Prompt: No matter how dark the sunglasses, I still see you.

I'd just like to take a quick moment to say that plagiarism is wrong. It's deceitful, unethical, and extremely hurtful. There are honestly no words to describe how disgusted I am with certain individuals who feel that they can copy popular Liason fics verbatim and use them for other couples. I thank the Admins of the site in question for quickly removing all plagiarized stories, and I certainly hope no Liason writer – or any other writer, for that matter – has to deal with this shit again.

As readers, if you see a fic at another 'ship site that resembles another fic you may have read, the best thing you can do is email the author post haste and say, "Hey, I might be sniffing the Sharpie a bit hard, but this fic looks a lot like one that you wrote. Take a look." Thank you to those readers that have done this in the past.

Just say no to plagiarism.

Also, Amanda forced me to turn this one-parter into a full-length flash fiction series. So we blame her. I know everyone hates me for having all these ongoing stories, but they will all be finished. Trust me.

Death to All Jellybeans

"Mooooooom!" Five-year-old Michael Corinthos III let himself into the penthouse and kicked the door shut with the heel of his black tennis shoe. "Dad! I'm hooooome!"

His uncle Jason was the first one to emerge and the older man grinned the instant he stepped out of the kitchen and laid eyes on his nephew. "Hey, buddy. C'mere."

Michael dutifully held out his arms and let his uncle swoop him up into a bear hug before carrying him over to the dining table. Sonny and Carly emerged momentarily from the kitchen, each of them carrying a glass of wine, and the tall blonde broke out into a beaming smile as soon as she saw her son.

"Hey, Mr. Man!" Giving him a quick kiss on the forehead, she tousled his silky red hair and plopped down onto the seat next to him. "Did you have fun at Gramma's?"

The little boy nodded, laughing when Sonny kissed his cheek noisily and tickled his stomach before settling himself down on a seat across from him next to Jason. "Yeah. She made me cookies and let me have my own room this time!"

"That's because you're becoming a big boy," Carly preened, straightening his little collar and brushing his hair out of his face.

Michael sat up straighter in his seat, pleased with the compliment. "And Mr. Taggert gave me a sticker," he announced, pointing proudly at the D.A.R.E. sticker that was only barely clinging to his striped shirt. "It doesn't stick so good anymore because I took it off of my pajamas and put it on this shirt."

"It's nice," Sonny replied quickly with a small smile.

The little boy bit his lower lip, his eyes straying toward his uncle for a moment before he worked up the courage to ask his father a long-overdue question. "Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Um…what did you do to make people so mad at you?"

Jason leaned back in his seat, giving Sonny a sidelong glance as his old friend rubbed a hand over his jaw.

"I mean, when I was at Gramma Bobbie's, I saw on the TV that a lot of people were saying that you were bad and ipperon – irrep – irresponsible," he finished with conviction, "and that they were mad at you."

Sonny let out a long sigh and leaned forward, tenting his fingers on the table. "Michael, do you remember what I told you before I left?"

The boy nodded. "That it was really important and you had to leave, and we had to have a pretend funeral for you and act like we were really sad…and not to tell anyone."

"That's right," the mob boss answered smoothly. "I told you and your mom and uncle Jason that I was leaving and that it was a secret, but…most of the people in town thought it was real. They thought that I was really dead. And when they found out I wasn't…some of those people got mad."

Michael nodded slowly, beginning to make sense of what his father said. "Because they didn't like that you lied?"

"I had to," Sonny responded softly. "It was the best way to keep everyone I love – you and Mom and Jason and Gramma Bobbie – safe. And I'm sorry it made some people mad, but I had to do it. You understand, right?"

The child nodded. "Yeah. I feel bad, though. It sounded like a lot of people weren't really mad…just hurt." His father's brows furrowed, and Michael popped a few jellybeans into his mouth before he mumbled, "…like Lizabeth."

Carly's dark eyes darted toward Jason, and her lips pinched into a frown when a flicker of regret raced across her best friend's cerulean orbs. It had been a couple days since the little twit had left him, and she personally couldn't understand why Jason wasn't patting himself on the back for dodging a bullet.

Sonny shifted in his seat, trying not to look in Jason's direction. "E-Elizabeth was there?"

