He didn't think she actually realized that she was pouting as she stalled up on the bedroom carpeting, her eyes tracking from the empty bed to the way he was cast back into one of her chairs. The lines in the face she made, right between her eyes, they were almost adorable and he just laid his head back on the chair, joint tucked in his fingers as he watched her sit to the edge of the bed facing him.
"He's got a bit of a thing for you, yeah?" he asked lazily into the quietness of her movements, "Can't keep his eyes to himself when it comes to you. He seein' something else when he puts his wife to the sheets? Laying you down in his head, Althea?"
"Really?" she exhaled a bemused breath, lips twitching a smile in his direction as she crossed one smooth leg over the other, "You're gonna get jealous over a twelve year old with a hard on for his female CO? It's actually a pretty normal response. Generally, they either hate me or they sexualize me."
"He just let himself into your home uninvited." He scraped the taste of the weed off his bottom lip with his teeth, "Drunk, angry and as welcome as he pleases. Jealousy isn't what I'm aimin' for, here."
"But you are jealous." She admonished with a wickedly warm crush of knowing in her voice. "It's burning you up, isn't it?"
He arched her a dry look of reproach, avoiding the question completely, "Think he'll keep his trap shut?"
"Does it matter anymore?" her hair graced her shoulders as she shook her head, breathing the question out softly between them. "It's gonna get out. One way or another."
"Is it worth it, Lieutenant?"
She frowned into the sobered melancholy of the question, a true honesty sheening his face in a way she didn't often see. None of the bravado or bluster he usually preceded each step with. His legs were splayed out tired and long from the chair and he'd sunken into it tiredly, no attention to the awkward press of his spine. Ally blinked a glance back over his face, watching the sudden sturdy revival of composure as his eyes glittered hard again, jaw shaking to the side as he sucked down some smoke. The flux of emotion that he allowed her to witness, it was such a stark high contrast to the flat and deadened sharpness she'd seen on his face earlier, with his blade at a throat and her gun at a temple. The variance in the man was jarring and she sucked down a long breath as her thoughts scrambled to lay one image over the other.
"Is it?" she asked softly.
She had a damn annoying habit of answering his questions with rhetorical repeats and instead of giving her a response he just panned her a flattened glare.
"He broke into my house and then walked out with an envelope of dirty cash, Filip. I'm not all that worried about him causing trouble." Her shoulders stretched back as her hands pressed the mattress. "Not to mention that I've had him on the ropes for a positive piss test since I started this job. He's not a bad guy… but he's not necessarily a great cop either."
"You mean to use him where you can. Y've already been twisting him." There was a sudden half smile of understanding cocking his lips and deepening his scars. "My sweet girl's just a wicked tyrant after all."
"I can be both at once, ya know?" she shot off before laying back on the mattress, lungs expelling the pent breath that had gone stale in her lungs. "I'm assuming the cost of the transmission comes off my cut."
"Business is so distasteful sometimes." He murmured ruefully as he studied the flush and innocently vulnerable way she was stretched back, one of her hands dragging her hair off her face. "Don't you think I'd lay claim to you in every greasy corner of this town if I could?"
"I think the day you do is the day I'll actually start truly trusting you." Her whisper worried the air above her softly. "But I don't expect that day will ever come, Filip. Welcome to reality."
"So," he jerkily stubbed the joint into the ashtray that he'd perched on the table beside him. "is it worth it, Ally?"
Her face was blanked cold and calculating as she turned her head against the mattress, eyes meeting his from the flattened angle, "It would be if you'd just shut the hell up about it and come back to bed."
"Y'want me to shut up? It's usually you chewin' this up." He broke the seething tease at her quietly. "Ask me nicely."
She just quirked him a disbelieving glance, "Get your cute Scottish ass over here. I'm cold."
"That you are, love." He dipped his head forward as he leaned from the chair, his voice laying a dank reality into her assessment even though she hadn't meant it the way he implied. "Maybe that's why we've held on this long."
She watched the weight of him relax onto the mattress beside her, her head turned into the way he leaned onto his side and let his head settle onto his hand, the other palm laying flatly possessive against her stomach.
"Maybe I just don't want to let you go." Her voice was trading into tired admittance and soured petulance. "I don't see why everyone else in this shitty little town gets to take whatever they want and I don't."
"Because you took an oath?" he asked over her, voice treading into a darkened humor as his fingers rubbed the cotton of her shirt into the tightened muscles of her stomach.
"I know we haven't known each other all that long but have I ever seemed like the type of woman who puts a lot of faith in promises, Telford?"
"Not in the least." He shook his head over her before dropping a light kiss to her forehead.
"Then you shouldn't be surprised." She curled into him then and he shifted up higher onto the mattress, enough to tug her leg up over his hip and drag her into the turn of his chest. He reached over her hip to drag the corner of the comforter over the slope of her back and onto what he could cover of the both of them.
"Y'do surprise me, Althea." He forced her head to cradle into his arm with a sure and guiding hand, brushing his nose back and forth into her hair as he considered how much money she'd just let walk away from her with little regard to the loss. "Often enough."
"How easily could you have shot him in the head?" the question was wrapped into the way her hand bunched his shirt up as she clung closer, tucking into him so that she didn't have to face the answer she knew was coming.
He let his jaw rub along the side of her head, eyes shut against the nervous caution in his response. "Easier than you'd like."
"Thought so."
He'd been debating the pause throughout Jackson's entire interaction with the crooked cop who was snarking and making biting comments at them from behind the counter. And at first, he'd decided to let it pass, assuming that she was right and jealousy had been coiling up in his gut like a low laying snake for a couple days. But he paused a few steps from the bell jangling of the door, one hand brushing the glass of the display case while the other tapped lightly into his President's lower back. Unable to let go of the gut gnawing he was getting from the memory of a couple nights before.
"Gimme a minute here, Jackie." He lifted his jaw up into the way discreet blue eyes turned on him in confused scrutiny, Happy's face just as bewildered from behind the other man's shoulder. "I'll follow to Scoops. Take Hap."
"What exactly are you gonna get from Barosky that we haven't already bargained for?" the accusation dropping heat into Jax's tone was far more than questioning. It was verging on distrustful.
"Following one crooked cop to another." Chibs shrugged his whisper forward. "Making sure our asses aren't hanging out."
"Is she becoming a problem that needs to be addressed, Chibs?" the younger man's face walled up, his voice panning deep and gritting, "Because I will address it. And you may not like the result."
"Not her." He shook his head minutely as he lifted a calming hand into the President's chest, dropping his shoulders to intentionally douse the flared heat of the situation. "One of her deputies is unhinged. I wanna know how far. And whether it's going to come round on us. That's all."
"You boys staying for tea and scones?" Barosky snapped up after them. "Or can I get back to my business?"
"It's pre-emptive." Chibs murmured as he met Jax's eyes. "And it's just business."
"Is she?" Jax stepped slowly backwards with his hands lifted, his head tipping at an angle and face unreadable, "Just business? Because I happen to know that's bullshit, Chibs. You told me, remember?"
"Aye, I did." He agreed tightly as he leaned his weight into the counter, "I haven't lied to you, Jackson. You know where I'm at."
Teller bit onto the inside of his cheek before nodding and lifting a hand toward Barosky in acceptance. "Make it quick. If you're not at Scoops in an hour, I'm sending Quinn after your ass. I need my VP."
He nodded slowly in silent agreement.
Swallowing down the nagging question of whether it was a matter of protection or a threat of patrol.