Juan Carlos “Juice” Ortiz - Teenage Dream

The midday sun over the California coast was aggressive, bouncing off the polished white surfaces of the beach club and making everything feel painfully, uncomfortably high end. The air tasted like expensive salt and overpriced cocktails. Juice felt like a grease stain on a silk sheet. He was here on some errand for the club something involving a contact in the local logistics scene and he felt every bit the outsider in his worn denim and heavy boots amidst the sea of linen shirts and influencer perfect smiles.

He was halfway through checking a manifest, trying to tune out the repetitive house beat pulsing through the lounge, when the voice sliced through the atmosphere.

"Hey, Juice! Is that you? I haven't seen you in ages!"

It was like a physical blow to his stomach. His brain stalled, the gears grinding as it struggled to reconcile the voice in his head the one that had haunted his teenage years with the reality of her standing there. The world around him blurred, the clinking of ice and the chatter of the wealthy socialites fading into a dull, distant hum.

No. No way. Not here. Not now.

His body reacted with a terrifying, instinctual speed that bypassed his conscious thought entirely. It was a visceral, heavy throb, a sudden tightening in his jeans that made his face heat up instantly. His dick didn’t care about the fancy setting or the fact that he was supposed to be a professional member of SAMCRO; it remembered her. It remembered exactly how she used to look in the hallways of Queens Academy, and the memory of her was a sudden, sharp ache that made him feel seventeen and desperate all over again.

He felt like a kid. A sweating, stuttering, awkward kid who used to stare at the back of her head in class, wondering if she could hear his heart thudding against his ribs. He’d spent years years trying to burn the image of her out of his mind, mostly through the solitary, frantic way he’d dealt with the ache she left behind in his bedroom at night. And now, the phantom sensation of her presence felt more real than the floor beneath his feet.

"Oh..." he croaked, the sound pathetic even to his own ears.

He realized too late that he wasn't alone. To his left, Tig let out a low, appreciative whistle, his eyes dancing with immediate, predatory amusement. "Well, look at that..." Tig murmured, a grin spreading across his face as he nudged Juice’s shoulder way too hard.

Chibs leaned back in his chair, a slow, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watched Juice’s visible struggle to keep his composure and his anatomy under control.

"Shut up," Juice hissed, though it lacked any real bite because he was too busy trying to remember how to breathe. He straightened up, his hands fumbling with the papers he was holding, nearly crushing them in his grip. His heart was a frantic bird trapped in his chest. He looked at her, really looked at her, and felt the dizzying, terrifying rush of a decade’s worth of unspent longing hitting him all at once.

"Uh hi," he managed, his voice cracking just enough to make him want to crawl into a hole and die. He forced a lopsided, nervous grin, trying to mask the fact that he was currently vibrating with anxiety and a very inconvenient physical reaction. "Yeah. It’s... it’s been a minute. A long minute. You, uh... you look good. Really good."

The California sun was brutal in a way Queens never was. Everything here looked too clean, too expensive — glass, polished wood, laughter that sounded like it belonged to people who never had to worry about anything real.

Juice stood out like a bad wiring job in a luxury bike. SAMCRO business, something boring, something he was only half-listening to while pretending he understood the paperwork in his hands. His kutte felt heavier here. Wrong setting. Wrong crowd. Yachts, influencers, rich guys laughing too loud.

He was already thinking about getting out of here.

Then—

That voice. "Oh my god... Juice? I haven’t seen you in like forever!"

His body reacted before his brain even caught up. Like someone had cut the power straight through his spine.

Slowly, his head turned. And there she was.

It didn’t make sense at first. It couldn’t. People didn’t just reappear like that. Not her. Not here. Not after ten years and a whole different life slammed between then and now.

But it was her.

And his brain immediately betrayed him.

High school. Queens. Lockers. Hallways. That stupid, crushing awareness of her walking past like she existed in a different atmosphere entirely. Too far out of reach to even joke about. The kind of crush you don’t confess because you already assume the answer.

He swallowed hard.

No way she remembers me.

Except she did. She knew his name. That alone short-circuited him worse than anything else.

Behind him, he could feel it before he even turned — the shift. The club noticing. Always noticing. Tig first, of course, already amused. A low whistle somewhere. Chibs just watching him like he was trying not to smile. Someone definitely enjoying this way too much.

"Fuck..." Juice muttered under his breath without meaning to.

His grip tightened on the papers in his hand until they crinkled.

She was closer now. Realer with every step. Same eyes, same energy — just sharper. Older. Confident in a way that made his stomach twist because it didn’t erase anything. It just made everything worse.

Because his brain, completely unhelpful, was doing exactly what it used to do back then.

Remembering.

Heat creeping up his neck, fast and humiliating. That same stupid teenage reaction he thought he’d outgrown. Except now it came with a leather kutte, a gun on his hip, and an audience.

Of course this is happening right now.

He finally managed to look at her properly without immediately looking away again.

"...You’re kidding," he said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. A nervous laugh tried to come out and died halfway. "You actually remember me?"

His eyes flicked away for half a second — just long enough to register Tig absolutely losing his mind silently behind him.

Juice exhaled through his nose, trying to reset his face, failing completely.

"We never even—" He stopped, shook his head, ran a hand over it like that would fix his brain. "We never talked. Like... at all."

His throat felt dry.

And worse than anything else — that old, buried, impossible high school feeling was sitting right back in his chest like it never left.

"...I didn’t think you’d ever look at me twice," he admitted quieter, almost like it slipped out before he could stop it.

Then, like he hated how honest that sounded, he tried to cover it immediately with a weak, breathy laugh: "Not that I— I mean— y’know. This is just... insane."

He looked at her again. And forgot how to breathe for a second.