drownedindreams | (no subject)

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She'd nearly dropped the house key twice trying to let herself into their apartment. It wasn't home yet but it was the closest she had. Since Jax was there, and the boys were there, it was close enough... which made what she did once she got the door open probably weirder. She opened the door, then pushed it shut, leaning back against it. Tara tipped her head back, and she took one deep breath, then another, then another, not realising that Jax was on the couch, and could absolutely see her having her tiny little meltdown.

She took another deep breath, and then reached for the lock on the door. She pushed it closed without looking at it, and then finally looked around the apartment, and she was torn between talking to Jax, and checking on the boys, until she finally spoke. "Just- Just one minute, I need to check on them." She didn't even say why, but she moved down the hall, to their room, and thank god, they were fine. They were fine and whole. She'd been afraid that somehow, somehow, they would both be laying there, their faces blank. Gone. Like the man outside the hospital. She didn't hear Jax get up, for the way the blood was roaring in her ears as she stared down at their sons who just slept soundly.

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Jax was no doctor, that was for sure, but he had a pretty good idea of what a panic attack looked like. When Tara hurried into the apartment and slammed the door, only half aware of him, he had a feeling that Tara was going through just that. She barely seemed to look at him, even as she spoke and hurried down to the boys.

"Whoa, Tara, hey..." Jax started, launching himself over the back of the couch to hurry over and check up on her.

She was gripping the edge of the crib with white knuckles - he was probably right with his assessment of her, although she didn't realise it. "What is this place?" She finally looked up at Jax as she shook her head. "Where did I bring our son? I thought this was supposed to be safe, Jax."

She tipped her head back as she took another deep breath, blowing it out as she forced her tone to even out. "A man bumped into me on my way to the hospital, today. He-" She licked her lips, and she knew they shouldn't talk about it in here, not where they could wake the boys, but she continued anyway. "He had no face, Jax. Not- not like it had been burned off or scars from surgery, or that he was malformed, he just had no face. It was blank." She kept trying to both think of it, and not think of it, because of the horrors involved. Because of how freaking awful it was.

She'd been sort of like this a couple of times before, although not quite this bad. Usually when there was a case at the hospital that was really, really bad abuse, really bad damage to a baby, every once in a while it shook her the hell up.

Jax sighed and spooned around her, burying his face in her hair and neck. For a second, he just held her, tried to get her calm and less rabbit-scared. "This place...doesn't play by any rules we know," he said finally. He loosened his grip a little, but kept her close, trying to be stable and reassuring and just there.

"Remember how I said it's like magic? Well it's not just like. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure it actually just is, and I don't mean rabbits out of hats and cards up the sleeve kinda stuff. I mean sometimes weird shit happens that we can't explain." How did he even begin to explain all the strange shit he'd seen? The frozen bees? The one time a guy had licked blood off his hand and then sprouted fangs? Or how there was some guy around, Raleigh Becket, who seemed to have his exact face.

How did he even start that?

"It's safe from all the shit that used to hunt us down. I never said it didn't have its own fucked up shit."

Tara wrapped her arms around his, her fingers digging into his arms. "There was a guy who got hit by a van, and he just got up and I watched his shoulder pop itself back into the socket, Jax. They're saying that there's a giant caterpillar that's stealing people's faces-" She turned in his arms enough to see his face, her brows furrowed together. "And we can't leave. Is that right? There's no getting out of here?' She was scared - deeply, truly scared, and it was for their sons more than anything else. "God, Jax, you don't- his face was gone. It wasn't natural."

Her hand moved up his chest, the other on the back of his neck. "I don't know what to do," she finally whispered, her eyes searching his for some sort of answer.

"No. No it wasn't."

And, fuck him, he'd actually gotten used to it. He was used to checking for the things that went bump in the night. This weird, fucked up place had become normal to him.

"It's not natural, sometimes. It's supernatural and shit that we never expected we'd have to deal with."

