"You look about as tired as he did this morning." Teller's voice was muffled as he dragged a shirt over his head, steps light as he moved toward the opposite side of the kitchen table. "Rough night, Sheriff?"
"Sort of." She didn't actually care to fake anything with him. Not in the middle of his kitchen with his kid's leftover cereal milk souring on the table, bits of Fruity Pebbles staining it a muddy pink.
"You're not wearing your piece." He sat slowly, his glance intentionally scrutinizing as he searched over the way she was standing curled into herself, waving toward the opposite chair.
"Thought it would send the wrong message." She pulled the chair back from the table, drawing it away from the way he was leaning forward so that she could keep skated back as she sat. "He's already been here?"
"We had a few things to discuss." Jax studied her a quiet moment before nodding, waving his fingers toward the coffee pot on the counter, head cocked into a silent offering.
Ally studied the looseness of his shoulders as he shifted them up in questioning and she leaned forward a little in the chair, watching the turn of blue eyes over her movement. She inhaled into the push up from the chair and turned her back open to him, barely catching the down of his brow as he watched her openly move from the chair and toward the counter, fingers slowly cautious as she pulled a still damp mug from the drainer. She was waiting for a cut down, in so very many ways.
But she was damn tired of waiting for it.
It was making her bed cold in the morning when she should have been allowed to curl into the spiced smell of aftershave and smoke and leftover leathered sweat.
If it was coming her way, she was gonna draw the fire.
"You and I have a few things to discuss too, Mr Teller." She poured her own cup of coffee and turned her hips back into his counter, waiting to watch his response to how welcome she'd made herself in the middle of his kitchen.
He'd cocked in the chair and showed her no tells, elbow to the table and head to his hand. "Such as?"
She took a swallow of dark bitterness, figurative and literal, head cocked at a sad angle as she studied the trace of amusement in his eyes, "You win."
Distaste angled his long features as he slackened back into the chair, letting half his body lay harder into the table top as he stared at her. His hand dropped to pick up the pack of cigarettes, blinking as he pulled one and offered her the pack. She normally wouldn't have taken him up on the offer but she angled off the counter slowly, pulling one from the pack in the wash of his surprise. She caught against the lighter faster than he did, the hand with the coffee drawn aside as she clipped up the flame, questioning cocked into the way her body was angled into him.
Jax gave her a discerning glance before leaning the cigarette into the flame and letting it burn, flaring it as he leaned away and watched her light her own. The plastic lighter clattered back to the table and he watched the way the tight inhale brought her shoulders back as she caught the cup in the same hand and stepped away. She skirted back to her chair, fingers trailing around the bowl that was still sitting at the end of the table.
"Win what, Sheriff?" he asked as he swallowed smoke, his shoulders a sudden wire tight line beneath the white t-shirt.
"You know what you conniving little bastard." She let the mug clap to the table hard, nearly sloshing the contents into wood as she stood beside the empty chair on a ragged edging of emotion. "Jesus Christ."
"He's not a fucking prize, Jarry."
"He's not your goddamn pet, either." Her face was damn near as white pale as his shirt and he let his tongue ride his bottom lip in annoyance.
"I'm not doin' this." He shook his head in tight negation, roughly flicking ash into the tray that was even between them. "I got bigger problems than you, Lieutenant. You need to get your priorities straightened out."
"I am." She flicked back over him tightly as she dropped the unwanted cigarette into the coffee, hips angling as she laid both palms onto the flat of the table. "I want Charming and I want him."
His jaw caught on a twitch and he leaned forward into the dusted rattle of her tone, eyeing how serious she was, "But?"
"But I won't ever have all of him." She caught his eyes follow the movement of her hair as she shook her head just a moment before his blue eyes trapped on hers again. "And I can't have all of Charming. Because of the club."
"Club's not going anywhere." He leveled into her.
"Neither am I." she flicked a glance over his face, feeling heat crawl up her throat. "Am I, Teller?"
The sudden grazed laugh of disdain he let between them was hazed in smoke, "You're so off the mark. You think I want you dead? I helped save your ass."
His jaw was wiring again as his tongue ran his teeth, head shaking his glance to the side. She watched a rapid flux of emotions twist over his features before his face hardened. He sniffed before sucking down another drag and jerkily stubbing out the cigarette he'd barely really taken into his lungs. Teller pushed back off the table and let his shoulders slacken into the chair, hands lifted as he stared at her in an openly questioning silence. He was giving her a lead of sorts, face all shaded angles and anger.
