Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from "Sons of Anarchy." They are the property of Kurt Sutter and Fox Network. No money is changing hands in the writing, reading or distribution of this story.
Chapter 40
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Skip!" Joss groaned, but smiled with a freedom she hadn't felt in such a long time, patting the older horse on the neck as she and Juice's Lauren slowly rode up the slight hill back towards Lauren's barn and arena. "You're probably thinking, 'who is this crazy girl? I'm retired, and she's got me racing across fields!'" Joss laughed, and then dropped her reins and leaned all the way down, her weight forward in the saddle, heels down, a more than satisfying kind of stretch in her calves as she threw her arms around Skip's long neck.
Beside her Lauren laughed, riding along on her big black Dutch gelding with the four even white socks, Markus. Now that was a good looking horse, big boned, solidly built, not an easy horse to fall from by any means, but Joss's eye had always been drawn to that kind of confirmation, and he was such a dandy with those four even, white socks! "It won't hurt Skip to have a good run every now and then," she said, patting Markus on the neck. "Skip still runs Markus around their paddock when he steps out of line and starts being an obnoxious kid." She laughed again. "Besides, we don't get to do this very often; most of our time is spent in the arena perfecting our dressage routine. I think Markus enjoyed this trail ride as much as Skip did!"
"That's good!" Joss smiled, sitting up in the saddle again and looking over admiringly and still a little jealously at how well Lauren sat a horse, without having to try to. "This has been such a great day for me! Thank you for inviting me over!" She beamed, it was so incredible to be on a horse again, standing in the stirrups and galloping across the expanse of a green field. Once again Joss said a quick 'thank you' to Tig that he couldn't have heard, for allowing her to accept Lauren's invitation. It was just what she'd needed with everything that had been bearing down on her: Tara and Jax, the future of SAMCRO and what she owed it beginning now, another club party to get through tonight, and Opie…she'd be handling that pretty soon too…it was down to hours nearly. But when she was on a horse, or just around horses, there was nothing else on her mind. They'd always been the greatest of escapes.
"No problem! We should do this again! It's just so good to be able to ride with someone who can hold their own!" Lauren answered. "I love Juice, and I love having him around to help out…or something like that…around the barn and stuff, but, he's just not going to be that knight on the steed that I always thought I would need in order to make it work." She sighed, but she was smiling, Joss smiled too, knowing there were no problems there between Lauren and Juice. No one ever got what they thought they wanted when it came to meeting the right person. Anyone who had a "type" would soon find out how wrong they were. Joss herself would never have ended up with Tig if the "type" that everyone thought they wanted was actually who they were meant to be with. Of course, Joss didn't know enough or even think enough about things to figure she had a "type" before meeting Tig, but a big, bad ass biker with a few screws loose and a penchant for necrophilia wasn't likely to have topped her list of attributes she'd look for in a man. But then, just who's "type" was Tig anyway? Nope, he was always all hers! Joss laughed out loud, luckily Lauren took it to be at what she'd said and laughed too. "I can't understand how Juice can so easily handle an eighty horse power engine, flying along down the highway at almost ninety miles an hour with one hand on the throttle and the other wrapped over both of mine to make sure I'm holding on tightly, but he can't handle just one, twenty-six year old actual horse!" She sighed, and laughed again.
Joss laughed again and then shrugged. "Why is that Tig can keep the largest SOA charter of outlaw bikers in line, but can't find a way to keep the chipmunks from getting into the garage, up on his workbench, and stealing all his shiny nuts and bolts?" That had been an ongoing war that Joss just loved to receive the correspondences of, even though it pissed Tig off to no end every time he went out into the garage and found that the lid had been mysteriously screwed off of the old pickle jar, and that he was missing yet another handful of hardware. "God damn it!" He'd always yell as he came into the kitchen, through the door adjoining the kitchen and garage. "It did it again, Joss! And yesterday when I came home, there was bunch of sticks and shit sticking out of one of my headlight boxes, and when I looked, the little fucker made a nest in there, with seven of my God damn screws! I swear I'm going to sit out there in the morning with a hammer and smash every one of those fucking rats!"
"The hell you are!" Joss had quickly responded to him sternly, "and if you do, I'm never 'playing dead' for you again! You'll have to get it from me the old fashioned way!" Tig had only grumbled something unintelligible, but Joss couldn't help but notice that all of the animals that frequented their house were safe, and respected after she'd made that threat. Tig…he was so strange, and so fucked up…but so was she…and they were everything the other needed. And soon, there'd be nothing that threatened what they were.
"So what's going to be happening at the party tonight, anything?" Lauren asked, bringing Joss out of her thoughts, and once again reminding her of the seniority she had in this life.
