the ass to take tattoo equipment on a plane. I paid for passage on a freighter from Boston."

"Your baby?!"

A bigger smile. "'77 Triumph Bonneville. Rescued her from a junkyard when I was 15."

Laughing, Mo puts a relieved hand over her heart that the girl hadn't just thrown a wee one in a dorm room and come back down to party. Though, come to think of it, it wouldn't be the first time it had happened. "Oh, leave it to JT's child…" she says as she takes the bill from Anabelle's hand and makes out change. "Though, I'm a bit surprised it isn't a Harley."

Anabelle shrugs, taking the change and shoving the smaller products into various pockets. "Eh, I could've easily gotten one, but it probably wouldn't have needed any work, or at least not as much, and that's what really bonds the bike and rider. Plus, things are bad enough with the club just with me riding, if I was on a Harley…. I'd rather not risk it."

"Does da club have a problem wit' it?" Mo asks, surprised. She'd never heard the Belfast lads say anything, but, then again, there aren't many women that ride here.

"A lot of the guys, the older generation in particular, consider it 'un-womanly'. There's SOME 'man's business' that they are ok with women being good at - shooting, fighting - because they are survival skills, and the women look after the kids. Gotta be able to protect them. But, in general, club women have a specific role, and riding their own bike, instead of bitch behind their Old Man, isn't one of them."

"That sounds feckin' stupid." a voice chimes in from the back as Trinity emerges, having just come downstairs.

Annabelle laughs, saying "Yeah, well, don't tell the boys I said this, but men can be fuckin' stupid about a LOT of things." Picking up her juice, Anabelle waves to Mo and heads back out.

"Who's she, ma? I saw you talkin' to her at the fights las' night."

Mo decided after only two days of Anabelle being in country that she would tell Trinity about her father. Anabelle is so much like him that Mo can't imagine her being anything less than an adoring and doting big sister, even from a sea away. The only hang-up is how to broach the subject with her daughter. She'd been so mum on the issue for so long, that she feels awkward talking about it. Honestly, she's also a little surprised that Trinity doesn't seem to remember JT - he'd been around fairly regularly until she was 5, after all, and had been a wonderful da.

Unable to force herself to just spit it out and deal with the backlash, she sees an opportunity when two of the Glasgow boys show up, having gotten word of a Teller in Ireland, inviting Anabelle to come spend some time at the Glasgow clubhouse. After talking with McGee, and assuring those that aren't keen for her to leave that she'll be back for at least another week before she goes home, Anabelle rides off for the ferry with the two Scots, planning on spending a week and a half or so on the larger isle, then a few days touring England and Wales.

Trinity and Anabelle had talked several times in the eight days Anabelle had been there before the SAMSCOT boys had shown up, and they are getting on well. The 15 and a half year old had heard a couple people around the yard talking about having Anabelle ink them when she gets back, and Trinity asks over supper one evening if Mo would mind if she got one.

Mo immediately shoots that down. The legal age in the UK is 18, and, while Ireland doesn't have laws regulating it, any reputable places refuse to tattoo anyone under 18 as well. If Trini were a bit older, 17 maybe, she'd consider it, but not now.

"But, talkin' about Anabelle, there is somethin' I need ta tell ya."

The girl takes the news fairly well, considering. She is, at first, angry that she's had a brother and sister all this time and not known, but grudgingly calms down when Mo tells her that they hadn't known about her either. Mo isn't, technically speaking, an Old Lady, even though it had been well established that she and JT were together, and the club has taken care of them since his death as if she had been official. The one time they'd met, Gemma had been adamant that her children, still young then, not know about JT's family here, and it would've been extremely disrespectful of Mo to go against that.

"But Anabelle knows now?" Trinity asks hopefully.

Mo nods her confirmation. "She found out a few months ago, immediately started arranging this trip over. That firs' night at the fights when ya saw me talkin' to her, she was askin' if she could get to know ya." They're quiet for a bit, eating, and Trinity looks a bit overwhelmed. Understandably. Her mother had just thrown rather a lot of life-changing information at her. Eventually, Mo continues talking. "I'll not tell ya specifics - that's Anabelle's decision ta tell ya or not, but you'd be better off not countin' on Jackson, your brother, to be as welcomin'." Still processing everything, Trinity only nods to indicate that she heard.

Two weeks after she'd left, Anabelle pulls back into the spot that had been deemed 'hers' on the side of the street at the "back" door to the Belfast clubhouse. Her bags are heavier than she's used to, having been re-arranged to accommodate two bottles of Scotch that she isn't going to be insulting by trying to pronounce the name of, courtesy Chibs' little cousin. Jamie, as she'd been told to call him, had told her that it's Chibs' favorite and insisted that one is for Chibs and the other is for her both as a welcome and a thank you for carrying the other back to his cousin for him. Packed between them is a thick envelope containing a couple letters from family and a stack of photos.

It only takes her walking in the door before Paddy is snatching her bags off her and telling her she'll be in the same room as before as he trots off up the stairs.

With the prospect so occupied, a member around her age, Dizzy, immediately pours her a welcoming shot, joking that she needed some "proper" whiskey after more than a week of "that rancid piss they'll 'ave been pouring down ya".

Anabelle doesn't have the heart to tell them she'd take dark rum over both scotch and whiskey any day.

Later, she's up in her room, fresh out of the shower and in her sleep clothes of soft cotton shorts and one of Happy's tee shirts, trying to muster up the energy to take her miniscule amount of other clothes downstairs to the room off the kitchen where she'd been told there is a laundry room. A tentative knock at on her door has her curious. Opening it, she finds Trinity on the other side, looking nervous. Anabelle immediately opens the door wider and motions the girl in, realizing Mo must've told her while Anabelle had been away.

They settle, cross-legged, on opposite ends of the bed, just looking at each other for a couple minutes.

"I don' know what ta say." Trinity breaks their silence eventually.

"That's okay. I don't really know either." Anabelle assures the younger girl…. Her little sister.

They'd already done the standard stuff that people who move in the same general circles say when they first meet, and it's been years since Anabelle had really gotten to know someone on purpose. Deciding cheesy is better than awkward, she picks the first random question that comes to mind. "What's your favorite smell?"

Trinity blinks a few times, before grinning and answering. "Leather and sandalwood."

Anabelle grins back, though more sadly. "So, you remember him, then?"

The other girl's smile gets confused. "My… our… da? No."

"Oh." her older sister replies. "Are you sure? Because that's what he always smelled like. The leather from his kutte, and he used sandalwood oil instead of cologne."

Trinity's breath catches as a flash of memory appears where before there had been only a blur of toddlerhood. Sitting in a man's lap, leaning against his chest with her head on his shoulder, playing with the edge of the leather he's wearing, his deep voice rumbling through her as he talks to someone over her head. She vaguely feels the beginnings of tears pooling in her eyes, melting into her sister's embrace as the other girl murmurs into her hair, "I have trouble remembering him too."

The morning she is preparing to leave, Anabelle has breakfast with Mo and Trini. In the middle of it, there is a frantic-sounding knocking on the door. Mo opens it and exclaims, "Heavens, girl, what are ya doin' here without an escort?" as she pulls a girl inside quickly, bolting the door behind her.

"I was careful, Mo! But I don't have much time!" Anabelle doesn't have time to wonder why the girl looks familiar as she rushes over to the table, pulling a book out of her bag. The girl locks eyes with Anabelle as she shoves the book into her hands. "I know there's empty pages yet, but tell him I will get a new one an' keep writin' and find a way to get the next to him as soon as I can." The girl hugs her fiercely once before turning and hurrying back to the door with a "See you at church, Trini!" as she unbolts it and jogs back out, her footsteps echoing on the narrow stairs.

It's only a moment before Mo has the house phone in hand, dialling a number from memory. "It's me. Aye, she was here, but hardly for a moment." Mo looks over to Anabelle. "I'm not sure…. Fi, ya keep the girl on such a short leash, are ya really shocked she runs off occasionally? She's 14, ya got ta -" She is apparently cut off. There's a sigh. "Well, she run off nearly as soon as she got here, so who knows? Aye, I'll let ya know if we see 'er again." The woman shakes her head as she puts the headset back in the cradle.

Trinity brings Anabelle's attention to the book that's still in her hands. "She's been tryin' ta figure out how ta get that ta ya to take to 'er da since ya got 'ere."

Looking down at it, Anabelle sees that it isn't a book so much as a nice, leather-bound journal. "Oh…" things start clicking "Was that Kerrianne?"

Both of the other ladies nods the affirmative and they all go back to their breakfast. When they are done, there's a round of confirming everyone has everyone else's contact information, and a couple long hugs goodbye before Anabelle makes her way back to the clubhouse to say her goodbyes and thank yous there.

An afternoon and night are spent in Dublin, at the Saints' clubhouse, as they had gotten word from their stateside brothers that putting her up for a night is worth having her in to do some ink, then she's on her way back to Galway, and securing early-boarding for the ship that will take her home, as it is scheduled to depart early the next morning, and she doesn't want to risk missing it. With no other passengers to keep her company this time, she spends the six and a half day voyage drawing, sleeping, and, when the sea is calm enough, inking a couple of the sailors working on the ship.

By the time the ship is docked in Boston, she has gotten her sleep schedule more or less back to normal, and she stops only long enough to change her british and Irish pounds for dollars at a bank just outside the port, then make sure her tank is full and send a text, before she takes off in a south-south-westerly direction.

Riding hard and stopping only for gas and sleep, it is just under two days before she pulls into the lot of the El Paso charter of Lone Star MC. You'd think that the uber-macho Texas men would be even more against females riding than the Sons, but exactly the opposite is true. There's not many, but Lone Star has a number of women who are full members, and most of the guys don't so much as blink at a woman pulling up on a bike, not giving a damn what's between someone's legs so long as they can handle their bike, their gun, and their liquor.

Anabelle is greeted by Joey (whose given name is Andrew, but she's never asked about it), who tells her that Hap is out with some of the others, dealing with business, and isn't expected back until late. She's glad she had texted ahead, as she is handed the spare key to Happy's borrowed room and lugs her rather heavier than normal bags inside. The Glasgow and Belfast guys have a friendly rivalry, and Belfast wasn't about to be outdone by their near brothers, so, in addition to the two bottles of scotch, envelope of letters and photos, and Kerrianne's journal, Paddy had added a second envelope from his mum with a letter and photos, and a third envelope of yet MORE pictures from Seamus's Old Lady, as well as two bottles of what looks like high-end whiskey, but what the hell does Anabelle know? Tacked on at the last moment from Mo had been a packet of biscuits and two tins of loose-leaf tea, with promises to ship more over periodically.

Anabelle's feeling like a pack-mule more than anything. It's not the first time she's played courier between clubhouses for members, but if she ever makes a trip like that again, she'll have to remember to bring an extra bag to strap to her bitch seat on the way home.

The following July, Anabelle has a two-and-a-half week break between Chicago and Miami, and Happy gets a week of R&R from Quinn. They rent a cabin on a beach outside of Charlotte.