Maybe it was a bargain with the devil that he'd made. Jax had escaped all the awful shit from which the club could never extract itself, but at the cost of going into someplace dark and mystically powerful in ways he didn't now how to counteract.

And it left him without any answers.

"But-" Her eyes searched his, and he seemed just a lost as she felt. Tara pulled in a breath, and closed her eyes tightly. "It will be alright," she said lowly. "Our boys will be alright."

She forced herself to take a deep breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth, and she opened her eyes again. "We'll get through this, just like everything else. Right?" Her voice dropped. "I need you to tell me it will be okay, Jax. I don't care if you lie to me, I need to hear it."

She couldn't handle it, couldn't handle that weight on her own. Not when it was added to what seemed a lifetime's worth of burdens that had fallen to her in the last six months.

"There are people who have lived here for a year. They've been comfortable and happy and they've managed," Jax said, leaning forward to kiss at her ear and neck. He was going to be real and stable right here, her anchor to the earth.

"And we are gonna be those people. Maybe shit's scary, but we've always had scary."

She nodded turning her head to catching his lips in a kiss. It wasn't the easy sort of relief and desperation that'd happened the first night she'd been here - it was something else, something that was intense instead of happy.

She pulled back just enough that her forehead still touched his, but her voice was lower when she spoke. "We'll be those people." She said it softly, her fingers slipping up to the back of his neck. She needed that stability desperately, the anchor that kept her from falling and crumbling when she didn't have the luxury. "We'll make it through this, too."

He would drown her in those kisses if he could, get her happy and warm and carried far away from all of her fears both in Darrow and back in Charming.

"You and me, babe," he said. "You know we can stand through anything." Carefully, Jax pulled her into his arms and held her tight, stroking her hair gently. Maybe they had to fake it 'til they made it, but the act was half of the success.

It was so hard for her to let those things go, for her to be happy and warm. Right now the intensity in her kisses made it either all or nothing, hot or cold. She burned like molten metal, but the metal was brittle when it cooled. She curled close to him, her hands on his chest.

"I didn't want this for them. That's why I did this, why I fought so hard," she whispered.

"I wanted our sons to have a better life, one that wasn't about fear, and there are monsters outside." And inside, she thought - and for once, she wasn't thinking of him, but of herself.

That was the devil's print on the bargain, wasn't it? The trade they had to make. "Tara...the monsters outside? They come and go. They're scary as fuck but so far nothing's come that stayed."

He sighed and held Tara close, wishing he could banish the demons outside and inside her, get her to trust in them again.

"And that fucked up face-stealing thing? The ice bees a couple weeks ago? They don't tangle you up in debts and retaliation and shit. It doesn't follow you."

"But what happens to the people, Jax? How do we keep them safe? I'm not- Hell, I don't even know how to keep myself safe from these things." She spoke quietly, and then moved, reaching for his hand, and she glanced back at their boys again, before she pulled him from the room because the last thing she wanted to do was wake them.

She spoke in a hushed voice in the hall, her eyes searching his. "I'm almost scared to ask," she said after a second, pulling in a breath. 'What... are ice bees?"

Because it made no fucking sense. None of it made any fucking sense. "Because- even if it doesn't follow you, it's still horrible Jax. It's trading the devil we know for the devil we don't, and what the hell are we doing? What can we do?"

"It's...a long story," he said, not bothering to hide his regret for having hinted at that little misadventure. "But Abel and I made it through. And that's important."

There were a lot of things he'd fucked up, but Jax knew how to take care of his family. He was never going to fail to protect them. Never again.

"Tara, I've been here a while. There's people who've been here for years. Their whole lives. And they've lived through it the way we lived through Nords, Mayans, and Niners."

It was different, but Jax wouldn't go back.

He turned and looked towards the boys' room, smiling as he thought about getting to know his boy all over again. "D'you think I wouldn't be trying to get out if I thought we needed it?"

