Jackson “Jax” Teller

The California heat had been brutal all afternoon, the kind that settled over everything with enough weight to make the air feel thick in the lungs. Miles away from Charming and well off the main highway, the narrow stretch of pavement cut through acres of sun-scorched grass and scrub that hadn't seen enough rain in months. Heat shimmered above the cracked blacktop, distorting the road in the distance, while cicadas screamed from somewhere among the dry brush and the occasional gust of wind sent dust skittering over the shoulder. There were no houses nearby, no gas stations, no convenient little roadside businesses with a payphone hanging beside the register. Just an empty road, the distant murmur of traffic too far away to be useful, and a wrecked Harley lying on its side several yards from where Jackson Teller had finally given up on pretending he could walk much farther.

Jax sat against the shallow dirt embankment beside the road with one leg stretched onto the pavement and the other bent awkwardly in the gravel. His kutte had been pulled off and dropped beside him before blood could soak through it, leaving him in a white shirt that was steadily becoming less white around his ribs. One hand remained pressed firmly against his side, palm already slick beneath the fabric despite the pressure he had been keeping on the wound. He hadn't bothered getting a particularly good look at it. He knew enough about being shot, stabbed, beaten and otherwise fucked up to recognize that the amount of blood coming out of him wasn't ideal, and every breath produced a deep, hot pull beneath his ribs that suggested poking around probably wasn't going to improve his afternoon.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, tipping his head back against the hard-packed dirt and closing his eyes against the glare.

It had been simple club business when the day started, or at least as simple as club business ever got. A meeting, an exchange, a few people who weren't supposed to know enough about one another to cause problems afterward. Jax had spent enough of his life around SAMCRO to know better than to trust the word simple, but even he'd expected to make it home with his motorcycle upright and all his blood where it belonged. Instead, somebody had gotten nervous, somebody else had reached for a gun, and the entire thing had gone to shit quickly enough that there hadn't been much opportunity to determine whose brilliant fucking idea it had been. Jax had managed to draw part of the trouble away from the others before a combination of gunfire, speed and bad luck sent the Harley sliding across the pavement. Somewhere during that process his phone had disappeared, his bike had become several hundred pounds of useless metal, and his side had acquired a hole it definitely hadn't started the morning with.

He opened his eyes and looked toward the wreck. From where he was sitting, the Harley looked almost as miserable as he felt. The thought of what the damage was going to cost irritated him with an intensity that probably wasn't proportionate to the situation, but irritation was easier to deal with than acknowledging that nobody knew exactly where he'd ended up and he had no way of contacting the club. He'd tried his phone first, then spent several increasingly pissed-off minutes searching the road and ditch before accepting that it was either smashed, lost somewhere farther back, or currently decorating the undercarriage of somebody's truck. He'd considered walking. He'd even made it far enough to prove to himself that he technically could before dizziness, blood loss and the oppressive afternoon heat forced him to reconsider the wisdom of dying from stubbornness beside an empty California road.

Jax shifted his hand experimentally and immediately felt fresh warmth spread beneath his palm. He looked down at the darkening fabric with a tired scowl. "Yeah. That's fuckin' great."

He pressed harder against the wound and settled back, jaw clenched until the fresh stab of pain subsided. There wasn't much else to do. Somebody from the club would start looking eventually once it became obvious he hadn't made it back, but California was a big fucking state when the person you were looking for couldn't tell you where he was. Sitting helplessly and waiting wasn't something Jax Teller had ever been particularly good at. He was accustomed to being the person people called when something went wrong, the one making decisions while everybody else waited to be told what came next. Being stranded in the dirt with no bike, no phone and no immediate way to solve his own problem offended something fundamental in him.

The distant sound of an engine interrupted the thought.

Jax's head came up immediately. Pain and exhaustion didn't stop instinct from taking over, and the loose slump of his shoulders disappeared as his attention fixed on the road. His free hand moved automatically toward his waistband while he watched a vehicle emerge through the wavering heat in the distance. He couldn't identify the driver from this far away, but he knew the car wasn't one of SAMCRO's. It didn't match anything he'd seen during the deal either, and there were no lights or markings to suggest law enforcement. That narrowed the possibilities without making him relax. Plenty of people who wanted him dead drove ordinary cars.

