Hi guys! Here is the latest chapter. I am absolutely exhausted and it has kind of been a day from hell, so please forgive any errors. Thanks for reading and leave me some reviews, yeah?
By the following afternoon, Filip and Fiona were both well rested and perfectly satisfied. They had spent the past day alternating between fantastic sex, long, lazy naps, and relaxing showers that lasted until the water ran cold. Most of all, they had really just enjoyed being together. As they went to pick up Adam from Jax and Tara, they decided that they really should do this sort of thing more often.
When they walked into Jax's house, everything was in a state of organized chaos. Abel was dancing around naked in front of the television with a sippy cup of juice. Tara was cleaning up a mess that Abel had managed to make in the kitchen. Gemma was in the living room, rocking Thomas who was somehow sound asleep even with the noise of Abel's cartoons, and Jax was at the kitchen table, feeding Adam. Filip smiled at the scene before, while Fiona pushed past him and headed right towards their son.
"Look Adam, your Mom's here," Jax said to the baby, handing him over to Fiona. "And your Dad, too. Maybe you can puke on one of them, now."
Worry clouded Fiona's features. "Has he been throwing up? Why didn't you call?"
Tara was glaring at Jax, but immediately looked towards Fiona. "Because he hasn't really been throwing up. Just spit up. Jax is being dramatic. Adam is fine, I promise. He has been an absolutely perfect baby all night, and if it weren't for the fact that we already have two of our own little monsters, I would probably steal him."
"Not a chance," FIlip argued, leaning over Fiona's shoulder to kiss his son. "We missed you, little boy."
"Aye, we did," Fiona smiled at Adam, who was perfectly content in his mother's arms, before looking back up at Tara, "But we will let you borrow him much more often."
Tara and Fiona shared a smile, while Jax shot a shit eating grin at Filip. Fortunately, any smart assed remarks were cut off by Gemma, "Next time you guys decide to go off on a sex bender, you better let me babysit, not Happy. When I showed up at the garage the other day, he barely let me anywhere near Adam. He was like a guard dog."
"You let Happy babysit?" FIlip asked, his eyebrows raised. "What happened to 'that scary bald man will never babysit our child'?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Fiona rolled her eyes. "I was in a hurry and kind of desperate, and he was the only one there. Juice was asleep on the couch. It was fine."
"What exactly were you so desperate for, Fi?" he asked with a playful smirk on his face.
Her eyes narrowed and her own grin settled on her face, but before she could answer him, Jax interrupted, "We really don't need to hear about that, guys. Let's keep talking about how cool your baby is. You should definitely not let my Mom baby sit for you, ever. She would probably return him to you clad in leather and with baby crows decorating ever spare inch. Remember how she kept trying to buy Abel a tiny leather jacket when he was a baby?"
It was Gemma's turn to narrow her eyes now. "I still say he would have looked adorable in it."
"Yeah, but Gemma, let's wait until he is out of preschool before we get him his first kutte and bike," Tara rolled her eyes. "Hey, maybe we can just give him a crow eater for his next birthday, save us all kinds of money."
Gemma chose to ignore them, and instead turned to Filip, "You know, we really should get this kid some SAMCRO onesies! Oh, we can get him a little hat, like Abel and Thomas!"
"Jesus Mom, why are you so obsessed branding a bunch of babies? Before we know it, you will have them in SAMCRO diapers!" Jax teased his mother.
"I am not branding them, Jackson! Just starting them off right. These three boys are the future of the Club," Gemma argued haughtily. "And I wonder if I could get some SAMCRO diapers."
Fiona noticed Filip become very, very tense for some reason. Nobody else noticed, because they were all too busy laughing at Gemma, but Fiona did. She laid a hand on his back and caught his eye, silently asking him if he was okay. He smiled at her, and she knew that whatever he had been thinking about was forgotten for now. Fiona loved that they could carry on entire conversations without say a single word. He made his way over to her and kissed her quickly.
"I'm fine," he assured her quietly while the others laughed and argued with one another. He reached for Adam. "Let me have him for a minute."
Filip held Adam and took a good look at his boy. It was still amazing to Filip to think about exactly how much he loved this kid. He had only known Adam for six weeks, but already there was nothing in this world that he wouldn't do to make his son safe and happy. Six short weeks, and he loved Adam just as much as he loved Kerrianne.
Adam was smiling at him and clutching his finger. There was no way that anybody could deny that this was a real, genuine smile. Filip couldn't believe how much his boy was growing and changing, each and every day. He was smiling now and moving around more, making eye contact with things. His eyes had darkened to a deep brown color, the same as his and Kerrianne's. According to the doctor, he had gained two pounds and was about half an inch bigger. If all of these changed had happened in just six short weeks, what would six months bring? Or six years? Filip really couldn't wait to find out.