Michael nodded, pulling a few more pieces of candy out of the plastic bag in his lap. "Yup. She lives at the Brownstone now. At first, I was a little sad that I had to stay there for two days til I could come home, but she said it would be like a party, and she'd play with me while Gramma and everyone else was at work. And guess what – I actually stayed up til midnight!"

There was no mistaking the happy, triumphant gleam in her son's eyes, and a sour taste invaded Carly's mouth on the reflection that the little Muffinface had something to do with it. "Gramma let you stay up til midnight?"

Michael shook his head. "Nope. She was gonna make me dinner, but then she got a call and had to run to the hospital, so Lizabeth said that she'd stay with me. She said we could order pizza-" He looked over at his father just in time to see the older man grimace – "and then we played Pictionary and she got out her Muppets Show videos, and I stayed up til midnight! But I got up late the next day, and me and Lizabeth just watched cartoons in our pj's til lunch. It was fun."

Uncomfortable silence descended on the room as Michael happily sneaked jellybeans into his mouth. After a long moment, Jason finally broke it.

"Is she…Is she doing okay?"

The boy didn't pick up the hesitation in his uncle's outwardly casual voice. "Yeah. She showed me her new painting – it's really cool."

"Yeah?" A small smile curved Sonny's lips as he reached for his wine. "She's painting again? That's good."

Michael nodded enthusiastically. "You shoulda seen it, Dad. It's like, crazy. It's all black with a bit of blue and red – she said she took her old credit card and dipped it in paint and just slashed it onto the canvas or whatever. It's awesome! She didn't tell me the title, though, because she said it was a bad word."

Jason slumped back in his seat as Sonny covered his mouth with his hand. Carly took one look at the two of them and rolled her eyes – honestly, the world did in no way, shape or form come crashing to an end just because a little milkmaid bought a clue and waltzed her little ass out of a world where she didn't belong.

Desperate to change the subject, she once again turned her attention to her oblivious little son. "Michael, where'd you get those jellybeans from?"

"Lizabeth."

The blonde rolled her eyes. It figured.

"Ac'shully, she got 'em from Uncle Luke, but she gave them to me and told him that he didn't have to bribe her 'cuz there were easier ways of getting her to do what he wanted."

Sonny and Carly exchanged quizzical looks at the comment and even Jason looked confused. "Luke was there with Elizabeth?"

Michael nodded at his mother, popping more jellybeans into his mouth and purposely ignoring his father's frown of disapproval. "Yeah, he and Lucky came by to talk to Lizabeth about stuff. They were really excited, I think, and when Johnny came to pick me up, Lizabeth was packing."

Sonny frowned at his best friend. "That doesn't sound right. Are you sure, Michael?"

The boy nodded, snatching his plastic bag away when his mother tried to grab it. "No, Mom – they're mine!" The blonde relented – temporarily – and Michael began to recount what he remembered. "She told me that she liked hanging out with me, and that I might not see her for a couple days. She also asked how you were doing."

Jason's eyes widened. "Me?"

"Yup." He chomped away on his candy, oblivious to the looks exchanged between the adults in the room. "And Uncle Luke said to tell you, Dad, that they're waiting for you down below. What does he mean?"

Sonny rolled his eyes. "Nothing, son. Sometimes, Uncle Luke says crazy things that no one understands. It's best if you don't pay too much attention to him."

Carly was smirking as Michael shrugged. "Kay. But Lizabeth pays a lot of attention to him, so I don't think he's that crazy. I mean, she's kinda smart – for a girl – and I don't think she'd like him or do what he says if he was really crazy."

"What was he saying?" Sonny wheedled, his curiosity getting the best of him. "What was he trying to get Elizabeth to do?"

Michael scratched his head, thinking. "Well, I didn't hear all of it, 'cuz I was sitting in the hall playing with Chelsea's canary. It's blue and it really likes crackers and when it walks, it's head goes up and down – like this." They waited until he was done with his impersonation. "But he said something about needing her help with something he was doing. Mom, what are wimminly-wiles?"

"Womanly wiles?" Carly repeated. "Did Luke say that?"

The child nodded. "Yeah, he said that was why they needed Lizabeth – 'cuz of her 'doll-face' and pretty legs. Then he said that men are suckers for the wimminly-thing."