Anabelle likes the wide, wrap-around porch with it's comfortable wicker furniture, but Happy's favorite part of the place is the gigantic bathroom. They'd spent two hours last night in the jacuzzi tub, and, right now, they are making VERY good use of the massive, walk-in shower stall with fancy shower heads dripping warm water down on them like a heavy rain.

Anabelle is against the wall, facing it, with her hands over her head where Happy had placed them, whimpering as her nipples pucker while they brush against the cool tile. Her feet are set apart and she's arching her back and raising up on her toes to give him access.

Happy only keeps slowly running a finger between her hot, wet entrance and just shy of her clit. "You know what you have to do." his low voice rasps. She lets out a louder whine, but doesn't give in, and he takes a moment to appreciate her body. He doesn't dare say anything to her, but she's gained a little weight, and he loves it. Her tits had gotten bigger, now filling his hands, and her hips had widened even more, her ass and thighs rounding out and gaining the slightest softness that they hadn't had before.

Tired of waiting, his free hand swiftly smacks against her ass, though not as hard as either of them want.

"Haaappp…." she whines.

He pulls his hands away completely. "What do you say?"

"Please, sir."

He rewards her by going back to stroking up and down her slit, a little firmer this time. "Please what?"

Her hips jerk slightly, trying to get some pressure SOMEWHERE. "Please, sir, will you fuck me?"

"Hm…." Happy pretends to think about it. "I don't know, little girl, it took you a long time to remember your manners today." The flat of two of his fingers press over her sopping cunt without entering her at all, and she lets out a choked gasp.

Her forehead thumps slightly as she puts her head against the wall in front of her. "I'm sorry, sir. What will my punishment be?" Anabelle's voice is strained.

He gathers her dripping hair off her back, gathering it over her right shoulder instead, so he can see the recently-finished piece of ink on her back as well as his happy face on the side of her neck. A proper smack against her ass this time, and she gasps again. Happy alternates sides, and, nine cracks of his open hand later, her ass is glowing a rosy pink, and he's watching the muscles of her back, strong from years of riding and and moderate manual labor, twitch underneath the dark, feathered wings etched on the skin there.

The sound coming out of her mouth is a keening moan, punctuated by sharp intakes of breath with every spank.

"I think that is good enough for forgetting. Unless you think it should be more?"

A slightly frantic shake of her head. "No, sir! I think that's enough!"

"Good girl," Happy smiles as he gently caresses down her back, barely grazing his rough hands over the now-tender flesh of her butt. "Now, what was it you were asking for?"

"Please, sir, please fuck my tight, wet pussy!" she finally starts properly begging.

The smile becomes a smirk that she can't see. "Oh? You want my thick, hard cock inside that hot little cunt of yours?"

"Yes, sir!"

"You want me to fuck you hard against this wall?"

"Please, sir?!"

"Too bad." Happy answers, relishing the desperate sob she lets out for a moment before he carefully drops to his knees. Spreading the flesh of her ass and thighs, he enjoys the view of her open in front of him, rivulettes of water running over her slick, swollen flesh. Leaning in, he licks a slow trail starting at her clit and working back until his tongue slips into her channel.

That desperate whining sound he loves is echoing slightly around the shower stall along with the sound of falling water, and he knows he's moving too slow for her to get any relief. Taking pity, he moves forward again, sucking her clit into his mouth and flicking the tip of his tongue over the swollen little nub. This sets her off into those little gasping moans that he is still convinced he'll never get tired of hearing, and he starts alternating his attention between eating her out and teasing her clit.

After several minutes of this treatment, her legs are beginning to shake and he pulls back to admire the view again, this time with some added pinkness on her inner thighs where the stubble on his face had been rubbing. Getting back to his feet, he turns her around, wrapping her tightly in his arms and holding her as she leans against him, shaking. Kissing her forehead softly, he runs a hand over her hair saying, "You're being such a good girl now, not cumming without permission."

When he feels the shuddering calm a little, he moves them again, bending his knees to grab the back of her thighs firmly and lifting to pin her against the wall. Anabelle's legs wrap around him automatically. He kisses her hard for a moment before pulling back slightly and waiting. When her eyes open, they are slightly glazed over, but she makes eye contact with him.

"No more holding back. Now, you are going to cum as many times as you can." Happy says as he slips into her, not giving her time to adjust before he starts pounding into her hard and fast. As long as he's had her on the edge, it's only moments before she's convulsing around him and letting out a wordless cry of relief.

He doesn't let up at all, and any time she starts to relax, coming down off of one wave of ecstasy, he adjusts his angle or reaches between them to pinch her increasingly over-sensitive nub, sending her crashing into her next orgasm.

Hap can tell when she starts riding the line between pleasure and pain, because grabbing hard at his shoulders turns into clawing at them with her short nails and the pitch of her slightly hoarse voice goes up. Only then does he pay any attention to his own oncoming orgasm. He'd been focussing on getting her off, but, when he turns his attention to the impossibly hot, wet pussy clenching around his dick, and the nails scratching at his back, and her slick skin sliding against him, it's not long before he's shooting his load into her as he bites down on her shoulder, lightning racing up his spine and setting off an intense white light behind his eyes.

Now, they're both shuddering as Happy lets go of Anabelle's thighs and she carefully settles her feet back on the floor. Soft kisses and gentle touches, along with lukewarm water, bring both of them down, and Anabelle reaches over to turn the water off just before it goes fully cold.

Stepping out of the shower, Happy grabs a towel and wraps it around his girl before reaching for another one and gently starting to dry her hair as she wraps arms around his waist and leans on him, legs still a bit shaky. Once the long, light brown hair is only damp, that towel gets hung on the bar, and he removes the one around her torso, running it softly over the rest of her body before using it to quickly dry himself off and hanging it as well.

Once they have crawled back into bed and pulled the blankets over them, Happy pulls her back into his chest, holding her tightly to him. "I love you." he says softly.

"I love you." is her quiet response as she drifts off to sleep. Her left hand has settled over his wrist as it lay over her stomach, and the metal of the ring there catches some ambient light coming in from outside, glinting softly. Twisting his own, matching ring briefly, his still thinks that, even if them being legally married was mostly for practical reasons, he is one lucky asshole to have bagged a wife like her.

He'd gotten stabbed in Oklahoma City. It hadn't been serious - more of a deep cut, really, since he'd partially dodged - and it had been lucky that he didn't need to be under general anesthesia to get sewn up, because, while his power of attorney is now with Quinn, Quinn had been all the way up in Toronto at the time, and his mother and aunt had been in Mexico visiting some of their close cousins.

This event had prompted the discussion, and it had quickly been determined that marriage would be the fastest and easiest way for one of them to have the legal authority to make decisions for the other in emergency situations. There would also be the added insurance of Anabelle being able to be there for Rosa and vice-versa if he couldn't make it to them for some reason.

Decision reached, they had gone out and found a pair of simple, blackened stainless steel rings before piling Rosa and his Tia Maria into one of their cars and driving them all down to the courthouse, having not given either woman a bit of warning. They were, of course, irate that they hadn't gotten to plan a wedding, but got over it quick enough when Happy pointed out that he could've brought a couple club members to be witnesses instead. So, Anabelle had become Anabelle Teller-Lowman, and they'd spent a few days in a hotel to approximate a honeymoon before heading off for their summertime schedules.

The next morning, they are both on their cell phones. Happy is done first, having gotten all the details he needs before he heads for New Orleans in two days, and he listens as Anabelle apparently finishes up cancelling her appearance at one of her normal conventions. She hangs up and takes an eraser to a few days in September on her planner, then flips a couple pages and screws up her face like she's seriously thinking about something.

"Don't like Philly any more?" he asks, curious.

She sighs before answering. "My body is feeling run down lately. I think I need a break."

This worries him. She's an independent, extremely capable woman, and he rarely gets concerned about her looking after herself. "You see a doctor?"

Half a shrug. "There's not really anything to see one about. I mean, my body is changing a bit, but I'm also starting to get older. That's perfectly normal for a woman in her mid-twenties. The only other thing is a general sense of fatigue, and that is explained away easily by all the travel. I mean, most months I log more miles than you, and you're a Nomad. The closest thing I've had to a break in the last five years was Ireland, and, even there, I was riding, seeing the sites, moving between clubhouses…."

She's right, it makes sense. Doesn't stop him worrying, though.

Anabelle looks over at him and sees his concern. Setting her phone and planner aside, she moves to sit on his lap, winding her arms around his shoulders as his hands rest at her hips. "I'm fine, love. I'm going to work through August, then head to Bakersfield and let Rosa spoil me for a few months. It's not like we're hard-up for money or anything."

More truth. Being a Nomad means dirty, dangerous jobs, and corresponding pay, which he pays a trusted stock broker to carefully wash through investments, which also earn a moderate amount. Anabelle has made a name for herself, having, at this point, even been commissioned to fly overseas a couple times to be featured at high-profile, international shops. The cost of supplies is fairly steady, so her fees going up with her increased reputation is nearly straight profit. Combined with their extremely frugal lifestyle, their bank accounts, both individual and mutual, are far from hurting.

It's his turn to sigh. "Promise you'll go to the doctor if it gets any worse." he demands.

"I promise." she replies, leaning down to kiss him.

It's the end of August, and Anabelle is doing a cleanout of her bags to dump any miscellaneous garbage or stuff the has made it's way to the bottom of them. Pulling out her other pair of thick jeans and the hoodie from one bag, she picks out the random pens and colored pencils that have somehow ended up in there, and collects all the pieces of paper, quickly sorting through them and throwing away a few receipts and a couple flyers and other crap, before sticking the things she needs to keep into the front of her planner. Scooping out the remaining detritus, she throws away a few pieces of plastic and other garbage, and sets aside the handful of tampons to get put in her toiletry bag. Re-folding the clothes back in, she pulls the other saddle bag over, pulling out her three shirts, two pairs of cotton shorts, and weeks' worth each of panties and socks before reaching her toiletry bag. Making sure there's nothing in there that needs to be thrown out she grabs the tampons and moves her hand to dump them in the small bag, but stopping before it actually gets there.

Looking down at the wads of cotton she tries to remember when her last period had been. She only bothers tracking the ones around Christmas, because her annual visit to Planned Parenthood happens between Christmas and New Years. It takes awhile for her to remember, as she'd never been regular, and she makes a face as a corresponding event comes to mind. She's gone this long before, but… fuck.

Leaning over to the bedside table in her hotel room, she grabs the phone book out of the drawer and finds the couple nearest clinics, calling to see which one accepts her Blue Cross insurance.

His phone is going straight to voicemail when she tries to call him from the gas station in Nebraska, so she hangs up and scrolls through her contacts and hitting the 'call' button as she gets to the number for the Denver clubhouse. Thankfully recognizing the voice that answers as that of JJ, the Denver Secretary, she gives her name and asks if Happy's still there.

"You been tryin' to call him, hon?" he asks, chuckling. "Dipshit ran over his own phone, hasn't had a chance to get a new one yet." Anabelle joins in the laughter. "Want me to fetch 'im for ya?"

