Chapter 01:
Someone Nice

The start of this story picks up in S06E12, 'You Are My Sunshine'. It obviously differs original episode in some ways, but the overall plot follows through. Warnings for language and drug use, rated T for subject matter throughout the story. Also, as a general disclaimer, I own nothing you recognize throughout the entirety of this fic – all SOA canon information and plot are property of Kurt Sutter. Only the original character Delilah is my intellectual property. This applies to all chapters of the on going work.

Enjoy!


There was no denying that it was a bad idea – even Juice knew that much.

He's sparked a joint with Bobby and acquiesced easily to the old man's demands that he find some way to unwind – drop a few painkillers and get some attention from one of the ladies down at Nero's club, he'd said – but following instructions to the letter had never been one of Juice's strong points. He knew Bobby could see the gears turning in his head from a mile away though, so he'd made little argument. He'd follow his orders closely enough.

He'd forgone the upper class club in favor of a more relaxed, familiar option – Delilah. She was a freelance girl who worked out of her apartment on the west end of town, started off on the streets before she'd moved into the world of 'legitimate' escort service under the cover of an in-home massage parlor. It was essentially the same as Nero's setup, minus the pimp or the overhead. A smart business plan, one had to admit, when they thought about it.

Either way, Juice knew her, and if he was going to pay anyone for their entertainment, it was almost always her. Safer to stick to somebody he was familiar with, and more comfortable, too. She was good looking, overly made up like a lot of the Croweaters, not plastic or unfathomably perfect like some of the girls around Diosa. Long dark hair, nice eyes, full lips, but she still looked like a real person.

It was a little easier to pretend that whatever happened between them was a legitimate hookup, given that she didn't look entirely unobtainable.

Truth be told, he just wasn't a huge fan of a lot of the girls who worked at Diosa. They were pretty, for sure; they came in every size, shape, and color, all of them drop dead gorgeous. But they were tied a little too close to the club, most of them able to spot a Brother from a mile away and always eager to service them, specifically. It was too much like bagging a Croweater and still having to fork over cash with those girls. A lot of the ones who weren't overly interested in the cut on his back seemed to have attitude, and his annoyance with uppity women always exceeded any desire he had to get off.

All he was looking for was a break – from the club, or from himself, maybe. The tight knots that bound those two concepts together kept them wound up so closely that he couldn't tell where they each ended and began, making it difficult to pinpoint which thing more rightfully deserved the pure hatred that had grown to fill him. If he could have destroyed one without doing so to the other, he couldn't honestly say which he'd choose.

It all came back to what he had done, the downhill momentum of every moment he could remember for what felt like such a long time.

It had all started with the business with Miles, the coke, and that fucking RICO case. He had the 'Men of Mayhem' patch to remind him of his part in that, as if he were capable of forgetting the blood that could never be washed from his hands. Life since that point had been little more than an endless parade of moments and situations that required more and more dirty work from him in order to make a satisfactory penance.

Handing over the evidence that sent Clay into lock up, the pretty blonde Jax had tasked him with disposing of, knowing he had to vote in favor of taking out Clay to escape his President's ire – it had all taken more out of Juice than he'd ever had in him to begin with.

He betrayed his club, killed a brother, killed a mother, and sold his soul to Jax in hopes of hanging on by the skin of his teeth. What would anyone else be, if not empty?

Shaking off the fog that clouded his head as best he could, he reminded himself where he was, reaching out to knock quietly on the door. He tightened the drawstring on his hooded sweatshirt and pushed his hands into his pockets, trying to give off something other than the mixture of nervousness and devastation he was sure played out on his face.

The door to the apartment swung open to reveal Delilah, grin plastered across her face. Her dark hair hung loose around her shoulders and her low cut top revealed an amount of skin that any other time would have undoubtedly drawn Juice's eye. He had known from the beginning that his heart just wasn't in getting off, but he'd decided to give Bobby's advice a go anyway. He knew fuck all else to do with himself.

"Hey Juicy," she greeted him warmly, stepping aside to allow him into her apartment. A nice place, decorated like a penthouse suite in a four seasons or something. He'd seen it a few times before, but he didn't exactly soak in the details on this particular visit. It had to be obvious to her that something was off with him, though he hoped his glassy, reddened eyes might lead her to the obvious conclusion that he was just high.

"What's up, Dee?" he asked awkwardly, lingering close by the door. It didn't matter how many times he'd done the same thing, he never knew the etiquette for visiting a working girl. Was he supposed to make small talk? Get right down to business? He was at a loss always, but especially now, when he wasn't even entirely sure he wanted to be there.

"I heard about Clay Morrow," she mentioned, circling around him to lock the door. She turned back, the corners of her lips tugged down in a halfhearted frown. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," he murmured, eyes focusing on dark red carpet beneath his feet. He spaced for a moment, his eyes filling with unshed tears as thoughts of Clay's death, of being forced to cast a vote in favor of it, filled his head. He mentally kicked himself for being so weak, tearing up like a fucking pansy in front of this girl he was supposed to be getting laid by, and let out a humorless laugh. "M'sorry… I'm just high."

She nodded as though she understood, but the look on her face wasn't entirely convinced. Those damned doe eyes of hers were practically flooded with sympathy and the sight of it written so clear there made him shift his weight uncomfortably. That wasn't what he came there to get.

