Here is chapter 52! Hope you enjoy...leave some love!
By the time Filip finally, finally, arrived home, it was almost four in the morning, he was tired, angry, confused, and he felt like death warmed over. On top of all of that, he had Juice in tow. The boy had been through the ringer in the past day or so, and as much as he had argued that he would be fine at home by himself, Filip really didn't think that he needed to be on his own right now.
Things had very nearly come crashing down today. They had been mere moments away from having to off one of the Prospects, and Juice had begged them for fifteen minutes and offered amnesty to the poor, bumbling men who were trying their very best to become brothers. At the time, Filip had thought that is was a stupid and unnecessary idea, but now he was glad that they had waited that few minutes. If they had gone ahead and killed Ratboy or Filthy Phil, an innocent man would have died, and they would still have a thief in their ranks.
In the end, the right man was dead, but Filip really wished that it could have gone down a different way. He still couldn't believe that Miles had betrayed the Club. Not only was Miles a moron, but Filip really hadn't figured that the kid would have the balls to pull off such a thing. Miles had always been very laid back and was pretty much scared of his own shadow. Miles would have been the absolute last person Filip would have thought responsible for the drugs going missing; it really didn't make sense. Honestly, his money had been on the ugly, gangly one, Ratboy.
Either way, it was done and over with now. They had been very, very lucky to have escaped this situation with so little damage. Yes, one of their patched members was dead and buried in a shallow grave, but it could have turned out much, much worse. At least this business with the stolen drugs had stayed off of the cartel's radar, and for that, Filip was extremely grateful. The Cartel could bring the kind of heat that Charming and the Club had never before seen. Thankfully, the situation had been dealt with and Filip was more than sure that SAMCRO wouldn't let anything like this happen again.
The main object of his concern right now was Juice. The kid was hobbling one legged, clinging to Filip like a lifeline, while they entered the house as quietly as possible. Filip had taken Juice to the Club house and patched him up as well as he could manage. The stab wound wasn't deep and had missed all of the major tendons and ligaments, but it had to hurt like hell. Add that physical pain to the fact that the boy had just shot a brother in the face about twenty times, and Filip knew that Juice was not in a good place right now.
The older man supported the younger as they made their way carefully across the living room, where Filip deposited Juice on the couch. He had a feeling that the kid might be in shock. He wasn't complaining about the pain he was in, but he was just sitting on the couch staring off into space, not blinking, not talking, not moving. His breathing was a little shallow, but at least it was even and steady.
Filip left the kid on the couch and made his way to the hallway bathroom, where he pulled a bottle of prescription pain killers from the medicine cabinet. He wasn't a doctor, far from it actually, but he hadn't encountered anything so far in his long life that couldn't be managed with a couple of hydrocodone. He made his way back into the living room, where he found Juice exactly as he had left him, sitting still as a statue on the couch staring at nothing.
"Juice," Filip said softly, not wanting to startle the boy, nor wake up anybody else in his house. "Come on, kid. You need to take a couple of these."
"What are they?" Juice mumbled, coming out of his daze enough to look at the pills being offered to him.
"Just something to take the edge off the pain, help you sleep," Filip explained, handing Juice two pills and going to grab him a bottle of water. "You need to get some shut-eye. Don't think about anything, don't worry about anything. Just sleep."
"Yeah," Juice agreed, although Filip could tell that he was already about a thousand miles away, and sleep was just about the last thing on his mind. Filip should have known that it wouldn't be that easy. He remembered the way Juice had acted when they had offed the Russians, but he had gotten over that relatively quickly. The Russians had not been brothers, though, and if the look on the kid's face and the distance in his eyes were any indication, Filip knew that Juice would not just forget this easily.
Filip sat down on the coffee table, getting himself eye level with Juice. "Listen, boyo. What happened today was no easy thing, and I am sorry that this business landed on your shoulders, but you did what needed to be done. You know that, don't you?"
Juice looked down at his feet and shrugged, "I guess."
"You guess nothing, boy," Filip replied firmly. "Answer this; did Miles try to kill you?"
"Yeah," Juice mumbled.
"So that rat bastard stole from our Club and tried to kill you. He deserves to be dead. It was between your life and his life, Juicey, and I am damned glad that it was his. He deserves everything he got. You can't keep feeling guilty about that. Enough is enough," Filip told the boy. "You swallow those pills. I am going to go get you some pillows and blankets. You need rest."
Juice nodded, seeming at least slightly more resigned. Filip stood and headed toward the hall closet. He stopped in his tracks when Fiona entered the room. She was dressed in pink plaid pajamas pants and an old t-shirt of his, and her arms were weighed down with pillows and blankets. She handed over the items with a soft smile.