"Nah, I just wanted to make sure he hadn't been sent somewhere else since I last talked to him. Can you let him know I'm about five hours out? I just stopped in Kearney for gas."

"Will do, sweetheart, see ya in a bit. Ride safe, now."

It's after 2 in the morning when she pulls into the guest spot at the side of the SAMDEN clubhouse, but he's waiting outside for her. The lot is quiet, only a handful of bikes lined up. It's 2 am on a Tuesday, so she isn't terribly surprised. He's kissing her as soon as she's off her bike, and she feels herself melt into it.

He carries her saddle bags as he leads them inside and to his dorm. When she's settled in, he makes a move to start pulling her clothes off, but Anabelle holds a hand up to his chest to stop him, chewing her lip.

"You know how I promised to go to the doctor if anything got worse?"

Happy's demeanor changes instantly, tensing with worry, eyes running over her. "What's wrong?"

She pushes him gently to sit him down on the bed before leaning over to her backpack, unzipping a side pocket to pull out a small piece of paper and turning to hand it to him, glossy side up.

Happy stares uncomprehendingly for a couple minutes before looking up at her worried face, then back down at the ultrasound printout in his hand. Tired of just staring at him waiting for a reaction, Anabelle quickly strips off her clothes, tossing them into the laundry basket where she sees most of his clothes waiting to be washed. He still hasn't reacted, so she crawls past him into bed and is about to pull up the comforter when he lays down beside her. Propping himself up on an elbow, he holds the ultrasound photo in that hand, while the other rests low on her belly.

"This is in here?" his tone is almost childlike.

Resting a hand over the one on her stomach, she answers, "Yeah."

Happy turns and gingerly sets the photo on the nightstand, as if it is the most precious thing in the world, before rolling back to her and cupping her face in his large hands. "We're having a baby?"

"Well, so far I'm doing most of the work, but, yeah," she cracks with a smile.

The smile on his face is the biggest she's ever seen, and he doesn't even get back at her for the wisecrack, instead scootching himself down so his head rests at the curve of her waist and talking to a spot somewhere under her belly button. "Hi little one. I'm your daddy…." and placing a soft kiss there, making her giggle.

"When….?" Hap doesn't seem to know quite what to ask.

"Doc said I'm right at three months already, so probably my birthday. We can find out the sex in another month or so, and we can expect an early March due date."

They talk for a bit, quickly settling on San Bernardino to settle down. Charming is still off the table, and SAMDINO is only fourish hours away, so she can still see Opie's now-1-year-old twins, Kenny and Ellie, who are also her godchildren, and it's only an hour and a half from Bakersfield and Rosa.

Before further plans can be made, Anabelle drifts off to sleep. Hap holds her, too keyed up now to sleep himself, thinking about the little alien-looking thing from the ultrasound that's in her tummy, cradled under his hand, making mental lists he'll have to write down at some point of all the things that need to get done.

Rosa and Maria are over the moon, and Trinity is excited to be auntie Trini, planning a trip to come stay with them for a few weeks the next summer.

Both of them are well-known around the club now, and word spreads quickly. As soon as they have put a down payment on a house in San Bernadino, baby gifts begin arriving by way of the clubhouse there. Onsies, blankets, hats, even tee shirts for Anabelle that had room to accommodate baby bumps, and a motorcycle mobile. All of it is in the club colors of black, white, and blue.

Anabelle secures a chair at a local parlor easily, packing as much work as possible in around doctor's appointments to account for at least a few months of maternity leave. She keeps working right up to two days before her due date.

Apparently as punctual as both of his parents, Johnathan Harold Lowman arrives at 8:37 am on his due date after a quick three-hour labor. Unable to pry the baby out of Happy's hands, Anabelle had to get Happy seated on the hospital bed behind her so he could hold Johnny through their son's first feeding.

It's two weeks later that a group from SAMCRO is in San Bernardino, stopping to check in and stay for a night on their way home from a run to Tucson. The usual feast is laid out in the bar, guys moving through in a line grabbing a bit of everything before the party begins.

A few minutes after he's settled Happy hears a comment from Jackson a few people down the table.

"Man, this meatloaf tastes just like my mom's! How the hell did the Old Ladies get her recipe out of her? She says it's going to the grave with her!"

Happy and Opie both look at the blond man incredulously before meeting each other's eyes.

Jackson notices the exchange. "What?"

"Anabelle, genius. She knows it's always been your favorite, so she made it for you." Opie answers.

Jax looks blankly at the younger man, then glances around as if to confirm he hadn't seen her here, and turns his face back down to look at his plate of food. "Oh…"

There's several slightly uncomfortable looks between those that heard the exchange. The guys here had yet to say shit about Hap having an Old Lady with her own bike, but whether that's because they don't care or they're terrified of what he'd do to them for saying something is anyone's guess. Regardless, the fact that she had gone out of her way to cook and drop off several dishes for an event that she knows she isn't welcome at, despite this technically being her home charter now, less than two weeks after having a baby, for a brother that she hasn't spoken to in years, impresses them.

For his part, Jax lets himself feel like an ass for several minutes while he slowly finishes eating. There had been a couple years in high school that he and Anabelle had almost gotten along again. They'd never been chummy, but being with Tara had made it easier to let go of his anger over his brother dying and realize that his sister wasn't to blame for any of it, and they had at least been able to hang out together, with Opie, and even be pretty decent to each other. Then, Tara had left, and he'd started his prospect year, and it had gone back to being like those two years had never happened.

Then, she does something like this. Word had gotten up to Charming that she had embraced her position as an Old Lady of SAMDINO and even whipped some of the other ladies and sweetbutts into shape, just as she'd been taught to since she was a child. Other than the meatloaf, he can see her influence in the whole event so far - organized in a Gemma-like fashion, but with a relaxed air that his mother doesn't have, which was always present at events that Anabelle had helped with-, and he knows she isn't here solely due to his presence.

The other thing Jax does in this time is realize he's disappointed she isn't here. He'd wanted to meet his new nephew, and check on his long-absent sister. He hadn't been consciously thinking about it, but, now that he feels the disappointment, he can't deny that the thought had been lingering at the back of his mind.

If anyone else notices how subdued he is through the rest of SAMCRO's visit, they don't say anything.

Happy feels helpless as he watches his wife quietly storm around their living room, tidying things that are already in order.

Johnny is now 14 months old, and for the last 6 or so, Anabelle had gotten increasingly more quiet and reserved. Not knowing how to deal with this new, unexpected side of her, Happy had found himself coming home later and later, to which Anabelle had responded by taking to sleeping in one of the cushy recliners in front of the tv instead of their bed. At first, he had moved her to their bed when he came home at night,but when she had begun refusing to touch him in the most plutonic of manners there, he had given up that endeavor.

They'd just had a clipped discussion that was half talking about their financial situation and half her sniping at him for not being home enough, and all Happy could think to do was turn and grab his wallet and keys from the door where he'd dropped them when he came in less than an hour ago.

"Enjoy it." The bitter tone makes her sound disturbingly like Gemma.

Turning back, Hap asked, "What?" trying to figure out how he should be reacting.

"You get to leave." Anabelle turns to him, hugging her arms around her middle. When he still looks confused, she goes on. "You go to work at the shop, then go out on club business, and hang out at the clubhouse, and if shit gets tense you can take off for a ride to clear your head. I go to work for two afternoons a week, and drive a cage between here, the grocery store, and the clubhouse." Happy feels a gut-churning mix of comprehension and shame as he begins to understand. She doesn't stop talking. "I love you, and I love Johnny, and I love taking care of the club, but I'm turning into MY MOTHER, Hap."

Dropping the keys and wallet again, he strips off his kutte, realizing for the first time that he hadn't taken it off to begin with. Walking over to his girl, he wraps her up in his arms and pulls her tight against him and drops a long kiss against the crown of her head. She doesn't relax, and he doesn't blame her. They'd talked about this, years ago, years before they were together even. He'd always known she'd be an amazing Old Lady, as devoted to the club as she is, and knowing it as well as she does, but even then, he'd known that that could never be ALL that she is. He'd managed to forget, somehow, that the road is in her blood. And, being the loving mother and Old Lady she is, she'd tried to limit herself to that, for him and Johnny, and it was slowly eating her alive.

Happy pulls back enough to move one hand to cup her face, bringing her eyes up to meet his. "This shit with the club will be clear by Friday, then I'm requesting a few days off. We'll figure it out, girl. Think you can stay for that long?" He hopes his tone is sincere, instead of sarcastic.

After staring at him for a long moment, Anabelle nods her confirmation.

"Good. Now, you think I can maybe sleep next to my wife tonight? I fucking miss her." It's her turn to look a little ashamed. She hadn't exactly been handling things in the most mature fashion either. The nod comes quicker this time, and they split to go around the living and kitchen areas of the ranch-style house, checking doors and windows are locked and turning out lights before they meet back up at the entrance to the hallway, both peeking into their son's room to check on him before continuing down to their room to share a bed for the first time in nearly three months.

Five months later, things are better. They had hammered out a rough schedule and coordinated with Rosa and Maria to come down to stay and help with taking care of Johnny, and Anabelle is back at conventions. Not nearly as many as before, but a half-dozen a year in various parts of the country. Enough for her to get a few days riding before and after, and have some freedom, some alone time on the road, before coming back and lavishing her husband and son with attention.

One day, when she'd been home nearly two weeks from her last convention of the year, Hap comes home earlier than usual, with a solemn expression, and she knows something has happened.

Setting up Johnny in his room to play by himself for awhile takes a couple minutes, then Anabelle's sinking down in a chair across the dining room table from Hap. "Just tell me."

"Bobby called. Ocho's dead, Jax is in the hospital, Kyle's a rat…." Hap trails off, knowing the next part will hit her the hardest.

"What." she demands.

With a sigh, he continues. "Opie got picked up on a job."

Anabelle's eyes slip shut and her hands ball into fists. There's several moments of silence as she collects herself. "How bad is it."

Hap rubs a hand over his head as he responds. "Not sure yet. Clay asked for whoever can be spared to be sent up until Jax is back on his feet, at least a couple weeks. I volunteered." He watches her shoulders sag and keeps talking. "Bobby said havin' you up there would be a help, too. 'Parently, Donna and Piney aint takin' it great, and Gemma will hardly leave Jax's hospital room."

The couple exchange a long look, and she eventually squares her shoulders. Without a word, she gets up and moves to the kitchen, making several sandwiches for them to eat before they leave and have in the car for Johnny on the car ride up, throwing out all the perishables that aren't getting immediately used as she goes. After scarfing down two ham sammies, Happy leaves her to her preparations, emptying the now-full garbage can, and goes out into the garage to check over the cage she and Johnny would be in, making sure nothing needs seeing to before they set out.

A scant 20 minutes later, Hap has topped up fluids in both the car and his bike, loaded up the single duffle bag that Anabelle had packed for the three of them - most of it being Johnny's things, since neither of the adults had ever shed their minimalistic habits from travelling full time - and Anabelle had called the owner of the shop she works at a couple days a week, telling him a family emergency had come up and she'd be out of town for at least a couple weeks even as she strapped Johnny into his car seat; then they are pulling out and heading to Charming, Hap leading the way on his bike.

