A/N: My profile picture has been changed to a sketch of Mac but it's…tiny and I can't figure out how to get a real photo up…. Anyone know how?

So we're at chapter 7. We're half-way, people! Excited? Sad? I think I'm a little bit of both myself.

About this chapter:

This is where Happy comes into play and I ended up doing a portion of the story as being told from his perspective which was... complicated and I'm unsure about whether or not I nailed his personality. So please let me know what you're views are.

I also would like to know people's opinions on Mac because I feel like she's starting to become…. Too much, for the lack of a better way to put it.

Enjoy : )

Chapter 7: Saint John of the Cross


In Boston, Mac's day job was tending bar at the Saint owned pub, Rocco's. Her mind is a vault of various mixed drinks and sometimes it became a betting game to use an iPhone application that is literally an encyclopedia of mixology to see if she could make the randomized drinks with odd-sounding names. She always won.

She takes pride in being a bartender because she does not take drink orders – at least that's what she is notorious for at Rocco's. She asks a person a series of quick questions that are all seemingly random and unrelated at the time. That is, until she uses that information and mixes up a drink that she believes it best suited for the person.

She is not a simple bartender; she is a skilled magician of mixology.

It's Friday night and the customary party following church is in full swing. Mac, having nothing better to do, has decided to be all the bar-tender she can be. She stands behind the bar and makes people drinks as they pass through, but for the most part the bikers and biker wannabes are not interested in her mixed drinks. They want everything straight up – or "just give me the bottle", as more than a few have told her. Only seven people so far have been curious enough to see if she really could match them with a drink.

"It's called an Earthquake Cocktail – try it." She hands the short glass filled with brown liquid to Jax. He is the current person deciding to indulge in the service she has offered. He leans over the dark bar, an elbow resting on the lacquered top as he swirls the drink around and takes a whiff of the strong cocktail. Jax is not normally one for mixed drinks, finding they're too girly, but this particular witch's brew burns his nose as he sniffs.

"What's in it?" He asks.

"Gin-Bourbon-Absinthe. Try it." She encourages with a warm smile.

Cautiously Jax takes a sip of the drink while Juice, who sits next to him, watches with up-close interest.

Juice has been sitting at the bar for a while now – talking to Mac while she makes drinks for various people and so far out of the seven drinks she's customized every single person has said the same thing…

"Dude, that's delicious." Jax smiles as he licks his tingling lips. Juice's smile widens to stretch from ear-to-ear. Give or take a few words thats exactly what everyone else has said, including Juice himself. He has received a drink that is just slightly fruity and sweet with the smooth kick of Kentucky whiskey called a Bourbon Daisy that invigorates his taste buds.

"Thanks." Jax gives her an appreciative wave and goes back off to sit with Tara – a woman who has caught the eye of Mac because the brunette seems to fit into the club the way a puzzle piece fits when you cut off the end. It fits but it doesn't. Not really, anyway.

"How do you do it – match someone to a drink?" Juice asks. He chews on the stem of the maraschino cherry that came with his drink as he rests his chin on his hand in a way that gives him a puppy dog appearance. At least that's how Mac views the young man with the tattooed head. He's cute and innocent with a dopey smile. For the lack of a better term he's juicy and Mac is almost willing to bet that a woman gave him his nickname.

Mac shrugs, "Being a bar-tender means you're three-quarters psychologist." It's not really a complete answer but it serves its purpose. The real reason is her ability to pick people apart brick by secret brick, but that's a little hard to explain.

"Amen to that." He takes a sip of the Bourbon Daisy.

"So – what's the deal with Jax' old lady?" Mac questions, as she wipes the stray droplets of liquor from the bar top with a rag.

"Who, Tara? She's a surgeon."

"Surgeon – like a doctor?"

"Yeah, like a doctor." Juice chuckles. Mac's nose crinkles in a grimace.

"I fucking hate doctors." There's a visible shiver that runs up her spin. Her dislike of doctors is more of an unfair association to her fear of hospitals and everything that they stand for. The fear of the sterility and whiteness of hospitals first reared its head not too long after Chibs was hospitalized after his chibbing. Mac has no doubt that seeing Chibs in the hospital has instilled the curious phobia in her that she can't shake.

"Tara's a sweetheart." Juice says.

"A sweetheart doctor, that sounds like an oxymoron to me." Mac mumbles. She takes a sip of her own drink, a cognac and absinthe concoction called a TNT.

"Smart blonde – now that's an oxymoron." Juice laughs. Mac rolls her eyes and flings the dirty rag at Juice's face.


Later….

