Season 1, Episode 5
Charming put on its Sunday face. Banners for the Giving Back Fair hung from light poles Gemma had bullied the city into pressure-washing. A dunk tank gleamed in the school lot, the PTA stacked pies, and Teller-Morrow donated a tune-up voucher shaped like a halo. The whole thing smelled like kettle corn and denial.
Cian Teller stood by the generator trailer with a coffee and a backpack full of radios and lies. His mesh purred—UHF net for the boys, county scanner throttled to a private squawk, three traffic signals quietly "out for calibration" so cruisers stayed busy elsewhere. He drew a ring around the fair in his head and taught it manners.
Gemma floated past, queen of small-town charity and large-town consequences. "Smile like you mean it," she told him. "This is how we buy patience."
"I left my sincerity in my other kutte," he said.
She straightened his collar anyway. "Don't get cute with Clay today."
"I'm cute by accident," Cian said. "Today I'll be ugly."
"Good boy." She meant useful.
---
They buried Cody before noon.
A narrow plot at St. Mary's, grass gone thin, the wind loud enough to pretend it wasn't listening. Two county cars idled a respectful distance. Unser kept his hat on and his mouth shut. Jax stood with his hands in his pockets and that new stillness on him. Donna brought bad coffee and better presence. Clay watched like a president learning names he'd never say.
Cody's mother cried like a person who'd used up tears months ago and found more out of spite. She didn't know what her boy had run, who he'd met, how he'd died. She knew only that the ground would keep him. Cian stood back a step and let the white carnation in his pocket bruise.
When the priest finished, Cian stepped forward, touched the key on his own chain, and laid a second, beat-up key on Cody's coffin. "For doors you don't have to open anymore," he said, low enough to be private.
Jax squeezed his shoulder once—a brother's amen. Clay didn't look at him; he looked at the horizon, like men do when they think they can outstare consequences.
On the way out, Unser muttered, "I'll call it gang-related and 'pending.' County's grateful for boxes they can check."
"Thanks," Cian said.
"Don't thank me," Unser said. "Do less of this."
---
Alvarez's escalation arrived wrapped in florist's paper like a dare. Gemma opened the box at Teller-Morrow and hissed through her teeth. Inside: white carnations around a ring of brass cylinders, the same lock cores they'd pulled off Cody's dead mouth. In the center, a toy sheriff's star.
A note, block letters:
> DON'T CONFUSE POLITENESS FOR FEAR. —A
Clay read it, chuckled without warmth, and said, "We keep being polite until we don't."
Gemma tucked the star into her purse like a crime. "Go run your fair," she told the boys. "If Alvarez wants a scene, he can buy a ticket."
Cian photographed the whole thing and fed the picture into his private bile.
---
Stahl squeezed where it hurts: Opie.
She met him at the bank like coincidence wearing perfume. Donna was one teller over, counting twenties with a smile that had learned to lie. Stahl's sunglasses caught her reflection and didn't care.
"Rough week," Stahl said to Opie, that voice she kept for men who think they can still choose. "Loan behind, two kids, a wife trying to make a good life in a bad town. I can fix one of those facts."
Opie said nothing. His jaw had a whole sermon in it.
Stahl slid a card across. "I'm not asking you to betray anyone," she lied. "I'm asking you to stop letting other people decide what happens to your family."
Donna glanced over. Stahl turned just enough for the wife to catch a smile that would rot teeth. Opie put a hand on the card but didn't take it.
"Your club will say 'brotherhood,'" Stahl murmured. "I'm saying breakfast."
Opie left the card on the counter like it weighed more than cash. Outside, Cian peeled off a column he had no business leaning on.
"She wants you hungry," Cian said.
"She succeeds most days," Opie said. He was too honest to make it a joke.
"I bought you a week," Cian said. "Your loan servicer's system thinks it's Thanksgiving. They'll call again next Monday."
Opie looked at him sideways, grateful and irritated at the same time. "I don't want you fixing my life with wires."
"I'm not," Cian said. "I'm fixing your afternoon."