They make good time, and are pulling into the lot of Teller-Morrow just under four hours later. At just after 7 pm, the garage is closed, and it looks like not many guys are here, which means croweaters and hangarounds are scarce. Anabelle parks and moves to get Johnny out of the car seat immediately. He doesn't mind the car, so long as it's moving, but once they stop, he only gives about two minutes of leeway before he's screaming bloody murder to be let out.

With who his parents are, you can imagine the immensity of NOT SURPRISED that that incites in people.

Happy pulls the duffle from her trunk and slams it just as she is closing the back door, Johnny balanced on one hip, and they move together toward the clubhouse. Passing the bike rail, she notes Clay, Tig, and Bobby's bikes a short distance from Hap's, and another, frankly, shittier bike way down the end that she assumes belongs to the current prospect. Walking inside, she immediately sees the Chapel doors are closed and knows that the remaining club officers are pow-wowing. Not seeing or hearing the prospect, she looks around the room to find the place more or less clean, but not to the standard it should be if he doesn't have any guys here actively fucking things up for him to re-clean.

Eyebrow raised, she meets Happy's eye and purses her lips before moving down the hall to the dorms, noting what sounded like some video game coming from the smallest dorm, and finding Kyle's old room easily, dropping her bag in there as Hap follows her with their duffle, setting it in front of the now-empty dresser, which still had half it's drawers pulled out. Clearly, the prospect hadn't even touched the place since Kyle had hastily packed his shit once his patches had been stripped.

Still incredulous, Anabelle turned on her heel and marched back down the hall to the tiny prospect dorm, closest to the main bar area, turning the knob and walking in without knocking, making the kid jump hard enough to fall out of the chair he was sitting in about six inches from the tv.

"Wh-who are you?!" he asked, picking himself up.

"Right now, I am your worst fucking nightmare." Anabelle answered, toddler perched on one hip and free hand going to rest on the other. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Club officers are meeting, and you are in your dorm, fucking around with video games instead of cleaning the bar? And don't even get me fucking started on the rat's room - have you even looked in there since he left? If all his shit's gone like it should be, then why are you sitting on your ass instead of going over it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure it's ready? And Ocho's dorm? You think his stuff's going to magically disappear? This is the mother charter and they have called for reinforcements from out of town, you think it's acceptable to put visiting brothers up in rooms with dirty sheets?" Her volume never went above a normal speaking one, but the tone is 100% Queen Bitch.

The kid looks about ready to piss himself, but somehow he finds the balls to spit out, "You think, whoever you are, you can just walk in here and start ordering me around?!"

Not acknowledging the question, Anabelle only turns her head slightly to talk over her shoulder. "Hey, babe, I'm pretty sure the prospect has lost door privileges." Then she takes a last, contemptuous look around the closet they call a prospect room, and turns on her heel. Still addressing Hap, she continues, "If he's this incompetent, then I should really go out to the office and start clearing that up. Once that is let go, it takes weeks to get back in order."

Juice follows her out and hits hallway just in time to see Hap pulling her in for a kiss and reaching to take the child from her, and his eyes go wide. She's the Killer's Old Lady? Fuck.

He watches Anabelle as she hands off the kid then moves over to the bar, reaching under with practiced ease to grab the spare garage keys that are kept on a hook there.

"Get to fuckin' work, prospect." Hap grinds out, startling Juice again. Juice moves to start down toward the dorms she had mentioned, knowing he would also need to go over the other empty room, not sure how many brothers would be visiting. "The fuck do you think you're going?" Hap's voice stops him this time.

Pointing at the rooms, the kid stutters out, "Cleaning- uh - do-"

Happy cuts him off with a glare, and a finger pointed at the kids' door. "Nah, that first, then the rest." Happy crowds close to Juice, nearly sending Juice into a panic attack. Lowly, Hap tells him, "And if you know what's good for you, you will treat my Old Lady like she's Gemma, Jax, and Jesus all in one."

Moving back down the hall, he grabs the small bag of Johnny's favorite toys from their bag and makes sure the rest of their minimal stuff is in a corner where Juice won't have any reason to touch it while he's cleaning the room. A minute later, Happy is setting Johnny and his toys down in the sitting area near the jukebox, silently chuckling to himself that his girl is going to Gemma to shame the next couple weeks, and through it all, he's going to be equal parts annoyed and amused.

He has a feeling that, in a couple weeks time, Gemma's going to regret having taught her so well.

The office isn't as bad as Anabelle had expected, but there's still plenty to do. Gemma had never been a fan of filing, after all, so it tends to build up, especially when there's too much going on for ther to make a prospect do it.

Making quick work of the work orders that had been left on the desk by the mechanics that day and yesterday, she organizes them into piles to differentiate what needs to be entered into the computer, which cars haven't been picked up yet and still need signatures for, and what she needs to harass guys about the following day to get enough detail to properly invoice.

Anabelle hasn't done this in over a decade, but so little has changed that she feels weirdly young again.

Sighing, she turns to the overflowing box of paperwork to be filed away in the big, slightly rusty metal cabinet that is set against the wall and settles herself on the floor to put all it in alphabetical and chronological order, cursing her mother (not for the first time) for not just keeping up on it daily.

Nearly two hours later, she pulls herself back up to a standing position, clutching the A through G papers, and yanks open the top drawer of the filing cabinet. As the metal groans, so does Anabelle. Right that moment, she'd bet anything that Gemma hasn't archived anything in at least three years. The files are all so stuffed that she immediately knows she won't be able to cram a single sheet of paper in. Deciding it's time for a break, she gathers up all the current papers that are in neat piles on the floor, careful to keep everything in order, and stacks them back in the box from whence they'd come, before walking out of the office, deciding she can start the archiving process tomorrow.

Walking back into the clubhouse, she's greeted by the sight of Tig sitting on the floor playing with her son, while Clay's voice drifts out the open Chapel doors and she faintly hears Bobby's voice coming from the direction of the dorms. So, Clay is going over something with Hap, and Bobby is supervising the clean-out of Ocho's room.

"Well, look who that is! Welcome home, sugar!" Tig exclaims in a teasing voice, and she bends down to plant a kiss on his cheek as she reaches the area.

"Mama! Pay car!" Johnny says, thrusting a matchbox car wrapped in one of his slightly chubby fists in her direction.

Instead, she kisses his head and briefly tickles one of his feet, making him giggle. "Not right now, bubby. Play with Tig." With that, Anabelle straightens back up and heads to the bar to get herself a drink.

As she's pouring her whiskey coke, Happy and Clay emerge from the Chapel and head her direction. Gesturing with the bottle of whiskey, she silently asks if they want one. Clay declines, but Hap nods his head, and she pours him one neat.

"Thanks for coming up to help out, hon." Clay says "Gem's refusing to leave Jax's side. We're four guys down, and none of the other Old Ladies are really up for handling shit around here."

Handing Happy his drink, Anabelle emerges from behind the bar and sits on one of the stools. "How's he doing?"

Shrugging, Clay answers, "Coulda been a lot worse. Docs say he's lucky he didn't break his hip, but it's still fucked up pretty bad. Won't be doin' much the next four weeks."

"Well, I'm sure the croweaters will make sure he's comfortable." Anabelle says with a smirk, making both men chuckle.

"I gotta go try and get Gemma to go home. She slept on a chair in Jackson's room the past two nights."

"Good luck." she says as he turns to stride out, heading for his bike and St. Thomas. Turning to Happy, she leans into his strong frame, and his free hand immediately circles around her to rub gently her lower back. If the prospect's half the idiot he seems to be, him and the office are gonna keep me plenty busy."

Knowing Gemma isn't always great at office upkeep, he asks, "That bad?"

She shakes her head, slightly. "Not exactly. I'll have to spend a couple days archiving the old paperwork. Once that's done, it won't be horrible, but the club being short on guys means the shop being short on hands, which means pissed off customers. I'm also going to have to keep an eye on Donna - she won't let anyone from the club look out for her, not until she gets over the anger, at least. Probably have to figure out what's up with Piney, too, and I should really go see Otto while I'm up here. Luann will wanna steal me away for a girls day, and I should take her up on it. I have a different standard to hit here…."

Happy kisses her head and says "Let me know if I can help." Even as she smiles a confirmation up at him, he knows that the only thing she MIGHT accept help with is Johnny. Asking him to step in on anything else will be a sign of weakness. SAMDINO is more relaxed than SAMCRO in a lot of ways, maybe because it's bigger, almost all of it's business is straight.

Then, there's the fact that, in a number of ways, she outranks him here, which he isn't used to. This is her home charter, her family, and all of the expectations they have of her also come with a proportionate amount of respect and standing. He is theoretically at least her equal, since he's patched, but this isn't his home charter. In fact, he'd spent so little time here over the years that, when he had shown up the first time as a Nomad, he'd been introduced to people as 'Anabelle's Old Man, Happy'. Shit is different now, but people have long memories about some things.

His girl downs the rest of her drink and leaves it on the bar for the prospect to deal with when he's done in Ocho's room, then moves back over to the couches, telling Johnny it's time to clean up his toys, and handing them to him for him to put in the little backpack himself. Once that is done, they say goodnight to Tig, and Happy tips the last drops of his own drink into his mouth as he follows them down the hall and into the room she had immediately claimed.

He doesn't know if she's actually psychic, or if she had heard some of the girls that move between Dino and Charming talking, or had some other way to know which room the rat had been in without checking when they'd arrived, but he does understand why she'd chosen that room. It isn't one with an attached bathroom, but it is decent sized and right next to the less-busy of the two hallway bathrooms, and it's at the very end of the hall, right across from the weight room he'd been working in that very first day they'd met. In the northeast corner of the building, it stays cool- not that heat is too much of an issue by this time of year, but still- And it's the quietest room in the clubhouse, furthest from the bar, not sharing walls with any other rooms, and with practically no foot traffic, it would be the closest they can get to privacy.

Hap shuts the door behind him and sees that fresh bedding is on the bed, with a few clean towels and washcloths stacked neatly on the dresser, which is shining like it had just been polished, and all the drawers ar shut neatly. The old, somewhat grimy carpet has fresh vacuum lines, and there's one of the pack-and-plays from the storage corner of the weight room set up against the outside wall on the far side of the dresser, with a pillow and a couple blankets for them to pick from folded inside.

Seeing Anabelle unpacking a set of Johnny's PJs and a Pull-Up, Happy strips out of his leather and picks up the toiletry bag that's already been set next to the towels, opening it to make sure everything he need is in there. He chuckles as he notices the little black velvet bag that she'd apparently thrown in at home, and her eyes turn to him curiously. Pulling the bag out, he tosses it to her with a smirk.

Realizing, Anabelle returns the smirk along with a shrug as if to say 'What?' then tucks it into the nearest bedside table drawer.

