viscosity
chapter one
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, so on and so forth.
Author's Note: Liason fic. Pure and simple. Liason, Liason, Liason. Carly/Liz friendship, Sonny/Liz friendship. Will get angsty. This part is primarily intro. Speculation fic, takes place in about three months.
Feedback: Yes, please! Let me know what you think. :D
Sometimes, most of the time, it was the little things that made her think about him. She'd see broken glass alongside the curb, and she'd think of him. She'd hear a door slam, and she'd look up and hope that it was him. She'd hear a sound vaguely like the cracking of pool balls, and she'd hope it was him. She'd smell the diesel odor of a motorcycle, and she'd pray he would ride by and offer her a ride.
Elizabeth Webber was okay without Jason Morgan in her life. She was okay. She had to tell herself that a lot, but she was okay. She had to be okay. She had no other options. She had been okay the other times, when he had ridden away from her on that motorcycle of his, and she would be okay this time; she could see him with Courtney and be okay with it. She had to be.
This was the mantra she repeated to herself every night as she closed up Kelly's, scrubbing down tables and sweeping the floors. She just told herself she was okay until she wanted to throw up. Two months; it had only been two months ago that the car accident had happened, that Jason and Brenda were exonerated of Luis Alcazar's murder, two months ago that Jason had told Sonny about Courtney, two months ago that Sonny had demanded Jason make a choice, and if Jason chose Courtney, he would regret it. Two months ago that Ric Lansing left town to attend to his own affairs. He had kissed her goodbye as they were kissing their unborn relationship goodbye.
She had been relieved in a sad, weird way.
She wiped down the counter and tossed the rag onto its shiny surface, and she smiled to herself. She was still standing, still breathing, and she was doing more than surviving. She may not have been happy, but she was alive. If she entertained any ideas of getting back together-or getting together for the first time or falling madly in love with each other and spending the rest of their lives together-then she would probably go insane, probably go running around Port Charles tearing her hair out. If she thought about it too much, she started realizing how much she missed him, how much she needed him, how much she was hurting.
Jason Morgan and Elizabeth Webber were not meant to be. That was the best way to think about it. If she thought about it that way, then she could get through her days with a genuine smile.
Sonny Corinthos was going to fund her art gallery opening. They had gone after everything had fallen apart and found another studio, and Sonny, who understood, Sonny, who cared like he was her older brother, Sonny had told her he would pay for all of it, because she needed something to hold onto. Even Carly was on board, tying in the opening to the opening of her club.
She untied her apron and laid it on the counter next to the rag. The memories came like this sometimes, hitting her in the face like a mack truck. Nobody had called her, no one had told her what had happened; she had to see it on the news, that a car containing one Jason Morgan and one Courtney Quartermaine had crashed into a snow bank. The two were taken into the intensive care unit immediately.
It had been much, much different than when Jason had been arrested for Alcazar's murder. She had known that Sonny would get Jason out of it, because Jason hadn't done it. Sonny wouldn't let his best friend go to jail, and Carly would claw tooth and nail before she saw that happen. But that, that moment when she had thought that maybe Jason was dead, she knew. And she had gone straight to the hospital. All thoughts of Courtney, all thoughts of Ric had flown from her mind, and all that existed was Jason.
She tried to put the memories away, to ignore them, but they were angry and they were tearing at her, asking her to do something, say something, to run into the wind like it didn't matter. She let her legs carry her to the other side of Kelly's, and she opened and then locked the door behind her, feeling the cold, winter, night air whip up around her, pulling, pushing, prodding, pleading.
The hospital had been cold, uninviting, and she couldn't seem to find anyone she knew, in spite of the fact that she knew everyone in Port Charles. Every face had been unfamiliar, terrifying. And then Sonny had seen her, come to her, and Carly had looked at her with sad eyes, and she pleaded, begged, in a tightly restrained voice if he was okay, if he had survived, if she could see him, and Sonny only shook his head and told her that they didn't know. She had felt herself start to break, but she never hit the ground, because Sonny had caught her in his arms and let her bawl in the security of his warmth until the cold snowy morning came and went, until Carly was curled up in his lap, softly snoring, and Elizabeth had stared at the walls, waiting for something, anything.
Courtney had come in and out of surgery. It was Jason who had taken the brunt of the injuries. All that time, Elizabeth had tried to be strong, but she could not be strong, not that time, not with the man she loved, the man she had always loved for as long as she could remember being a woman, not with him lying in a hospital bed, cold and unaware.