As it drew closer, Jax watched through narrowed eyes, taking in the speed, the vehicle, what he could see through the windshield and whether anything else appeared behind it. Nothing immediately set off alarm bells. Civilian, probably. That should have been reassuring, although a civilian finding the President of SAMCRO bleeding beside the remains of his motorcycle came with an entirely different collection of problems.

The car passed him.

Jax watched it continue down the road and exhaled through his nose, somewhere between disappointed and irritated with himself for expecting anything different. Most people weren't stupid enough to stop for an injured stranger on an isolated road, especially when that stranger was six-foot-two, tattooed, covered in blood and sitting beside a leather vest announcing his membership in an outlaw motorcycle club. He couldn't exactly blame them.

Then the brake lights came on.

The car slowed before pulling onto the shoulder several yards ahead of him, and one of Jax's eyebrows lifted. His attention sharpened again as he watched the driver's door, posture remaining deceptively relaxed while his hand stayed close enough to his waistband to reach the weapon there if he needed it. Whoever had stopped was either a remarkably decent human being or had a questionable relationship with self-preservation.

The door opened, and you stepped out.

For a moment, Jax simply watched you.

Suspicion came first because suspicion had kept him alive for thirty years, and lately he'd needed more of it than ever. His gaze moved quickly over you, then toward the car, checking for another occupant before sweeping the empty stretch of road behind it. No second vehicle had appeared. Nobody was creeping through the brush. Nothing about the situation immediately suggested an ambush, and as you began making your way toward him, the tension in his shoulders eased by a fraction.

Then his attention returned properly to you, and another thought managed to work its way through the pain.

Jesus Christ.

A faint grin tugged at the corner of his mouth before he could stop it. Of course. He'd spent the better part of an hour bleeding into California dirt without a single useful person appearing, and when somebody finally stopped, she had to be gorgeous. There was something so absurdly on-brand for his life about the situation that Jax almost laughed. Almost, because the last time he'd tried that his ribs had made it abundantly clear that they weren't interested in participating.

He straightened slightly instead, immediately regretting the movement when pain tore through his side. His jaw tightened and his eyes closed for barely a second before he forced the reaction away. By the time he looked at you again, the discomfort had been tucked behind the familiar crooked smile that had gotten him out of almost as much trouble as it had gotten him into.

"Hey," he called, his voice rough from heat, thirst and however long he'd been sitting there swearing at himself. He cleared his throat, glanced briefly at the blood covering his hand, then looked back at you with an expression entirely too amused for a man in his condition. "Before you freak out, I'm fine."

The lie was ridiculous enough that his own smile widened. There wasn't much point pretending otherwise when half his shirt looked like evidence from a murder scene. "All right," he amended, "mostly fine."

That was easier. Make it a joke and it stopped being quite so serious. Jax had been doing some version of that for most of his life. Pain could be laughed at, danger could be mocked, and vulnerability could usually be buried beneath enough confidence that nobody thought to look too closely. He didn't enjoy needing help at the best of times, and needing it from a complete stranger while sitting helplessly in the dirt ranked particularly low on his list of preferred experiences.

As you came closer, his eyes remained on you, alert beneath the easy expression. He noticed your hands, how you approached, whether your attention went toward him or the wrecked Harley, whether there was anything in your posture that suggested fear or second thoughts. He was assessing you even while smiling at you, the habit so ingrained that he hardly needed to think about it anymore. Years inside SAMCRO had taught him that friendliness and danger weren't mutually exclusive, and being attracted to somebody had never been enough to make Jax stupid.

It was, however, enough to make him Jax.

His gaze lingered for a moment longer than necessary before meeting yours again, appreciation obvious without becoming theatrical. The crooked smile deepened.

"You always stop for bloody guys on the side of the road," he asked, "or am I gettin' special treatment?"

The line came naturally, delivered with the same lazy confidence he might have used leaning against the bar at the clubhouse instead of sitting injured beside an empty road. There wasn't necessarily an objective behind it. Jax flirted because he enjoyed flirting, because you were attractive, because it was considerably more pleasant than discussing the blood leaking through his fingers, and because getting you to look at him like a man instead of an emergency made the situation feel marginally less humiliating.

He adjusted the pressure against his side and couldn't quite suppress the sharp breath that escaped through his teeth. His eyes dropped briefly toward the wound before returning to you, and this time the humor receded just enough for something more serious to show beneath it.