"Ready to shower, little man?" Happy asks his son, who nods and climbs down from where he'd been sitting on the bed, and grabs his PJs and Pull-Up. Hap grabs two towels and washcloths before leading him next door, locking the bathroom door behind them. 10 minutes later, Happy is standing in front of the sink with a towel around his waist, and Johnny is slowly getting dressed in his night clothes, distracted, as he always is, by watching his daddy shave.

Hap and Anabelle have privately laughed about how of course THEIR son is obsessed with knives and razors already.

Another five minutes, and they are walking back into the dorm room, Hap carrying Johnny in one arm, and the wet towels in the other. "There's my clean, handsome men!" Anabelle greets them before walking over and giving both of them an overly dramatic, noisy smooch hello, making the boy giggle and the man chuckle.

"Go'd potty in toile', mama!" Johhny told her proudly.

Knowing what age both her brothers and Opie had been in diapers until, Anabelle had started potty training early, and it's going pretty well so far. Holding her fist up in front of him, she said "Good job, dude!" and he reached his own little fist out to push knuckles against hers. "Kiss papa goodnight." She told him, even as she took his dirty clothes from his arms and dropped them in the laundry basket off to the side.

Johnny's arms wrap around Hap's neck and little lips press against his cheek, making him smile as he says "Sleep tight, little guy". Handing the kid off to Anabelle, he sees that two of the three blankets have been put down to provide extra padding to the thin mattress in the pack and play, and he hangs the wet towels and cloths up on the hooks on the closet door, watching as his wife tucks their son in carefully with both the remaining blanket and his favorite baby blanket. The dim, soft red nightlight is already plugged into the outlet between the dresser and the makeshift crib, so there are no complaints as Happy and Anabelle turn off the overhead light and retreat into the hallway, shutting the door behind them.

As they go back down the hall, Happy has what he has begun referring to as a 'dad thought', realizing for the first time exactly how long that hallway is, how far from his sleeping son he would be in an emergency. He starts to suspect, not for the first time, that is wife is somewhat psychic as she seems to sense what he is thinking, and grabs his hand, saying "He'll be fine. He knows how to climb out and come find someone if he needs anything."

She's right, as usual. This is not the first time they've stayed in a clubhouse, even if it's the first time Johnny had been in this particular one. Dino, while it earns mostly straight, still has it's fair share of danger, and lockdown had been called twice since Johnny had been born. Additionally, Johnny and Hap had ended up sleeping in a dorm a couple of times for various reasons in the past few months while Anabelle had been away for conventions. He's a smart little dude, and he knows that all he has to do is find someone he either knows or who is wearing a kut like his papa's, and he'll be taken care of.

As they pass what was Ocho's room, they see that it is now empty, bed bare and waiting for clean sheets. They continue on past the front bathroom and Anabelle stops in front of the laundry room, pushing the door open and immediately crossing her arms and saying "Jesus fucking Christ." in a very Gemma-esque way. Hap looks over her shoulder and immediately sees what she's talking about, and pastes a scowl across his face, mostly to keep from laughing at what's about to happen.

The shelves that are usually full of neatly folded sheets and towels are all but bare. He expects that the towels that had been left in their room were probably some of the last that had been clean. All of the linens not in use are piled in front of the washer, which appears to be empty.

Spinning around, she looks directly across and into the now-doorless prospect room. Not seeing him, she marches the last few feet out to the main room and finds him wiping down tables at a rather leisurely pace as Bobby and Tig play pool.

"Prospect!" she snaps, making the kid immediately look up, terrified, and the two guys to turn toward them. Happy grabs a beer from behind the bar and starts moving toward the pool table as his wife gets shit taken care of. "Why the fuck have no linens been washed in at least a week?"

"That's not my job! Sweetbutts do laundry!" the guy nearly squeaks out.

Bobby, Happy, and Tig all laugh. Having all been prospects at one time, they know what's coming.

"No, idiot, it's not." the kid starts spluttering something, but Anabelle ignored him. "It's the sweetbutts rancid pussies that dirty the sheets, so it's their job to take them off and put clean ones on the guys beds. It is YOUR JOB to make sure that there ARE clean sheets FOR the sweetbutts to put on the beds."

"But that's women's work!" is the next thing out of the kid's mouth.

Anabelle's arms slowly uncross, and her eyebrows raise as she puts her hands on her hips. "Is that so?" her tone is dangerous. The short conversation with Happy, the guy everyone casually refers to as 'Killer', seemed to flash across the prospect's mind, and he looks like he is re-evaluating everything he knows, straight down to 1+1=2.

In the coldest voice the kid has ever heard, the woman talking to him says, "You have 15 seconds to finish cleaning that table and get to the laundry room before that spray bottle in your hand gets shoved so far up your ass that it sprays out your mouth every time you swallow."

It takes Juice 11 seconds to quickly wipe down the rest of the table and he doesn't dare risk either leaving the supplies out or taking the time to put them away behind the bar, instead just keeping them in hand as he sprints to the laundry room. She appears in the doorway almost as soon as the spray bottle and rag are on a shelf, and she leans against the doorframe. "You do at least know how to do laundry, right? Mommy hasn't been coming to the clubhouse to wash your panties for you?"

"Yes, ma'am," he says as he begins pulling wadded up linens apart.

"Good." he might be imagining things, but her tone sounds the tiniest bit pleased. "I'll even be nice and give you a tip - don't do the sheets and towels separate." He looks to her in question. "A load of 10 towels takes three times as long to dry as a load of two sets of sheets and three or four towels. Seems easier to separate them, but that takes way longer." Soon, the first load is in the washer and he's at least smart enough to keep separating the wads of fabric and piling them in load-sized stacks so the can just grab one and throw it in next time. Anabelle nods in approval. Gemma has obviously done fuck all to train the kid, but at least he's capable of learning.

He straightens up and looks at her once that is done, not sure what to do next.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Jaun Carlos."

"Nickname?"

"Chibs has been callin' me Juice."

"He your sponsor?" Juice nods. "I'll be having a talk with him." Juice swallows heavily. "Don't call any woman on this compound 'ma'am' ever again. Female shop customers are 'Miss', along with their last name if you know it. Sweetbutts answer to any pet name up to and including 'bitch', 'cunt', and 'gash', but if they haven't done something to deserve being called one of those things, then they have the right to disrespect you in return, even if you get your rocker. Do you understand?"

"Yes, m- uh…."

"Anabelle."

"I understand, Anabelle."

"Good. What do you know about prospect duties?"

At this, Juice kind shrugs, having now realized that there is a lot to it that he obviously hadn't been told. "Basically, I clean and follow the guys' orders,"

Anabelle sighs. "How long have you been a prospect?"

"Few weeks… almost a month?"

Anabelle reaches a hand up and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Thanks, Gemma….." Looking back at him, she continues. "Starting first thing tomorrow morning, you begin a crash course in being a Prospect for the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club." Motioning to the piles of laundry, she goes on, "Finish at least three more loads after the one you just put in - love of God, DO NOT forget to clean out the lint trap between EVERY LOAD, my son is in this building and if you set it on fire, then I am chaining you up in the garage and burning your dick off - then get some sleep if none of the guys tell you to do anything. I expect you to be up, dressed, and prepared to work no later than 7 am. Between loads tonight, keep cleaning the bar - wipe down tables, empty AND WASH ashtrays, wipe down chairs, vacuum the couches, stock the bar, sweep, mop, take out garbage, wash glasses. It shouldn't take you the whole three and a half loads of laundry you have left, but as long as it's done when I get up to make coffee in the morning, I don't give a damn how long it takes you. Questions?" When he shakes his head in the negative, she simply turn and walks back out to get herself another drink, this time skipping out on the coke and pouring herself a whiskey and another for Happy, making a mental note to make sure there's rum in the next liquor order. When had they stopped stocking it, anyway?

She watches out of the corner of her eye as Juice makes his way out, spray bottle and rag once again in hand, and begins cleaning tables and chairs again, this time with more purpose.

Satisfied, Anabelle takes the drinks over to the pool table, where it's now Happy v Tig, and sets the glasses down on a nearby table before finally moving to greet Bobby.

After a big hug, Bobby holds her out at arms length and looks her over. Shaking his head and smiling, he says, "I just can't believe our little princess is a momma!"

Tig chimes in, "What I can't believe is that Killer made such a cute kid!"

When Bobby turned a wary eye to the notoriously touchy Hap, Hap's response was to shrug and say, "What? He's right. My kid's fucking adorable."

"So, when we gettin' more little Killer/Princesses then?" Bobby questions teasingly.

Happy looks Anabelle in the eye, and she shrugs before taking a drink. "You want any more, they're gonna be girls."

"You can't possibly know that," Tig says incredulously, before turning to Happy, "But, if she's right, look the fuck out. Girls are a whole different ball game, man."

Anabelle wandered to bed around midnight. She had been right when she told Juice it wouldn't take three and a half loads of laundry to clean the bar, especially since only one other member had shown up. Luckily, that member had been Chibs, and she'd been able to chastise him for his lack of attention to this prospect in a single sentence and without being disrespectful, not that Bobby or Tig would've ratted her out to Clay if she had been more harsh, but she considers Chibs a friend and didn't want to start shit there.

The next morning, as he does every morning, Johnny wakes her up a little after 6 by crawling into the bed on her side and kissing her face. Best alarm clock she's ever had.

OK, maybe that one is tied with the times Happy wakes her up by eating her out.

Anyway, she takes them both to the bathroom to potty and brush teeth, then gets them dressed quietly. She knows Hap is partially awake through all of this activity, but, as long as they don't make too much noise, he will be able to fall back asleep and snooze for a couple more hours until he has to get up. Most days, he just gets up with them, but he hadn't crawled into bed until almost 3, so she is going to leave him be unless one of the guys need him for something.

By 6:30, she is making coffee, noting that the sweetbutts, croweaters, and members are trained at least well enough to scrape their dishes and load them into the dishwasher, which means that Bobby or one of the senior croweaters will start it when it gets full and put them away once it's done. Consequently, the kitchen can use a deep clean, but isn't that bad overall.

She quickly scrambles a few eggs and makes a few pieces toast, which gets jam spread over it, then seats herself out at a table with Johnny, feeding him bites of her eggs and letting him chew on half a piece of jammy toast while he drinks his sippy cup of milk and she sucks down half the pot of coffee that had been brought out with her.

At 6:55, she had replaced the remaining coffee on the hot plate and set Johnny on the counter next to the sink, and is washing the jam off his hands, and she's pleased when Juice walks into the kitchen. He looks a little bleary-eyed, but otherwise has followed her instructions.

He bolts down a cup of coffee and a granola bar quickly. At her look, he says, "I don't really get hungry until I'm awake for a couple hours."

Shrugging she points at his cup, then the dishwasher, and he puts it in there dutifully. She begins her lesson in the kitchen, explaining that, as a prospect, his place the hierarchy is on the level with the sweetbutts. Yes, he has to listen when the guys tell him to do something, and his sponsor is responsible for him, but on a day-to-day basis, when the club isn't using him for something, he essentially works for the croweaters and old ladies. Then came explaining the difference between a croweater and a sweetbutt, which, frankly, not even all members know.