Opie nodded once. "Tell me before you do it next time."
"Or what?"
"Or I thank you worse," Opie said, almost smiling.
---
The fair started sweet and turned sharp.
Cian's permit scrape flagged a late add: a "literacy outreach van" with a vendor ID he didn't recognize. He watched it nose toward the generator trailer and park like it belonged. Two men in event shirts hopped out and started unspooling cable that didn't need unspooling.
"Juice, right rear," Cian said. "Logo's crooked. Badge laminate's wrong."
Juice drifted up with a grin that promised customer service. "Your sticker's yesterday," he said to the taller shirt. "New ones are blue."
"Came straight from city hall," the man said, offering a smile he'd practiced in worse places.
"City hall doesn't come straight anywhere," Juice said, and plucked the badge. It tore like a forgery. The shorter shirt flinched toward the van. Tig appeared behind him, a friendly arm around his neck. Friendly enough.
They popped the side door. Inside: boxes of pamphlets on the top layer, fireworks and cutting agent underneath. Not a bomb, not even clever. A spook and a photo op. Blow a generator, send families running, and let Hale pin the panic on the patch.
Opie rolled the door shut and smiled at a passing councilman. "Literacy," he said. "Big fan."
Unser arrived on cue because Cian had tripped his "lost child" flag across the lot. The sheriff looked in the van and sighed like a man trying to retire and failing. "You want me to own this?" he asked Cian, low.
"I want it to vanish," Cian said. "And I want the men who wheeled it in to remember how long roads can be when you walk them."
Unser jerked his chin. A deputy invented a parking violation. The van and its contents were towed like a civic favor. The two men left on foot, Tig walking six steps behind humming a love song until they decided to get small.
"Alvarez keeps it just this side of war," Chibs said, watching them go.
"Until he doesn't," Jax said.
Clay shook a hand he didn't like and got a photo that would play nice in the paper. SAMCRO SAVES FAIR FROM FIREWORKS MISHAP. Politeness tasted like metal.
---
Stahl served paper right on the midway.
"Clayton Morrow," she said, producing a smile and a subpoena for ORIGINAL SURVEILLANCE MATERIALS. The word original had teeth.
Clay read, didn't blink. "If we had 'em, we'd frame 'em."
"You will. Tomorrow. 10 a.m." She tucked a copy into Gemma's purse without asking. "And Jackson—tell your half-brother to stop rewriting the county's maintenance schedule. The lights keep developing interesting personalities."
Jax didn't smirk. "Must be the weather."
Stahl turned to Cian like a cat to a laser pointer. "You ever get tired?" she asked.
"Of you?" he said. "Hourly."
"Of playing defense," she said. "It's not your natural posture."
She walked away with a balloon from a kid who didn't know better. Gemma crushed the subpoena paper twice and smoothed it flat again. "You bring me anything that puts her in a hole," she told Cian, "and I'll bake you a pie."
"Blueberry," he said.
"Key lime," she corrected. "It stings on the way in."
---
He stood in the office alone at twilight, the fair noise rolling like surf. The micro DVR—the warehouse sin—sat on the desk like a loaded question. He could hand Stahl a slice and point it at Mayans, buy the club a week of breathing and flood Alvarez with federal heat. He could also invite every three-letter alphabet into their kitchen for the next year.
He took the drive, hesitated, put it down, picked it up. He could feel Cody's key tapping his sternum under the shirt, a sad metronome. He whispered to the empty room, "Angry men feed the wrong fires," like it was a spell.
His phone buzzed. PACKAGE AT DONATION TENT—FOR SAMCRO.
Cian walked the midway past games and pie and people who believed in their illusions. The package was a shoebox with a bow. Inside: a baby monitor camera and a white carnation. He plugged the monitor into a power strip. The screen blinked, then filled with the green-tinged image of an incubator. Lines, numbers, a tiny chest rising and falling.
Abel.
Jax arrived behind him like a shadow with bones. Gemma was three steps slower and angrier. Tara was already on the phone to the NICU before anyone told her to be.
