Fate Misunderstood

Juliette had set her alarm to get up early enough that she could go home to take a shower and make herself decent for when the guys returned from Belfast. Their plane was supposed to land around 10 and by the time she had showered, dried her hair, and gotten dressed for the day, it was already almost nine. She stopped by the diner to get a quick breakfast, a short stack of pancakes, and then she high tailed it to the clubhouse to wait. The whole place was nearly empty, only two or three mechanics out in the garage with Tig and Kozik when she arrived, and the two prospects hanging around silently waiting for someone to give them some orders. She parked her car and walked over to the entrance of the clubhouse, climbing up to sit on top of the picnic table instead of going inside so that she'd see them first thing as soon as they arrived.

It was torture sitting there waiting with nothing to do but twirl a strand of hair around her finger. She checked the time on her phone every five minutes but it seemed like that only made time go slower. Opie's girlfriend arrived not long after she did, along with a few various hang-arounds and crow eaters and once of the prospects, the one that reminded her of a big teddy bear, wandered over to where she was sitting and in his attempts at casual conversation, he pointed out the swing set that he and the other prospect had spent all night building. She thought it was a sweet gesture, even though Abel wouldn't be able to play on it for at least another year or so. Finally, at just after 10:30, a black van slowed down on the main road to turn onto the lot and she jumped up from her seat when she saw her mother in the passenger seat. Tig hurried up to open the back doors and let the guys out as Jax slipped out the side door. He opened Gemma's door and she slid out of her seat, picking up the large bundle from her lap and Juliette's heart rate picked up when she realized that it was her nephew inside.

Juliette ran toward her brother at full force, throwing her arms around him as she took a huge breath of relief that they had all made it home safe. He hugged her back just as tight and she gave him an extra squeeze before she pulled away and he turned to greet Tig and ask for any new news on Tara. Clay was herding all the guys toward the clubhouse to have church so she didn't really get a chance to greet anyone else, but she had a hard time resisting reaching out to grab Juice when he walked by her, grinning, and gave her a wink.

As soon as they were all inside, she changed her focus to which way her mother had gone with her nephew and decided that inside the clubhouse was the most likely destination so she headed back toward it. Gemma was sitting on one of the stools at the bar with the baby in her arms and Juliette approached cautiously, her eyes focused on his tiny face in person for the first time. Her mother was smiling down at him and she didn't look up even when she spoke. "Looks just like Jax, doesn't he?"

"Scary alike."

"Come over here and meet your nephew."

Juliette inched closer as Gemma turned around to face her. Abel gurgled and cooed when she reached out to touch his hand and he surprised her by grasping her fingertip in his tiny fist. Even though she knew it was a baby's reflex, it still felt kind of like he approved and she couldn't help but smile at him. He really did look just like Jax and she couldn't believe how much he had grown since the last time her mom had emailed her photos of him.

"You wanna hold him?"

"U-uh, no that's okay. He's probably been around enough strangers this week."

Gemma chuckled and shook her head. "You're probably right about that."

The doors to the chapel opened after a very short meeting and the guys came pouring out, most of them immediately going off to do their specific orders, but Clay and Jax meandered over to where they were as Gemma slid off the bar stool and started rocking Abel gently in her arms. After a short conversation on whether or not Gemma should be taken up to the cabin to hide out, Clay went off to talk to some of the guys and Jax went into the back to the dorms. She watched her mother just hand off the baby to Opie's girlfriend before she followed after him and Juliette had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. Of course she couldn't just be happy that her grandson was back at home safe and sound; she had to go right back to wedging herself into other people's business and stirring things up. Gemma would never change.

She came back out only a few moments after Jax had come through and left and she greeted Lyla again with a kiss on the cheek before she patted Opie's shoulder and walked past them. It was only after she got halfway to the door that she turned back to her daughter. "I'm gonna go by the house for a bit. You comin'?"

Juliette paused for a moment as she thought about the fact that Gemma had already greeted Lyla twice since they arrived back and she had yet to make any move of affection toward her own daugher. "I think I'm just gonna stay here for a bit."

"Okay, sure," Gemma nodded before looking back at Lyla who was still holding Abel in her arms. "Come on, baby."

Both Lyla and Opie followed her out of the clubhouse and Juliette sighed heavily as she slid onto the bar stool closest to her and raked a hand through her dark hair.