Sonny was frowning, his hand still covering his mouth, and Jason was looking at the child in complete bewilderment. If the entire subject wasn't so distasteful, Carly would have laughed out loud.

But Michael wasn't done.

"Dad, do you know a guy named Roy Lucca?"

"Roy Di Lucca," Sonny corrected. "Yeah, he used to be a friend of your Gramma Bobbie."

The information surprised Michael, and the child sat still for a moment before sighing sadly. "Oh. I wonder if she knows that he's dead."

Jason's eyes bulged out of his head and Sonny choked on his wine. Carly snapped her gaping mouth shut and took a slow breath before leaning closer to her son. "Michael? Hey, how did you know that?"

The boy shrugged. "Uncle Luke said so. That's what he wanted to talk to Lizabeth about. He wanted her to help him find out who did it."

Jason's hands clenched into fists, and it didn't take Michael long to realize that his father was upset as well. "Uh…did I say something bad?"

"No, no, sweetheart," Carly assured him, running her fingers through his hair. "No way, Mr. Man. We're just…surprised that Uncle Luke would tell Elizabeth about that."

"Well, she said that she really liked Roy," the boy tried to answer on the behalf of the eccentric Spencer. "She said that Roy and Uncle Jason saved her life. Did you really, Uncle Jason?" The enforcer's dazed half-nod was enough for the boy, who continued excitedly. "It sounded like a really cool a'venture, ac'shully. Uncle Luke said that Lucky was already on it, and now he needed Lizabeth's help. She didn't want to at first, but he changed her mind."

"She should have stuck with that," Sonny mumbled, running a hand through his hair.

Michael shrugged. "Well, Uncle Luke told her that she had two choices: she could either sit around at the Brownstone and do nothing but eat and sleep and paint and pine away for some clueless…Mom, what does 'fuck-nut' mean?"

Both Sonny and Carly groaned aloud, neither of them daring to look in Jason's direction as the enforcer gaped at his nephew from across the table.

"Anyway, he said she could do that, or she could come with him and find out who hurt Roy." Michael tossed a couple jellybeans in the air and managed to catch them in his mouth, a feat he celebrated by pumping his fists into the air several times. "He told her that it was about time that she had some fun and some danger in her life – like the old days. Dad, what did he mean? What was Lizabeth like in the old days?"

Sonny, still slightly off-center from all the information his five-year-old son had tossed out in the past ten minutes, took a minute to absently respond. "Uh, she was…she was kinda…she got into trouble a bit. She liked to have fun and stay out late and do what she wanted. She's still like that sometimes."

Michael nodded sagely. "That musta been what he meant. He said something about how she had helped them beat Helena Cassidine, and that this would be nothing compared to that."

There was a brief pause and Sonny looked at the child expectantly. "…And?"

"Oh, and he asked her to pack all the miniskirts she had. The shorter, the better. And tube tops. What are tube tops? And hey – what are garters? Aren't they snakes? Why would Lizabeth pack snakes? And if she has snakes...how come she hasn't shown 'em to me?"

Carly groaned and dropped her head to the table, refusing to believe what her young son was telling her. This just wasn't possible – there was no way in Hell that the goody-goody-Muffin-Face was up to whatever crazy scheme Luke was hatching. He'd be better off commissioning Lamb Chop to help him than that little twit.

Jason had heard enough. He rapped his knuckles on the table as he swung around to face a displeased Sonny. "This is crazy."

"I'm not disagreeing," the moblord sighed heavily, shaking his head.

"He should know better than to try to pull her into this," Jason seethed, already standing up from his seat. "I don't care what happened between…I don't care what happened – Elizabeth needs us to step in here."

"We'll go find Luke right now and talk him out of this," Sonny agreed, pulling out his cellphone. "She's probably still at the Brownstone, so if we head over now, we can talk to her."

"Uh, I don't think that's gonna work," Michael interjected hesitantly, cramming a handful of jellybeans into his mouth. All three adults turned to stare at him.

"Why not?" Sonny asked patiently as Jason gripped the back of one of the chairs.

Michael's blue orbs traveled from his mother to his father to Jason, finally landing back on his perturbed father once more. "Because…Lizabeth's already on a plane to Mexico."