Cian watched the screen, counted the frames. Eleven beats, a hitch, eleven beats again—the same pattern, the same pixel noise. "Looped," he said. "It's not live."
Gemma didn't exhale. "They want us to think they can get in."
"They want us to run," Jax said, eyes never leaving the tiny chest.
"Then we don't," Gemma snapped. "We finish our pie and our photos and our smiles."
Cian killed the monitor, coiled the cord, and put the carnation in his pocket with the other. He looked at Jax, at the fair, at the Reaper patch on his own chest, and made a decision he didn't like.
He slid the micro DVR into his kutte.
"Where are you going?" Jax asked.
"To buy us time," Cian said. "And to make Alvarez wish he liked cake."
Gemma caught his arm. "Don't you hand that woman the whole kitchen."
"I'll give her crumbs," he said. "Sharp ones."
He walked toward the street where Stahl's crown vic always found a shadow. He felt the weight of the drive like a small, stubborn truth. He wasn't going to start a war. He was going to point one.
Behind him, the fair music kept lying beautifully to the town. Ahead, the night waited, patient as a fuse.
"Giving Back: The Price of Polite"
Stahl was exactly where a vulture would perch—half a block off the fair under a streetlight that flickered like a bad alibi. Cian walked up with the micro DVR in his kutte and a face that said do not mistake this for trust.
"Brought you dessert," he said, holding out a small evidence bag he'd not called an evidence bag. Inside: a clipped slice of the warehouse night—thirty-eight seconds, clean timestamp, the blue tow nosing in, the overspray glow, a Mayan rocker flashing mid-gray as a shadow stepped through the frame.
"Original?" Stahl asked.
"From a third-party camera whose owner remains patriots and cowards in equal measure," Cian said. "You'll get your chain of custody when the owner decides he likes your perfume."
Stahl studied him over the edge of her sunglasses like he was a crossword she was determined to finish. "You're giving me crumbs."
"Sharp ones," he said. "Watch your tongue."
She pocketed the slice, but she smiled like a person who had found a seam. "Jackson Teller never plays me. You… might. That makes you useful. It also makes you a future arrest."
"Get in line," Cian said. "Bring cake."
He turned to go; she called after him without raising her voice. "Tell your half-brother Opie to fix his taillight."
Cian didn't look back. "Tell your conscience to file a change-of-address."
---
Alvarez answered polite with spectacle. Main Street at golden hour—kids sticky with cotton candy, Gemma's raffle jar full, Jax rocking a baby stroller that wasn't there but lived behind his eyes. A line of Mayans rolled slow like a parade Charming hadn't scheduled, engines a low hymn. Third bike carried a milk crate bungee'd to the sissy bar. The rider set it down at the curb in front of Teller-Morrow, like a man delivering a pie.
"Back," Cian said into the net, lazy tone gone steel. "Crowd back."
He stepped into the space where people think they're safe and aren't. The crate lid fell. Keys spilled—hundreds of brass blanks—shimmering into the street with a sound like rain on a tin roof. In the middle of the metal hail: three white carnations and a flash-bang the size of a fist.
"Eyes!" Cian barked. Tig yanked a kid back by the shirt; Chibs shielded a stroller with his body; Jax already had Gemma behind the service truck by the time the pop cracked the evening open and turned sound to cotton for two seconds.
Windows didn't blow. No one fell. But panic came like a tide. The Mayans idled, smiling, then rolled on, leaving the glittering mess and a town full of people suddenly aware of how thin their skin was.
"Keep moving," Jax said in a calm that held. "It's over. Go home. Hug your kids."
Cian stood in the river of brass and watched the light turn them to coins. He bent, picked up one carnation, tucked it into his pocket—white bruising to brown against cloth—and texted Juice: pull every plate. log every motor tone.
Juice: already singing.
Hale arrived ninety seconds late and six ethics short, chin hot, hand on a badge like it was a weapon. "This is what your presence buys us," he told Clay.
"No injuries, no damage," Clay said, even. "Just litter."