-

Most of the early afternoon was spent meandering around the compound, from the clubhouse to the garage to the roof back to the clubhouse as she talked to the various people she found in each of those places. Most of the guys were off doing club shit and trying to find Tara, but the prospects were still around and they were so obviously trying to flirt that she found talking to them very enjoyable. At one point, she found Kozik in the garage in between all the runs he was making around town for one reason or another and she stayed with him until he had to leave again. The next time he came back, Clay, Jax, and most of the others were with him and they came right over to where she was sitting on top of the picnic table, sitting down around her and talking among themselves.

There was a rumble of motorcycles coming from down the street that only seemed to get closer even though all the guys were already there, and the ones that weren't there were gone in the club van. A few seconds later, a pack of five or six motorcycles pulled onto the lot and right over to where the guys usually parked their bikes. Juliette noticed by the ape hangers that they were Mayans but as they took off their helmets and climbed off of their motorcycles, she saw their cuts which confirmed it. The guys got up from the tables and went over to talk to them but Juliette stayed far back from the club business, just watching from her safe distance. As the Presidents from both clubs talked, she could tell that there was some major tension.

Just then, the black van returned to the lot and pulled right up to where they were standing. Kozik and Juice got out and Bobby right after them, pulling an older Hispanic woman out with him. He was shouting gruffly at her and she was hysterically talking right back at him in Spanish, which of course none of them understood. Juliette had told Tig many times before that learning Spanish would be a smart move but they never listened to her.

The Mayan President stepped forward to talk to the woman and from where she was sitting, Juliette could hear her say that Salazar was her nephew. That was all the Mayan needed to here to grab his gun and point it at her as he demanded to know where Salazar was. Once he got the information he wanted from her, he put his gun away and his whole crew ran back to their bikes and took off out of the parking lot. The SAMCRO boys were right behind them, leaving the terrified woman with Kozik and the prospects. They started pulling her back toward the van and she was pleading with them not to hurt her but of course they couldn't understand her and she couldn't understand them. Juliette jumped up from the table and hurried after them, calling for Kozik to hold on a second and he stopped to look back at her in confusion. "What?"

"Look at her, she's scared!"

"So?"

"So you need to remember that even though she's Salazar's aunt, she is innocent." Kozik rolled his eyes but he stayed rooted to the spot as Juliette spoke to the woman in the language she could understand. Julie apologized for the guys' behavior but explained why they were so aggressive and she told her that Kozik and the two prospects were going to take her back home, promising that the SAMCRO guys would not harm her. The woman calmed down a bit after that, but she asked Juliette if she would come with them because the men scared her. Julie smiled and nodded at her and the woman reached out to squeeze her hand thankfully. "Okay, I'm going with you."

"No," Kozik disagreed immediately, shaking his head. "No way. This is Club shit. It doesn't involve you."

"I'm the only one who can communicate with her, asshole. And it's not like you're doing anything illegal so I won't be in any trouble or danger. I'm coming."

"Fine," he huffed. "But if Clay gets pissed off about this, it's your ass, not mine."

Juliette shrugged nonchalantly and walked around to the side door of the van, opening it and climbing in first with the woman next to her and the prospect Miles on the other end by the door. Kozik climbed into the driver's seat and the teddy bear prospect got into the passenger seat. Julie asked her where she lived as they pulled out of the lot, even though the guys already knew because of the intel they'd done, and she got the woman talking to keep her calm. Kozik kept glancing back at her in the rear view mirror every time she spoke, like he couldn't believe that it was actually her speaking Spanish in the back seat but she just smiled back at him every time. The woman apologized for her nephew's behavior and wished Juliette's family luck as she got out of the van back at her home and once they were back on the road to Teller-Morrow again, Kozik was chuckling and shaking his head.

"Can't believe you speak fuckin' Spanish."

"Why not? It's been very beneficial to me in my job. Apparently, it would be in your jobs too."

"When'd you learn it?"

"I've been fluent since high school. Tried to convince Tig to let me teach him a couple times but you know how stubborn he is."

Kozik laughed. "Tig speaking Spanish? No fuckin' way."

"You laugh, but imagine how much easier that would've been if just one of you were fluent."

"I think I'll stick to English, babe."

"Fine," she shrugged, leaning back in her seat. "Be small minded."

He shook his head at her but he was still grinning when she met his eyes in the rear view mirror.