Happy always wants to understand. He is a person who is anti-social in the textbook definition and he does not experience the typical roller coaster of emotions that he sees normal people go through. They laugh and they cry, they feel happy and they feel bliss, they feel afraid and they feel disgust, they feel sympathy and they feel love – but all those words are foreign to Happy. He understands them, but he doesn't truly know what they mean. There's no image of puppies running through a field when he thinks of the word 'happiness'. His eyes do not burn with tears that as a man he is not allowed to cry when he hears someone sob-story about redemption and love. Happy doesn't really mind though, because being one who does not feel, he does not feel regret or remorse. But this does not keep him from wanting to understand. He'll watch people for hours, carefully noticing how their faces and bodies express what they feel. Happy watches as people cry because he doesn't understand what brings forth such a strong emotional reaction. He wants to feel what can only be felt. So he sits back and observes like a finely trained scientist, taking mental notes on what people feel and how it affects their motivations. He lets his test rats muse around his all-encompassing lab and notices how when someone is upset their brow furrows in the very slightest and there's a drooping in their lids. All this because he wants to understand what he never can; something that can only be felt to be experienced.

But Mac is a different case altogether. He can't read her. No matter how hard Happy tries he can never fully decipher what's going on within that thick skull of hers. At first it unsettled him but now it infatuates him. Is she like him? Is she as void inside as he is?

He watches her laugh as she twirls around a bottle of rum, putting on a grand spectacle behind the bar while people watch. She seems to have all the proper emotions in check. She laughs when something is funny. She smiles to show someone she's interested. She frowns whenever someone asks how she met Chibs, which by Happy's count is now nine times, as if the meeting is something she'd rather not recall. All her emotions are there… on the surface, anyway. She laughs with only a passable amount of tone. She smiles with her mouth but her eyes never pull back and glimmer. It's like she only exists in half-truths.

Happy takes a sip from his beer and watches Mac between the shoulders crammed around the bar. She tucks a long lock of light blonde hair behind her ear. The numerous metal piercings that pack into her fleshy earlobe and painful cartilage sparkle under the recessed lighting in a way that reminds Happy of the glint a knife has when it is held at just the right angle.

Even though her face lies at every corner Happy has to admit she is a damn fine whole lot of woman. She is tall in a way that would make most women thin and gangly but she has just right amount of fat padding in-between her muscles and skin. Happy is willing to bet the density of her cushioning is somewhere along the lines of an inch thick along her curves – a perfect thickness according to his calculations made during some… dissections. If there's one thing Happy hates in a woman, above nagging – which he actually hates in anyone, he hates a chick who looks like she'll break if he so much as breathes on her the wrong way. Not Mac, though. Definitely not. The faintest of shadows play on her biceps and along the sliver of stomach he can see whenever her shirt rides up. The shallow shadows give evidence of rigid muscles underneath that delicious inked flesh of hers.

He imagines how her muscles would ripple under in him as they writhed about in his navy blue sheets. He wonders how it would feel to have those long legs of hers wrapped around his…

"Happy?" Mac waves a hand in front of his face.

Happy blinks. He had gotten enthralled by his fantasy and didn't even notice she had come over to the table. He knows he should feel embarrassed about the fact that he's got a chubby.

But he isn't.

"You've been giving me the evil eye for the past twenty-minutes." Mac looks none too pleased. Kinda like she just sucked on a lemon.

"Get me another." He leans back into the chair and balances on only two legs as he holds up the empty bottle.

Her elongated, slightly-upturned nose flares in a way that informs Happy she is disgusted at his demand.

"Get it yourself." She pushes the glass away.

"You're the one playing bar-tender, so tend."

"I tend the bar, not assholes. Get it yourself." Her tone tells Happy that she's honestly pissed off but Happy feels something similar to amusement and a lasting horniness that needs to be dealt with.

"Listen, bar-maid-" He starts with a coy little smirk that is wiped clear from his face by Mac's fist. She punches him hard, right in the mouth and Happy is knocked out of the chair that he brings down with him.

He clatters onto the ground and everything is silent. The fallen chair rocks against the floor with a clack clack clack as the bar instantly becomes silent. He stares up at the ceiling, not fully realizing what happened until someone shouts it.

"She just punched Haps!" Tig exclaims and his tone his giddy – he obviously enjoyed watching the punch.

He pushes himself up off the floor and everyone is looking at him, expectantly. They expect him to hit her back and turn the punch into a full blown assault.

But he's not angry.

He's hornier.

"It's cool." He says. He pulls the chair up off the floor but still everything is silent; they're all stunned.

