green eyes — chibs telford x reader
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summary filip telford had kept his feelings to himself for months. he hadn't accounted for tig trager making it impossible.
prompt – chibs jealous of reader's friendship with tig, slow burn feelings, tense then soft warnings – jealousy, mild confrontation, soft ending 🎀 word count – ~3k note – two chaos goblins and one very jealous scotsman
requests are open :)
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It wasn't jealousy.
Chibs had told himself that enough times that it had started to sound almost convincing. He wasn't a jealous man — hadn't been, mostly, through the years and the marriages and the complicated wreckage of his personal life that the club had left behind. He was practical. Measured. Scottish, which meant he kept things close and processed them slowly and didn't make scenes.
What he was, standing in the doorway of the clubhouse watching you lose yourself laughing at something Tig had just said — Tig, of all people, Alexander Trager who had the emotional maturity of a labrador and twice the chaos — was not jealous.
He was observant.
That was what he told himself.
It had started three months ago, the friendship. Or maybe it had always been there and he'd only started clocking it three months ago, around the same time he'd started clocking everything about you with a specificity that unsettled him when he examined it too closely.
You and Tig made sense, in the way that chaotic things made sense together. You had the same energy — not the dangerous kind, Tig had plenty of that, but the particular flavour of person who said exactly what they were thinking and found the wrong things funny and could derail a serious conversation in under thirty seconds just by existing in it. You bounced off each other. Finished each other's terrible ideas. Egged each other on in ways that made every other person in the clubhouse simultaneously entertained and exhausted.
Chibs had watched it develop with the complicated feelings of a man who had no right to complicated feelings and knew it.
Because what were you to him, technically? They'd hooked up. More than once. Enough times that it meant something, or he thought it did, or he wanted it to and couldn't quite make himself say so. You were warm and funny and saw through him in a way that very few people managed, and when you were in a room he was aware of it in the particular way he was aware of weather changing.
But he hadn't said anything.
He'd told himself it was the club. The timing. The complicated mess of his history that made new things difficult. All of that was true. None of it was the full reason.
The full reason was sitting across the clubhouse laughing at Tig's impression of Jax while stealing chips off his plate without asking and looking more comfortable in her own skin than anyone Chibs had ever met.
He was terrified. That was the full reason.
The night it came to a head started ordinarily enough.
Party at the clubhouse — nothing unusual, the regular end-of-week noise. Chibs had been at the bar, drink in hand, doing perfectly fine, until Tig had appeared from somewhere with you on his arm — not romantically, just the casual physical ease of two people who'd become genuinely comfortable with each other — and steered you toward the pool table with the energy of someone who'd already decided the night's agenda.
Chibs had watched.
He'd told himself he wasn't watching. He was facing the bar. But the mirror behind the bottles gave him a perfectly clear view of the pool table, which was not his fault.
You were terrible at pool. Tig was attempting to teach you, which mostly involved him standing behind you and guiding your shot while making comments that made you laugh so hard you missed the ball entirely. Everyone nearby was laughing too. It was completely innocent.
Chibs drank his whiskey.
Tig said something close to your ear and you turned your head and said something back and Tig absolutely lost it, bent forward with it, and you looked pleased with yourself in the particular way you did when you'd landed something well.
Chibs put his glass down.
He wasn't going over there. He had absolutely no reason to go over there. He was going to stay at the bar and finish his drink like a reasonable person who wasn't jealous because he wasn't jealous—
He went over there.
"Telford." You spotted him first, the way you usually did, the particular awareness you had of him that he tried not to read too much into. Your face did the thing — the warmth, the slight shift — and then immediately settled into something more neutral when you clocked his expression. "You alright?"
"Fine," he said. Pleasantly. Completely fine.
Tig looked between the two of you with the expression of a man who had just been given information he found extremely useful.
"Chibs," Tig said, with the cheerful obliviousness that was either genuine or an extraordinarily good performance. "We're playing pool. She's terrible. It's brilliant."
"I'm improving," you said, pointing at him.
"You scratched twice in a row—"
"That's improvement from three times—"
"That's not how improvement—"
"Tig." Chibs said it quietly. The tone that wasn't loud but had a quality to it that the club had learned over years to pay attention to.
Tig paid attention to it. Looked at him. Looked at you. Looked back at him.
Something moved across his face — not the obliviousness, something sharper underneath it, because Tig was considerably less oblivious than he presented when it suited him.
"I'm gonna get a drink," Tig said, with absolutely no subtlety whatsoever, and disappeared.
You watched him go. Turned back to Chibs.
"That was subtle," you said.
"Wasn't trying to be subtle."
"Clearly." You studied him. The pool cue was still in your hand, held loosely at your side, and you were looking at him with the directness he'd always found difficult to deflect. "What's going on, Filip?"
His name in your mouth. The full one — not Chibs, not the club name, the real one. You used it sometimes and it always did something to him that he couldn't account for.
"Nothing's going on," he said.
"You've been standing at that bar staring at the mirror for forty minutes."
He said nothing.
"The mirror that faces the pool table," you added.
"I was having a drink—"
"Filip."
He looked at you. The directness of you, the complete inability to be deflected, the way you looked at him like you could see the parts he kept carefully out of sight.
He exhaled.
"Tig's very—" he started. Stopped. Tried again. "The two of ye are very—"
"Close?" you offered.
"Aye."
"He's my friend."