-

tara safe. getting checked out @ st. thomas

The number wasn't programmed into her phone because she never saved the Club's prepaid cell phone numbers, but the text had come from the same phone that had called her in Belfast so she knew that it was from Juice. She sent back a quick thanks before pocketing the phone again and hopping into the driver's seat. Everyone was gone by the time she got back to the house, leaving just her mother and nephew. Gemma was leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee in one hand and Abel in the other, bouncing him gently on her hip while he just giggled.

"Hey, baby," she greeted as Juliette shut the kitchen door behind her. "Did somebody let you know about Tara?"

"Yeah, Juice did," she nodded, dropping her car keys on the counter and walking around the kitchen island to sit on one of the bar stools on the other side. "I'm glad she's okay."

"I just hope the baby's okay."

"What baby?" she asked cautiously, somewhat apprehensive about hearing the answer even though she could pretty much gather on her own. Gemma gave her a look as she set Abel in his carrier on the counter and Julie sighed heavily. "Seriously?"

"Yep."

"And are we happy about this?"

"Another grandkid? Of course we're happy."

"All of us?" She was hinting at whether Jax and Tara, the people who actually mattered, were happy about the responsibility of another child and what that would mean for them as a couple and as a family with Abel.

"Yes, Juliette, they're both happy."

"Well that's good." She actually didn't think it was good at all, but she wasn't about to say that to her mother. "How'd everyone else react to the news?"

"Wasn't really a chance for her to tell anybody before we went to Belfast."

"Then how do you know?"

Gemma shrugged and went to light a cigarette but she stopped when Juliette gave her a look and shook her head, nodding toward the baby where he sat cooing in his carrier. "I could tell. Mother's intuition."

Julie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "And Jax?"

"I had to tell him while we were there."

"Moooooom," she groaned, running her hands down her face. "That was so not your place."

"Hey, you don't know what the circumstances were over there. Me tellin' him saved him from doin' something really goddamned stupid."

"Whatever."

The two of them sat in silence, Gemma sipping her coffee and Juliette watching her baby nephew from a safe distance. until the kitchen door opened and Tara slowly walked into the house with Jax following right behind her, his hand resting gently on her back. Gemma picked Abel up from his carrier and walked over to hand him to Tara, giving her a kiss on the cheek before she reached up to hug Jax. He was smiling when he looked over at Juliette, a genuinely happy smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, and she couldn't help but return it when he went back to watching the love of his life, now the woman who was carrying one of his children in her belly and the other in her arms.

She just sat there, watching the four of them as they went to sit down at the dining room table to talk and they played with the baby and passed around the ultrasound photo. That feeling she'd had since she was a child-- that she didn't really have a place in the family-- came bubbling back up to the surface and that split second, she wondered how she ever thought that coming back to Charming could work. Nothing had changed while she was away and she was sure that they really wouldn't miss her all that much if she were to leave again. The bottom line was that she'd been right: she shouldn't have come back. All that bullshit Kozik fed her about her family needing her just didn't hold up. Maybe they had for that short span of time but now everyone was back together and she was just an outsider again.

No one even noticed her pick up her keys on her way out the door and they didn't even look up when the kitchen door shut. She got into her car without any particular direction in mind but she eventually found herself pulling into the driveway of the small tan stucco house. She dug the silver key out of her glove compartment and walked up the short path that led to the front door, turning it over between her fingers as she stared at the black wood in front of her and debated on whether or not to go in. He had given her the key, after all. She let out a heavy sigh and quickly unlocked the door, stepping inside and locking it back behind her. After she kicked off her boots and set them out of the way, she turned the lamp on in the living room and went further into the house, looking around at her surroundings.

Juice wasn't home yet and Juliette felt somewhat odd about being in his house without him there. The whole place was exactly in order thanks to his OCD, but there was a load of clean towels in the dryer that needed folding so she set to work doing that first. Once they were all done, she went down the short hall to the bathroom to put them away before she made her way into his bedroom to trade her jeans and tank top for one of his gray tee shirts. There was an almost completely full case of beer in the fridge that he hadn't had a chance to drink before they all left for Belfast so she grabbed one out and sat down at the kitchen counter to sip on it as she looked around for something to do until he got home, which could be at any hour of the night. There was an old newspaper neatly folded on the counter so, with nothing better to do, she opened it up and read all the old Charming news from about three months before.

