He hadn't spoke to her until she'd gotten him half undressed, the water already running hot in the shower and bloodied clothes dropped along pristine tile. And when he did finally speak, it wasn't in English, but it wasn't all that hard to understand regardless. It was a murky mix of sullen apology and pained affection - and the fact that he'd used Gaelic to intentionally hide what he was actually feeling didn't do much to cover the fact that his eyes held more trepidation than she'd expected. Too much worry and more of something like worship than she thought he'd probably like to lay between them.
Ally shook her head into the way he pressed his forehead tiredly to hers, her fingers braced along the coiled strength of his arms. "It's okay. You did what I asked you to do."
"I forced you to ask." He drove his forehead harder into hers.
"You don't force me to do anything, Telford." She felt a smile want on her lips but it didn't come alive. "You ask. And I can't seem to tell you no."
"You're too calm on this, love." He squinted over her, realizing that she was searching over the blood that was still staining his skin. And it kept him from wanting to kiss her, as much as his muscles burned to do it anyhow.
"I am far from calm." She admitted in a rattled whisper. "Trust me."
The arched brow he gave her damn near hedged into sardonic humor.
"I did, now didn't I?" he asked as he gently pushed her back, hands shirking his belt undone as he watched her face. "And y'didn't disappoint."
"I generally don't, Filip. You should have learned that by now." she whispered into the way he was stripping his clothes, already stepping into the shower on a half smirk. The echo of his movements tripped her back to their earlier fight. And that tripped her farther back into other discussions.
"You told me you'd kill him if he ever broke into my house again."
He just gave her a tired look, face ashen pale as he stepped into the water, "You asked me not to. And I just can't seem to tell you no, Ally."
"You do, though. When it comes to them." She murmured back, catching the way it lifted his head from the spray, another man's blood already trickling off his slackened jaw.
"And so do you." He asserted softly. "When it comes to them."
"What did you say to me?" she was treading back to the door gently. "The Gaelic?"
He snorted his face under the spray, words tinny under the water as he avoided her glance with eyes shut, "Y'already know, Cu Sith."
"Sure, but someday you're gonna need to share with the class, Scotty."
"Clean shot, Jarry. I did not see that coming."
She didn't mean to jump into the man's words but they raked across already raw nerves, fish-hooking into her skin and holding there as she entered the kitchen. She felt suddenly extremely exposed under Teller's tipped glance, his young face looking more aged than it should in the sunny kitchen. His fingers were pressed upon a pack of cigarettes, one of her ashtrays already settled in the middle of the table as he sat sidelong to it.
"I don't know how to respond to that right now." She shook her head as she forced herself across the kitchen anyhow, digging into the bag she'd left on the counter.
Teller flashed an amused glance in her direction, eyes wider and almost roaming younger in the way he snorted as she tugged a joint from her purse and leaned into the table. One hand pressed flat to the wood to sturdy her nerves as she confiscated his lighter and sucked down a long drag of the weed, the taste an easy out for her shakiness to take. He suddenly tipped off a broad laugh as he shook his head, taking the joint as she offered it up, the smoke trapped deep down in her lungs as she held onto it, exhaling just before a cough brought it back between them.
Jax turned his body into the table, elbows digging into the wood as he took a small drag and passed it back, the very movement just a measure of peace keeping. "You just got yourself beyond dirty, Lieutenant."
"Didn't think joining your VP in the shower was appropriate considering you have two psychopaths in my bedroom cleaning up what was obviously murder." She didn't dare sit down, didn't dare drop to the chair and onto a physical level with him.
She was too battered up to let him ride over her, and he was too practiced to have this moment much dwell on him. The very idea of letting him run her down in the conversation was infinitely unacceptable. Not when he was looking at her with complicit blue in his eyes, as though they'd just successfully rolled a bank together. Or maybe even murdered a man with matching hands.
"You know exactly what I mean." He cocked his head on a cynical smile.