"I know that."
"Then what—"
"I know that," he said again, quieter. Something in his voice going somewhere different, somewhere that wasn't the controlled pleasantness he'd been managing all evening. "I know he's your friend. That's not—" he stopped. Jaw working. The particular expression of a man having a conversation he hadn't prepared for and wasn't entirely willing to have. "It's not about Tig."
You were very still. The pool cue balanced between your hands. The party carried on around you, loud and indifferent, and Chibs stood in the middle of it feeling considerably more exposed than he liked.
"Then what's it about?" you said softly.
He looked at you for a long moment.
Tig found Chibs outside twenty minutes later.
He was leaning against the wall near the bikes, cigarette in hand, looking at the sky with the expression of a man who had retreated to think and hadn't finished thinking yet.
Tig leaned against the wall beside him. Said nothing for a moment.
"So," Tig said eventually.
"Don't," Chibs said.
"I'm just saying—"
"Tig."
"You've been watching her all night—"
"Alexander."
Tig held up both hands. "Okay, okay." A pause that lasted approximately four seconds. "She likes you, you know."
Chibs looked at him sideways.
"I'm serious." Tig dropped the performance entirely, which happened rarely enough that Chibs paid attention when it did. "She talks about you. Not — not like that, she's not obvious about it. But I notice things." He shrugged. "People think I don't but I do."
Chibs was quiet.
"She's not laughing with me because she wants me," Tig said, simpler now, direct in the way he occasionally was when something actually mattered. "She's laughing with me because she's easy to be around and so am I. That's it." He looked at Chibs. "You're the one she watches when she thinks nobody's looking."
Chibs looked back at the sky.
"I'm not good at this," he said finally.
"I know."
"My history—"
"I know."
"It's not simple—"
"Chibs." Tig said it the way you'd said Filip — quieter, more real than his usual register. "Nothing worth having is simple. You know that better than anyone." He pushed off the wall. "Stop watching her in the mirror and go talk to her."
He went back inside.
Chibs stood outside for another few minutes. Finished his cigarette. Looked at the bikes and the night sky and the complicated wreckage of every reason he'd given himself for staying quiet.
Then he went back inside.
You were at the bar when he found you. Alone — Tig conspicuously absent, which told Chibs everything about what had just happened. You had a drink in your hand and you were looking at it rather than the room, and when you heard him settle onto the stool beside you you glanced over with the careful expression of someone who had been thinking while he was outside.
"Hi," you said.
"Hi, love," he said.
The word came out naturally. It always did with you, even when he was trying to keep things managed — the endearment slipping past the careful control like it had decided not to wait anymore.
You looked at him. Something in your face shifting.
"It's not about Tig," he said again. Quieter now, the party noise around them, the particular private pocket of a bar conversation that nobody else could hear. "I know that's not—I know he's your friend. I'm not—" he paused. "I'm not a jealous man. Generally."
"Generally," you repeated softly.
"Generally." He looked at his hands. Looked back at you. The walls were still there — they were always there, he'd built them carefully over years — but they were thinner than they'd been all evening, worn down by a cigarette outside and Tig Trager of all people saying something that had cut straight through. "I don't like watching you with someone else. Any someone else." He held your gaze. "Because I want to be the one you're laughing with. I want—" he stopped. Started again. "I've wanted that for longer than I've been willing to say."
The bar was quiet between you.
You set your drink down. Turned on your stool to face him properly.
"Why didn't you say anything?" you said. Not accusing. Just honest. Just you.
"Because I don't—" he exhaled slowly, "—I don't do this well. The saying it part. I'm better at—"
"Showing up," you said quietly. "I know." Something soft in your face. "I've noticed, Filip."
He looked at you. The particular exhaustion of a man who had been carrying something heavier than he needed to.
"I have feelings for you," he said. Simply. Finally. Like it had been waiting a long time. "That's what it's about. Not Tig. Just—" he held your gaze, "—you."
You were quiet for a moment.
Then you reached over and took his hand where it rested on the bar. Covered it with yours. His eyes dropped to it and then back up to your face.
"I have feelings for you too," you said. Like it was obvious. Like it had been obvious. "I was waiting for you to catch up."
Something in his chest unknotted.
"Tig told me ye watch me," he said, after a moment. "When ye think nobody's looking."
Your expression did something — a flicker of betrayal and then resignation and then something warmer. "Tig has a very big mouth."
"Aye." The corner of his mouth moved. "He does."
"I'm going to kill him."
"Probably." He turned his hand under yours, linking his fingers through. "Later."
You looked at him. He looked back at you. The party moved around you — the club, the noise, the whole complicated world of it — and in the middle of it Filip Telford held your hand and let himself want something without talking himself out of it for the first time in longer than he could remember.
He reached up with his free hand, slow and careful, and tucked a strand of hair back from your face. His thumb stayed at your jaw after — just resting there, the worn roughness of his hand against your skin — and you stayed very still and let him.
He leaned forward.
The kiss was soft. Unhurried. The kind that didn't rush because it didn't need to, the kind that had been waiting long enough that it knew it had time now. His hand at your jaw held you gently, his thumb tracing once across your cheekbone when he pulled back, just enough to look at you.
Your eyes opened.
"Mo chridhe," he said quietly. Like he was trying it out. Like he'd been saving it for exactly this.
You squeezed his hand.
"Yeah," you said softly. "That."
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