2006
PC airport
"You know, man, I wish you wouldn't dress up like a funeral director all the time. It's embarrassing."
"No more so than your refusal to either dress your hair in a -- normal manner or wear anything not made of 100% cotton," the older man shot back.
"Hey, back off the hair, Nikky-boy." Lucky lifted his hands in protest, looking at his brother. "And, I like t-shirts. A hell of a lot better than this accountant costume you've been wearin' lately. She's not gonna recognize you."
Nikolas turned to regard Lucky, wearing a t-shirt Nikolas could have sworn Lucky had had since they were teenagers. "Have I mentioned lately that the older you get, the more like your father you become?"
"Have I mentioned lately the the older you get the more like," Lucky saw his brother's back stiffen sharply, "a blood-sucking vampire you get?"
Nikolas relaxed and shot a quick grin in Lucky's direction. "Incorrigible..."
"Pompous..."
"Brat."
"Killjoy." Ten years. It had been ten years ago that he'd walked into a hospital room and seen Nikolas standing over their sister's crib. He'd hated him then, more than he'd ever hated anyone breathing. And now -- now the man standing beside him was his brother. Who he was closer to, in some ways, than anyone else breathing. Even if he was a pompous killjoy, now and then. More often now than then, lately. Lucky turned to study his brother, and something else caught his eye. "Hey," he elbowed his brother, "that's her flight."
Nikolas took a step forward, aligning himself with Lucky, both of them scanning the crowd emerging from the gates. His face fell, and Lucky let out a muffled exclamation as the stream of people dwindled to a trickle, and she didn't emerge. Nikolas grasped his brother's elbow. "You don't think--"
"GOTCHA!" Both men were enclosed from behind by a pair of wiry arms and squeezed tightly. They turned, wearing identical expressions of delight; for one moment, their kinship was written on their faces. "I so got you that time. Both of you. Pay up," the young woman held out both palms, face-up, one to each brother, her blue eyes sparkling.
Lucky fished in his pocket, slipping a bill into her palm with a grin, then without warning, grasped the girl about the waist, spinning her 'round in a circle. When he finally put her down, they were both laughing. "Lu," he mock-gasped, studying her. "You GREW. Like ten feet; when'd that happen?"
Nikolas reached out, grasping his sister's hand gently and turning her to face him. "Ignore him," he ordered, a smile teasing at his lips, as he watched his baby sister, all coltish long limbs and a cloud of dark hair and the brightest blue eyes that ever were. He pulled her forward, his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her forehead. "You look absolutely beautiful, Lesley Lu. Breathtaking." He tucked her hair behind her ears. "Except for -- dear God, Lucky, what IS that?" Nikolas indicated a spot on Lesley Lu's cheek in front of her right ear as he turned her to face Lucky.
Lucky recoiled in horror, his eyes widening. "It's -- it looks like it's growing! And, taking over her whole face! Run, Lu, for the love of God, ruuuun!" Lucky's voice trailed off into a high falsetto scream as he stumbled backwards, hands extended as if to ward his sister off.
Lu lifted her hand to her mouth in a wide, elaborate yawn, her other hand resting on her cocked hip. She looked at her brothers, and rolled her eyes. "Lightweights," she snorted. "Come on, you two, I'm almost fourteen. And, I've been living with Dad. There is absolutely nothing either of you can do that's gonna scare me. And, just for thinking you can pull one over on me," she looked back and forth between them severely, "I'm tempted not to give you your surprise."
"Awww," Lucky dropped to his knees dramatically, "we're sorry, Lady Lu. C'mon, forgive us. I'll make you cheese fries, and let you play with Foster Jr., and sneak you into all the good shows at the club."
"And, I'll let you ride Sheba, and show you all the secret passageways at Wyndemere, and take you on the private plane three times a day," Nikolas proclaimed dramatically, also falling to his knees beside Lucky, looking up at her, with his hands clasped together. "Send me on a quest, my lady, and I shall endeavor to complete the task, just to win your forgiveness."