Sweetbutts are there for sex, and very little else. Yes, they do the thing with the sheets, but, honestly, most sweetbutts don't stick around long enough to learn that rule. Most girls don't last as a sweetbutt for more than 6 or so months. That's about the average time it takes them to realize that the life isn't what they expected, and that the chances of a member slapping a crow on her ass are practically nonexistent.

Croweaters are long-term girls. They are here for a reason other than taking a walk on the wild side. Usually, they need protection, and the club provides it in exchange for sex, help at the clubhouses or legit businesses, and, sometimes, alibis. They're part of the family. And, while they do sleep with the guys, there's a certain amount of respect, and they are the biggest pool from which most members wind up with Old Ladies. They know the life long before they are exclusive with a patch, much less inked, so they know what they are getting in for and don't split or freak when trouble rolls in. They also know that the life of an Old Lady isn't at all like what sweetbutts think it is - namely, nonstop sex, drugs, and motorcycles.

Once that is explained, she starts him on his first task of the day, doing that kitchen deep-clean. "The kitchen should always be clean, unless we are actively using it. Between Bobby and Gemma, they are usually pretty on top of it, so all you really need to know is that this deep-clean is to be done at least once a month - it's your job, and it looks a lot better for you if you don't have to be told to do it - and, on the daily, if you see dishes in the sink, either hand wash them, or rinse them out and put them in the dishwasher if it's dirty." At this, she points to the reversible sign stuck to the front with magnets. "If the dishwasher is dirty and pretty full, " she opens the cabinet under the sink and points at the dishwasher liquid gel soap "grab that, fill up the soap cup" at this, she opens the door to the dishwasher and points at it, "close the door and press the button for Normal Wash." closing the doors, she gives the final instructions "then change the sign to 'clean'. If the sign says clean and the dishwasher is not running, open it up. If the dishes are, in fact clean, put them away. If they aren't clean and someone just forgot to change the sign, then either change the sign or start the dishwasher if it's full."

Grabbing the baby, she then gives Juice instruction for the deep clean. Pointing under the sink she says "Bucket, bleach, scrub brush, and gloves are in there. Us a half a cup of bleach - measuring cups are in the second drawer down, IMMEDIATELY rinse it out and put it in the dishwasher, we don't need anyone getting poisoned on accident - into the bucket then fill it up to the marker line with COLD water. Use the brush and scrub down the countertops and use paper towels to dry, then, one shelf at a time, empty it, putting everything on the clean counter and scrub the shelf, dry it, repeat with the next shelf, don't forget the drawers, including the tray where forks and spoons and shit are kept. When that's done, clean the counter again, then the exhaust hood over the grill, and the inside and outside of the microwave. Change the water in the bucket whenever it turns dark grey or any shade of brown. Once all that's done, empty out the fridge, throw out anything that is moldy or expired, unless it is marked not to throw out by Bobby - it's clear which things those are - and scrub down the empty fridge. Once everything's back in the fridge, sweep, then get prepared for your knees to hurt. Scrub the floors, make sure the gunk is out from between the tiles -for reference, the grout should be a light tan color."

Juice looks overwhelmed at the instructions. "It's not as bad as it sounds, really. If you have any questions, ask me or Bobby, or a croweater if there's any around. I'll be in the office fixing years of Gemma bullshit. If you finish in here before I come find you, make sure the bar stays clean. Oh, and start on that laundry again at 10:30." With this, she turns, grabbing the bag of toys from where it had been left in the bar, and retrieves the keys from under the bar before making her way back out to the office.

It's only 7:20 at this point, so the place is otherwise deserted, and she sets Johnny up on the beat-up couch to play before shutting the door and going around back to the storage room, where there should be extra file boxes. Taking a couple minutes to rearrange several to the correct order, she grabs a couple of the flat boxes and heads back in. She chatters idly with Johnny as he plays contentedly with his matchbox cars and blocks, pulling out packing tape to put the file boxes together, then heaving the top drawer open and carefully wriggling the first overstuffed file free before grabbing the two behind it as well and moving to the desk to start the tedious process of sorting everything into chronological order and putting everything more than 11 months old into the file box to go to the archive also known as the back storage room.

The mechanics all greet her as they come into the office to punch their timecards, even those that hadn't been working here when she still lived in town knowing her, because, well, Charming, and by 9, the place is bustling. The archiving work takes even longer when she is interrupted every couple minutes by phone calls, mechanic questions, and walk-in customers.

At one point, Johnny exclaims "Papa!" happily, and Anabelle looks up to find Happy in the doorway, moving to sit on the couch by his son, who crawls into his lap for a snuggle.

"How's it going?" he asks nodding at the stacks of paperwork.

Anabelle heaves a sigh and wants to rub at her eyes, but doesn't dare with all the dust and ink and who knows what else that is on her hands. "Slow. It'd be easier if there was someone that could actually run the garage so I could focus on it, but if wishes were fishes…"

He gives her a strange look, like he'd only understood part of what she'd just said, but didn't want to ask for clarification. She realizes she'd just spat out a Mary-ism that he probably wouldn't know, and doesn't comment. "Are you busy?" she asks instead.

"Not right now. We're waiting on Tacoma to get here; they're a couple hours out. Then Church."

"You mind taking him until then? He'll be demanding lunch soon, and he could use some running around after being cooped up in here all morning. Tire him out for a nap." Hap nods and gets Johnny cleaning up his toys. As they get up to leave, Happy leans down and gives her a long, slow kiss that leaves a smile on her face as she gets back to work. "Oh, Hap!" she calls after him, and he pops his head back around the door frame. "If the prospect is done cleaning the kitchen and you guys aren't using him, can you give him some hell about the bar being clean?"

He gets a smirk and declares "Oh, yes I will!" before walking off slowly, son toddling by his side.

The Tacoma boys roll in around 3, and Anabelle decides to call it for the day. Grabbing the cordless phone and the message pad, she heads out to the garage and leaves them at Billy's station. He's the mechanic that's been here the longest, so he ends up being the go-to when they need one of the mechanics to cover phones for a couple hours. Explaining she has some errands to run, she leaves those and the spare keys with him, gives the older guy a kiss on the cheek and moves back to the clubhouse.

She's glad Happy had taken her request to ride the prospect, and probably some of the others had gotten in on it as well. Even in the dim lighting - she makes a mental note to get slightly higher wattage bulbs soon - and with seven extra members; four from Tacoma, then one each from Rogue River and Reno, in addition to Happy - the place is nearly sparkling. With all the guests and Charming boys in one spot, she moves through the crowd greeting people and dispensing hugs and friendly kisses on cheeks, asking briefly about something for each of them. After a few minutes, she reaches Happy near the bar, where he is taking to Kozik and Jet from Tacoma.

Greeting all three warmly, she turns to Hap and takes Johnny from him, while saying, "I have some errands to run, is there anywhere I need to be careful of?"

The only visiting brother that had been briefed at all, he shortly says "Stick to Lodi if you can, make sure the Bastards are on speed-dial. If you have to go to Stockton, see if someone can roll with you."

Anabelle nods and gives him a final kiss before moving into the kitchen to make herself something quick to eat before she goes, and is glad to find Bobby in there filling a carafe with coffee, probably to go into Chapel with the boys, which means it'll be a long one.

"Hey, Bobby." she greets, moving past him to grab a plate and the bread on the counter before setting them down and opening the fridge. "How we doing on beds?"

"At capacity, but fine. Me and Chibs are both going home tonight, and the prospect can set up on a cot if we're short for some reason."

Charming has always been small, as far as charters go, usually not running more than a dozen plus a prospect, and there's only 8 dorms plus the storage room that had long been converted for Prospect use. Usually there's one or two guys that live here full time, and any single guys with houses or apartments tend to crash here a lot, so they have dedicated rooms. Looks like, with Ocho gone, Tig's the only full-timer, so they should have just enough beds with everyone going home.

At that moment, Juice comes nearly crashing in through the back kitchen door, carrying two cases of beer. When he has clambered out to the bar, Anabelle continues to make herself a sandwich on-handed, tearing off bits to hand to Johnny to keep him occupied. "Has pay already been handed out for the month? I'm going to stop by Ope's place and check on Donna."

Bobby shake his head as he sets the coffee maker to brew another pot. "Haven't had time to split it out and pay bills."

"Alright," she replies, "I'll make sure she's set for a week or two."

"Thanks, hon."

"Are you guys expecting to ride out after church, or should I make a late dinner?"

"Dinner'd be great, sweetheart. We're probably going to be a few hours in church."

She nods and takes her plate out, claiming a seat at the bar to eat. The prospect is loading beer into the cooler. With a sigh she says, "Prospect." and his attention snaps up to her. "The beer is for church. In the laundry room, bottom shelf, there's a cooler without a lid. Get it." A minute later, he's setting it down, and reaching for the cases of beer again. "No." he freezes. "Fill it up about 4 or 5 inches with ice first." Just as he's finishing loading as much beer into the cooler as he can, Bobby comes out with two carafes of coffee. "Take it and follow Bobby." She orders, knowing Bobby will give him further instruction.

Scarfing down the last of her sandwich, she leaves the dirty plate in the sink in the kitchen, mostly to see if the prospect remembers and follows her orders from the morning, then walks quickly down the hall to get her and Johnny ready to go out.

On their way out, the guys are in Church already, and Juice is cleaning up the bar.

Anabelle is snapping Johnny into the car seat when another car pulls in, with Susie stepping out in short order. She's one of the croweaters that's been around for ages, though she's only a few years older than Anabelle.

The women greet each other happily, with Susie leaning in to meet Johnny with a kiss to his face. When she stands back up, Susie says, "Bobby called, said you could use some help with dinner?"

Anabelle is relieved. She won't have to rush nearly as much. "Yeah, there's seven visiting members in. You mind grabbing some cash from the box and doing a big shop, then starting on the prep work? I need to run to Lodi and get some Gemma-approved clothes real quick, then stop and check in on Donna and the twins. Make sure and use the prospect - I gave him the welcome speech this morning, so he shouldn't give you any trouble."

"Oh, good, he was getting more than a little obnoxious. I know the linen situation was getting bad, do I need to do something about that and get rooms made up?"

"Linens are clean, but make sure rooms are fresh - I'm in the quiet room with my Old Man, and Ocho's old room should be good, but all the rest I have no idea. Definitely check Tig's room - you know he likes the girls that don't know the rules."

A few more coordinating comments and the women split up, Susie heading inside to make a list and get cash from the grocery stash, and Anabelle off on her errands.

Two hours and 15 minutes later, she's pulling back in and unsnapping Johnny, letting him run around the lot as she unloads a few bags and notices that the two big charcoal grills are out, with a big bag of charcoal sitting next to each. It only takes her a few minutes to change and put on makeup, then she's off to the kitchen, where she finds Susie setting halves of corn cobs onto perfectly portioned squares of foil, while Juice portions out burgers somewhat clumsily.

Turning back around to go out, she tells Susie "I'll get the charcoal started then come in to help." before leading Johnny over to his now-normal spot by the couches to set him up to play, then heading outside to do exactly as she'd said. Twenty minutes later, the grills are smouldering, and the foil packets are lined up in one of them.

