SAMCRO's new partnership with Cara Cara does nothing to deter Sydney from her new job - much to Tig's dismay, leading to an explosive argument that has become all but routine for the scorned couple.

General trigger warnings for this story: Language, smut, mentions of rape, abuse, drug use/overdose, violence/death, racism/gang activity.

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CHAPTER 14: VICIOUS CYCLES

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2 weeks later…

Sydney stumbled drunkenly through the darkness with her arms wrapped around her overly exposed body in the cold, mid-November air, struggling to find her footing on her way up to the front door in the pleasers that had yet to take her down - no matter how hard they had tried.

Tig sighed as he watched her nearly trip over the ridiculously high heels as she scurried away from him - a sight that he had witnessed countless times over the past three months. It was a sight that he had hoped Jax's Cara Cara partnership proposal would eliminate, but instead, it seemed to have done the opposite.

Rather than the porn studio being her escape from him, from the club, from their mistakes - it was now her newest way to get back at them, and get some recompense for all that she had been robbed of. She pranced around that goddamn pink warehouse with the body that he could no longer allow himself to worship, on display to anybody who would look - including his brothers - because she knew that he wouldn't.

"Here." He reached out once he caught up to her, steadying her wobbly body with a hand around her elbow.

"I'm fine." She slurred as she wretched her arm out of his grasp, the force of the recoil sending her tumbling back into the side of the house where the cold metal sent a shiver up her barely-clothed spine.

Tig looked painfully over her alcohol-fuelled expression as she barely made eye contact with him through her thick, glittery lashes that fluttered as she nodded her heavy head. He looked away, jamming the house key on her keyring into the lock where it clicked open and he stepped inside, feeling his body being hauled out of the way as she pushed past him.

Even though it had been what Sydney had come to expect, it still stung as she strutted down the hallway in the skimpy lingerie that was made up of an assortment of straps and buckles, without a single indication that he was watching her.

Tig chewed the inside of his lip as he stared down at his boots in an attempt to avoid the insulting eyeful of the white leather outfit that she was trying to force-feed him, dropping her car keys down into the crystal dish with a clang that temporarily filled the dead air between them as she disappeared into the kitchen. Ever since the Halloween party, he found himself hating when she wore white - the ironically angelic colour that only reminded him of the demon that he had created. He didn't bother with an explanation as he silently made his way up the stairs, resuming the routine that they had both begrudgingly grown accustomed to.

Sydney frowned as she watched the light at the end of the hallway turn off, the sound of his footsteps on the floor above her reverberating in her ears in a way that seemed to sober her up instantly. She shook her head, stomping across the kitchen towards the whiskey bottle.

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Clay awoke from a light slumber that he had succumbed to in the time that he had been waiting for Gemma, lifting his head from the pillow where he found that the lamp on her side of the bed was still on, and the spot that she used to sleep in, was empty. He sighed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he tried to focus them on the alarm clock on his nightstand, squinting until he could finally see that the blurry red numbers read 1:37 A.M..

Gemma felt the tense in her muscles from where she sat cross-legged on the couch as she heard the bedroom door opening at the end of the hall, debating which excuse she would have to use to buy her yet another night away from him. She knew that pretending to be asleep tonight was out of the question as she held a burning cigarette between her fingers, so instead she dropped her eyes to her lap where she fiddled with the belt of her robe, hoping that her silence would say enough.

Clay sighed as he stood across the room from where she ignored him - something that she had taken to, lately. "You comin' to bed?" He tried to keep the irritation out of his tone.

"Can't get comfortable." She blew a mouthful of smoke out of the side of her healed lips, feeling the penetration of his unfaltering gaze as he silently demanded more of an explanation. "Don't wanna keep you up…" She looked up briefly.

"I'd rather you toss next to me, than on the couch…" He raised a brow softly, getting more ignorance. "This is starting to become a habit…" He sighed as he made his way over to the loveseat, having learned his lesson about her personal spaceas of late. "It's been like, weeks since-"

"I still got a lot of pain." She snapped, finally meeting his eyes for more than half of a second.

Clay blinked under her glare. "Well then maybe you should go see the doc." He spit out.

"I don't need meds." She scoffed. "I just need some time."