"Just terror," Hale snapped.
"Terror's your department," Gemma said, smiling her nice smile.
Unser slid in behind Hale like a good ghost. He clocked the keys, the crushed carnation, the ears still ringing, and looked at Cian. "You stop the panic. Thank you."
"Send me a ticket for the cleanup," Cian said, kicking a drift of brass toward a dustpan.
---
Stahl squeezed Opie at sunset the way storms squeeze warm fronts: quiet, inevitable. A cruiser pulled him two blocks from the fair for the promised "taillight." Hale did the sermon. A tow truck he hadn't called arrived exactly on time.
"Policy," the driver said, smile dead. "We check undercarriage before release."
Cian's mesh pinged—a new transponder ID attaching itself to Opie's truck like a tick. He didn't yank it. He stared at the little red dot and made a new map in his head.
He called Opie's burner. "You're bugged," he said. "Say nothing, pay the fine, drive somewhere you hate."
"How somewhere I hate?" Opie asked, already angry at the wrong thing because there weren't right things left.
"Stahl wants to watch you orbit Jax. Give her a different planet," Cian said. "Drive to the feed store in Lodi. Sit for an hour. Drive home slow the back way. Tomorrow, we'll 'find' your tracker on the lift."
"You ask me first next time," Opie said.
"I am," Cian said, and the line between fixing your afternoon and running your life hummed like a power cable.
He sent a different text to Juice: spin a ghost route. make the bug see Opie at a motel on 12, then the VFW, then Donna's mom's.
Juice: on it. your tax dollars at work.
Opie did it. Stahl watched a story she wanted to be true: tired man, tired marriage, tired orbit around anything but crime. She took notes. She missed dinner. Donna put the kids to bed alone and told herself nothing was wrong. That was the cost that wasn't paid in cash.
---
Back at the shop, the bill for aiming chaos came due the old-fashioned way: up close.
Clay waited in the dark office with the light off and a cigarette making a planet in the air. When Cian stepped in, Clay's hand moved faster than a man his age should've been able to. The backhand wasn't wild—it was precise. It caught Cian across the mouth and turned honesty into copper.
"Did you hand the ATF my club?" Clay asked, voice low and bruised.
Cian licked the blood and gave it a name. "I handed Stahl thirty-eight seconds of Mayan business," he said. "No faces in our house. No sound. Enough to buy us oxygen."
"You bought a fan and called it breeze," Clay said, stepping in close. "You put eyes on us for the season."
"Eyes were already here," Cian said. "I gave them a mirror that points the other way."
Clay's jaw worked. He was a president who couldn't admit he was also a father; he was a father who wouldn't admit he liked this kid too much to let him be this reckless. "You keep doing this without asking me," he said. "Next time, I don't stop at one."
"I'll try to duck," Cian said, lazy even when his cheek sang.
Gemma slid in like a ghost with claws, caught Clay's wrist on the second swing that wasn't coming. "Enough," she said, and the word was a law. She turned to Cian, thumb already reaching for the collar, smoothing away chaos like it was lint. "You tell me next time," she said. "Or I'll hit you harder and blame menopause."
"Key lime," Cian said. His smile was blood.
Jax stood in the doorway and did the calculus—Clay's authority, Gemma's leash, Cian's sin, the club's oxygen. He didn't apologize for anyone. He didn't thank anyone. He said, "Alvarez is aiming in daylight now. We aim back."
Clay looked at his stepson—son—and at the boy who wore his name and not his blood, and he nodded once. "Church at eight. We set rules for what crumbs we feed and to who."
Cian touched the dog tag under his shirt, felt Cody's key bump it. He nodded. "I'll bake the crumbs."
Gemma flicked his ear. "And I'll bake the pie."
---
He should have slept; he taught the town a new dance instead. He set school-zone lights to "sticky" during commute hours so cruisers had to babysit blinking amber. He convinced two county cameras to think they were getting maintenance until Tuesday. He nudged a CalTrans lane closure into Sunday morning and moved a farmer's market permit up by an hour. He couldn't stop bullets with code. He could make the men who shot them late.