"I do, Teller." She snapped over him before pressing off the table, laying her hips back into the kitchen counter as she took another drag. "You don't need to rub it in."
"I'm not." Jax lifted his hand in a half attempt of defense that fell flattened out between them, "I'm just… surprised."
"Yeah?" she felt frustration crackle up her throat. "Me too."
"You gonna be able to carry this, Jarry?" his eyes were again older than the rest of his face as he studied her intently. "Can you live on this level? Down here with the trash? I mean, really?"
She swallowed into his accusatory and pointed glance, feeling the tip from nervous to flash bang angry in her spine, "I shot the bastard first, didn't I? Where the hell were you, Teller? Stop for a drink somewhere?"
A sort of mirth crossed his features before he relaxed in the chair again with a nod, breathing out amusement as he reached for his cigarettes, "Yeah, I guess you do seem like an ends-justify-the-means sorta gal."
They sank into a silence then, doubled smoke curling into the spaces of her kitchen as the sound of the shower running down the hall echoed their quietness. Ally shook her head slowly as she leaned forward, stubbing the last of the joint into the ashtray as he watched her movements, his glance thinly cautious in the quiet.
"I need coffee." She broke awkwardly into the silence, turning toward the pot she'd made only a forever ago.
"Boys are gonna have to wait till dark to get him outta here." Jax murmured into a softened gentleness. "Apartments at TM are half back. Chibs can take you. You should get some sleep."
"I need…" she swallowed the jagged edging on her tone, intentionally trying to soften her words into a request rather than demand. "Can you find a way to leave this open ended? He's got a wife and kids who don't necessarily deserve any more shit. This… it wasn't their fault."
"Sure." Jax's voice was softer in reply than she expected as she poured a cup of coffee and the true gentleness in it had her reaching for another cup to offer him. "We'll take it out of Charming. Lodi can carry it. Make it look drug related. He's gonna pop a positive drug test in autopsy anyhow."
"Thank you." She breathed out, the taste of her appreciation akin to bitterness.
"You're welcome." The response tasted even worse, even if his voice was layered in ranges of sympathy.
"I don't need to go to TM." She shook her head as she carried both cups to the table, setting them down before settling herself into the chair, balancing their glances over the table. "I need to get back to Saint Thomas."
He winced her a shaded glance of actual apology, head tipped, "No, you don't."
She didn't want to believe what he was implying.
Didn't want to trust in anything that came out of his devilish mouth.
Unfortunately, she didn't doubt this truth.
"My office would have called me." She accused between them.
Teller nodded slowly and legitimately apologetically, "I'm sure they will. Just talked to Montez twenty minutes ago. He's probably halfway back to Scoops already."
"And I still don't know why he's dead." She shook her head slowly, eyes dropping to the ashtray that he was stubbing his cigarette into.
"Not gonna." Jax supplied quietly before pushing up from the chair, picking up the coffee she'd offered him as he moved to leave the kitchen. "I'm gonna check in with the boys and then get outta here. I have other shit that needs to get done today. We good, Lieutenant?"
Surreal was a deeply inadequate understatement.
And her life was miles beyond it when Jackson Teller was sipping coffee in her kitchen, and his Vice President was in her shower, and his soldiers were wrapping up a homicide down the hall like a goddamn Christmas gift.
She was an ends-justify-the-means girl?
She didn't know what she was anymore.
"Yeah." She lifted her own cup in a jaded acceptance of the situation that seemed to almost still her jangling nerves, "We're good, Teller."
What she was… she was alive. And protected, in a way.
Even if this sort of peace he'd contracted between them was fleeting.
"I mean it about TM." He offered as he turned down her hall. "Tell Gemma to blow it out her ass."
She waited until he was out of her sight to drop her forehead to her arms on the table, shuddering her lungs into the edge of it as she let her guard finally fall. She didn't cry – but she did let a little rage stir up a fire in her lungs, the twinge of it scenting like weed and gunpowder.
She despised him all over again when her phone rang dread up her back.