Edited 2014-02-03 06:18 (UTC)

"It's important," she agreed, her brows furrowing together. "Tell me... soon. Not now, I really can't take another thing now unless they're going to come after us right this second, but... soon, I need to know. Okay?" She looked up at him, her brows furrowed together. "I just.... it's- when it's people, when it's the other clubs..."

She pulled in a breath. "They're human, Jax. You can shoot them. This thing? This caterpillar thing? If you see it, you just can't show emotion, or else it steals your face. How would you know that? How do you not show emotion??"

She sighed, and then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I know you would, that's why- I knew I must not... get it, or something. I must not understand, because you're not... way more upset." He didn't warn her before she'd gone out.

"I know, I know," Jax smoothed at Tara's short hair. He had to pull himself together, make it look easy and livable and not let on just how fucked up and scared he'd been. Tara didn't need to know how he'd crouched by Abel's crib, surrounded by cans of chemical spray and with his gun at the ready. He had to be strong for them.

"You get used to it, all that fucked up shit." Which was fucked up in and of itself. "Doesn't get any less weird but you figure out how to deal with it."

Carefully, he steered her into the kitchen and started dumping grounds into the coffee maker and readying a new pot. Coffee, bottles and baby cereal. Those were the simple, immediate realities that kept him centered and breathing, even through the madness.

"I promise that we are gonna be okay."

She leaned against the kitchen counter, and she looked exhausted when she finally found words again. "Okay. Okay, so I'll get used to it." She sounded defeated, and her eyes flicked to his. "I don't know how to do this without you," she said quietly.

"I mean, I guess- I don't even know how to live my life without you in it, when I try everything falls apart." She reached out her hand for his when he'd finished putting the coffee on, and she pulled him closer to her, so her was standing in front of her. "I put in my transfer papers today. They're going to call me Monday, let me know if I need to interview or who I need to talk to before I know if I have the job." Her hands smoothed down his chest to his waist, her head tipped back to look up at him.

"There'd be daycare like there was at St. Thomas, so things would be a little better for you. I know..." She paused for just a second. "We weren't on the best of terms when you left for Belfast," she said after a long moment. "I keep forgetting how difficult this has to be for you, and I shouldn't forget that."

"All that shit's past, Tara." Belfast felt like another lifetime ago, ever since settling into his new reality here. "What we got now is what I care about."

Never let it be said that he forgot a slight where one had been dealt, nor his own retaliations, but Tara had always been a blind spot for him. There was a lot he'd forgive from her.

"Free for employees?" If it was, that would put a stopper right into one of the bleeding holes on his financials.

"Okay," she said as she looked up at him. "I mean, we hadn't talked about it. I'm... glad, because things changed a lot, for us, after that. They changed- I can't even tell you how much."

They both had to do a lot of forgiving when he got back. She wanted to tell him, sort of, that the shit that happened with Ima wasn't okay, it was never okay, that if he ever did it again-- but she wasn't that woman anymore. She'd take care of it, if it happened, but she wondered if it was just who he was, after the shit with Colette.

She nodded when he asked if it was free - she knew that right now, paying for somebody to watch Abel was bleeding him dry. "Yeah. That's why we started using the hospital instead of Aleda, at home." She let her hands skim back, needing to keep that touch, the hands on his waist - they'd spent seemingly forever together, that every time they've been apart in their lives coming back seemed like coming home. "Does this seem more real, to you?" She said it softly. "Or does it still seem like a dream?" She was still trying to find her own way through.

Aleda. The name sounded familiar, but only just. Must have been the nanny they hired after he brought Abel home. Free daycare, however, would be a blessing. Sure he could call on the neighbors now and then, but that wouldn't be half the drain that his current daycare was.

"Will they take Abel?" They weren't married. Not here anyway. Tara's bonds with Abel weren't by blood or by law, which always complicated things.