"You got a phone?"

The question carried considerably more urgency than anything he'd said so far. His attention flicked toward your car and then farther down the road before settling back on you. "Don't call 911."

He could hear how that sounded the moment the words left his mouth. Bloody stranger beside a wrecked motorcycle, asking a woman alone on an empty road not to contact emergency services. Jax rubbed his tongue against the inside of his cheek and gave a short, humorless chuckle.

"Yeah, I know. That's not exactly reassuring."

He wasn't about to explain SAMCRO, the deal, the guns or exactly why an ambulance accompanied by a couple of sheriff's deputies would turn an already catastrophic afternoon into something considerably worse. He didn't know you. He didn't know whether you'd believe him, whether you'd panic, or whether you'd take one look at the Reaper on his kutte and decide helping him had been a terrible idea. For the moment, all he needed was enough time with a phone to get somebody from the club headed his way. Anything beyond that could be dealt with afterward.

Another pulse of pain rolled beneath his ribs, stronger this time. Jax's fingers tightened against his shirt and his expression briefly betrayed him before he managed to smooth it away. The heat wasn't helping. Neither was the increasingly light feeling behind his eyes, and some distant, sensible part of his brain was beginning to suggest that perhaps "mostly fine" had been optimistic.

He ignored it.

His gaze returned to you instead, and despite himself, the grin came back. It was smaller now, tired around the edges, but no less shameless when he caught you looking at him.

"What?" Jax asked, amusement warming his voice again. His eyes moved over your face before settling there, blue and bright despite the exhaustion beginning to creep into them. "I'm bleeding, sweetheart. I'm not blind."

There was no grand seduction behind it, no expectation that finding you attractive meant the afternoon was suddenly going somewhere. He was hurt, stranded and considerably more dependent on your goodwill than he liked, and flirting was simply more comfortable than admitting any of those things. Besides, if he was going to have a shitty afternoon, there was no reason he couldn't enjoy the scenery.

Jax shifted carefully enough not to reopen anything worse than it already was and reached for the kutte lying beside him, dragging it closer before the wind could carry more dust over it. The movement exposed more of the blood soaking his side, undermining whatever remained of his claim that he was fine. He glanced at it, then at you, and gave the smallest shrug he could manage without hurting himself.

"Jax," he said.

He offered the name casually, almost absurdly so, as though the two of you had met across a bar instead of on an empty stretch of California road with his motorcycle wrecked behind him and his blood drying on his hands. His mouth curved again as he tipped his head toward you.

"Figure if you're gonna save my ass, I should probably know what to call you."

The California heat had spent most of the afternoon baking everything it touched. Miles outside Charming, where the main highway had given way to narrower roads cutting between dry fields and stretches of scrub, the asphalt shimmered beneath the sun and the hills in the distance had disappeared behind a pale veil of heat. There wasn't much out here beyond brittle grass, dusty trees and the occasional utility pole marching alongside the road. Cicadas screamed somewhere beyond the shoulder, and whenever the wind bothered to move, it carried more heat with it instead of relief.

Jackson Teller had been sitting in the dirt long enough to develop a personal grudge against California.

His Harley lay several yards behind him where it had finally stopped sliding, black metal scraped viciously along one side and the handlebars sitting at an angle that told him he'd be having an unpleasant conversation with the mechanic later. Considering he was the mechanic, that particular problem could wait. His kutte had survived, which currently seemed more important. Jax had managed to get it off before collapsing against the shallow embankment beside the road, and it sat folded beside him while the white shirt underneath absorbed an increasingly concerning amount of blood.

His hand remained pressed against his ribs. Every time he eased the pressure to check the wound, fresh warmth spread beneath his palm and confirmed that, no, it hadn't miraculously fixed itself during the previous thirty seconds.

"Fuckin' perfect." Jax let his head fall back against the dirt.

The whole afternoon had gone to shit with impressive efficiency. What should have been a straightforward exchange had turned into an argument, the argument had turned into somebody reaching for a gun, and everything after that had happened too quickly to bother assigning blame yet. That could come later. SAMCRO excelled at assigning blame after everybody stopped shooting.

