"Youth is Like"
Written by SRC
Note: I really don't own anything that you recognize. Please read and review; Con-crit encouraged; douchy remarks are not. *wink*
Just my two cents into a back-story for Spinelli. This takes place after the rescue of Baby Jake. I will be taking certain artistic liberties in the story line, though.
*
The door was shut, locked, to keep its occupant of the room in and everyone else out. Towels and pink sheets alike were used to impede and block the inch of space beneath the bottom of the white paneled door and cream-colored carpeted floor. Along the pink walls of the inside of the room was an ever-growing collection of 8's. From an old playing card, the red eight of hearts that was weary and tattered found alone on the streets of Knoxville, to the liberated street sign of Oakland, Tennessee's Eighth Street, shiny, green and slightly bent from where the perpetrator applied to much force with the wrench while getting it off of the pole, to the lone character of the element oxygen (with the atomic number of 8, of course), clipped from a rather large periodic table.
A black eight ball sat next to the lamp on the bedside table.
The full sized bed that was in the middle of the room was pristinely made, crisp white sheets tucked in blue and pink floral comforter neatly and evenly blanketed the elevated mattress. A coordinating quilt was neatly folded at the foot of the bed, against a cast iron footboard that was designed with intricate scrolls and swirls and matched the headboard that rested high against the wall. Across from the bed was a mahogany armoire that housed an old television, the original Nintendo system and a brand new PS3. For now the doors were shut, hiding its contents. An overflowing bookshelf was on the same wall as the bed. The books that didn't fit were stacked in neat piles next to it. Pushed against another wall was a matching low-boy dresser that housed a small, yet eclectic wardrobe. On top of the dresser sat a record player that currently had Black Flag yelling from it, with passion and no regrets. The only other piece of furniture in the room was an old, cheap wooden desk that didn't match the rest of the room. There was a small flat-screen monitor hooked up to a bulky, black motherboard that hummed quiet, yet intently. Next to this PC, a modern looking, white Macintosh Desktop was powered off. The keyboards for the two machines were side-by-side, black and white respectively. An army green messenger bag that contained a third computer, a black, well worn laptop, was draped and hanging from the back of an old desk chair that was neatly pushed into the desk.
The room was tidy, clean and seemed to be ripped from the pages of a Better Homes and Gardens advertisement. If not for the collection of eights, the trio of computers, the records and its player, someone would question the occupancy of the room.
As it were, the tenant of the room was sitting on the floor by the open window, his knees bent, head resting against the regrettably pink wall. In his left hand that rested on his knee, held loosely in his fingers was a small, tightly rolled joint, half gone and slowly burning away, out of the window of the high-rise bedroom.
Spinelli could see the city below him, twinkling lights winked back at him. The clear December night breathed back in his face, stinging his ears and cheeks, biting his red-rimmed eyes and making them water.
He had promised Jason -, no, Jason had ordered him not to smoke anymore. No drugs in my house. The threat had been veiled; the threat of eviction, but Spinelli had heard it clear as day, anyway. And he didn't smoke pot that often, and he definitely didn't sell it anymore. But, today he had hacked into Interpol for his mentor and so he figured he earned this one release tonight.
Spinelli was not stupid. He was going to get caught for his actions. This went beyond hacking into bank accounts and sending worms and viruses into accounts to track the money trail. This went beyond re-routing a shipment of "coffee" or Manolo Blahniks. This was the International Criminal Police Organization.
Interpol.
And we're not talking about the indie band, here.
His name was probably being entered on a black list as he sat here smoking, losing brain cells. Drug trafficking, terrorism, a catalogue of fraudulent activities that a complex law enforcement system that threaded together 186 nations would now probably be pursuing him on.
But it was worth it, he thought. To reunited Stone Cold and his progeny. If he could just make his mentor see how he could both live with, love and protect his son, then it would all be worth it! If he could explain without pushing or being condescending, that Jake would eventually find out. The Maternal One and the Conscientious Cop were a handsome couple, to say the least, but Baby Jake shared little resemblance to the dark features of the false paternal figure. How could he explain to his master that one day, Jake will piece together the holes in his childhood, fit together the puzzle pieces of clues his parents didn't account for and realize that he was lied to for most of his life? Deception cut deeper then any personal wrong!
And it was funny where the winning clues always came from. Spinelli could imagine a handsome, 15-year-old Jake, who loved science and sports and had a passion for learning, like his mother. He could imagine the reality hitting him in the face in an AP science class, where his teacher has just explained that having a cleft in your chin was a dominant trait, and if one parent had one, you had nearly a 50 percent chance of having one. Both of his parents had a cleft, yet his chin was free of any mark.