"Figured that you would be needing these," she said. "Are you okay, Juice?"
"Oh, um, yeah. I think I am fine," Juice replied, after swallowing the pills. "I'm sorry that I am pretty much always sleeping on your couch. I will try not to get in the way."
Fiona laughed quietly, "It's no bother at all, though we should probably break down and get a bed to stick in the spare room, as often as this happens.
"Ha, yeah," Juice agreed. Filip handed him the pillows and helped him settle on the couch.
"What on earth happened to you?" Fiona asked, her eyes noticing the lack of mobility.
"Ah, there was just an issue out at the warehouse. Something got stolen and Juice handled it," Filip explained, trying to leave as many of the details as possible out, and for that, Juice was grateful. The way Fiona was looking at him led Filip to believe that he would have a lot of explaining to do later, but she let it go for now.
It looked like the pain pills were already taking effect on the boy, and his eyelids were getting heavy. Soon after that, the gibberish talk started. "Thanks Chibs. Hey, I might need a ride to work tomorrow. I don't know if I can ride a pony all by myself. I might fall off and land in a puddle and my shoes would be wet and I would really hate that a lot. So maybe you can let me have a ride in your car, and we can eat doughnuts, because we are best friends."
"Absolutely Juicey," Filip grinned. "No ponies and extra doughnuts and car rides. Sounds like a great time. You just get some sleep."
Juice was sound asleep by the time Filip had made his way over to Fiona. He immediately wrapped an arm around her shoulder, leaning much more heavily on her that he was aware, and dropped a kiss on top of her head.
"You haven't gotten even a wink of sleep, have you?" she asked as she lead him to the bedroom, arm still wrapped securely around his waist. Fiona could tell that it had been a long, difficult day or so for her husband, and she couldn't even begin to imagine how exhausted he was. She had been on her own with Adam all day and night, but he had been a cake walk and, with Kerrianne's help, she had taken the opportunity to catch up on her own sleep. It looked as if Filip hadn't had that luxury.
"Not even half a wink," he replied, sounding a little bit pathetic as they entered the room.
"My poor Filip," Fiona smiled, closing the door and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "Let's get you to bed, yeah?"
"Yeah," he nodded, resting his forehead against hers. "I feel like I could sleep for ages, but I will graciously take the few hours I have."
"You can sleep for as long as you'd like, Love," she told him, enjoying the first quiet moment she had gotten to enjoy with her husband in days.
"Adam has the doctor in five hours," Filip reminded her. "I should go with you."
"No, Love," Fiona shook her head. "You stay here and rest, I will take Adam to the doctor and I have some errands after, as long as he is in a good mood. Do you have Club stuff to do?"
"I've got to get Juice to the garage, Tara is going to come by to take a look and made sure I did okay with his stitches and bring him some antibiotics. Kid got stabbed today, and it would be just his luck to catch gangrene or something. And then there is the fact that I actually have to work at the garage," he said, actually beginning to wonder if he was ever going to get any sleep.
"No, you don't," Fiona told him with a grin. "I bullied Gemma into letting you have the day off. I will take care of getting Juice wherever he needs to go tomorrow, or I am sure we could arrange for a Prospect to come get him. You need to get some sleep, Filip."
He let loose a low, happy sigh sigh, before pressing his lips to hers. He allowed the kiss to linger for just a moment, before pulling back to ask, "Have I told you lately how much I absolutely fucking love you?"
"Yeah, but it's still nice to hear," she replied. She really, really wanted to kiss him again, but she stopped herself, content to just relax in his arms for a moment. He was not on the same wavelength and he pulled her even closer to him and tangled a hand in her hair, kissing her deeply.
After a moment, he allowed the kiss to end and looked at her, "I'm really sorry, you know."
"For what?" she asked, wondering what on earth he was sorry for. He hadn't done anything wrong, as far as she knew.
"If I remember correctly, we had some pretty fantastic things planned for last night. I have spent weeks and weeks thinking of the extremely dirty things I am going to do to you, but now I am afraid I wouldn't be of any use to you at all in my current state," he explained.
Fiona was very, very intrigued by these dirty things he had planned, but she knew very well that he was right, and besides, she had taken Tara's warning regarding birth control to heart. No, she would let her husband sleep now, but as soon as he woke up, she would be more than ready to delve into these plans of his.
"It's okay, my Filip," she smiled at him. "I want you to sleep. I am going to need you in top notch form. I have waited for weeks, I can wait another few hours, I promise."
"Top notch, huh?" he asked. "Then I will definitely need plenty of sleep, because I am nowhere close to top notch at the moment."
"I love you anyway," she told him. "Now get to bed. The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you will wake up."
Filip really didn't need to be told twice. He stripped off his boots and jeans and climbed into bed, where he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
