belfast — juice ortiz x reader
⋆｡°✩ 🎀 ♡ 🎀 ✩°｡⋆
summary Belfast wasn't exactly a holiday. but somehow an Irish guy with a charming accent decided it was a good time to flirt with Juice's girlfriend. Juice decided it was a good time to completely fail at being cool about it.
prompt – season 3 Belfast, Irish guy flirts with reader, boys tease Juice, he tries to play it cool and fails, protective then soft warnings – jealousy, light swearing, protective Juice word count – ~2.5k note –my first juice fic, I hope y'all like it :)
requests are open :)
⋆｡°✩ 🎀 ♡ 🎀 ✩°｡⋆
Belfast was grey and cold and nothing like Charming.
She'd known that before they left — had known the whole trip was serious, that Abel was the reason they were here and everything else came second. She wasn't here for a holiday. She was here because Juice had looked at her with those big brown eyes when the club started making plans and said I don't want to leave you alone and she hadn't been able to say no to that face in the two years they'd been together and she doubted she ever would.
So here she was. Belfast. Standing in the car park of a pub that SAMBEL had pointed them toward, pulling her jacket tighter against the wind while the club did whatever the club needed to do.
Juice was beside her. Had been beside her since they landed, actually — the specific quality of someone who had decided they weren't moving more than three feet away and was sticking to that.
She found it endearing. She always found him endearing, even when he was being absolutely ridiculous about it.
The Irish guy appeared sometime around the second round of drinks.
She was standing at the bar waiting, Juice having been pulled aside by Jax for something, when he materialised beside her. Dark haired, easy smile, the specific confidence of someone comfortable in his own territory.
"American?" he said.
She glanced at him. "That obvious?"
"The jacket," he said, nodding at it. "And you look like you've never seen rain before."
"I'm from California," she said. "We don't really do rain."
He grinned. "Ciarán," he said, extending a hand.
She shook it. Told him her name.
And that was, objectively, all that happened. They talked about Belfast and California and the rain and she laughed at something he said about the weather and it was a perfectly normal conversation between two people at a bar.
What she didn't see was Juice, across the room, clocking the entire thing from the moment Ciarán had appeared.
"Juicy."
Happy's voice. Low. Amused in the specific way Happy was amused, which was the most dangerous kind.
Juice didn't look away from the bar. "What."
"You're staring."
"I'm not staring."
"You've been staring for four minutes."
"I'm keeping an eye on her. We're in a foreign country. It's—" he stopped. "It's a security thing."
Happy looked at him. Looked at the bar. Looked back at him.
"Right," Happy said.
"It is."
"Sure."
"She doesn't know anyone here—"
"She's talking to someone right now."
"Exactly," Juice said. "That's the problem."
Happy said nothing. Which was worse than if he'd said something.
Across the room Jax had appeared beside Juice at some point, catching the tail end of this, and now he was looking at the bar too with the expression of someone doing the math.
"Is that guy talking to her?" Jax said.
"Apparently it's a security concern," Happy said.
Juice looked at him. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
Jax pressed his lips together. His eyes were doing the thing they did when he was finding something funny and was being careful about it. "You should go over there."
"I'm fine."
"You've been staring at her for—"
"I'm not staring, I'm watching, there's a difference—"
"Juice."
"What."
Jax looked at him. "Go over there."
He was going to be cool about it.
That was the plan. Walk over, be cool, say something smooth, establish that she was with him without being weird about it. He was capable of that. He was a grown man. He'd handled actual threatening situations. He could handle some Irish guy making conversation at a bar.
He crossed the room.
She looked up when he appeared beside her. The smile she gave him — automatic, warm, the one that was specifically for him — did something to his chest it always did.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey." He slid his arm around her waist. Cool. Natural. Not weird at all. "You good?"
"Yeah, this is Ciarán," she said. "He's been telling me about Belfast."
Juice looked at Ciarán.
Ciarán looked at Juice.
Specifically at the cut.
Specifically at the Sons of Anarchy patches.
The easy smile became slightly more careful.
"Your man?" Ciarán said.
"Yeah," she said.
"Right." Ciarán nodded. The body language of someone reassessing a situation rapidly. "Good chat," he said to her. And took his drink and found somewhere else to be.
Juice watched him go.
She looked up at Juice.
He was absolutely being cool about this.
"You okay?" she said.