The sound of a key in the lock broke her attention from the community section and when she looked over her shoulder, Juice was pushing open the front door. He shut it behind him, smiling when he saw her sitting at the counter but her attempt to return it was weak and unconvincing and his brows furrowed as he dropped his cut onto the loveseat and walked through the living room over to her. "What's wrong?" he asked, leaning back against the counter next to her and picking up her beer to take a sip.

Juliette just shook her head as she closed the paper and folded it back up. "Nothing."

"You're a shitty liar, Jules."

She let out a heavy sigh as she raked a hand through her dark hair. "I don't know, just thinking, I guess....about how coming back here was a mistake."

"Why would you think that?" he asked, worry evident in his voice.

"After everything that's happened just since I've been back? It makes me think about why I left in the first place. And I actually believed all that shit about my family needing me when the truth is they don't. They never have, and they never will. Nobody needs me."

"What about me?" She finally looked up at him, her eyes wide and her expression unsure as he continued. "Do you know what I was thinkin' when we were in Belfast-- gettin' shot at, gettin' blown up? I was thinkin' I can't wait to get home and see you. Jules, I'll be the first to admit that this life....it's not the easiest path to follow. But I like that no matter what kind of shit happens around here, at the end of the day, you're here waitin' for me when I get home."

He reached up to cup her cheek and her eyes fluttered shut at the contact as she placed her hand over his. She felt him shuffle closer and when she opened her eyes, they were only inches apart. His free hand went up to grab the back of her neck and he gently pulled her up to meet his lips, smiling into the kiss when she locked her legs around his waist and pulled him in against her. She wrapped her arms around his neck while his hands went to her hips, dipping under the gray fabric of the too big tee shirt and sliding up her sides to cup her breasts. She let out a hum of approval and she could feel that he was already getting hard. He broke the kiss, his breath hitching in his throat, when she reached down between them to grab him and he threw his head back and closed his eyes as she slowly palmed him through his jeans.

"Jesus Christ, it's good to be home," he said breathlessly.

Juliette left a trail of kisses down the side of his neck before he snatched her up without warning, making her squeal in surprise as she tightened her arms and legs around him to keep from slipping. He carried her down the short hallway to his room and set her down carefully on the bed then kicked off his boots and yanked his shirt over his head in one swift motion. He crawled onto the bed with her, laying her back gently, and he pushed the bottom of the tee shirt up just past the waistband of her panties so that he could plant kisses on each of her hip bones before he slowly continued his way up. Julie could tell that he was taking extra care to be tender with her since she was in somewhat of sad mental place, and she did appreciate that, but once he finally slipped the shirt off of her completely, she took control by pushing him onto his back so that she could work his belt.

He was trying to keep up the gentle tone he'd started out with but it turned out to be impossible not to tangle his hands in the back of her long hair while she was sucking him. His breathing was heavy and his heart was beating erratically; every once in awhile when he hit the back of her throat hed let out a moan and she'd long forgotten about the family that didn't have a place for her. He had to stop her before he was too far gone because a week in Belfast had felt like a lifetime and he wasn't sure he would last as long as he usually could. She sat up, flipping her hair back off her bare shoulder, and threw one leg over his body to straddle his waist while he took a moment to catch his breath.

"Come here," he muttered, and when her brows furrowed, he licked his lips and grinned, grabbing her hips and tugging her body forward. She caught on immediately and pushed one hand against his chest to stop him as she shook her head, but then he took a turn in looking confused. "Why not?"

"I'm not sitting on your face."

"Again, why not? You-....you're not being shy, are you?" Juliette bit her lip and looked down from his eyes and he chuckled. "I don't get it. Jules, it's not like I haven't done it before."

She rolled her eyes as she rolled over to lay down in the empty space beside him. "I know it's stupid. But I don't know, that position seems way more...exposed, I guess?"

Juice laughed again as he sat up and grabbed her right knee, pulling it apart from her left so that he could lay on his stomach between them. He placed his hands on the backs of her thighs and pushed them up so that her knees were bent and her feet were planted on the mattress. "More exposed than this?" he asked, very lightly dragging his finger down her center, still covered by the very flimsy black lace.

She inhaled sharply and closed her eyes. "Okay, point taken."

"I don't care either way. However you want it, babe."

"Thanks, I appreciate that," she quipped.

"Don't mention it," he replied casually as he hooked his fingers into the band of the fabric. "Now can I take these off?"

Juliette nodded emphatically and he grinned as he slipped the fabric down her legs and got down to business.