But that seemed almost secondary compared to Tara's hands over his back and waist. Everything fell away when Tara was looking at him. "You're here with me. That's what feels the most real."

"I don't know, but I'm going to start by saying he's my son, and go from there. I don't know what they'll need, for them - birth certificates, vaccine records, I have no idea, but he's my son, and they'll have to figure it out." She said it with complete certainty, no hesitation. She'd been so exhausted last night that she'd fallen asleep within seconds of being in bed, curling close to him and just needing him to be there, for her.

And he was. He had been without fail, since the moment she'd pounded on his door two days ago. "You know I want this to not be impossible for you, right? To not be... hard, if that's a thing we can make happen?" She said it softly, and she shifted to tug up his shirt just enough that her hands were pressed to the bare skin above the waistband of his boxers on his hips, because she needed that connection. She wasn't going any further, just... that much.

She'd tried to get this across earlier, but it was important to her. "I know that I'm not the only one adjusting, and I want to make sure it's okay." She'd fallen into that role, before. The person who tried to make their family okay, before she'd gone to jail and then he'd tried, but it was too late.

"Babe," Jax said, bending down to kiss her, to revel in being close to Tara for the first time in so long. "You're here. Anything's possible now." It was such trite bullshit, but he figured they could both use a little romantic right now. Just to keep things fresh.

"Abel's our boy. Wendy hasn't got shit to claim. He's ours."

He bent to kiss her again and then pulled back just enough to laugh. "You're making it real hard to think, your hands on me like that, but I can deal with that kinda...hardship."

"I just don't want to take over whatever life you have here," she said softly, her eyes searching his when he pulled back from the kiss. "I show up, all... messed up, and I bring a baby with me, and you're just settling in being a single parent who works and- I just meant that I know you've got to be going through a lot." She said it softly, and her fingers toyed with his hair before she leaned up to meet his kiss. "He'll always be our son."

She wasn't able to stop the way her lips quirked into a smile, her skin flushed as she looked up at him, as she tried to push away just how much this was both familiar and something she thought was long gone. "I feel connected to you," she whispered as her eyes searched his, that smile small and sweet on her lips. "I feel connected with you, and it... it helps me remember who you are," Her smile didn't falter when she said that, but when she leaned up to kiss him again, there was a thread of need there that wasn't there before. Something heavy and emotional, her hand that'd moved to his chest fisting his t-shirt without realising how tightly she was holding it.

Jax laughed at that just a little, shaking his head. "I don't have much of a life here. I wake up, drop Abel off, go to work, and go home." Without the club, without a whole lot of distractions going on, he'd turned into a bit of a homebody. "You coming here is great."

It was so easy to rest against the counter with her, to see Tara finally smiling and happy to be here. There was a hunger in them both that felt so good, like simmering heat under their skin.

"The boys are in bed," he said, a subtle offer.

"It'll be different, now." She didn't know how, but it would be - he wouldn't have to worry about having nothing, because both of them, together, they'd have everything.

Her eyes searched his, and she spoke quietly, her brows quirking upward. "Do you know- before the night I showed up, it'd been months? I..." Her hand found his chest, and she could feel his heartbeat under her hand. "They are." And she ran her hand up to cup the back of his neck, her eyes searching his. "I need to be connected," she finally said softly, and it wasn't just some innuendo, it was--

We don't know who we are until we're connected to someone else.

"I need to remember who you are, Jax," she murmured before she leaned up to kiss him, her fingers still tight on his shirt.

"We got all night to remember," Jax promised. Tonight and every night after, as far as he was concerned. He could tell that there was something deeper than sex on offer here. Sex was just the conduit, the skin against skin to send sparks between them. It was their hearts, their thoughts that would turn that back into a fire.

They would be okay. He believed that. Had to, wanted to.

More than okay. Things would be good this time.

"C'mon," he said, putting the undrunk coffee aside to guide her to their room. "Let's connect then, babe."

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