For now, Jax knew he'd managed to pull some of the trouble away from the others, caught a round in the process and discovered exactly how unforgiving asphalt became when a Harley stopped cooperating at speed. He remembered hitting the road, remembered the bike separating from him and remembered getting back onto his feet through sheer stubbornness before realizing there wasn't anywhere useful to go. His phone had disappeared somewhere along the way. He'd searched until bending over started making the edges of his vision dark, then accepted that wandering through dry brush while bleeding probably wasn't one of his better ideas.

He'd made it farther down the road on foot before the heat won.

Now he was stranded, wounded, phoneless and alone, which covered approximately four of Jax Teller's least favorite things to be at once.

He lifted his hand from his side and inspected the result. Blood glistened across his palm and fingers, and another dark trickle immediately disappeared into the fabric of his shirt.

"Yeah," he murmured. "That's probably bad."

Jax pressed his hand back against it.

He knew enough about injuries to understand he needed help. Unfortunately, understanding something and enjoying it were two entirely different things. Jax was accustomed to being useful when everything went wrong. Somebody needed a ride, a gun, a plan, money, backup or a body disappeared, and the club handled it. More often than not lately, Jax was the one everybody looked toward while waiting for the answer. Sitting beside an empty road hoping a stranger would rescue him didn't fit particularly well with that arrangement.

Neither did passing out in a ditch, though, so compromises apparently had to be made.

The sound of an approaching engine eventually broke through the endless cicadas.

Jax's eyes opened immediately.

Whatever exhaustion had been settling into his posture disappeared beneath instinct as he turned toward the road. His hand shifted away from the wound and toward his waistband, hovering there while a vehicle emerged through the shimmer in the distance. It wasn't one of the club's. Wrong make for anyone involved in the deal, too. No lights, no markings, nothing immediately identifying the driver as law enforcement.

Civilian didn't mean harmless, but it improved the odds.

Jax watched the car approach without making any attempt to wave it down. If whoever was driving noticed him and stopped, fine. If they didn't, he'd rather preserve what little dignity remained than start flapping his arms around like some stranded tourist.

The car passed.

His jaw tightened. "Asshole."

A few seconds later, brake lights glowed red.

Jax blinked.

The vehicle slowed before pulling onto the shoulder farther ahead, tires crunching over loose gravel. He straightened automatically and regretted it when something hot and vicious pulled beneath his ribs, but his attention remained fixed on the car. Nobody else had appeared behind it. He couldn't make out another occupant through the windows. His hand stayed near his waistband as the driver's door opened.

Then you climbed out.

Jax's first assessment was automatic and practical. Man. Alone, apparently. No visible weapon. No immediate indication that you belonged to anybody who'd spent the afternoon trying to put holes in him. You'd also stopped for a bloody stranger beside a wrecked motorcycle in the middle of nowhere, which either said something admirable about your character or something concerning about your survival instincts.

His second assessment was considerably less practical.

Well, shit.

Jax's eyes remained on you as you approached, and somewhere beneath the suspicion and the pain, amusement began tugging at his mouth. Of course the stranger who finally stopped had to be a good-looking guy. Apparently the universe had decided nearly bleeding out wasn't enough entertainment for one afternoon.

The attraction itself wasn't particularly complicated. Jax had never needed much convincing to appreciate somebody attractive, and pretending otherwise wasn't going to make him bleed less. The more relevant question was whether you appreciated men back, and unlike the blood currently soaking his shirt, that wasn't something he could determine at a glance.

Didn't mean he couldn't have a little fun finding out.

Jax shifted against the embankment, trying to sit a little straighter before immediately wondering why the fuck he'd bothered. Pain tore through his side hard enough to tighten his jaw. He breathed through it, waited for the worst to pass, and by the time you were close enough to get a proper look at him, he'd replaced the grimace with an easy half-smile.

"Hey." His voice came out rough. Jax cleared his throat and looked briefly down at himself, taking in the blood, the dirt ground into his jeans and the scraped skin along his forearm before looking back at you. "I'm fine."

There was a beat before his mouth twitched. "That's bullshit. But I'm alive, so we'll start there." The grin came more naturally after that.

It was easier when the situation became funny. Jax had spent years perfecting the art of treating things like they weren't serious until circumstances physically prevented him from doing so. It worked particularly well with injuries. If he could make a joke, he wasn't helpless. If he could flirt, he definitely wasn't helpless. There were probably several psychological conclusions somebody could draw from that, but Jax had absolutely no interest in hearing any of them.