That was two months ago.
She walked home in the still night air, walked to the studio, even though the studio held too many memories, too many fears, too many anxieties-too many memories of all the times someone had run away from someone they loved. The studio remembered the smell of Lucky, the feel of Zander, remembered the warmth of Jason, the anger of Nikolas. It remembered the small red glass fragments on the floor, some of which still lay there, embedded in the wood, and in the night sometimes they would twinkle, taunting her silently with her fear and her indecision. She opened the door, and the lights blinked at her, and she stepped over them.
Eventually, the doctors had come, Tony and Bobbie, and they had looked as tired as Carly and Sonny and Elizabeth felt. Alan and Monica had watched on, their somber parents' faces firmly in place, and AJ was wandering around somewhere, being sullen and angry and aggrieved for himself.
He's still in critical condition, she thought she had heard someone say. We're not sure he'll make it through the night. She thought she heard someone cry out then, and she realized it was herself, and Sonny gathered her to him, and Carly had wrapped her arms around both of them, and Elizabeth whispered to both of them that she didn't know what she'd do without Jason, and Carly had whispered back that she knew, that she understood, that she felt the same way. They were an awkward trio, joined together in a time when the person they all loved the most could easily have just slipped away and been gone forever.
Elizabeth walked across the studio, dropping her coat onto the ground, unheeded. The days had become too long, the nights too dark, the days too lonely, and her hands had become too callused because of all the painting she had done. She had to. That was what she needed, the creativity, the catharsis, the expression of what she had kept inside for so long.
He had survived the night, and the next one, and the next one, but he was unconscious, and they waited days just for him to wake up and Courtney had held vigil over his side, maintaining that they were engaged, that they were going to spend the night together. All through it, Carly had held Elizabeth's hand, and Elizabeth felt an affinity for the woman she had never felt before. Carly had blamed Courtney; she didn't say as much, unusual for her, but she blamed the girl for what had happened to Jason, and in some way, she was probably closer to the truth than she wanted to be.
Never had Elizabeth Webber and Carly Corinthos been friends, but seeing one of the men they loved most in the world in the condition he was in made them realize something important about each other: they weren't that different. When Jason finally woke up, both Carly and Sonny had urged her to go in to see him, to talk to him, to tell him everything that had been tattooed on her face and in her heart for all the time he had been in the hospital, but she couldn't. They insisted, and she begged them not to make her. Jason didn't want to see her, she told them.
As soon as she found out he was okay, she had left the hospital and gone back to her studio and started to paint. Carly had come to visit a few days later, and Sonny the day after that, but Jason had never come. Carly told her that Jason and Courtney had broken up, but she didn't know why.
Elizabeth desperately needed Jason to be happy, wherever he was, whatever he was doing.
She put her paintbrush down lightly on the tray below the easel, and she stared at her latest piece of work, at the mass of gray perched on the piece of wood. She had been able to create beautiful, brilliant pictures after the accident, but now it all came out gray, lonely, desolate. She could be happy without him; she was fine without him. She had new friends, friends brought to her from a near-tragedy. She and Carly went out from time to time, went shopping, went to get their hair done, and people they both knew looked at them strangely, and Carly and Elizabeth took turns snapping at them.
Sonny had become a brother to her, a very caring, very protective older brother. And Jason had just disappeared from her life. Gone, never to be seen again, at least as far as Elizabeth Webber was concerned.
She stared at her painting and then decided she had to get out, had to go somewhere. She was feeling too alone, too sorry for herself, and that was an ugly place to be. Her walls were caving, the bricks she had carefully laid and placed around her, building herself into a small little box, safe but confining. She picked up her coat and slid it over her shoulders, and she left the studio again, left the studio with its memories.
She walked until the night air was too cold, walked until her ears were frozen and her lungs burned from the inhalation of the icy air. The world placed her down again on Pier 52, where she always seemed to end up. The irony was almost too much, but it was also beyond her. She sat down on the cold bench and she stared into the sky, waiting for it to provide her with some sort of divine answer, but she knew there would be none to have.
"I wished for happiness," she called to the night air, and it whispered back to her, but she could make out no words. "I wanted love. I wanted someone to love me, and I wanted to love him back. And I found him-but he's lost now."
The world had no answers for her, and she began to laugh, began to laugh because she remembered all of the times Jason had asked her to go away with him, of all of the times he had moved in for the kiss, of all of the times she had been too terrified, too frozen with fear to respond, and she had made excuses to him, because that was easier than putting herself into the position to love again. She laughed because she had once loved someone and he had been lost to her, and she laughed because she loved someone now and she had lost him because she had been too scared.
