A short, bittersweet story of friends turned lovers, turned strangers who find their way back together and attempt to get it right. AU: Jax, Tig, Juice, Kozik and Kip are still alive, otherwise basically follows the rest of the show.
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Fifteen:
HAPPY
Happy had seen her exactly sixteen days before, and he'd spoken to her twice. Once was the night that he'd returned from the run and was surprised to see her in the clubhouse, the next a few days later. He'd given her time and space to wrap her head around his popping up, but he was getting to the last of the rope before he snapped.
It was eight-thirty in the morning and he'd found himself drinking, something that had become normality since he'd left her behind, but he hadn't been able to get any sleep because his dreams consisted of nothing but her, and he didn't want to see her face while he slept. She haunted him enough while he was awake.
Eventually she would have to sit down and talk to him, she would have to have the conversation that she was desperate to avoid. Eventually she would have to listen to his explanations. He doubted that she would quit work before she did but, at the same time, she'd always been a bullet in a bonfire and he'd never been able to tell which direction she was going to go in. Apart from towards him. She'd always gone towards him.
He stared harshly at the wooden bar in front of him and cursed himself. He'd thought that he'd been doing the right thing by leaving her and by going Nomad, had wanted her to have a better life than the one that he'd be able to supply for her, but she'd ended up getting involved in it due to her own stubbornness and stupidity. His brother's had made it known how much they adored the short blonde, taking her in as the little sister of the club, which he thought was insane. They were hard-assed, grown men who broke the law for a living, and they'd been sucked in by a little girl.
He couldn't blame them, though. He'd been sucked in from the first night he'd seen her, standing outside of Billy's with a dodgy tiara and an idiot by her hip. He'd loved her since the moment he'd set his eyes on her.
The fact that she had found herself in the middle of the Sons of Anarchy despite him being away made him feel two feet tall, she could have been by his side for the whole time.
"You right, Hap?"
Jax slid onto the stool beside him and looked at his friend with worried eyes, but Happy couldn't focus on anything but how different she'd looked when he'd laid his eyes on her.
The defeat and heartbreak had been obvious when the shock had faded out of her face. She didn't want to see him after he'd ripped her to shreds, and he didn't blame her for that. "Jasmine is Free Bird ... she was my girl back in Tacoma before I went Nomad."
Jax nodded, he'd obviously already been granted the information, and grabbed the bottle of jack from behind the bar. He grabbed a glass at the same time and poured them both a generous shot. "She didn't come here looking for you."
Happy wanted to snap and ask his President how the fuck he knew that Jasmine had been his girl, and how he knew that she hadn't gone to Charming looking for him, but he didn't because he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. He'd seen how close Jasmine and Jax were throughout the time he'd spent giving her space and studying her, and he didn't want to hear that she'd started a relationship with someone he considered blood. "She said that she thought I was still Nomad and she didn't think I'd be here. I believe her, she's always been too honest."
"Wears her heart on her sleeve." Jax mumbled.
Jax poured two more shots and sat in silence while he waited for his friend to keep talking. He didn't need to comment, he knew that Happy would speak more because he couldn't handle what was going on in his brain.
"I left her so that she wouldn't get sucked into this fucking life." Happy slammed the glass down so hard that it shattered on the wood. "And she got into it by herself. How fucking fucked is that?! How did she even get involved?"
"Her car stalled a few miles out. She came by to get it fixed, ended up impressing Tig and got offered a job in the office that day." Jax informed him softly. "She fits right in, Hap. She's part of this family, now, whether you tried to get her out of it or not. She's not going anywhere, don't try."
He knew that she would, that was the problem. Happy knew that she was meant to be an Old Lady from the first day that he saw her. She handled herself well, had a backbone of steel, and she could do the impossible - she could calm him down and make him think out his decisions before he made the wrong one.
But she was too good to be in their world, he'd heard her father tell her so, and she'd been so ready to let go of all of the money in the world to be by his side. She'd been ready to chose him, and he'd made her think that she was nothing in order to give her the life he knew she deserved.
"She's ... Hap you need to know that she's got a man at home." Jax's voice held something that he couldn't decipher, but he felt as though his President was trying to make him realise the depth of the situation. "I've never met him, but she never sticks around later than twelve at the parties and only stays for one drink after work - well technically, two shots - but she always leaves to see him. He's good for her, she loves him more than breathing."
It hit him straight in the stomach and he looked over at his friend. "You've never met him? Is she fucking hiding him or something?"
"I don't know." Jax shrugged his shoulders with a forced smile. "All I know is she hasn't brought him by the clubhouse, she leaves before it hits the morning, and he was asleep at her house when I went over there last week."
Happy bit his lip to fight his urge to punch the President in the face for being at his Old Lady's house, because he had no right to. She wasn't his Old Lady anymore. He'd forced her to give that title up.
Instead, he grunted and left the room without another word.
He missed Jax's smug smile. The President had planted the seed, he just needed to wait for the flower to grow.