Lesley Lu couldn't help it; she let out a giggle, placing a hand over each of their eyes. "Okay, okay. Just -- stop embarrassing me. And, no peeking," she demanded, imperiously, every inch a young princess with her two most loyal squires. She lifted her eyes to a figure over both their shoulders and nodded.
A moment later, low, musical laughter greeted the siblings, and through Lulu's fingers, the men saw the light of a camera flash. "Now, that's definitely one for the grandkids."
Lu lifted her hands, and both men quickly rose, Lucky half a beat faster. He turned and grasped the tall, slender woman standing behind them by both hands, pulling her into a hard embrace. Her arms wound around his neck as his lips found hers, in a long, searching kiss. "Hey," he said, softly, a moment later, one hand resting against her cheek. "God, I missed you, Em. Thought you weren't coming in 'til next week."
Emily slipped her hand around his waist, turning in the circle of his arm to face the other two, and gestured with her free hand towards Lu. "I wasn't. But, I ran into Lu in Geneva and decided to hitch a ride back. I've been away from Port Charles way too long."
"No kidding," Lucky murmured, pulling lightly at a strand of her silky hair that had fallen across her face. "Wait. Hitched a ride?" He turned to his sister. "Lu??"
"Um." Lu looked back and forth between her brothers. "Daddy didn't mention I had my pilot's license?"
"No, Luke left that particular bit of information out," Nikolas scowled, severely. "He also neglected to inform us that the laws had changed, and it was now legal for a pilot under fourteen to fly unassisted across the Atlantic. Perhaps because they haven't."
"Yeah," she bit her lip. "You know my dad; laws aren't his thing. And, I did pass all my tests; I have my license, and I'll be fourteen in, like, a month. C'mon, Nikky, don't be mad."
Nikolas slid an arm around his sister's shoulders. "I could never be mad at you, Princess," he squeezed lightly. He met Lucky's eyes, saw his brother's warning glance, and dropped it, with a sigh. "It's good to see you, Em," he said, with a tentative smile.
"You too, Nikolas," Emily responded, somewhat formally. She dropped his gaze quickly, and turned back to Lucky. Emily grinned, drinking him up with hungry eyes. "Couldn't even bother to wear a tie for his sister's homecoming," she made a tsk-tsking sound with her teeth. "What would would my pooor mother say if she could see me with you right now?"
Lucky swatted her on the fanny, and Emily let out an outraged squeal and began advancing on him as Lucky backed away. "Something like 'my lucky, lucky daughter -- to be loved by a fine hunk of man like Lucky Spencer'?" Soon as the words left his mouth, Lucky took off running, Emily sharp on his heels.
Lu laughed, and she and Nikolas began to follow at a more sedate pace. "Hey, Nikky?" she asked a moment later; his head tilted down to hers. "Is everything all right with you and Emily?"
Nikolas hesitated, then pressed a kiss on top of his sister's head. "Everything's fine, Lesley Lu; I was just surprised to see her. Now," he twined his fingers with hers and continued quickly, "tell me everything. Starting with this plane of yours..."
highway outside of Port Charles
"Shit!" Her fists pounded against the steering wheel as the engine made another in what had been a series of Really Bad Noises. Gia wrenched the wheel over, managing to pull the car off the road, just as the sound under the hood became a definite groan, followed by an ominous click, and then silence as the engine completely cut off. She leaned back, with an enormous sigh, her eyes glaring heavenward. If she was looking for a sign, this was a pretty unmistakable one. Only thing more obvious would be a Day-Glo orange billboard saying 'Back The Hell Up, Gia'.
"Owe me a quarter, Mama," piped up a small voice from the backseat, and Gia turned around, her face softening. There was never a time looking at him couldn't make her face soften or her day brighten.
"A quarter, huh?" Gia looked around, finding one in the ashtray, along with assorted other coins. "I thought the going rate was a nickel when Mama said a swear."
"Bored with nickels. 'Sides, quarters are bigger." Her son's chubby fingers closed over the coin, complacently.