"How much time?" He raised a brow.

Gemma felt her no longer sore face beginning to quiver as he continued to pick apart her lies. And it was nobody's fault, but her own. "It's late." She blinked as she stamped out her cigarette.

"That's why I'm tryin' to get you to come to bed." He nodded.

"I'm sleeping out here." She shook her head as she reached over to turn the lamp off.

"I'm trying to talk to you here." He scowled, his voice raising as she continued to shut him down.

"Since when do you want to talk?" She scoffed, fighting off the guilt as she scolded him for doing the one thing that she so desperately wished she could.

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Sydney stumbled around the kitchen, pinballing from counter edge to counter edge where she revelled in the deliciously physical pain - a nice break from the mental torture that had become her life. She finally reached the stove, steadying herself in the sparkly shoes that crashed loudly against the hardwood floor with each step that she took, something that her subconscious seemed to be all too aware of as she refused to take them off.

She tried to focus her spinning eyes on the dials in front of her, blindly reaching for the closest one where she cranked it up all of the way, moving backwards unsteadily as she began pulling out drawers in search of a pot.

Tig yanked the pillow down over his head as the clanging of pots and pans plucked him from the already shaky sleep that he'd finally managed to fall into among her persistent ruckus.

"What the?" Sydney scowled as she rifled through multiple bottles, her clumsy movements sending half of them tumbling to her feet. She knew that she had multiple boxes of pasta in here, where the hell had they all gone? "Tig!" She called as she continued to search shelf after shelf to no avail, bracing herself against the open door now that her focus was on something other than staying on her feet. "Tig!" She whined when she got no answer the first time, stumbling back where she managed to catch herself on the edge of the island. "Ugh!" She groaned as she leant down and pried the eight-inch heels off of her feet and threw them across the room, hoping that the extra noise would get his attention as they bounced off of the glossy dining room table, ricocheted off of the wall, and finally hit the floor. But when her cries continued to go unanswered in what her intoxicated state deemed to be a timely manner - which was only a matter of seconds - she snapped. "Alexander!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, which she could tell were starting to be affected by her increase in cigarette consumption as they began to burn behind her chest when she finally heard him getting out of bed.

"What?" He whined as he hobbled down the stairs, pulling his jeans on over his boxers.

Sydney had barely been able to feel her body just seconds before he'd come down the stairs, but now as he stood before her with his pants low on his hips, she realized that half a bottle of whiskey still hadn't been enough. "Did you eat all the pasta?" She snapped out of it, bitterly blinking away the only image that didn't seem to blur before her eyes as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Tig could hardly understand her through her unintelligible slurring as he tried to gain his own bearings - let alone hers. "What the fuck are you talking about?" He sighed as he rubbed his forehead sleepily.

"Why the fuck is all my pasta gone?" She yelled as clearly as she could, waving her hand impatiently.

"Maybe because you're looking in the fucking fridge!" He shouted back incredulously as the sound of her screeching grated on one too many of his past nerves, shaking his head as he stalked over to where she was standing in front of the open refrigerator with various condiment bottles scattered at her feet. "And you don't even have the pot on the right burner." He sighed as he pushed the heavy metal doors closed and turned the stove off altogether before she could burn the damn house down. "Go to bed." He shook his head, pointing up the stairs as he blocked off the hazardous appliances from where she had shrunken down considerably.

"I'm hungry." She whined, stomping her foot.

"Well you should've fuckin' thought about that on the way home instead of deciding on a liquid diet. Go." He nodded with his own level of impatience as the familiar fight began - one that he hoped wouldn't land him sleepless, again.

"Why don't you fucking care about me anymore?" The only haze that Sydney could feel now was in her mouth as she began slurring the desperate pleas that only dared to leap from the tip of her tongue when she drank.

"You're drunk." Tig shook his head.

"I know what I'm saying!"

"You don't!" He snapped back. "Just like you haven't every night since I've had to bring you home like this!" He could only take so much of a mental beating, and he did enough of that himself, he didn't need additional punches from the coping mechanisms of a man that she had insisted on throwing in his face, each and every night. He couldn't handle it; the push and pull, the softness that she cradled him while she was sober and scared, and the poison that she infected him with when she would come home from Cara Cara, drunk and angry about what her life had become because of him.