"What's so funny?" she heard, and she stopped, recognizing the voice immediately, but the chuckles still disrupted her stream of thought, her giggles still interrupted her ability to speak.
Jason came down the steps, and she realized that this was the first time she had seen him since the accident. He wasn't gone, he had never left, and now he was standing there, just staring at her the way he always did, just looking at her as though he could see right through her brick wall. And he probably could, she thought.
"I was just thinking," she said to him, and she had to cover her mouth with her hand and bite the inside of her middle finger to keep from laughing. The familiar smile she knew so well tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he wanted to laugh at her, wanted to be amused by her.
"About?" he asked, and he came and sat down next to her.
"About how stupid I am sometimes."
"Yes," he replied. "You are stupid sometimes."
"Thanks," she told him softly, and she was acutely aware of how close he was to her. Her hands hummed, her brain screamed at her to do something, kiss him, hug him, do anything to let him know that she was still there, that she was always there.
"It's dark out. It's dangerous for you to be out here, Elizabeth."
She wanted him to hold her, to cradle her to him and tell her that everything would be okay, but she knew that they were beyond that. It would take more than gentle words and hand-holding to rebuild what they had. The trust had been trampled.
"I have to leave again," he said to her, and her stomach plummeted.
She had heard this too many times, played this game with him before. He would leave-for a year, maybe, maybe longer-and then he would come back and they would rebuild everything they had, and it was like starting from scratch.
"Okay," she whispered, and her laughter had become tears that threatened to fall, and she clutched her hands, and she realized that those appendages were shaking.
"I'll be back in a couple of days," he told her.
She didn't understand what he said at first, but then she got it, and a warmth filled her pelvis and her abdomen and everything surrounding that, and the warmth spread like sunlight to all of her limbs. "Oh," she whispered.
"I'll be back in time for your opening," he told her.
"Okay," was all she could say, and he reached out his hand to her, holding it only a few inches over her clasped hands, and he hesitated. Then he pulled his hand back, as though he were afraid to touch her-even with the protection of both of their gloves.
He stood and he walked away from her, not looking back, but there were promises of the future in the air.
"I can love him enough for the both of us," she whispered to the night air, and she smiled so that the world could see it. It was only the beginning.
chapter one
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, so on and so forth.
Author's Note: Liason fic. Pure and simple. Liason, Liason, Liason. Carly/Liz friendship, Sonny/Liz friendship. Will get angsty. This part is primarily intro. Speculation fic, takes place in about three months.
Feedback: Yes, please! Let me know what you think. :D
Sometimes, most of the time, it was the little things that made her think about him. She'd see broken glass alongside the curb, and she'd think of him. She'd hear a door slam, and she'd look up and hope that it was him. She'd hear a sound vaguely like the cracking of pool balls, and she'd hope it was him. She'd smell the diesel odor of a motorcycle, and she'd pray he would ride by and offer her a ride.
Elizabeth Webber was okay without Jason Morgan in her life. She was okay. She had to tell herself that a lot, but she was okay. She had to be okay. She had no other options. She had been okay the other times, when he had ridden away from her on that motorcycle of his, and she would be okay this time; she could see him with Courtney and be okay with it. She had to be.
This was the mantra she repeated to herself every night as she closed up Kelly's, scrubbing down tables and sweeping the floors. She just told herself she was okay until she wanted to throw up. Two months; it had only been two months ago that the car accident had happened, that Jason and Brenda were exonerated of Luis Alcazar's murder, two months ago that Jason had told Sonny about Courtney, two months ago that Sonny had demanded Jason make a choice, and if Jason chose Courtney, he would regret it. Two months ago that Ric Lansing left town to attend to his own affairs. He had kissed her goodbye as they were kissing their unborn relationship goodbye.
She had been relieved in a sad, weird way.
She wiped down the counter and tossed the rag onto its shiny surface, and she smiled to herself. She was still standing, still breathing, and she was doing more than surviving. She may not have been happy, but she was alive. If she entertained any ideas of getting back together-or getting together for the first time or falling madly in love with each other and spending the rest of their lives together-then she would probably go insane, probably go running around Port Charles tearing her hair out. If she thought about it too much, she started realizing how much she missed him, how much she needed him, how much she was hurting.