Gia laughed, quietly. If there was ever any doubt the kid was hers... "Baby, I'm gonna go try and see what's wrong with the car. Here's your juice," she handed him a sippy cup, "and don't undo your seat belt." She leaned over the seat and pressed a quick kiss on his sticky cheek, and then reached around him to unroll his window. "I won't be long, Jackie. And you can watch Mama out the window, okay?" She waited for his nod, pressed another quick kiss against his cheek, and then slipped out the door.
As she headed to the hood, Gia kicked at the tire. Hard. What pissed her off even more was that she was the only person she could legitimately be pissed at. When she had decided it was finally time to come down here with Jack to visit Marcus, it was Gia who had come up with the brilliant plan to drive down from New York, figuring it would give her time to think. To sort of form a set of armor, hard enough to deal with this place. She straightened up, shading her eyes as she gazed down the road.
Port Charles. It wasn't her home. It wasn't her son's home. Hell, she'd spent as much time in Paris as she had in Port Charles. Her son had been born there. If she were actually tallying up the minutes and days and years of her life, most of them had been spent elsewhere. So why was it when she woke up in the night in another strange bed in another strange city, her first automatic sleep-borne reaction was that she was back here, in Port Charles, NY? Her shrink claimed it was loose ends, things left undone. Gia knew that that was just a fancy way of saying 'guilt'.
She sighed, propping the hood up. Introspection, however 'good' for her soul her shrink claimed it to be, was not gonna get this thing rolling again. Gia poked around; Marcus had taught her how to put an engine together when she was fifteen. She ought to be able to get one started again. She lifted the oil cap, and pulled out the tester-stick. Completely. Dry. "Shit," she swore again, quietly, then quickly glanced back into the car. When no demands for money were forthcoming, she popped her head inside. "How you doin', bugaboo?" Gia asked.
"Is the car brokened?" Jack responded.
"Nope, just thirsty. But, remind Mama to kill Uncle Gary when we get back home, okay?" She chucked him under the chin, mentally making a list of ways to murder her assistant, who had, apparently, not bothered to check the oil level before renting this thing.
"You always wanna kill Unca Gary. I like Unca Gary," he protested.
"Yeah, 'cause he bribes you with lollipops and twenty dollar bills." She opened the car door and rummaged under the seat until she emerged triumphantly with a bottle. "Ah-ha!" Gia turned to her son with a grin. "Be right back, kiddo."
She quickly poured the oil into the canister, then hurried back to the car, turning the key and listening to the nice, normal purrr of the engine. Glancing triumphantly in the rearview mirror, Gia grinned at Jack. "What d'you think of that, Jackie?"
"Mama fixed," he said, her baby boy with eyes blue as the sky. Just like his daddy's. "Mama always fixes."
Her smile faded, and for a moment, Gia was tempted to wrench the wheel around, head back to NYC, and forget she'd ever had this idiotic idea. She hesitated, then turned the wheel right, towards Port Charles. Much as she might hate it, much as it might terrify her, Mama was pretty sure that if there was any possible way in this world to fix this one, it lay there.
Harborview Towers
PH Floor
"Isiah? Colin? Zachary?" Marcus Taggert knelt at the edge of the king-sized bed and began to crawl across it towards the woman and infant curled in the middle. "Elliot? Maximilian? Moose?"
The woman giggled, tickling the baby's toes. "I think Daddy's gone a bit 'round the bend with that last one, don't you think?" The little boy rewarded her with the wide-eyed, glassy grin of the very young. She tilted her head to his, pressing a gentle kiss against his cheek, then looked up at the man looming above her. "Do you realize you just used up your entire quota of names for the day, and one of them was 'Moose'?" she laughed.
He collapsed beside her, looping his strong arm around her and their baby, settling her comfortably into the curve of his body and sighed loudly. "I'm starting to realize that our son is going to get to grammer school, and they're still gonna be calling him 'That Kid'." His aggravated tone was belied by the lips nuzzling at the nape of her neck.
"Hey!" She grabbed at his discarded shirt, just within reach and tossed it backwards in his general direction. "I'm not the one who rejected three perfectly good names before breakfast!"