Different scenarios played out in Spin's mind. But what stuck out most was when he found out on his own parents weren't really who they claimed to be.
*
He pushed his shaggy hair away from his eyes with the back of his hand. He kept running his left hand along the plush cushion of the tweed brown sofa that was in the family room, where he was sitting when he heard the news.
"Damien. Your parents have been in an accident". His Grandma had told him, in the same frank voice she always used with him, but this time, with this important news, there was touch of empathy.
He just kept running his hand along the fabric, while simultaneously pulling at his hair with small fists and staring down at the hardwood floor, decorated in a red patterned, traditional throw rug.
"Damien. Damien, do you understand me?" Her eyes followed the hand on the sofa, moving back and forth over the worn fabric. She snapped out of her daze and grabbed his hand in one hand and his jaw in the other, as she jerked his face to look at her. "Damien Spinelli, you look at me."
Hazel eyes made the slow decent from the floor to his grandmothers own blue eyes. They were shiny with unshed tears, but the grasp on both his face and hand were firm and the pressure was just under bruising. "Yes, Gran".
She softened her grip on his jaw and dropped the other hand so it bounced in the little boys lap. "There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it. Your parents, they lost too much blood. They won't be making it through the night… probably won't be making it past a few hours, I reckin'. If you want to see them before they pass we should –".
"I can save them! They can have my blood. We'll match, I'll match one of them. They can only donate the O allele! I read about it on the intern –"
"Damien, you won't be a match. You can't save anyone."
"But they both have O negative blood, Gran. I asked them. I need to have O negative blood."
His Grandmother just looked at him before sighing, "I'm leavin' for the hospital in five minutes, you best be ready to go when I do."
He didn't move off of the sofa, just sat there, pulling at his hair and thinking that maybe he learned the allele formuls wrong. Before following Gran out the screen door and down the porch steps, he grabbed a pen and sketched pundit squares on his forearm in the backseat of the Ford on the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital.
*
He was thirteen when his parents died in a car crash.
He was thirteen when he found out that they weren't his. He wasn't theirs.
He was thirteen when, for the first time in his life, he felt intellectually inferior to nearly everyone in his life. A loser, yes. Socially awkward, yes. Unattractive, sure. But he knew he was smart. Except he wasn't, was he? He couldn't see the facts that had been staring him in the face for his entire life.
He was fourteen when he coded his first virus on the library computer in his high school.
He was fourteen when he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder.
He was fourteen when he was diagnosed with depression.
He was fifteen when he got the pundit square with two O alleles tattooed to his hip.
He was fifteen when he hacked into the school system to change the entire lacrosse teams grade to a rainbow of C's, D's and F's. And it was a day later he was expelled, for it. It was a day after that when Todd Harmon took his lacrosse stick to his kidneys and face, landing him in the hospital with a broken rib. Harmon had also pissed in his favorite converse sneakers, but the doctor really couldn't diagnose that.
He was sixteen when he took his GED, passing it with ease as well as flying colors.
He was sixteen when he finally met Dave, at a music festival on the hottest day of that year in Tennessee, the eighth of August.
Spinelli hoped with his entire body, his entire heart, that Jason's progeny didn't share a similar timeline of bad choices when he did find out. Which he would.
*
When they had gotten to the hospital, a nurse had informed them that Jim Spinelli had slipped into a coma and it was unlikely that he would wake up again. Gran told Damien to sit in the room, say his goodbyes and pray for his father while she went and talked to her daughter.
Spinelli sat in the chair next to the man that had claimed to be his father for as long as he can remember.
Jim Spinelli owned an auto shop and his fingers always seemed to be dirty. In the hospital, under clean white sheets, the harsh white glow of florescent lights, the grease and oil stained digits were in stark contrast. All Damien could do was stare at those big hands. If he had looked up, he would have seen his fathers face swollen and pink, eyes resting shut. The thick black hair had been shaved off and his scalp had been stitched from nearly back to front. Cuts and bruises traveled down his neck, disappearing beneath the hospital gown, snaked down his arm like sleeves of tattoos. Heart monitors beeped around him, and the IV bag beside the bed was at a steady drip. Damien didn't pray, but he did bargain. He pleaded to a God he didn't know he believed in that if he would just allow his father to live, if he would just open his blue eyes and waggle his thick black eyebrows at him, the way he did when he wanted the conservative, shy young boy to laugh, that he would do whatever he wanted him too.
Anything.
For 30 minutes, Damien had his eyes squeezed shut, kneeling on the sterile linoleum floor with his fathers stained fingers clasped in his own clammy palm. Finally, he climbed up off of the floor and squeezed his body onto the cot along side the only man who never tried to change him.