"Just because you don't wanna hear it, don't mean I don't know what I'm saying!" For some reason, even among the seas of alcohol that she'd tried to drown it with, her brain was crystal clear when it came to him.

Okay, maybe she did know. "Baby…" He shook his head as he rubbed at his eyes as they filled with guilt. It wasn't her fault, none of it was. "It's late, I'm tired. I just want to get some sleep, okay? That's all it is." He nodded sincerely.

Sydney felt the steady buzz of rage rippling under her skin as his softened tone fried the ends of her already shot nerves. "What about when I'm trying to sleep? Huh?" She shouted, ramming her palms against his chest. "What about when I wake up to your nightmares, and I fucking stay up with you - give you what you need, no questions asked, huh?" She pushed harder as he stood before her, unmoving.

Tig hung his head as he took her beating - the beating that he knew was only chipping away at his sanity, but that he couldn't deny he deserved. He supposed that was the masochist in him, the masochist that lived underneath the sadist's mask that her purity had stripped him of; the part of him that so cruelly enjoyed the temporary relief that followed the agonizing pain of a well-deserved punishment - the closest that any part of him would ever get to repenting for a lifetime of sins.

Sydney panted as he said nothing, as he did nothing. "Fine." She shook her head as she took off down the hallway where she swiped her keys from the table where he had left them, and yanked the front door open.

Tig's eyes widened once he realized what it was that she was doing, her tantrum changing course from the angry stomp up the stairs, accompanied by a slam of the door that signified that he would be sleeping on the couch, that he had expected - bolting out the door after her, shirtless, and barefoot.

"Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah." He huffed as he caught up to her halfway to the garage, thanks to the rough surface on the bare soles of her delicate feet. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He yanked her back by her wrist where her keys were dangling from her fingers.

"Get the fuck off of me!" She yelled, turning to push him off.

"Okay." Tig immediately backed away with his hands up as she began to cause a scene - something that could very well be just as bad as her driving drunk, as far as staying off of ATF's radar went. "But you're not going anywhere like this." He shook his head.

"Says fucking who? You?" She laughed in his face before turning back on her heels, feeling his arms wrap around her waist this time.

"I'm not fucking around." He growled as he held her back.

"Leave me the fuck alone!" She yelled as she slammed the ball of her heel into his shin, wriggling out of his grip where she turned to face him with the keys still in her hand. "I'm a grown fucking woman! I don't need anybody telling me that I can't go where I fucking want!"

Tig winced as she screamed at him in the middle of the yard for the entire neighborhood to see - again. "I'm not trying to fight with you…" He sighed as he continued to try and diffuse the situation - an action that his entire life revolved around not doing, before he'd met her.

"Well then fucking don't!"

"But I'm not letting you get behind the wheel like this." He shook his head firmly.

"Oh, now you fucking care!" She scoffed. "Didn't seem to give a fuck when I left the clubhouse like this on Halloween!" She turned away once again, yelling incoherently as he yanked her back with a force that finally made her release her grip on the keys.

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Hale sat at his desk at the station house, his eyes hollowing as he stared into the swirling cup of black coffee in his hand that he had hoped would help get him through the graveyard shift. At first, the escape from ATF in the late hours of the evening, into the early hours of the morning had helped with the weight of the role that he had played in their orchestration of Donna's death, but as time went on, the hours of activityless, distractionless work had begun to eat away at the one thing that had always made all of the bullshit, worth it; his purpose.

"That's a domestic!" He was snapped out of his groggy haze by the sound of his dispatcher's voice calling after Smith and Benson as they pulled their jackets on over their uniforms.

"Maple Street again?" Benson raised a brow as he leaned backwards, craning his thick neck back into the small room where all of the calls to the station came in.

Hale's ears perked up. Maple Street… He felt his heart beginning to race.

"Yes, sir." Eglee nodded. "Neighbor called it in - third time this month."

"Oh, don't even bother." Smith scoffed, beginning to tug his jacket off.

Hale blinked as he tried to sort out what portion of his concern was personal, and what portion was professional, but it was a line that he didn't have time to walk if Sydney was in trouble.

"What the hell is wrong with you guys?" He sneered at his colleagues. "This is our job."