Joss shrugged, nowhere near as apprehensive or nervous about tonight's party as she had been last week's, but still, she preferred not to think about it…Opie would be there…and who knew where that would lead? "I don't know," Joss answered, wanting to just change the subject, then looked over at Markus, his solid, muscle bound frame, and she smiled. "So, how is he over fences? You do any hunter/jumper classes with him? He'd be such a regal Hunter!"
Lauren laughed, giving the big black another pat on his neck. "Markus jumps, but I don't." She said, and sighed. "I'm so short, my legs can't grip passed his ribcage, and I'd probably go flying over his head." She laughed.
"Really? You don't jump?" Joss honestly couldn't believe that. A horse like the one Lauren had, and they didn't jump? "Have you ever seen him jump?"
"Once or twice when I bought him," Lauren answered, looking up into the ring at the old standards and rails, weather beaten and paint chipped, but she smiled at Joss. "Think you remember how to jump? Wanna try him?"
Chapter 40; Part 2
Tig had never seen Joss on an actual horse before; he'd only seen the pictures that were pinned to the wall in her old bedroom, in daddy's mansion. The garage had been slow, so he'd cut out early, remembered she was riding today at Lauren's and decided to check it out, just incase, who knew what might be happening? Horses were big animals, and dangerous too. As he slowly drove down the long gravel drive, towards a large riding arena, he could see both the girls, on horses, one of them standing quietly off to the side, while the other one, who Tig was soon able to identify as Joss, was riding a shining black, massive animal around the ring at a…well, the horse was what he'd call "running," but what Joss would have called it, he wasn't sure. That girl really did look good on a horse, moving with every stride of the beast, holding his head with his nose close to his chest though there was no obvious tension on the reins in her hands; all of her weight looking like it was in her heels, stretching her legs long and lean around the horse's black hide. And she was so…into it, a look like nothing he'd ever seen on her face before; she didn't smile, she didn't narrow her eyes and force the animal under her control, they were just both there together, one responding to the other, and Tig began to understand where Joss had learned to bond with and to trust him as much as she did. Horses, they were all bigger and stronger than her, there was no way she'd ever be able to make any of them do something they didn't want to do. The trick was making them want to do it…and damn that girl, but that's exactly what she'd done to him.
She was tuned into the horse, the horse tuned into her, one of his ears at times flicking back towards her, as if picking up signals from her, then responding to them, increasing his speed, turning off the rail now, down the center of the arena, towards a jump that was set up there. The horizontal bar between the two many slatted vertical pieces that held it hadn't seemed that high, maybe about three feet off the ground, and the black horse Joss rode was huge, but the closer the horse, carrying his Joss, got to the jump, the bigger and higher it began to look, and Tig realized he'd gotten off of his bike and had run over to the fence around the arena, as if he could be there to catch Joss if she fell off of that horse…and then it was too late, the horse's massive front hooves lifted off of the crushed gravel in the arena, his knees tucked up to his broad chest, his strong rear legs propelling his big body over the jump, his front legs unbending just in time to catch himself, Joss crouched over his thick neck, not sitting in the saddle any longer, all of her weight in the stirrups she stood within, her hands tangled in the long black mane as the rest of the animal skipped effortlessly over the fence, landing with a slight bounce then continuing on in those long, smooth strides. Lauren cheered at the other end of the arena, and Joss…she looked up with the biggest smile of pride, empowerment, and triumph on her face that Tig had ever seen, sitting back in the saddle again, and finally noticing him as she slowed her mount, beaming as she patted the animal's strong neck. She'd never looked more beautiful!
"Hey," Joss still wore that smile as she walked the horse on towards him at the fence, Lauren beginning to ride down on the other horse herself now. "What are you doing here? It's only two thirty."
"Not much to do today, I think it's because the hot ass receptionist type ain't showing up for work anymore." Tig smiled back at her, reaching out and touching the broad expanse of the horse's face a little above his nose, only to have the animal pull away and toss his head into the air in some kind of defiance. "Whoa," he said softly to the horse then laughed a little bit up at Joss. "He definitely likes you, but not me."
Joss smiled and just shook her head. "No, that's not it. It's just that when you stand directly in front of a horse, because of how their eyes are set, they can't see you. So he didn't know you were even there, and then something touched him," She explained, and Tig began to feel some sort of odd kinship to horses, how being touched was always a surprise he didn't care for…unless it was Joss doing the touching. "Come over here, to the side of him, let him see that you're there, then give him a pat on the neck."