"I can't… none of this works if you don't work with me." She finally murmured quietly over the table, letting her body sink back into the chair on a level of unflinching desperation that she could very well taste in her throat. "I know you don't trust me and I sure as hell don't trust you. Trust him. He's never been disloyal to you, Jax. You win."
He shaded a glance down the table before light lashes brought another rise of blue eyes in her direction. "I need him."
"So do I." she admitted in a guttered softness that broke her to admit. "But he loves you, not me. He loves his club, not me."
Teller gave her a huffed breath of sardonic laugher as he shook his head, "It's what he is, Jarry. You've been here five minutes in comparison."
"I want him and I want Charming." She repeated softly, laying her voice low.
"I feel like we've been here before." He murmured off, head turning into the way his oldest son stepped into the room sleepily, a hand stretching off the table as he laxed his body farther back in the chair and more relaxed. "Hey, buddy."
She watched Able leaned into the pressing of his father's open palm, putting his weight into the way that Jax stretched his shoulders and angled enough to draw him curled around into his lap. The boy's eyes focused on her briefly before his head dropped back against Teller's chest and she exhaled slowly into the way the man let his jaw draw along the blonde of the boy's hair.
"You've been here for five minutes of a hundred years, Lieutenant." He murmured over the child's head. "You read your reports, your files. RICO and the Fed reports? But that information gives you nothing. Not when it comes to him sitting at the table beside his brothers."
"He really doesn't tell me anything, Jax." She hushed down, her head angling into the way Abel was sleepily watching her with wary eyes. "The choke hold is unnecessary."
He flicked her a look of darkening blue over his son's head, "You have no idea what is or isn't necessary right now, Sheriff."
"Because he tells me nothing." She thrummed the whisper tighter into the table, catching the way Jax's hand wiped his hand along his son's hair, the rings he was wearing lifted lightly from sifting blonde. "And I don't want him to."
There was a twisting of cautious curiosity in his eyes as his jaw rode the top of his son's head again and she stayed still to where she was, watching the movement as he calculated the risk of whether he wanted to step forward into the subtly played implication. Jax breathed in through his nose as his hands shifted under his son's arms, lifting the boy from his lap and to the floor. Abel gave him an obviously glaring pout but wandered away and back toward the living room as the man quietly told him to find Wendy. The glide of his eyes back to hers was inherently threatening, the blue color crystallizing as his head angled.
"Talk."
"I want him." She repeated once again, keeping it just as soft, but threading thick. "And I want quiet in Charming. I don't need anything else."
"You tellin' me you're gonna turn a blind eye to all the bullshit that could cut your career golden inside of five years?" his smile was suddenly lining predatory. "For dick? You're not that kind, Jarry. You want it too much."
"I'm a County Sheriff, Teller." She snorted into his accusation. "This is the head of the line for a uniform. I ride that desk until I retire. Or get shot."
"Naw," he grinned into it darkly, "plenty other desks you could leverage into. Chief of Police? County commissioner? Council seats too."
"Not likely, considering the dick in question." She sharpened over the table with a cocked glance of disbelief. "Is it? Pretty sure that wouldn't play all that well under public scrutiny. Patterson finds out and she could bury me if she wanted to."
"But - "
"But," she let her hand flatten along the table, "it's not like you boys are above playing ball with the suits, either. Is it? So what if I do? It doesn't necessarily have to change anything."
"And what exactly wouldn't it change?" he asked into a leveled softness. "You and I already have a deal. You got nothing else to offer."
"The more power I have, the more leverage you get. Besides…" Ally kept the quietness they'd balanced between them, and shored her shoulders just as tight as his. "you think I can't make your life a whole new sort of hell, Teller?"
"So much for not wanting to send the wrong message." He responded into a sardonic blankness.
Her glance shied unintentionally toward the sink and she felt him flinch tighter into the table on the movement, her eyes riding sharply back to his, "I can also make your life a Sunday walk in the goddamn sunny park."
The breaking moment between them was pressing her lungs still and keeping his hands tight held to the table and she thought, for a moment, that she'd imagined the suddenly bright eyed smile that preceded his breathy chuckle, "You been spendin' too much time with Chibs."
A flushing smile flared on her as she angled her head away, letting her tongue skate against her lips as she dropped her glance to the floor, "You and I have to make this work, Jax. Or we'll ruin what's good in him."
"I know." He was chewing thoughtfully against the inside of his cheek as he nabbed at the pack of cigarettes again, shunting his shoulders into the chair back as he shrugged up a tensed smile. "Let's deal, Lieutenant."