"Lexi," Marcus patiently picked the t-shirt off his head, dropping it over the side of the bed, and ran a forefinger up the length of her thigh, "Aloysha, Leonid, and Sergio are not perfectly good names; they are names that would haunt our son to his grave, baby."
Alexis Davis turned on her back, her head still cradled against Marcus' bare chest and lifted the baby boy above her head. She brought him down to her lips, nuzzling his belly, and lifted him again, crowing with delight. "Your daddy thinks he's just so smart, doesn't he? But, you and I know better, don't we? Marcus," she looked at him, letting the baby rest against her stomach, "we are not going to name our child Moose."
"Alexis," he turned his head and kissed her tenderly on the lips, "my love," he kissed her again, "we are not going to name our child Aloysha." He kissed her a third time, his hand rising to hold her still for a long, luxuriously languid kiss. "Marry me, Alexis," Marcus murmured, breathless moments later.
She turned away, all attention focused on the baby again. "Not today, honey, I have court. But, thanks for asking," Alexis looked at him briefly with a soft smile.
Marcus sighed, and lifted his arm behind his head to pillow it gently. After a moment, watching the woman he loved and the child they'd made, a reluctant smile curved his own lips. She was crazy, she made him crazy. But, god, he loved her. Hadn't known what love was until three years ago when he'd had the good sense to step out on the terrace, and Alexis had had the good sense to break the heel of her shoe. He'd fixed her shoe, something had clicked; they'd been together since. It hadn't been easy, but it had been real, and now, he slid his arm down to slide around her shoulders, cupping his son's head, here they were. The only thing, the one thing marring his absolute contentment was that she refused to marry him.
It had almost become a private joke between them. He asked her, at least once a day. More, if he was so inclined. She always had an easy excuse, a quick answer. And, it was always, in one form or another, 'no'. When she had first become pregnant, Alexis' refusal to so much as move in with him had almost ripped them apart. He hadn't been able to understand that it wasn't him she was rejecting; it was the idea, the concept of commitment that terrified her in some dark place she didn't know how to name. Finally, though, after many dark nights and much soul-searching, he had realized that living with her in his life was more important than simply living with her.
And, so, they'd created their 'arrangement'. Half the town shook their heads; the other, the half that actually liked them, predicted disaster within six months. It made absolutely no sense to anyone. Except for them. Alexis lived here, with their son, in the converted apartment that had been created when she'd purchased Sonny's, and knocked down the connecting walls. He lived in his apartment in the Brownstone. Every weekend, he spent here, while they learned to be a family. And, one night a week was his alone with his son, while he learned to be a father. It was crazy. They were all three, including their as-of-yet nameless son, crazy. But, he was finally learning, maybe crazy worked for them.
"What?" Alexis tilted her head towards Marcus' as he chuckled, lost in thought. "What's so funny?"
He shook his head. Marcus opened his mouth to answer, when the phone rang. He grinned. "Saved by the bell," he murmured, reaching behind all three of them for the phone. "'Lo." He listened for a moment, grimaced, then held out the phone to her, trading it for the baby in her lap. "It's your brother."
Alexis sat up, reaching for the phone. She scooted back against the headboard, for a short, murmured conversation which he did his best to block out, occupying himself with his child. A moment later, she rejoined him in the middle of the bed, a slightly shell-shocked expression on her face.
"Lexi? Baby, what is it?" Marcus asked, concerned, mentally damning all Cassadines, especially those named Stefan, to hell for all eternity.
"No, it's nothing bad. It's just," she looked up at him, "it's Stefan. My brother got married. And, he's coming home."
203 Asbury Road
"Michael! Michael Morgan Quartermaine, you better hope I was imagining things when I heard you turning on that Nintendo, and what I actually heard was you getting you and your baby sister down here for breakfast!" Carly hollered up the foot of the stairs in one long breathless spurt. She leaned against the banister, putting all her weight on her left foot as she slid her right heel on. "Michael!"