Tig didn't even really want to, he had nothing against horses, but his only interest them was more along the lines of…well…it wasn't like Joss's interest. But he was doing what she'd told him to do, standing almost behind the big, black horse's head, looking at him in his big dark eye that watched him with a surprising lack of suspicion…Tig wasn't used to that. Slowly he reached up, laying his palm and fingers against the muscle of the animal's neck, the horse turning to look at him a little more, but this time, he didn't pull away from him or toss his head. Joss smiled down at Tig, who realized, he was also smiling. "Hey big guy," he said softly, now rubbing the black hide, realizing that he'd never really bothered to try and…connect…with an animal like this…in the "normal" way. Joss smiled more and more, looking down at him, wind whipped strands of her black hair sticking all over from beneath the safety helmet she wore, the chin strap squishing her face a little, but there was still so much peace and power rested in her features, she was still so beautiful. His dark, sweet, perfect angel…she was the only one who could touch him, or at least, the only one he'd let get close enough to, because she was the only one who knew how. Joss was more than fucking perfect, she was fucking amazing.
"Oh my God, I don't know which one of you looked better!" Lauren's happy voice suddenly intruded into Tig's thoughts, and for a moment he was confused, wondering why and how he'd done something to look "better," and then realizing Lauren spoke of Joss and the horse she rode over that jump. The jump that Tig had been ready to see Joss come tumbling off of this horse while going over, but she hadn't, she'd gone with the motion of everything around her, and in doing so, hadn't let herself, or even the horse, fall. Again something chased away the rapture Tig felt himself enclosed in, and it was about God damn time something snapped him out of it…but he wouldn't have minded just another second or two. This time it had been the feeling of another pair of eyes staring at him, strangely and suspiciously. He looked up and Juice's Lauren was looking at him, but as soon as he had looked up, she'd looked away. Typical reaction out of anyone, he couldn't blame her…was glad to see he still "had it" despite everything else that had been floating around his mind at the time. Lauren looked back at him, but didn't really look at him. "Hi," she said, and smiled politely, but Tig could tell she wasn't at all comfortable around him. Huh…it really was just something about whatever magic Joss possessed, and not horse people in general.
Tig shot Lauren a nod, but didn't bother to say anything to her; he just looked back at Joss. It was unbelievable what she'd learned to become from horses and what they did for her…and in that, what they'd done for him. On the horse wall in her old bedroom, she'd had one of those plaques with a motivational saying kind of things, only the one in her old room had read, "Horses only spook at two things: Things that move, and things that don't." Tig had no understanding of what that meant, or if it was even supposed to be funny the first time he'd noticed it…but now, he began to realize, that plaque was describing him…and Joss, she understood how he saw things, how she couldn't make him do anything he didn't want to, and wasn't afraid to face any obstacle with him, and in doing so, she wouldn't let him fall. She knew how to make a lot of those spooky things okay. "Hey," he said, looking up at her like he was seeing her for the first time. "Can you come down from there?" He asked, overcome with the urge to be close to her.
Joss smiled, still, so happy to be riding once again, and dropped both of her feet out of the stirrups, lifting her leg over the horse's neck and slid down off of the saddle to her feet, instead of getting off the way Tig had expected, but she couldn't have looked more graceful as she hit the ground, then walked over to the fence, putting her foot on the lowest rail of it to climb over, but Tig just grabbed her in his arms then and there, hugging her tightly, and holding her for a few long seconds, trying to bury his face in her silky, raven hair at her neck, but remembering it was confined within a thick braid. "Joss," he managed to whisper to her, knowing he couldn't just keep holding her like this, with someone watching him do it. "Let's go home."
"I've got to put the horse up," she answered as he let go of her. "I drove myself, you can go; I'll be there soon." Joss promised, and her emerald eyes sparkled over his lips, wanting him to kiss her, but no, not here; he'd already done far too much, and all he knew about Lauren was who she was with and where she'd lived, refusing to let Joss come here to ride until he'd "checked her out" as he'd put it, telling Joss, "you don't know, she could have a husband over there who's FBI or something." Besides, he could see Lauren trying to figure out the strange embrace Joss shared with her man, his arms around her tightly, but her hands only gripping his forearms, not even trying to move passed his elbows. Tig eyed Lauren, and again she looked away. Only Joss knew how to touch him, only Joss understood, and only Joss had to. Besides, they'd be leaving soon, and when she was on the back of his bike…
Damn! She had driven herself! Fuck! And just when Tig was looking forward to throwing her on the back of his bike, and speeding away, with her arms snugly around him. What? No he wasn't! Fuck that shit! From now on, he'd bungee cord that bitch to the back of his bike so she didn't HAVE to touch him! Nope…she didn't HAVE to…fuck…this was a useless fight that he just couldn't win…never held the high ground, not even once. But part of him was always going to fight it; he knew that, it was beyond his control.