Jason Morgan and Elizabeth Webber were not meant to be. That was the best way to think about it. If she thought about it that way, then she could get through her days with a genuine smile.
Sonny Corinthos was going to fund her art gallery opening. They had gone after everything had fallen apart and found another studio, and Sonny, who understood, Sonny, who cared like he was her older brother, Sonny had told her he would pay for all of it, because she needed something to hold onto. Even Carly was on board, tying in the opening to the opening of her club.
She untied her apron and laid it on the counter next to the rag. The memories came like this sometimes, hitting her in the face like a mack truck. Nobody had called her, no one had told her what had happened; she had to see it on the news, that a car containing one Jason Morgan and one Courtney Quartermaine had crashed into a snow bank. The two were taken into the intensive care unit immediately.
It had been much, much different than when Jason had been arrested for Alcazar's murder. She had known that Sonny would get Jason out of it, because Jason hadn't done it. Sonny wouldn't let his best friend go to jail, and Carly would claw tooth and nail before she saw that happen. But that, that moment when she had thought that maybe Jason was dead, she knew. And she had gone straight to the hospital. All thoughts of Courtney, all thoughts of Ric had flown from her mind, and all that existed was Jason.
She tried to put the memories away, to ignore them, but they were angry and they were tearing at her, asking her to do something, say something, to run into the wind like it didn't matter. She let her legs carry her to the other side of Kelly's, and she opened and then locked the door behind her, feeling the cold, winter, night air whip up around her, pulling, pushing, prodding, pleading.
The hospital had been cold, uninviting, and she couldn't seem to find anyone she knew, in spite of the fact that she knew everyone in Port Charles. Every face had been unfamiliar, terrifying. And then Sonny had seen her, come to her, and Carly had looked at her with sad eyes, and she pleaded, begged, in a tightly restrained voice if he was okay, if he had survived, if she could see him, and Sonny only shook his head and told her that they didn't know. She had felt herself start to break, but she never hit the ground, because Sonny had caught her in his arms and let her bawl in the security of his warmth until the cold snowy morning came and went, until Carly was curled up in his lap, softly snoring, and Elizabeth had stared at the walls, waiting for something, anything.
Courtney had come in and out of surgery. It was Jason who had taken the brunt of the injuries. All that time, Elizabeth had tried to be strong, but she could not be strong, not that time, not with the man she loved, the man she had always loved for as long as she could remember being a woman, not with him lying in a hospital bed, cold and unaware.
That was two months ago.
She walked home in the still night air, walked to the studio, even though the studio held too many memories, too many fears, too many anxieties-too many memories of all the times someone had run away from someone they loved. The studio remembered the smell of Lucky, the feel of Zander, remembered the warmth of Jason, the anger of Nikolas. It remembered the small red glass fragments on the floor, some of which still lay there, embedded in the wood, and in the night sometimes they would twinkle, taunting her silently with her fear and her indecision. She opened the door, and the lights blinked at her, and she stepped over them.
Eventually, the doctors had come, Tony and Bobbie, and they had looked as tired as Carly and Sonny and Elizabeth felt. Alan and Monica had watched on, their somber parents' faces firmly in place, and AJ was wandering around somewhere, being sullen and angry and aggrieved for himself.
He's still in critical condition, she thought she had heard someone say. We're not sure he'll make it through the night. She thought she heard someone cry out then, and she realized it was herself, and Sonny gathered her to him, and Carly had wrapped her arms around both of them, and Elizabeth whispered to both of them that she didn't know what she'd do without Jason, and Carly had whispered back that she knew, that she understood, that she felt the same way. They were an awkward trio, joined together in a time when the person they all loved the most could easily have just slipped away and been gone forever.
Elizabeth walked across the studio, dropping her coat onto the ground, unheeded. The days had become too long, the nights too dark, the days too lonely, and her hands had become too callused because of all the painting she had done. She had to. That was what she needed, the creativity, the catharsis, the expression of what she had kept inside for so long.
He had survived the night, and the next one, and the next one, but he was unconscious, and they waited days just for him to wake up and Courtney had held vigil over his side, maintaining that they were engaged, that they were going to spend the night together. All through it, Carly had held Elizabeth's hand, and Elizabeth felt an affinity for the woman she had never felt before. Carly had blamed Courtney; she didn't say as much, unusual for her, but she blamed the girl for what had happened to Jason, and in some way, she was probably closer to the truth than she wanted to be.