He remembered when his mother signed him up for self-defense classes after the first round of bullying and his father signed him up for piano classes instead. Then there was the soccer club his mother took him to, so he could make friends, she had said. Because the friendship thing was important to his mom, his dad asked him to play, but went to every game, with fresh cut orange wedges and his inhaler. And as a reward, Jimmy Spinelli would read Harry Potter to his son in the silly voices, while he nursed the bruises. And when the second Harry Potter book came out when he was 12, his father still read it to him nearly every night.
So, Damien gently rested his head on his fathers shoulder and recited all of the poetry he had ever committed to memory, as his father continued his journey on.
*
The joint in between his fingers had slowly burned away, so he took one last deep inhale and held it in until his lungs felt tight and his head felt fuzzy. When he finally exhaled a minute later, he heard the door slam from down stairs. He heard Jason's methodical routine from his job.
Open the closet. Unlock the gun case. With care, disassemble the shiny silver Beretta and put away the body and the magazine, carefully. Hang up the leather jacket on the thick plastic hanger in front of an old flannel shirt of Spinelli's. Deposit the keys on the bowl on top of the desk and the tri-fold leather wallet next to it. He checked the messages on the machine and then made his way to the kitchen.
Once in a while, Spinelli wondered how his presence had altered the gruff mans life. His work life, he's sure he made things a little easier, but home life? Spinelli thought that maybe Jason wanted his solitude back from the clutches of his presence. Spinelli always renewed each day with the intention of being invisible to his roommate, to live like an anthropologist and blend in with the environment and leave it untouched by his presence, make it calming for Stone Cold to continue with his Stone Cold ways. But, Spinelli had no filtering system, and he found himself needing the human connection that Jason begrudgingly gave him.
Spinelli heard the steps of his roommate and landlord before they reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Before Spinelli could blink back the smoke that blew in his face, Jason was knocking on the doorframe while simultaneously pulling on the locked door with futile.
"Spinelli! Open up. What did I tell you about locking the door. Spinelli!"
Spinelli made sure the joint was completely burned out, then dunked it in water before swallowing the last of the roach. "I'll be there post haste, defender of the night!"
Quickly, he scrambled up and grabbed the air freshener from behind a book. As he sprayed around the room, he grabbed the sheets and towels that were stuffed under the door and threw them in the closet before shutting the door once more. He glanced around the room and saw that nothing was out of place before turning on his monitor at the desk and pulled up a game of online chess. Before walking toward the door to let his tenant in, he smelled his clothes and decided spraying himself wouldn't be the worst idea he ever had, so he air freshened his t shirt and his arm pits before opening the door and tried to casually leaned against the frame of the door, coughing as elegantly as possible.
"Stone Cold! Good tidings, I hope?" he started to cough again, a reaction from inhaling the scent of mountain springs that he just practically bathed in, and the wicked cotton mouth he had acquired from he previous illegal activities.
Jason looked at him, his disheveled appearance, before sidestepping the young man and walked into the pink room. "Are you ok?" he sniffed the air and then he began to pound heavily on the area between Spinelli's shoulder blades as his friend continued to hack up a lung.
"Your concern is appreciated, but much unwarranted" as he took a last cough and gingerly tried to rub his back were the larger man beat him. He walked over to the desk and sat down on the desk chair and spun it around to face Jason.
Jason looked around the room, with a look of suspicion. "Right. What are you listening too?"
"The American punk band, circa 1977 to 1986, Black Flag, of course. The Jackal believes that this music stands for the disenfranchised youth and really emphasizes anti-authoritarian, non-conformist messages including, but not limited to isolation, neurosis, poverty, and paranoia. Their music, though gruff and elementary at best, is raw, full of passion and uses atonal and microtonal guitar solos that speak just as loudly as their evocative lyrics". Breathe, Spinelli.
Jason glared and then blinked those pale blue eyes. "What?"
Spinelli pulled at his shaggy brown hair, "I like them".
"Why didn't you just say that? Anyway, what did I tell you about locking the door? It's not safe. What if there was a fire, or someone broke in, or, I dunno, what if you had a seizure?"
Spinelli let out a very elegant snort as Jason glared and paced in front of the younger man.
"I'm sorry, but really, a seizure? I believe you are what Parent magazine refers to as a "helicopter parent"!" He couldn't help but snicker.
Jason's glare sharpened. "Do I want to know what that is?"
"You know… " Spinelli waved his hands around, "You… hover. Like a helicopter". He shut his eyes and laughed genuinely, "Also, one knows that helicopters are used for seeing, searching and looking for trouble, which you do as a profession, of course."
Jason rubbed a hand over his eyes and the glare left his face. "I just worry." He glared again. "And I'm not your parent".