"I'm am, Ma!" came the response from upstairs. "Jess and me are comin'. Jeez; chill out. It's not like we're not late every single day."
"Yeah, well, maybe it's time we tried something new. And, watch your tone, buddy," Carly added as an afterthought. She limped on one heel and one stocking foot, swearing as she stubbed her toe on a metal jeep, missing one wheel and both doors. Limping even more she rounded the corner, heading for the small guest bathroom, left heel dangling from her foot. "Aaah!" she yelped, startled as she barreled full into a form emerging from the same bathroom.
"Hey, hey, hey." Her husband stopped her in her tracks, grasping both elbows gently. "Carly? Honey, you okay?"
"No. Yes." She shook her head dismissively, moving past him into the bathroom, and sitting on the closed toilet seat to slip on her other heel. Carly fastened it, and stood, placing the earrings held tightly in her fist on the vanity and beginning to screw the left one in. "I'm just running late."
He stepped up behind her, gazing at her in the mirror above the sink. After a moment, he gathered her hair gently in his fists, pulling it back behind her shoulders. When her earrings were in, he let it loose, and pulled her back into his arms, still meeting her eyes in the mirror. "You're always late, baby. Every single morning appointment you make at the office, Elton pushes back an hour. Michael's teacher has a permanent late excuse stapled to her desk. And, Jessa's babysitter loves you because she gets to sleep an extra half-hour every morning." He hesitated, then drew out a folded newspaper from his jacket pocket. "Did you read the paper this morning?"
Carly hesitated, then let out a long breath, turning in his arms. She reached up, laying smooth fingers against his cheek. "Jax. It has nothing to do with us. It matters less than nothing to you and me."
He bent down, caressing her lips with his, his touch more comfort than kiss. After a moment, Jasper Jacks lifted his head, his arms still wrapped firmly around his wife. "I know that, my wife. I just wanted to make sure you did," he said, softly.
She rose on her toes to wrap one arm against his, pressing her body full length against his. Her other hand wound itself in his belt buckle as she took a backwards step, scooting herself up on the edge of the vanity. "Have I mentioned just how crazy," she wrapped her legs around his, drawing him into her, "in love with you I am?" Carly purred as she drew his head down to hers.
He grinned, his hands sliding to either side of her hips. "Not lately. But, I'd love to hear a step-by-step recitation of all the ways you're crazy in love with me." Jax bent down, capturing her lips, this time making sure she knew that this was, indeed, a kiss. A soul-searching, branding, one-of-a-kind kiss, designed to make her breathless and weak in not only the knees, intended to go on forever and ever. A kiss that was interrupted mere seconds later by a loud 'huuumph' from his stepson.
"Oh, give me a break. Ma, Jax -- I used this bathroom," Michael protested, loudly. "Until NOW."
Laughing, Jax backed away, reluctantly, slipping his arm around his wife's waist as she slid down off the counter. "Sorry, Michael. Your Mum is just completely and utterly irresistible. I couldn't resist."
"Aaargh!" Michael yelled, thrusting his small sister in his mother's direction. "Okay, you're gonna have to finish getting Jess ready because I think my ears are bleeding!"
Carly grinned, picking up her daughter. "Good morning, sunshine," she pressed kisses all over her face until the two year old was giggling. "I don't know what's wrong with brother this morning; he must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. But, not you, right? You are just a perfect ray of sunshine."
Jax laughed out loud, reaching around his wife to lift his daughter onto his hip. "For a change, huh? Usually you're just like your mother, an absolute demon in the morning."
"Oh, you are gonna pay for that one, Jacks," Carly swore, pushing them out of the bathroom in front of her. "Just for that, the next deal Deception brokers with Jax Cosmetics is so gonna cost you double."
Jax bent his head down to his daughters, their blue eyes almost identical. "See what I mean?" he whispered, sotto voice, his eyes twinkling back at his wife.
They continued their teasing on the way into the dining room; neither of them remembered to pick up the newspaper lying on the bathroom floor. New York Crime Boss Finally Found, the heading read. Sonny Corinthos Extradited Back To Port Charles.