He was broken out of his baby induced trance by Jax. "Have you heard from Juice at all today?"
"No, I haven't," FIlip answered honestly. "I figured that he would be laying low, taking it easy."
"He was doing much, much better yesterday afternoon," Tara jumped in. "He was up and walking around even. You did a fantastic job with the stitches and keeping the wound clean, by the way. He wasn't really in any pain at all."
"Yeah, thanks," he smiled, glad to have done something medically right for once in his life. "I am just glad that it wasn't any worse. It could have been really bad."
"I know, but it wasn't," Jax said, matter-of-factly. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it all. I can't believe that Miles was trying to steal from us."
"Me either," Filip agreed. "I guess that he got what was coming to him. I just worry about how Juice is dealing with it all."
The three women were pretending to ignore them and focus on the babies, but each and every one of them knew what had happened with the drugs and Miles and Juice. Old Ladies were not generally supposed to be involved in Club business, but these were Old Ladies like none other. Besides none of them, not Jax, not Clay, and certainly not Filip, could keep a damned thing from them when they really wanted to know something.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Jax nodded. "You still going out to the warehouse tonight?"
"Aye," Filip said. "Gonna have dinner with Kerrianne when she gets home from school, but I will head out there tonight. Why?"
"Why don't you see if you can find Juice? Take him with you?" Jax suggested. "He may be my prospect, but he likes you better. Just see where he's at with all this. It might do him some good."
"Yeah, okay," Filip agreed, somewhat reluctantly. He wasn't actually convinced it would be a good idea for Juice to head back to the scene of the crime, so to speak.
Jax could obviously sense Filip's reluctance, and attempted to reassure him. "Look, man. Take him if you want, or don't. Just keep a close eye on him, alright? He trusts you, and if he will talk to anybody about it, he will talk to you."
As completely uncomfortable as it was for Filip to be the understanding, sensitive one that Juice could talk to, he knew that Jax had a point. He and Juice were good friends, and Juice had always been more open with him than he had been with any of the other brothers.
"Okay, Jackie-Boy. I will see if I can find him," Filip pledged, before turning to Fiona. "Let's go get our other kid, yeah? I kind of missed her too. Besides, maybe Kerrianne has heard from him."
It turned out that Kerrianne hadn't, in fact, heard from Juice. She had, however, brought home a completely perfect report card, which caused both of her parents an absurd amount of pride. Their girl had really turned things around and was a straight A student at a very challenging private school. On top of that, she was helping around the house and doing pretty much anything they asked her to do. She deserved every single glowing bit of pride her parents threw her way.
Kerrianne had demanded pizza for her birthday dinner, and an hour or so later, when it was delivered, Fiona had already made plans to further reward their daughter with some excessive shopping that Filip would probably be paying off for years.
Filip spent a couple of hours sitting with his girls, eating far too much pepperoni and mushroom pizza. He had a feeling that he would regret it later, but it was delicious, as was the company he was sharing it with. It did his heart good to see Kerrianne and Fiona laughing and smiling while Adam made cute baby noises from his seat. Regardless of whatever was going on with Juice, whatever was happening with the Club, his family was here. They were whole and they were happy and they were all his. That was enough for him.
Later that night, Filip changed Adam, kissed his wife goodbye, and told Kerrianne for the thousandth time how proud and happy he was. He pulled on a jacket and his kutte and his bike roared to life. The night was chilly, but not as bad as some there had been. It was clear and there were about a million stars disrupting the complete and total blackness of the evening. Everything seemed calm. It would have been a perfect evening, except for one glaringly obvious thing.
He couldn't find Juice. Filip had checked Juice's house, ridden by the Club house, and even cased a few of the boy's favorite bars. Juice wasn't anywhere to be found, and not a single soul that he spoke to could even recall seeing the boy for the past few hours. It was as if he up and disappeared.
Filip knew that Juice could be flighty sometimes. He knew that the boy had any number of places to hide, several people to find comfort with whenever he needed it. It struck him that Juice wasn't resorting to any of his old habits. He knew that what the kid had seen, what he had done, was weighing heavily, but the complete and total lack of Juice threw Filip.
As he was leaving the run down, shitty apartment of some crack whore that Juice slummed it with at the worst of times, it suddenly struck Filip that something was very wrong. His brother, his best friend, had shot and killed a trusted family member a couple of days ago. Yes, he had been stabbed in return, but Filip doubted if that even registered with the boy. After all of that, he had up and disappeared to someplace that even Filip couldn't find him. This was eight different kinds of not right, and Filip knew very keenly that he had made a mistake in letting Juice out of his sight.
Filip climbed back on his bike and rode off again, with real purpose. He had to find Juice, and he had to do it now.