"It's cool." He says it with menace this time as he glares the crowd down like one large entity. They turn away and the noise resumes with full volume.

"You're at full salute." She comments, rather dryly in contrast to her expression. Happy looks down in his lap and notices the bulge under his jeans but shrugs it off.

Screw Tig. Screw Chibs even though "he ain't fuckin' her". Screw everyone else. Happy wants to screw her.

"That was hot." He smirks, ever slightly, because that's what he's trained himself to do. Sometimes you've just gotta fake it until you make it, as his mother always said. There's a sore stiffness in his jaw and a laceration on the inside of his cheek that gushes blood. Mac knows how to pack one hell of a punch and that is hot by any one's standards. It's primal how sexy she is to him. It's animalistic - probably something having to do with biology and evolution, some bullshit about evolution or survival of the fittest. Something like that that Happy can't really remember because his blood is only flowing to one head and it's not his brain.

He tongues the cut on the inside of his cheek that fills his mouth with the metallic taste of blood. It hurts like a bitch.

But it only excites him more.

Happy doesn't look directly at Mac but he can see her in his peripheral vision when she slides into the chair across from him and lights up a cigarette while she looks at him through narrowed eyes.

Happy looks beyond her to the bar where Chibs, Jax, Tig and Bobby still await to see if Mac and he are going to explode like the two unstable elements they are. But they aren't going to collide and explode. At least not how they think.

"Do you get off on that sort of thing?" She asks.

Happy spits a wad of blood and saliva into his empty beer bottle before he's able to speak.

"What if I said I did?" The question is of course absurd but nonetheless he wants an answer. Just to know – just to add it to his endless vault of scientific data on what makes people tick.

Mac leans into the table with her elbows as she speaks, "I'd tell 'ya you're a sick fuck."

Happy imagines that if he felt feelings, he would laugh right now because of how ironically true her statement is. He is one sick fuck, but he doesn't like to get beat for foreplay.

"I don't get off on being hit."

With one of her pale eyebrows cocked high above the other it tells him that she doesn't really believe that. The split second that her eyes stop staring into his dark pits and glance at his hidden crotch then zoom back up definitely tells him she doesn't believe.

Considering Mac does not exactly give off an overly-feminine vibe Happy takes this as a sign that she is like no woman he has never met before. It makes him form a wonderful hypothesis that normal courting rules to get a woman to bed don't apply here. MacLeod is either a lot easier or a lot harder – but there's no way she's following him to bed with his usual romantic forgeries.

"What turns you on?" He turns the tables on her. He twirls the beer bottle around with a lack of interest as the blood spittle swishes about at the bottom as he leans the chair back onto two legs.

Mac chuckles and shakes her head in faint semi-circles, "You are so not it." She stands and takes the bloody beer bottle from Happy's hands, presumably to dispose of it.

"You're cute, though. I'll give you points for originality, too, but no." She gives him a curt, two-fingered salute and walks back to the bar.

Rejection. That's one emotion Happy can tie a specific event and feeling to. No matter how apathetic of a man he is, Happy is still only a man. It still stings to get shot down and erupt into a flaming mess.

"You," Happy calls the attention of a blonde crow-eater on the couches, "Here." He motions with one finger and she obliges. Time for some therapy.


"That shit doesn't fly here," Jax says rather passionately with an angry finger pointing at the blonde the instant she is close to the bar, "You're a guest so act like it."

Mac holds up her hands as a gesture of peace, "I apologize."

One of the hardest things for MacLeod to adhere to within clubs is the strict hierarchical set-up. Everyone has a place and a line that they are not allowed to cross. If you cross that line, no matter who you are, there are repercussions. It's the same basic principle in every tier of every hierarchy in every MC. You bow to those above you and the Presidents always have final say. It's an unwritten code of conduct among the various clubs that if you're a guest you abide by common law and behave appropriately. It's meant to keep the peace and for the most part, it works.

"I thought it was funny." Tig beams. Jax's eyes flutter closed for a brief moment as his jaw clenches tight with heavy agitation.

"Oh c'mon, take that stick out of your ass, Jax. Happy got hit by a girl and it was funny. Here, have a drink and laugh." Tig says while pouring Jax a glass of whiskey. Jax's right eye subtly twitches as he stares down the black-haired man.

It is obvious to Mac that there is something lurking beneath the surface of this interaction and decides to keep on walking past the bar then through the front doors.

Outside in the dark night the air has substantially chilled from the downright balmy 82˚F it was earlier when the sun shined bright. Not accustomed to the hot weather and the bright sun Mac has been burning up for the entire day but finally when she's outside she feels back to normal.