As you came closer, his attention continued moving between you and the surroundings. He checked the road behind you again, glanced toward your car and watched your hands without making the scrutiny obvious. His expression remained relaxed throughout it, but there was intelligence behind the blue eyes tracking you. President of an outlaw motorcycle club wasn't exactly an occupation that encouraged blind trust.

Eventually, apparently deciding you weren't about to finish what somebody else had started, he relaxed by degrees.

"Didn't think you were gonna stop," he admitted.

His gaze traveled over you again, slower this time. Not enough to turn the appraisal into a performance, but certainly enough that it couldn't entirely be mistaken for checking whether you were armed. Jax caught himself doing it and smiled. "Glad you did."

There was something deliberately ambiguous in the way he said it. Enough that, if you were interested, you'd probably hear it. If you weren't, Jax could let it pass as gratitude and nobody had to make the next several minutes weird.

He'd learned that particular dance a long time ago.

Another pulse of pain beneath his ribs interrupted whatever amusement he'd found in the situation. Jax sucked a breath through his teeth and pressed his palm harder against the wound, waiting until the dizziness receded before speaking again.

"You got a phone on you?" The question brought the situation back into focus. His eyes flicked toward your pockets and then your car before returning to your face. "Need to call somebody."

He paused.

"And before you get any heroic ideas, don't call 911."

Even Jax couldn't keep a straight face after saying it. He glanced down at himself as though seeing the scene from your perspective for the first time: bloody stranger, biker vest sitting beside him, wrecked Harley, empty road and an immediate request not to involve law enforcement.

A short laugh escaped him before pain made him regret it.

"Jesus Christ. Yeah, I hear it." He rubbed his thumb absently over his bloodied palm and shook his head. "Could've phrased that better."

He wasn't going to explain why. Not yet. Telling some random guy he'd met thirty seconds ago that there had been gunfire during an illegal exchange and he'd prefer the sheriff's department remain blissfully unaware of his current location seemed like an excellent way to turn a Good Samaritan into a witness.

Besides, there were better things to talk about.

Jax looked back at you and found you considerably more interesting than his immediate legal problems. His expression softened into something amused again, the flirtation creeping back almost automatically now that he'd established you weren't an obvious threat.

"You got a name?" His head tilted slightly as he studied you. The smile at the corner of his mouth suggested he was enjoying this considerably more than somebody bleeding through his shirt had any right to. "Or should I just keep callin' you handsome until you tell me?"

There. Slightly less ambiguous.

Jax watched your reaction with open amusement, apparently content to let the line sit between you. If it landed, great. If it didn't, he'd survive the embarrassment. Probably. He'd already survived worse today.

His hand shifted against his ribs again, and the movement exposed another section of blood-soaked fabric. Jax noticed your attention drop toward it and gave you a look that was almost accusatory, as though you were the one being unreasonable about the fact that he was bleeding.

"Don't." His grin widened before you could interpret that as anything serious. "I know what it looks like."

He glanced down. It looked fucking terrible.

Jax considered this for a moment before conceding, "All right, looks worse than I thought."

The admission lasted approximately two seconds before he returned his attention to you. Humor was easier. Flirting was easier still. Both meant he could keep pretending he wasn't becoming increasingly aware of how hot the afternoon had gotten, how heavy his limbs felt, or how much he currently depended on the goodwill of a man whose name he didn't even know.

His eyes moved over your face once more, and a tired smirk pulled at his mouth.

"Could've been worse, I guess." Jax reached beside himself for his kutte, dragging it away from the dusty edge of the road and onto his lap. The movement made his breathing hitch, but he recovered quickly enough to glance back up at you.

"Could've been some ugly bastard that stopped." The shamelessness of it finally made him laugh properly, although he cut himself off almost immediately with a pained curse beneath his breath.

"Fuck. Don't make me laugh." As though that had somehow been your fault.

Jax settled again and extended his cleaner hand, or at least the one with considerably less blood on it. There was something almost absurdly normal about the gesture under the circumstances, but his expression suggested he knew that perfectly well.

"Jax." The introduction came with the same crooked smile, his eyes remaining on yours as he waited. "And now you tell me yours, handsome, so I know whose car I'm about to bleed all over."

.