Darling

Morning was some cruel fucking mistress.

Sun filtered in through the blinds, and dust danced in that light, a haze hanging over the mess of Ryan's things on the floor. Around her, Pin's house—she had to remind herself where she was—stood still, silent, everyone else undoubtedly asleep in their own beds. The clock on her bedside table read 6:54, and Ryan emitted a groan into her pillow, forcing the bedsheets away from her body. She wouldn't be able to fall back asleep, and she knew it.

The twenty seven year old was a solid ache from her head to her toes, one long bruise shuffling down the hallway. Worn carpet gave way to worse laminate in the kitchen, and Ryan lost a few minutes pouring water and coffee into the coffee maker on the counter, her eyes half-closed. Almost two years had passed since she had set foot inside Pin's house, and she could only say that she was relieved to find it largely unchanged. The life she had slipped out of years before was waiting for her to come back.

Mismatched chairs surrounded the kitchen table, wobbly with age. Pin's house was small, a bungalow locked in the middle of the Stockton suburbs. Potted plants—most dead, or at least dying—stood watch in the corner of almost every room, along with framed pictures of younger looking versions of the house's inhabitants. Tired furniture pieced together the life that Pin and the others set up for themselves: a sofa with broken springs, a leather armchair almost bleached by the sun, a kitchen table supported by a broken leg and a couple two by fours. Home, as they all knew it, was quiet and safe, comfortable. Ryan sat at the kitchen table and stared into the backyard, listening to the soft noise of the coffee maker. She always missed this place when she wasn't around.

"You're up early."

Ryan looked up at Elliot blankly, nodding a little. "Couldn't sleep."

"Me either," the man mused, settling into a chair opposite hers. "Pin snores like a fuckin' pot belly pig."

"I'm making coffee," she offered lamely, nodding toward the counter. "Should be done soon."

"I could use some of that." He cast her a glance. "I could get used to havin' you around—cookin', keepin' this place clean."

She cast him a sour look, leaning back in her chair. "I'm not a maid."

"Didn't say you were." For a moment, the two regarded each other coolly, Ryan's eyes steeled against his. Elliot grinned then, shaking his head. "C'mon, Ry. You know I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, I know."

The ice in her voice seemed to subdue him for a second, and she pushed away from the table to fish through one of the cupboards for a mug. They fell into an uncomfortable silence, and Ryan paused at the sink, looking hard out the window there. Elliot, of all the guys, had been the least forgiving.

"You doin' anything today?" He joined her at the counter.

"Nah." She shook her head. "What's up with you? Anything good?"

"Pin's got me running out to Charming."

Ryan stared emptily into the dark mug in her hands. "What's in Charming?"

"Who, not what," Elliot corrected. "Sons of Anarchy, that MC. Been running shit for 'em for the past few months."

"I didn't know that," she said meekly. "We work with the Sons now, huh?"

"You don't." He gave her a blank look. "We do."

Ryan wanted to roll her eyes, but reigned it in, retreating to the kitchen table. She rubbed tiredly at her jaw, still sore though the bruises had faded. A week and a half had passed since Pin picked her up, just long enough for the swelling to go down, the cuts to scab over, and the reality of what happened to settle over her.

She stood on precariously thin ice, like that was news. The looks on the faces of the others as she relayed what happened cut her down to a place she hadn't visited in a long time. Pin, even—the man draped her over his shoulder, half-carried her out of a blood soaked hotel room—regarded her with a kind of cool neutrality that made her feel grim, sick. She fucked up. They noticed. Ryan was left to think about it, dwell on it, reminded as everyone carried on around her that it wouldn't be forgotten any time soon.

Pin and the others agreed that it would be best for her to keep her head down for a little while.

The noise of a door closing somewhere else in the house cut through the quiet. Elliot stood at the sink, taking long, purposeful sips of black coffee. They had been friends once—Elliot and Ryan, some kind of duo that worked together like clockwork: drinking buddies, con artists. They grew up under Pin's watchful eye, starting at eighteen, and carrying on five, six, and then somehow ten years.

"Never knew you two to be early risers." Pin stooped in the doorway, rubbing weathered hands over his eyes.

After a moment of quiet, Elliot sighed. "Couldn't sleep."

Ryan met Pin's eyes briefly and looked away, tucking her legs up on the chair beneath her.

"What time you leavin'?" Pin turned his attention to Elliot and then coffee, pouring sugar and creamer into a mug with his eyes half-shut.

The two fell into conversation, Ryan watching silently from the table. Pin was hardly an old man, but graying—his long hair salt-and-peppered, beard the same, and his face carved deep with wrinkles that spoke of the life he had lived to that point. He grew, somehow, more stern with age, the humor in his eyes masked with heavy eyebrows and crow's feet. Life seemed to have a way of doing that.

It happened to Ryan, too—the road made her different. Harder, maybe, or angrier, a more resentful version of the person she had been once. She outgrew that person, toughened and wizened up. More than anything, life and all of its hardships had made her quieter. "Quiet" was always her descriptor, and it worked for her. People opened up to her, and in the absence of her words let secrets slip out. She listened, and kept secrets, at her core too loyal to betray even the stupidest skeletons that people exposed to her.

Elliot and Pin spoke to each other quietly, leaning up against the counter and the fridge. Elliot changed, too, became more serious and sharp, losing his mischief almost over night. After one long haul, they found each other at Pin's house again and it was like they had forgotten how to speak to each other, how to be friends.