The two older men exchanged glances. They knew very well whose house was on Maple Street, and they knew that Hale knew, too. And the reason that he knew had nothing to do with his job…

"It's not our job to go out once a week, for nothing." Smith shook his head.

Hale ground his teeth. "And what if it isn't nothing?" He sneered as he looked between them as they stood, emotionless. "How do you live with yourselves?" He scoffed, taking off out the door, and to Sydney's house.

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Once again, for some reason, Sydney seemed to sober up the second that she was forced to be around somebody otherthan Tig as the red and blue flashing lights of the police cars instantly broke up her haze.

"This is becoming a pattern, ." Benson nodded as he walked up to the volatile couple.

What remained of Sydney's hearing faded as Tig tried to explain the situation that the cops had become all too familiar with, when her eyes landed on Hale. Her entire body froze, the chill of the late night air suddenly becoming much more noticeable as the remainder of her adrenaline - and intoxication - depleted in an instant, hugging her arms tighter around her body when all she found herself left to feel was shame.

She hadn't seen him in months - the months since finding out about her involvement in Donna's death that had caused him to majorly pull back, and in a way, she supposed that she shouldn't have - he was a cop, and she was a criminal. But that didn't stop her from missing him, because it only left her with one less person to talk to.

"Are you okay?" He asked quietly as he draped his jacket over her shoulders in the frigid autumn air that he could feel was quickly transitioning into winter, moving to shield her scantily clad body from the wandering eyes of his fellow officers.

But the absence of playful banter was suddenly the least of Sydney's concerns as he looked at her like that, looked down on her, like that. "It's not like that." She rolled her eyes, knowing what he was thinking - what he had wanted to believe since the day he'd found out that they were together. "You can ask your butt buddies over there, yourself." She scoffed as she looked over the two highly amused men, whom she wished were enough of a reason to stop these outbursts, but that was the masochist in her.

"Sydney…" Hale sighed. "If he hit you…"

"He didn't." She snapped as he continued to insult her with the battered wife act. "I hit him." She blinked out of his gaze, once again admitting her crimes to the cop that she knew wouldn't punish her for them.

Hale sighed as he felt the grounds of progress slipping out from underneath him, sending him sliding right back into old habits as he chose to forget what she had just told him - but it was one of the few old habits that didn't challenge his morals nearly as much as it should have.

"Is there somewhere that you could go while she sobers up?" He turned to Tig who nodded - grateful for the near miss, and for the opportunity to fix the big mess.

"And puts some clothes on." Smith added with a snicker.

Sydney felt it again as the veil of revenge began to lift - the embarrassment of her pathetic actions that they could all see so clearly. She shook her head as the tears began to bite at her eyes, shrugging out of Hale's jacket and letting it fall to the ground as she ran back into the house, bolting up the stairs where she locked herself in the bathroom. She let herself break down, the tears instantly coating her cheeks in a mess of mascara, eyeliner, and heartbreak that sent sobs rippling through her heaving chest that eventually gave way to the alcohol that sloshed around in her empty stomach.

She did her best not to choke through the vile combination of hyperventilation, and regurgitation - gripping the edges of the toilet bowl so hard that she felt a few of her sparkly white acrylic nails cracking under the pressure.

Once she was sure that she was done throwing up, she fell back into the fetal position, hugging her knees to her chest as she cried, rocking herself back and forth until eventually she fell asleep on the cold tiles where she woke up a few hours later.

She lifted her head as her ears rang, blinking through the dried tears that had crusted her eyes shut. She sucked in a shaky breath as she crawled towards the door, not feeling any better than she had when she'd fallen asleep. She sniffled as she twisted the lock on the doorknob, pulling it open from where she still hadn't gotten to her feet - and it was a good thing that she hadn't, because she would've tripped over the bag of Taco Bell that was sitting outside the door for her.

She felt a fresh batch of tears spring to her eyes as she crumpled back down, shaking her head as she reached for the bag. No matter how many horrible, nasty, vile things she said to him, he still did what he could to show her that he cared.

And it made her feel like the biggest piece of shit on the planet, because it still wasn't enough.

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Song for this chapter

Love Is a Weapon - Letdown.

This Love - Maroon 5