"Okay," he sighed, but hadn't meant to, looking at Joss, but looked over Joss's shoulder and gave Juice's Lauren a somewhat beckoning glance. God damn she was short…he was more than a foot taller than her…she was like one of those little people from those movies, with the ring…what were they called? Hobbheads? No. Hobgoblins? No. Blumpkins! No. Hobbnobbs? No. Blumpkins? What? Really? Aw fuck it; his name for her was just going to be "Hob-bitch." Yeah, he needed Hob-bitch for a minute, but not with Joss around.
He looked back at Joss again ignoring the startled look in Hob-bitch's eyes…hmm…Hob-bitch had a pretty decent rack, too! But no, that didn't matter, it was just an observation, his brain was hardwired to identify these things, he couldn't help it. Tig looked at Joss. "Go on down to the barn then, I'll be in the shower when you get home." He half smiled then pointed towards the barn, Joss understanding that he wanted her to go, but he pinned Hob-bitch to the spot with his eyes as Joss gave him a look before leading the horse she'd been riding away.
"Don't 'Tara' her!" She warned him, with a slight smile, then gathered up the reins in her hand and walked away, looking at Hob-bitch as she passed. "Don't worry," she told her. "It's you he wants to talk to, so just be you."
Tig smirked, it was fun being scary. But the apprehension in Hob-bitch's eyes was anything but amused. "Hey," Tig said to her, and she looked at him like she wasn't quite sure what to do, or if she should even be talking to him in the first place. Well, could he blame her? "No, it's cool. I know what Juice probably said about me, but I got mine," he glanced over at Joss as she and the horse walked out of the arena then again looked at Lauren. "Come over here, I just wanna ask you something."
"What?" Hob-bitch was still very tentative, but she'd walked over, stealing a glance at Joss and likely wishing she wasn't facing her old man by herself. Tig smiled, it was wrong for this kind of intimidation to make him happy, but damn did it make him happy!
"What's involved in owning a horse?" He asked her, leaning over towards the horse that Lauren still held, an older looking animal than the one he'd seen Joss riding, but now Tig knew the secret, stand to the side, let the horse see you, and then you could pet his neck…and damn if it hadn't worked again! He smiled as he patted the old horse. "Beautiful animal," he said to Hob-bitch, who smiled a bit now.
"Well, that depends." She said, and Tig could tell she liked to talk about this stuff as much as Joss did. "How much are you willing to spend for the horse itself?"
Hmm…he hadn't thought about that angle of it…most of what he needed or wanted was available to him in some…non-commercial way. But how the fuck could he steal a horse? The club sure as hell didn't deal in black market ponies. He looked at Hob-bitch. "How much is a good one?"
"Well, just like with bikes, 'good' is a relative term." Hob-bitch replied thoughtfully, and Tig smiled a bit more, liking the way she chose to explain this. Hob-bitch was kinda cool! "Just because you pay a lot for a horse, doesn't mean it's necessarily a 'good' horse for what you want or need. I mean, you can get thoroughbreds absolutely free from off the track a lot of times when they don't turn out to be what owners hoped they would. Racetracks throw away a lot young thoroughbreds in slaughterhouses every day, and a lot of them are good horses," she said, and Tig could tell how disgusted she was with the fact that it happened. Well, he saw her point, it wasn't fair, to be knocked off just because you couldn't perform to the rest of the world's specifications. But Hob-bitch wasn't done, "At least, they can be good horses once you get the crazy out of them."
Alright! This was perfect! Without knowing it, Hob-bitch had just said the magic word, and it wasn't 'free!' What other kind of horse was there out there for Joss? She needed a "crazy" one that she'd have to earn the trust of and patiently wait for it to come around and want to make her happy. And Joss…dark, sweet, vegetarian Joss, would love the whole 'spared from the slaughterhouse' deal, too! It was perfect! Tig smiled even more now than before. Hob-bitch really was cool, and she didn't even know why! "Yeah…" Tig said, his mind still working. "Now where do I keep it?"
"Joss said you guys have about three acres, that's more than enough room for one horse." Suggested Hob-bitch, her voice lighter in tone now, much more relaxed all over and talking to him like he was her friend's boyfriend, and not some cannibalistic lunatic. Fuckin' hell! Boyfriend? No, think horses…where to keep one.
Tig shook his head. "My place is all wooded," he answered. Trying to clear out a place for fencing and some kind of barn, and a place for Joss to ride was not going to be a possibility. Besides, he liked the trees, no grass to mow that way, and they kept everything dark. But Tig had confidence in Hob-bitch, she rocked; with her help this was going to be possible! As soon as he found a place to put a free, crazy thoroughbred, because his house wasn't an option…cuz, well, there was that other little problem. Tig looked at Hob-bitch, shaking his head at her again. "Besides, right there, at my house, wouldn't be good…I got issues."