Spinelli softened his smile and looked at Jason more carefully. Jason's shirt was damaged. Holes speckled the black cotton and Spinelli could see the lightly tanned skin through them. His jeans were not torn, but dirty, as if he had rolled around in dirt and the water had seeped up the bottom of the pants to about mid calf. He could see that Jason had already kicked off his boots and could see the thick white socks were still relatively dry. Spinelli allowed his own red-rimmed eyes to travel up the larger man to study his face. Bluish gray smudges were beneath tired eyes and the slowly growing crows feet were even more prominent. His lips were angry red and very chapped, as if he had nervously licked them for about a week straight. A cut grazed his left cheek that was covered in light stubble.
Spinelli sighed, knowing that Jason wasn't going to offer any information without his prompting. "How is Baby Jake?"
Jason again rubbed his hand over his face before taking a seat on the end of the bed. "He's remarkably fine. Not a scratch on him, ironically."
And Jason recounted the events of the night in a few minutes, so that Spinelli could fill in the gaps.
"So Small Stone Cold is in the loving care of the Maternal One, but how does Fair Samantha… Fare?"
"Uh, she aggravated her hip injury… I wanted to take her to the hospital, but she asked to go home." He shrugged, "other wise, she's fine". A hero, really.
"And Stone Cold? Other then your misplaced, crippling guilt, are you ok?"
Jason hesitated. "No. I'm fine. I'm going to try and sleep. We have to do business tomorrow, so you should sleep too".
Spinelli looked up with guilt in his eyes, "The Jackal should really make sure Self-reliant Sam is comfortable. She has no one tonight, as the mother of the Goddess is most definitely out of town, and the Conscientious Cop is with his makeshift family.
"Wait. Can't you… can you… can't you see if Maxi will check in on her? I just want one night. I just want one night were I know where everyone is, where everyone is supposed to be." Jason shut his eyes and rolled out his shoulders.
He felt his stomach warm as Jason admitted he thought that the younger man belonged there. Of course, Jason probably just felt an obligation to keep the hacker around.
Spinelli watched his friend, so tense he may crack. If this is what his Master needed to sleep through the night, then how could he say no? He turned quickly to the monitor, typed a quick message to I_Need_Shoes, Maxi's Gmail account. And turned back to Jason, who had been hovering around the back of the Hackers chair. "Maxi will get that and I'm sure will be a wonderful nurse to Fair Samantha. The Jackal knows how doting the other Blonde One can truly be". He tried to offer a comforting smile.
Jason just stared down at the hacker intensely, until Spinelli began to squirm under the attention. He looked away just as Jason's eyes began to soften. "Spinelli… If it wasn't for you," he swallowed hard. "My son would be dead. I don't really understand what you did. But I owe you everything."
"Stone Cold! You would have found him! He would be fine regardless of what I did. The Jackal just… sped the process up."
"Stop that!" Jason yelled, so loudly it drowned out the wails of Henry Rollins. "This... self deprecation act is intolerable! So, shut up, alright? God Damn." He sighed and rolled his eyes, "If you didn't need a god damn cheerleader all the time, if you could accept the fact that your wanted, helpful, that people may actually like you, instead of being miserable, confusing and needy, people would stick around! No one wants a charity case, Spinelli, they want someone who relies on them as much as they rely on you. Friendship has to be mutual". He barked out a hash laugh, "You are the dumbest smart person I know".
Spinelli stared at his hands that were tightly clenching his jean-clad knees for several silent minutes.
"Look. I'm sorry for the... But I don't know how to get you, to like you, ok? If you don't like you, respect yourself, how will others?" He grasped Spinelli's shoulder, and although Spinelli couldn't look up from his jeans, he could feel the calluses on Jason's finger through the thin fabric of his tee shirt.
"I'm really tired. I just want to sleep. But I want you to know, that I owe you. My life, money, anything you need." He squeezed his shoulder one more time before walking out of the regrettably pink room. "I'll see you in the morning."
Once the door shut, Spinelli put his elbows to his knees, hunched over and started to thread his fingers through his hair and pull hard, listening to Henry Rollin's voice croon into the now vacated room.
"I was so wasted, I was a hippie, I was a burnout,
I was a dropout, I was out of my head, I was a surfer,
I had a skateboard, I was so heavy man, I lived on the strand
I was so wasted, I was so fucked up, I was so messed up.
I was so screwed up, I was out of my head, I was so jacked up,
I was so drunk up, I was so knocked out, I was out of my head
I was so wasted, I was wasted."
*
Note: There you have it, folks. The science part may not be right and I may not have things 100% straight on cannon-Spinelli facts, so give me a little slack? This was my first GH fic, and my first time ever writing in Spinelli-speak. I don't think I did to bad, but what do you think?
Thanks again!