Susie knows all the cheats to make a big meal when there isn't much time, and she'd gotten everything Anabelle would have. Suse is finishing of portioning the burgers and stacking them with wax paper in between to go in the fridge until they're needed, while Anabelle takes the already-boiled chunks of potato from where they'd been in the fridge cooling, as well as sour cream, a pouch of pre-shredded cheese, and a bunch of fresh chives, and setting it all next to the packets of bacon bits, quickly using the kitchen scissors to cut up the chives into the bowl, then dumping everything else in to make baked potato salad.

Within a couple minutes, those things are done and Susie is preparing toppings for the burgers - the cheese came sliced, but the tomatoes and onions and lettuce won't cut themselves - and Anabelle is starting on the dessert. Tubes of sugar cookie dough are squished into a bowl and mixed with M&Ms, then cupcake papers are lined on a baking sheet, and generous spoonfuls of dough dropped in each before they go in the oven. While those bake, canned peaches get strained and layered into a baking pan and mixed with some spices and a little butter, and the Bisquik comes out, getting sugar, butter, and milk added before the slightly liquidy mixture is poured over the peaches to become cobbler.

Just as the cookies have been taken out and the cobbler put in, the chapel doors open, spewing a dozen hungry men out into the bar. Anabelle immediately grabs the tray of burger patties and heads out to throw the first round on the hot grills, announcing loudly on her way out "First burgers will be up in 10 minutes!" as Susie follows her with the bowls of potato, veggie, and four-bean salad balanced in her arms.

She's glad Su had thought to do up extra, because the shop is just closing for the day, and a number of the mechanics and hangarounds wander over to grab food instead of heading straight home, and a few croweaters as well as several sweetbutts had materialised, knowing there are out-of-town members visiting, because things like that spread around Charming in a matter of minutes sometimes.

As usual, Bobby grabsone of the first burgers and loads it up before practically inhaling his food, then he takes over grill duty, and Anabelle makes her own plate, giving Susie a big smooch on the cheek as she walks by where the girl is sitting on Jet's lap. "Thanks for the help, love."

Once the amount of food has dwindled, Susie gathers a couple of the girls, and they round up the dessert options, and bring out smaller paper plates and another box of plastic forks, beginning to dish up the cobbler for people to grab. The croweaters that don't know Anabelle have obviously been given a quick pep-talk, as she is catered to like she's a member. The sweetbutts, on the other hand, just see an unknown female, even if she's an Old Lady, and there's one in particular that had had her eye on Happy even as he walked around with his kid, and she hadn't been thrilled when the new chick had sat down next to him.

For her part, Anabelle had clocked the bitch immediately, and knows that that's the one she's going to have to make an example of come the weekend.

Once Johnny is in bed that evening, Anabelle gathers her things to shower, wanting to call it an early night herself, and is pleasantly surprised when Happy grabs his own towel from the hook on the closet door to join her.

The moment the bathroom door is locked, she finds herself pinned to it, Happy pulling the things from her hands and all but flinging them onto the small counter by the sink and roughly kissing her. Soon, clothes have been stripped off, and Hap sinks down in front of her, pausing only to lift one of her thighs to rest on his shoulder before he dives in, licking and sucking hard at her clit.

Anabelle's head thumps back against the door and her hands go to his head and she lets out a moan. They know all of each others' buttons, and it is only a couple minutes before she's cumming around his fingers. As Happy stands back up, still holding her against the door she says, "Not complaining, but what was that about?" He usually prefers to tease her.

She tastes herself as he kisses her again and sucks her tongue into his mouth. Pulling back minutely, he growls out, "Forgot how much power you have here."

Anabelle smiles wickedly as she asks, "Oh yeah? You getting off on me playing Princess?"

He is, but he's not about to admit it out loud. Instead, he pulls away and starts the shower. Her smirk stays in place as she pulls out her supplies form the shower kit, along with his shower gel, reaching past him to set the bottles on the ledge. As they both step into the tub, she's surprised to find the water lukewarm - this bathroom has it's own water heater, so Happy has set the temperature intentionally. Curious what he's up to, she goes along with it as he moves her under the spray to get her hair wet and hands her her shampoo before he grabs her body wash and squirts some into a washcloth, quickly but gently scrubbing her body down. Once she's rinsed off, he swaps the shampoo bottle for her conditioner and uses his own body wash to scrub himself down, and they are both effectively bathed in a matter of minutes.

Instead of them getting out, he pulls her closer and starts kissing her, slow and deep, and both their hands move over the others body at a leisurely pace. She catches on to his game as one of his hands moves from cupping and squeezing her ass cheek, changing position to rub one thick fingertip over her asshole.

Within a couple minutes, Anabelle is clutching his shoulders, the sounds of her whimpers echoing slightly off the tile surrounding them, as he stoops down to bite and suck on her neck, and two fingers are scissoring her open. As he adds the third finger, she murmurs into his ear, "Goddamnit, Happy, will just fuck me already?!"

He dick isn't the longest, but he is thick, and he knows he should loosen her up more to do this raw without really hurting her, but he also knows she likes it that way, and if she's willing to be bratty and play into the slight fantasy he has about defiling the Princess, he's not going to complain. That decided, he roughly spins her around and she automatically braces against the shower wall. Before she has time to complain, he is pushing the thick head of his cock slowly past the tight ring of muscle, and both of them groan at the sensation. Moving just the head in and out a few times, he then suddenly snaps his hips forward, burying himself in her as deep as he can get, making her gasp. Pushing his palms against the perfectly round ass cheeks, he slides his hands out to grab her hips at the same time, pulling the cheeks open so he can look down and see himself sliding slowly in and out of her.

She manages to keep the bratty tone as she demands "Harder, Hap". He doesn't comply, keeping the same pace. She lets out a whine, then tries demanding "Faster." To this, he reduces his thrusting until he is barley rocking an inch each way in and out.

As Anabelle tries and fails to push back against him, he grinds out, "I'll fuck you however I damn well want to." Her face turns back toward him over her shoulder, expression a mix of a scowl and a pout, prompting him to remove one of his hands and bring it cracking down across the ass cheek it had just left. This wipes the petulant look off her face, and makes her muscles spasm slightly around him.

"Fine." the tone is still annoyed. One of her hands moves from the braced position, getting down to just touch her clit before he's snatching it away, and she whines again.

Using one hand, he holds her wrists above her head, and the other keeps hold on her hip and he finally starts pounding hard into the bratty, beautiful princess in front of him. She likes getting fucked in the ass, but it doesn't exclusively get her off, and he makes no motion to give her any additional stimulation that will, just fucking her hard and watching to her try and writhe against nothing and listening to her whimper and moan for several minutes until his orgasm hits him out of nowhere and he's cumming.

As he pulls out of her, she wriggles and stomps her foot a little, which might be the hottest thing he's ever seen in conjunction with his cum dribbling out her ass and down her thigh. Happy turns her to face him, smirking down at her pouty face as he positions her under the still-lukewarm spray and gently cleans as much cum out of her as he can before turning the water off.

Once they are dry, she snatches up his tee shirt and puts that on instead of the tank top she'd brought, and he pulls the soft cotton shorts from her hands before she can put those on. His shirt covers her ass, even if barely, and they are only walking next door. Anabelle's pleased when he simply pulls his own boxer briefs back on and hitches his jeans up without buttoning them back up. She'd expected him to get redressed and go back out to catch up more with the Tacoma guys while she went to bed.

Soon, they are cuddled up in the middle of the slightly lumpy bed, just kissing each other softly until they fall asleep.

The next few days fall into a routine, with Anabelle working in the office and taking care of the clubhouse, and visiting Donna, and generally being Gemma while Gemma is babying Jackson, who reportedly does very little except sleep from the heavy pain meds he's on, at home. Anabelle finds out at one point that all of the guys, the prospects, and the croweaters have all had a talking-to either by Clay or on his behalf, and are under strict orders that Anabelle's name isn't to be uttered within 200 feet of Gemma, which Anabelle had laughed at finding out, but understands why.

Jax's crankwhore wife had gone on a bender starting the night Jax had been injured, and one of the duties that had fallen to Anabelle had been to haul her ass to rehab and clean Jax's house -really, their house, since it had been left to the both of them in JT's will, but Jax lives there.

Friday rolls around, and neighboring charters arrive for Ocho's funeral. Every bed, cot, couch, and guest room available to the Sons had been prepped, Susie is leading the charge getting food ready for the wake, and Anabelle's off to fight with Donna.

Donna had accepted Anabelle's help with money, and thanked her for talking them out of buying a bigger house several months ago, but she is still very angry with the club.

"Why are you pushing this so hard?!" Donna demands, throwing her hands up.

Anabelle stays in her spot near the door, arms crossed as she looks at her friend. "Because Ocho died drawing a couple Mayans away from Opie." Donna looks taken aback. "Yeah. He was the distraction to pull them away so Opie had time to finish what he was doing and get out. Ocho died so that Opie could get arrested instead of executed. And I don't give a fuck what you think of the club right now, I will be damned if I am going to let you disrespect the man that laid down his life to save your husband." Donna looks thunderstruck, and Anabelle finally moves, gently pushing the other woman down the hall and into the bathroom. "Take a shower. I'll set out a dress for you and get the kids ready."

That Saturday, Anabelle finally finishes the archiving, and her days will get easier just running the garage and clubhouse. Jackson hadn't wanted to look weak using his walker in front of other charters, so he and Gemma had not made an appearance at the funeral, thankfully, so the peace is being maintained until such a time as Jax is back up and moving, forcing Gemma to stop doting on him.

Donna is coming around about the club, slowly, and offers to take Johnny for the night so Anabelle can relax at the party and have a night alone with Hap.

And so, Anabelle finds herself attempting to get ready Saturday night, but is being distracted by Happy, who had walked into the bedroom for something and been surprised and delighted to find his wife in a dress. He'd only ever seen her wearing one a few times, almost always for weddings. She's attempting to finish her makeup - also much more than she can usually be bothered with, while Happy slides a hand up her skirt and doesn't waste any time pushing the crotch of her panties aside to rub her clit.

Groaning, Anabelle says, "Hap, much as I would love to just stay in here and fuck all night, you know we need to go out there."

"Yeah.. I know," he replies somewhat sullenly, removing his had from her skirt and sucking his fingers clean casually. He watches as she finishes up with a few final swipes of he doesn't know what, but her eyes look greener than usual, and he isn't going to be down on the magic voodoo shit that girls are capable of. She steps into the killer heels that had been acquired on her abbreviated shopping trip early in the week, and he holds the door open for her, ogling the sleeveless black dress she's wearing, appreciating that it barely shows any cleavage, but reveals her whole upper back - and the crows wings he'd tattooed there a couple years ago - down to her waist, from which point the skirt floated down to her mid-thigh. Super hot, and classy enough that she wouldn't be mistaken for a sweetbutt or croweater even if everyone in the main bar didn't already know who she is.