The moon up in the sky is bright, hanging low among a midnight blue sheet like a luminescent sickle. The horizon glows faintly with far away city lights. The haze is just enough to wash away the stars save for a sporadic few that barley twinkle. Mac's has always loved stars. Back when she was a little girl her mother would sit her in her lap on warm summer night and point out all the constellations. Virgo, Perseus, Cygnus, Draco… all of them. Her mother would tell her "look, look at the stars, Shannon. They'll help you find your way home". But here, where there are no stars that sparkle in the sky Mac almost feels lost.

Where is her home? Does she even have a home at this point? She used to say that the small town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis was her home but then Sarah told her something very poignant that changed that. Sarah said one day that "home isn't a place you're afraid of. It's a place you feel loved". So, Mac started calling Boston her home and she still feels it is but…. It never can be again. Boston is where virtually everything she cares about is. Boston is where Sarah – Boston is where Sherlock lives. Boston is where The Saints are. Boston is where she has a job she loves.

But she can never go back.

She takes a seat on the outdoor table, bending her legs out and resting her elbows on her knees.

She has safely decided against trying to contact anyone. With how well connected both The Saints and the Flanagan's are she would be signing her own death certificate by dialing any familiar numbers. As soon as Ace turns up dead she'll be the first one to be blamed because that's who she is to them. She's their dedicated hellhound through thick and thin. It's a double edged sword, being a female in The Saints that is, because you have to be twice as tough as the men to be taken half as seriously and that creates a lot of friction. Every other woman Mac knows takes her for a gigantic bitch because she doesn't take any shit and has a zero tolerance policy for bullshit. The men understand, though, and usually have a respect with the women who are their fellow members. After all, a pair of tits does not buy you a cut. You can only earn by proving yourself loyal, strong and true.

And Mac has done a lot of proving herself and that is exactly why she knows she'll be the first one on the chopping block – and not necessarily in the figurative sense of the phrase.

"It's time to get realistic, Mac. You gotta figure out what to do." She scrubs her face with both hands out of frustration. It's been a week since everything turned to shit and MacLeod has starved away the thoughts that nag in the back of her mind for as long as she can.

She thinks of Sherlock, as she has been with increasing frequency lately, and fishes the throw-away phone out of her jeans pocket. Her green eyes stare at the cheap black polymer that seems to mock her under the moonlight.

She swallows hard and there's a visible bob in her throat as she does so. MacLeod flips the phone open then enters the familiar phone number into the keypad. 675.555.2342 glows back at her through the night and gives off the faintest glow that illuminates her face when she holds it close.

She nervously nibbles on the corner of her lip. It is probably the fourteenth time she's done this today alone. She gets out her phone and dials his number but she never works up the courage to hit the send button. Mac can handle never speaking to Sherlock again. But if he answer the phone and even he wants her blood? That's something she doesn't even want to imagine.

She doesn't know if she handle losing her sister and her best friend in the same month. Mac still hasn't completely stepped down from the ledge she teetered on after Sarah's death. Losing her club is one thing, but losing Sherlock? That would devastate her. Because as much as she cares for all the other Saints none of them individually mean a fraction of what Sherlock does to her. He's her Jiminey. He's her best friend. He's her confidant. If she lost him it may be the last gust of wind needed to knock her over the edge and send her crashing to the rocky tides below.

Someone once said that you only truly love your family; romantic love is just a politically correct term for lust. Well, Sherlock is, without question, her family. Their friendship is closer than most married couples. She knows everything about him and he knows almost everything about her (which is the most anyone could ever really hope for). She loves him unconditionally and without reason, even though he's a huge pain in her ass.

All Mac can pray for is that Sherlock loves her as much as she loves him. She takes in a deep breath as her thumb hovers just over the 'send' button.

The heavy front doors of the clubhouse swing open and filter out a few bodies as well as the heavy Hendrix tune that plays from the jukebox. Bringing up the rear behind the small crowd of patches that disperse into the line of bikes Mac notices Chibs coming out accompanied by Bobby.

She gives them a nod of recognition when they wave then returns her attention to the cell phone.

675. 555. 2342

Her thumb hovers over the 'send' button.

She breathes in.

Exhale. Press.

She panics for a very brief second but then MacLeod bites the bullet and presses the phone to her ear.

It rings three times before someone picks up. Only that person isn't Sherlock.

"Who is this?" Mac demands.

"Oh now, Mac, that hurts. I thought you said we'd always have Paris…." The voice laughs grimly.


Please, please, please review and let me know what you're thought are on Happy and Mac. : )

Saint John of the Cross – Patron Saint of Contemplating