Elliot nearly threw his mug into the sink, and Ryan jumped at the noise, her heart leaping into her throat. The two men laughed.

"C'mon, Ry," Elliot said, offering her a smile. "Don't be so touchy."



The guy they sent after her was fat and ugly, probably two hundred and fifty pounds of piroshki and Ketel One.

Ryan had known that he was coming, at least—it was her fault, this mess of chalk lines that inadvertently led back to the Melnikov's, one of the Russian monarchies in Seattle that ran guns and drugs from the motherland to the West Coast. The bastard that beat her up was one of the lowlifes they hired to keep people in line and stand outside of their hotel rooms. He wore a loose fitting suit—designer; a gift from one of the bosses for a job well done—and thick cut gold rings that could've been cutting off the circulation in his fat fingers, all jewelled to hurt when they met skin. He bested her, a few heads higher, a few punches ahead. He dragged her onto the pavement by her hair.

The Russians had to have known they wouldn't get away with it. They liked playing those games. None of them ever seemed to look at life and death the way everyone else did, always nonplussed at the loss of one of their guys. To them, the business was about making money and meeting deadlines, and the loose ends between those had to be cut out, done away with. Ryan left his body slumped there on the side of the road where she knew they would find it, two gunshots red on his forehead.

"I'm glad you took care of that shithead," Pin had said quietly in his truck, casting her a glance that wavered on pride. "You did good."

Ryan had just nodded, already half-asleep. She was self sufficient—enough, at least, to know how to take care of herself. As they drove through the night, Pin kept her awake, rambling stories about the people she hadn't seen, his days in Vietnam as a soldier. When he thought she wouldn't see, he took long glances at her, offered water, food. He could've had a heart attack, the way she sounded on the phone. Jesus, he had said. He said she almost put him in the ground that night—all the blood and the mess of bruises over her face.

In the afternoon, they sat together on the front porch, watching cars drive past and listening to the noise of the birds in the trees. Ryan relaxed into the California heat, having grown used to the chill of the Pacific Northwest in her time away. She slumped on an old plastic Adirondack chair, long legs resting on the porch railing in front of her.

"I didn't know we had shit with the Sons," she said after awhile, her eyes finding Pin's.

"Yeah." The old man shrugged. "Long time coming. Lucky Elliot figured it all out."

"I thought you hated MCs." Ryan's voice was quieter than she expected it to be, and she tried to recover, fumbling for words. "I just—I mean—what else happened when I was gone?"

Pin turned, looking over her face, his eyebrows drawn together. "Time changes things. You know that, Ry." He leaned back in his chair. "We have to do what's best for us. For the family, you know? Running with the Sons gives us some stable cash. We have an agreement and they don't challenge it."

"But—why? We've got deals with the Russians, the Chinese—we had the Italians, too, didn't we?"

"Look what they did to you." Pin's voice was hard. "One slip up. You coulda died. I'm sure that's what they wanted."

"I'm fine," Ryan retorted, almost out of habit.

"You almost weren't," Pin replied with ease. "Do we need to revisit all that shit, Ryan? Go look in the mirror. You're lucky you got outta there."

Ryan studied her hands, feeling anger bubbling up in the pit of her stomach. "I would've been fine."

"Like hell you would've."

They fell into a tense silence, and Ryan drew her legs up under her, looking hard at the brown grass in the front yard. She didn't understand.

The Sons of Anarchy drifted across her path every once in awhile when she was on the road, never long enough to make any kind of impact. She kept her distance, heading warnings that Pin had fed to her over the years. MCs weren't their territory, money-grabbing and dangerous compared to the dealers that they dealt with. They didn't follow the rules—but no one else did, either, which is what made the business the business—and maintained a reputation that it seemed everyone knew about, tough enough that most people kept to themselves when they were around. Their charters handled their own problems, ran drugs or guns or found other ways to make their money.

Pin spoke again after a few minutes. "Look, Ryan—you know how it is. We gotta keep up, or we're gonna get left behind."

"What is it, then?" Ryan asked, her voice an attempt as nonchalant. "Blow?"

"Smack for awhile. Blow mostly," Pin said, his voice low. "They're trying to get the dealers out of Charming."

Ryan was surprised at that admission, her eyebrows coming together as she turned to face him. "By dealing?"

"They sell to the junkies for the right price, the dealers have no market."

"Smack." She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. Heroin was a hard drug for a small town like Charming, but she knew well enough that appearance meant nothing. "Who sells it?"

"The club. Their guys. I don't know 'em."

"I could do it," Ryan said then. "That could be my run. Elliot could take the Russians up in Washington, and—"

The look on Pin's face silenced her. "Not now, Ryan."

"Pin, I—"

"Ryan, I know. I know you could handle it. You could handle going back up to deal with the Russians if I sent you." He slowly got to his feet, rolling his shoulders. "But you gotta take it easy. Take some time off. It's for the best."

The screen door closed quietly behind him, leaving Ryan alone on the porch. Tens years of listening to Pin felt like a lifetime in that instant, and she let out a frustrated groan, hanging her head back. She wanted to punch something. Or someone. Or, she thought hotly, both. He was right, probably, even though she didn't want to admit it.

She stretched tiredly in the sun, feeling the raw ache where knife met skin under her shirt. A clean red line cut through the skin beneath her bra, still tender to touch. Around her, the California afternoon buzzed, birds singing on in the heat.