Once Juice has handed each of them a drink, the couple splits with a kiss. Happy moves to go sit with Koz, and Anabelle starts making the rounds, making sure to talk to everyone whose mouth isn't already occupied. Now that she has settled down and become a "proper" Old Lady of the club, she is welcomed by nearly everyone, and treated respectfully regardless of whether they are okay with her or not.

Well, treated respectfully by the men, at least. Sweetbutts through the whole room flat out ignore her, sass at her when she addresses them, and give her dirty looks. Then, as she's on her way from the bar to where Happy is sitting waiting for the current game of darts to finish so he can have a turn, the one she had clocked at the barbeque days ago steps into Anabelle's path, arms crossed and a smug look on her face. Several feet behind her at the bar, Anabelle hears a croweater, Carrie, telling Juice to pull the van around.

"He's visiting, which means he's on a run, and up for grabs. I'm sure he thinks that kid you keep around here is cute or whatever, but you need to step off." The girl says, and Anabelle wonders if she is even legal to drink yet.

Anabelle doesn't have the time or patience for bullshit, so she simply shakes her head before shifting her grip on the full bottle of beer in her right hand and swings it up in a swift diagonal stroke, smashing it into the girls jaw and bringing it back to upright before any of the beer is spilt. The girl remains conscious, beginning to wail in pain after a moment of shock, hand coming up the slightly grotesque-looking dent that is now adorning her face where her jaw is obviously broken.

Off to one side, Carrie appears, saying "I had Juice get the van. I'll tell him to dump her at the ER."

Anabelle smiles at Carrie and says a quick thanks before stepping neatly around the still-wailing girl and handing the beer to Happy, who accepts it and pulls her in for a kiss.

Those present are collectively impressed, having only heard rumors of her putting sweetbutts in their place at various clubhouses in other parts of the country, but the party moves once the wailing girl is removed, and Anabelle's glad that the matter is quickly dropped as she and Hap play doubles darts against Jet and Susie, who he seems to have taken a liking to.

The next time Anabelle makes her rounds near 1am, just before she will drag Hap to bed, there is, unsurprisingly, no more trouble from any sweetbutts.

Lunchtime Monday is apparently when Jackson reaches his Gemma limit and demands they some to the clubhouse. Whether it is by doctor's orders or his own volition, Anabelle doesn't know, but the walker he had reportedly been using has been replaced with a pair of crutches, and he hobbles away from Gemma's Escalade as quickly as he can manage to go greet his brothers hanging around the picnic tables.

Gemma keeps an eye on his progress even as she makes her way to the office, stopping in the doorway and flipping up her sunglasses to say, "I should've guessed when Clay wouldn't tell me who was handling the office." before crossing her arms and pouting like a sullen teenager.

Not stopping entering the order she is in the middle of, Anabelle replies, "Hey mom! It's great to see you too. Oh, no, I was happy to put my whole life on hold and come do your job, please don't thank me."

Gemma's lips purse. "Still a little bitch."

Finishing the order and submitting it, Anabelle gets up and immediately files it along with a couple work orders from the morning, before turning around and saying, "As long as you're here, I'm going to get lunch." and brushing out past Gemma.

Gemma watched as her daughter walked briskly across the lot, stopping to say a brief hello to Jackson before continuing on into the clubhouse. It's only a few minutes before her eye is caught by Anabelle walking back out again, plate in one hand with a sandwich and some chips, and a toddler in the other. She has, of course, heard tell of her grandson, but this is her first look at the boy. From a distance, he resembles Happy, which she supposes is a good thing, because he would've probably killed Anabelle slowly if the child had looked like another man. Dark curls stick up from the boys' head and Gemma wonders if that's what Happy's hair looks like if he lets it grow out, and she can't picture it. His skin is also slightly dark, like Happy's, and a little fist comes up to rub at his eyes like he's just woken up from a nap. Glancing at the clock, she realizes that is probably exactly what had just happened.

Next to emerge from the clubhouse is Happy, who Gemma belatedly realizes wasn't out with the others, and he is quick to hand off a sippy cup to the little guy even as he sits down next to Anabelle at the picnic table she'd chosen, winding an arm around her waist possessively.

She wants to grab the cordless and go out there, but knows it's the wrong move. Even Gemma is capable of recognizing when she's being a cunt, even if it's only to herself, and she had stepped in it a couple minutes ago. Anabelle had always been the (relatively) mature one in their relationship and it never ceased to bug the hell out of Gemma, because it meant she was usually in the wrong. She just couldn't help it though. The mere existence of the girl reminded Gemma of the horrible relationship she had with her own mother, and she just couldn't get past her own childhood trauma and bitterness to be a proper mother for Anabelle. Yes, she should have said thank you for dropping everything to come take care of the family business while I take care of your brother. She should even be happy that the girl had done the nearly four-years overdue archiving, and that the office was cleaner than it had been in twenty years.

For all that she should be feeling those things, and knows that that's how a normal person would be reacting, Gemma just can't help but feel like Anabelle had done it to rub Gemma's own failure to do those things in her face. She knows that isn't the case, but it's what she would have done to Rose in this situation, so she can't help but assume in that back part of her mind.

For her part, Anabelle sat out at the picnic table, eating and trying to ignore her mother's eyes burning a hole in her head. She has long since come to understand why Gemma treats her the way she does, but that doesn't mean she can be okay with it, and she knows how hard it must be for Gemma not to simply come storming out and demand to hold her grandson. Part of her appreciates the rare show of restraint, but another part of her can't help but bitterly think that it would be a very different story if it had ended up being Gemma's granddaughter.

She's pulled from her thoughts as Johnny lets out a screeching whine and tosses his sippy cup across the table and onto the ground. One of the guys on the side picks it up and tosses it to Happy, who nods his thanks, wiping away any dirt from the mouthpiece on his tee shirt before setting the cup on the table out of Johnny's reach. Unable to get the cup to throw again, Johnny starts crying louder and trying to squirm out of her lap.

He's begun cutting a new tooth, and it isn't going well. Wives tales persist for a reason, and the only thing that seems to help is alternating giving him washcloth with an ice cube to chew on and then changing it out for one with a corner dipped in whiskey. Happy had taken morning duty, so, now that Gemma is on hand, Anabelle takes the afternoon shift. Finishing her sandwich quickly, she simultaneously stand up and secures a still-squirming Johnny around the waist under one arm, the change in position startling him out of his tantrum for a moment, then stuffs his sippy in her back pocket before grabbing her plate with her free hand and moving inside.

Happy watches her go, shamelessly checking out her ass on the way, before the nearby conversation of his brothers catches his attention.

"I don't remember her being that bad when she was cutting teeth." Bobby says idly, looking to Piney for confirmation.

Shaking his head, Piney replies, "Don't look at me, I had my hands full with Opie, at the time not-so-affectionately called 'Fussy Gus." There's several chuckles before he continues. "Nah, I don't think that girl ever threw a tantrum in her life. JT and Otto did their best, but she always knew. Even as a tiny little one, it's like she was determined to prove Gemma wrong. John knew she wasn't sleeping through the night, but she always stayed quiet through it. Like she knew fussing would give Gem a reason; for waking you boys up," this last bit is directed at Jackson. Looking at the office, where they can see Gemma on the phone, he goes on, "Not that she ever needed a reason to do or say anything that she did." This is punctuated by a swig of tequila from his hip flask.

Jackson clears his throat awkwardly. "Is there any word on Ope?"

"The charges are for B&E, possession of controlled explosives, and arson," Bobby's the one that relays this. "Rosen's still working on finding out if they're willing to plea down, or if they're determined to take all three to trial."

"Bail?" Tig asks.

"300k" is Bobby's answer, and they all know the club doesn't have it.

A few days pass in this manner, Anabelle taking care of the office in the morning, a terse exchange with Gemma, then taking care of Johnny and seeing to the clubhouse and Donna in the afternoon and evening. Then, one afternoon, she's standing behind the bar to do the weekly booze order, and Clay and a guy that is maybe a few years older than her, wearing a sharp suit, settle in front of her at the bar.

"Can I get you boys a drink?" she asks, setting her pen down.

"No, thanks, sweetheart. We need to talk to you. About Opie." Clay responds.

Looking at the guys - obviously Rosen, the club's lawyer - "He beat the shit out of someone already? I need to go tell him to calm the fuck down?" She's mostly joking, but this guy obviously doesn't know that, and his eyebrows take on a worried crease, as though it is something he hadn't realized he should be considering. "Y'know, for a lawyer, you have a shitty poker face. I was kidding. What can I do?"

"Mr. Winston seems unwilling to entertain any options about pleas." The guys said a little snootily.

Raising an eyebrow, she asks, "Well, what options has he been presented with?"

"Well, his first offer was 4 years for arson, parole after 3. When he declined that, the DA came back offering 3 years for possession of a controlled explosive, parole after 2, which I argued down to parole after 1." He seems proud of himself as he presents this list.

"Well, of course he isn't taking those deals, they're both shit." before the lawyer can reply, she goes on, "If they dropped the arson charge after one bad attempt at a plea deal only to replace it with a completely bullshit plea deal, they can't prove it in court. He's a licensed demolition technician for a construction company, it's perfectly legal for him to have explosives. Should he be carrying them around West Oakland at 3 am? Probably not, but the most that will legally warrant him is a fine and MAYBE a court order to retake his licensing exam or have it suspended for a couple months. The only thing they can get him on is the B&E, and that's only because the officers managed to catch him literally coming out of the warehouse. Wasn't the fire ruled as an electrical thing anyway? They're trying to spin it like he blew the place up."

As Anabelle moves back to her order, Clay turns to glare at the lawyer, who stutters out, "What? Ho-ow did yyou..? I don't even have a copy of that report yet!"

"Maybe you should try reading the newspaper, then. It was reported in the Tribune like four days ago." With a sigh, she says, "Anyway, he's right not to take those deals. This is his first non-traffic offense, and we've established that they can't prove the serious charges. 60-90 days for the B&E, 3 months probation."

Clay sighs out, "Go do your goddamn job, Rosen." and the lawyer skitters off. Clay asks, "Why didn't we send you to law school, again?"

"I didn't want to, and Gemma would've pitched a fucking fit."

Rubbing his face, her step-father says, "Oh. Yeah. That."

After another two weeks, Jackson is cleared to be on his own through the night and happily moves into a dorm at the clubhouse, not wanting to go home to an empty house and still be relying on Gemma for rides, since he isn't cleared to ride yet. At this point, With Gemma back at the shop full time and sufficient bodies at the clubhouse, Happy is told thank you for everything, but please take your wife away before WWIII starts right here in Charming.

As they settle back into life in San Bernadino, Anabelle attributes her feeling run down to their time in Charming, but, a month later, she can't be in denial anymore.

Staring down at the little pink plus sign on the plastic stick, she's glad they'd gotten a bigger house than they really needed at the time, and moves out of the bathroom to find Hap already in bed, waiting for her and reading the copy of Ink that had come in the mail today.

"Babe." He grunts. "Babe." He actually looks a little annoyed as he moves the magazine down from his face and looks at her. She waves the stupid little stick at him and says "Ready for round two?"