"Okay, so, you know the drill," she swiftly changed tack, most of her smile returning to her face as she took his hand and brushed her thumb across the back of it. "You want the legit massage first? Could probably use it, as tense as you've gotta be."

Maybe she was cutting him some slack, giving him an out so that he didn't have to admit that he wasn't sure he could get it going in the state that he was in. Maybe she really thought he looked tense and wanted to put that license in massage therapy to good use. Either way, he was grateful for the offer, and nodded in response.

"Yeah, sounds good," he muttered.

"Excellent. Second door on your right, if you didn't know it. I'll give you a minute to get undressed and all that," she offered politely, earning another nod from Juice.

He made his way to the room she'd indicated, though he'd already known where it was. Like the rest of the house, the décor was tasteful, expensive looking just from the looks of it. The walls were painted a deep burgundy color with some ambient lighting thrown in, a massage table in the center of it. There was a bathroom just off the main room where he'd always assumed he was meant to get changed, this time being no different.

Standing in that mirror at just that moment, however, everything seemed foreign. The familiar smell of jasmine and vanilla – just good smelling incense as far as Juice as concerned – was odd and overbearing, the soft lighting still too harsh as he looked on at his own reflection. Those damned skulls glowered back at him, permanent and forebodingly dark; SON SHINE.

In that moment, he would've given anything to tear them away, to have never gotten them in the first place. He didn't want them, but more than that, he didn't deserve them. He didn't have the mindset to go through the complex emotions that tied into it all, his basic instincts boiling it down until what he felt was something he could understand:

Fear.

It may have looked like disgust at first, maybe even regret, but at the root of all things was fear. Of being a fuck up, of being a killer, of being everything that he had become in order to preserve himself. Fear of waking up in the morning and feeling the same loathing he felt at that instant when he looked in the mirror, fear of losing the only family he'd ever known, and fear of being trapped within it for the rest of his life.

Though the emotion was easy enough to name, it was infinitely more difficult to process. He'd never been allowed to show apprehension, never been afforded the luxury of a momentary weakness. There was no room for it in the world he'd made himself a part of.

Fear led to panic, and panic made you stupid.

Though he knew that lesson inside and out, he couldn't stop himself from providing a brilliant example of it. His chest was tight and his heart was thrumming wildly as the first waves of alarm began to grip him tight. The stifling anxiety was choking him, leaving him like a dog on a short chain, before a solution suddenly came to mind – the pills in his pocket.

Oxycodone, eighty milligram tabs. He had six of them, still in their blister packs. Even Juice wasn't entirely clear what he was thinking or hoping for when he decided to pop all six pills. Maybe he just wanted to get a buzz on, as he would later tell everyone. Maybe he truly didn't care if he ever woke up.

In reality, it was probably a toxic mixture of both, no other logical explanation behind dropping enough Oxy to level a junkie. Regardless of his motivation, all six tabs went down easily enough, helped along by a generous swallow of tequila from the flask in his pocket.

From there, it was only a waiting game.

He undressed as he had been instructed to do, shedding his clothes and folding them neatly as he was always prone to doing. He lay face down on the table and for a moment, he held his breath. His imagination told him that he could already feel the heavy dosage of opiates beginning to take hold, but his gut told him it was bullshit; he'd have a few minutes at least before he felt even the softest touch of the fog that was bound to set in.

Minutes he wouldn't be spending alone he realized as the Delilah made her way into the room.

"Sorry about the rough day, baby," she murmured with her back to him, selecting some sort of essential oil to start the massage with. It may've been little more than a cover, but he remembered her telling him once that massage therapy was actually what she'd gone to school for. For reasons he didn't ask about, reasons that didn't concern him, the money hadn't been good enough to cut it, and a window of opportunity for a side business had opened up. Still, the girl knew her shit when it came to massage.

"Hm? Oh, yeah," came his only response. If he tried to talk about it again, he was bound to tear up all over again, too. The whole thing would've been a waste of time at that point; there was no way he'd be able to get it up while picturing her seeing him cry like a baby.

"We'll take care of that," she assured him with a giggle, beginning to work on the tense knots that crowded the muscles of his shoulders and neck. Her words would have been a little more comforting if they didn't sound so scripted, like lines from a bad porno, or something.

He guessed he was being a little overly critical, though; she had to have something to say to every guy who came in a little tense. He reminded himself that he wasn't paying for conversation, in the first place.

As she slowly unwound the knots in his shoulders and moved down his back, he began to feel the effect of the pills he'd popped. Just a whisper at first, nothing he could be sure was anything other than his imagination, but the feeling intensified quickly. There was a rush of warmth that started at the crown of his head and turned to fire by the time it reached his feet, effectively blotting out every thought as it coursed through his body.

He groaned at the pleasure of the feeling as well as a particularly sore spot on his lower back receiving attention, the act of keeping his eyes open steadily growing more difficult. The edges of his vision started to go blurry and dark, his entire body floating.

"Time to turn over, baby," a soft voice purred in his ear. What had she said? He couldn't quite make it out clearly as the voice sounded far away, like talking underwater, but he took his best guess at it and tried to maneuver himself over from lying facedown.

The last thing he remembered was the feeling of falling.


Author's note:

So, what did you think? I've got another chapter ready to go up with this, as this is just sort of a recap of how the story's plot differs from the original episode so that we can get set up. I've been through multiple rewrites of this story and this chapter alone before deciding it was ready to be posted for you guys, so please do let me know what you liked, didn't like, would like to see happen, etc.!