"Fine," he said. "Totally fine. Great."
"You sure?"
"Why wouldn't I be sure? I'm sure. I'm very sure."
She looked at him for a long moment with the expression she had that meant she could see through him completely and found it more endearing than exasperating.
"Juice."
"What."
"You're doing the thing."
"I'm not doing any thing."
"The thing where you say you're fine a lot because you're not fine."
"I'm—" he stopped. "I was just checking on you."
"You came over here because you were jealous."
"I came over here because—"
"Juice."
He exhaled. Looked at the bar. Back at her. "He was standing very close to you."
"We were at a bar."
"It's a small bar."
"Most bars are small."
"Angel." The nickname slipping out before he'd decided to use it — the private one, the one that wasn't for everyone. "He was—" he stopped again. Ran a hand over his head. "I don't know. I didn't like it."
She looked at him.
Then she stepped closer. Her hand flat against his chest — the placement she had for him specifically, right there, the one that meant something.
"I was just talking to him," she said. Soft. Not teasing anymore.
"I know that."
"You know I'm not going anywhere, right."
He looked at her face. At the honesty of it, the warmth of it, the specific way she looked at him that nobody else ever had.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I know."
"Then stop looking like someone kicked your dog."
He almost smiled. "I wasn't—"
"You had the face."
"I don't have a face—"
"The sad puppy face, Juice. You had it."
"I do not have a sad puppy—"
She kissed him. Brief, certain, right there at the bar in the Belfast pub in the middle of SAMBEL territory with the wind rattling the windows outside. Just — kissed him. Like it was the most natural thing.
He forgot what he'd been saying.
When she pulled back she was smiling.
"Better?" she said.
He looked at her for a moment.
"...Yeah," he said. "Better."
Across the room, Jax had watched the entire thing with the patient attention of a man waiting for a specific outcome.
"There it is," he said.
Happy said nothing. Which was its own kind of satisfaction.
Bobby appeared from somewhere. "What'd I miss?"
"Juice got jealous," Jax said. "Tried to play it cool."
"Did it work?"
They both looked across the room at Juice, who was now standing at the bar with his arm around her, looking considerably less tense than he had four minutes ago.
"She kissed him," Happy said.
"So no," Bobby concluded.
"It worked out," Jax said. "That's what matters."
Later — much later, the pub winding down, Belfast doing its grey quiet thing outside — she found him sitting on the steps at the back of the building. Not upset. Just. Quiet. The specific quality of Juice when he'd gone somewhere in his head that wasn't bad exactly, just thoughtful.
She sat beside him.
He looked at her. Then at the alley. Then back at her.
"Sorry," he said. "About before."
"You don't have to—"
"No, I—" he stopped. His hands between his knees, that particular posture she'd learned meant he was being honest. "I know you weren't doing anything. I know that. I just—" he exhaled. "Sometimes I look at you and I think about how—" another stop. The specific Juice energy — of a man who felt things genuinely and found the words secondhand. "How someone like you is with someone like me and I don't fully—"
"Juice," she said.
He stopped.
"Stop finishing that sentence," she said. "Wherever it was going."
He looked at her.
She held his gaze. "Someone like me is with someone like you because someone like you is the best person I know." She said it simply. Just the fact of it. "That's it. That's the whole reason."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Even when I'm being an idiot about Irish guys at bars," he said.
"Especially then," she said. "It's endearing."
"It's not endearing—"
"It really is."
He looked at the alley. The corner of his mouth did the thing.
"Don't tell the guys that," he said.
"They already know," she said. "They watched the whole thing."
He closed his eyes briefly. "Of course they did."
She laughed — the soft kind, the fond kind. She put her head on his shoulder and felt him exhale and relax in the specific way he relaxed when she was close, like something settled that had been unsettled.
His hand found hers.
"Belfast is cold," he said.
"It's very cold," she agreed.
"When we get back to Charming I'm taking you somewhere warm."
"Okay."
"Somewhere that's not grey."
"Juice."
"What."
"I know." She squeezed his hand. "I know."
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
Outside Belfast was doing its cold grey thing and inside the club was loud and complicated and Abel was still out there and tomorrow would be hard. But right now it was just the two of them on the back steps and his hand in hers and the specific quiet of somewhere they'd never been together before.
It was enough.
It was always enough, with him.
⋆｡°✩ 🎀 ♡ 🎀 ✩°｡⋆