At two a.m., his mesh lit: the tracker on Opie's truck had learned a new trick—heartbeat. Stahl had switched from idle pings to live audio.
"Don't remove it yet," Cian told the empty room. "Let me teach it to listen to the wrong truth."
He recorded an hour of nothing useful—classic rock, Opie's truck idle, Bobby singing through his nose—and fed the bug a steady loop. Stahl would think she was in the walls of their lives. She would be in a jukebox.
Price of polite: every lie required a better one behind it the next day. He could feel the bill collecting interest.
He killed the screens and stepped into the yard. Night had a notch of quiet that wasn't Charming's. He listened. There it was: a single bike idling two blocks off, patience on a throttle.
He walked to the curb and sat on the edge, palms on knees, as if he were a teenager with nothing to do. The bike rolled into the pool of a streetlamp and stopped twenty feet away. Helmet mirrored, jacket clean, no patch. The rider killed the engine, took off the lid, and set it on the tank. A young face, pretty in a way that gets you killed quicker—Mayan bone structure, new-soldier eyes.
He held up a phone. On its screen: a picture of the welded steel crow Alvarez had hung on Teller-Morrow's gate this afternoon—now mounted inside their office like art.
"They said you'd hang it where you could see it," the kid said. His voice was steady and too confident. He had not learned you're allowed to be afraid. He pointed with his chin at Cian's kutte. "You're the one who makes the lights blink."
"Guilty," Cian said.
The kid set the phone down on the tank and slid his hands out to show he was empty. "Got a message," he said, and that word message landed heavy given the week they'd had.
"Flowers bore me," Cian said. "Speak."
"Alvarez says you've got good aim," the kid said. "He says you think you can make a man late to his own grave. He likes the game." A small smile. "He says you don't know the stakes."
"They're always the same," Cian said. "Family and the people who pretend to be."
The kid nodded appreciatively, as if at a chess move he'd expected but enjoyed anyway. He lifted one hand and tapped two fingers against his chest where a patch would be if he'd earned one. "He says we're done with keys."
"So what's next?" Cian asked, and he already knew he wasn't going to like it.
The kid swung a leg over the bike and stood, easy and unarmed and stupid in the way messengers are when they believe in the shape of words. "He says—" and then he stopped because he'd said enough, or because someone in the dark behind him clicked a safety, or because the night itself decided it was tired of polite.
Cian's head tilted. He'd been waiting for a second shadow. It stepped out of the hedge line across the street—older Mayan, real patch, small subgun hugged to his ribs like a baby. The muzzle lifted, the lesson obvious: you can aim chaos, kid, but sometimes it aims back faster.
Cian smiled like a man who wasn't about to move. "If you shoot," he said, voice conversational, "you write the war. In front of my home. On a Tuesday."
The older Mayan considered that—genuinely, like math—and lowered the gun an inch because pride wants witnesses, not headlines. He jerked his chin. The kid got back on the bike.
"Tell Alvarez he can keep sending art," Cian said, standing. "I've got wall space."
The older one grinned without humor. "He's switching mediums."
They left in opposite directions because theater demands an exit that looks cooler than it is. Cian stood in the street lamp's ring and felt the bill settle another few dollars onto his chest. Then he went inside and wrote it down where only he would see it:
— Stahl has the crumb;
— Hale wants a riot and we gave him confetti;
— Opie is a wire with two kids on it;
— Alvarez will stop being funny.
He tucked the note with John's pages and Cody's key and the carnation that had bled brown, a pocket altar of good intentions and worse outcomes.
He didn't sleep. Dawn showed up like a man late to his own funeral. Cian made coffee too strong and set the cups where he knew men would reach for them without thinking.
Church at eight. He'd walk in with a fat lip, a plan that would buy them six hours, and a fresh appreciation for the truth his grandfather hadn't written but his bones knew anyway:
Control is a lullaby. Chaos is the gospel. You can sing either. You'd better mean it.