Never had Elizabeth Webber and Carly Corinthos been friends, but seeing one of the men they loved most in the world in the condition he was in made them realize something important about each other: they weren't that different. When Jason finally woke up, both Carly and Sonny had urged her to go in to see him, to talk to him, to tell him everything that had been tattooed on her face and in her heart for all the time he had been in the hospital, but she couldn't. They insisted, and she begged them not to make her. Jason didn't want to see her, she told them.
As soon as she found out he was okay, she had left the hospital and gone back to her studio and started to paint. Carly had come to visit a few days later, and Sonny the day after that, but Jason had never come. Carly told her that Jason and Courtney had broken up, but she didn't know why.
Elizabeth desperately needed Jason to be happy, wherever he was, whatever he was doing.
She put her paintbrush down lightly on the tray below the easel, and she stared at her latest piece of work, at the mass of gray perched on the piece of wood. She had been able to create beautiful, brilliant pictures after the accident, but now it all came out gray, lonely, desolate. She could be happy without him; she was fine without him. She had new friends, friends brought to her from a near-tragedy. She and Carly went out from time to time, went shopping, went to get their hair done, and people they both knew looked at them strangely, and Carly and Elizabeth took turns snapping at them.
Sonny had become a brother to her, a very caring, very protective older brother. And Jason had just disappeared from her life. Gone, never to be seen again, at least as far as Elizabeth Webber was concerned.
She stared at her painting and then decided she had to get out, had to go somewhere. She was feeling too alone, too sorry for herself, and that was an ugly place to be. Her walls were caving, the bricks she had carefully laid and placed around her, building herself into a small little box, safe but confining. She picked up her coat and slid it over her shoulders, and she left the studio again, left the studio with its memories.
She walked until the night air was too cold, walked until her ears were frozen and her lungs burned from the inhalation of the icy air. The world placed her down again on Pier 52, where she always seemed to end up. The irony was almost too much, but it was also beyond her. She sat down on the cold bench and she stared into the sky, waiting for it to provide her with some sort of divine answer, but she knew there would be none to have.
"I wished for happiness," she called to the night air, and it whispered back to her, but she could make out no words. "I wanted love. I wanted someone to love me, and I wanted to love him back. And I found him-but he's lost now."
The world had no answers for her, and she began to laugh, began to laugh because she remembered all of the times Jason had asked her to go away with him, of all of the times he had moved in for the kiss, of all of the times she had been too terrified, too frozen with fear to respond, and she had made excuses to him, because that was easier than putting herself into the position to love again. She laughed because she had once loved someone and he had been lost to her, and she laughed because she loved someone now and she had lost him because she had been too scared.
"What's so funny?" she heard, and she stopped, recognizing the voice immediately, but the chuckles still disrupted her stream of thought, her giggles still interrupted her ability to speak.
Jason came down the steps, and she realized that this was the first time she had seen him since the accident. He wasn't gone, he had never left, and now he was standing there, just staring at her the way he always did, just looking at her as though he could see right through her brick wall. And he probably could, she thought.
"I was just thinking," she said to him, and she had to cover her mouth with her hand and bite the inside of her middle finger to keep from laughing. The familiar smile she knew so well tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he wanted to laugh at her, wanted to be amused by her.
"About?" he asked, and he came and sat down next to her.
"About how stupid I am sometimes."
"Yes," he replied. "You are stupid sometimes."
"Thanks," she told him softly, and she was acutely aware of how close he was to her. Her hands hummed, her brain screamed at her to do something, kiss him, hug him, do anything to let him know that she was still there, that she was always there.
"It's dark out. It's dangerous for you to be out here, Elizabeth."
She wanted him to hold her, to cradle her to him and tell her that everything would be okay, but she knew that they were beyond that. It would take more than gentle words and hand-holding to rebuild what they had. The trust had been trampled.
"I have to leave again," he said to her, and her stomach plummeted.
She had heard this too many times, played this game with him before. He would leave-for a year, maybe, maybe longer-and then he would come back and they would rebuild everything they had, and it was like starting from scratch.
"Okay," she whispered, and her laughter had become tears that threatened to fall, and she clutched her hands, and she realized that those appendages were shaking.
"I'll be back in a couple of days," he told her.
She didn't understand what he said at first, but then she got it, and a warmth filled her pelvis and her abdomen and everything surrounding that, and the warmth spread like sunlight to all of her limbs. "Oh," she whispered.
"I'll be back in time for your opening," he told her.
"Okay," was all she could say, and he reached out his hand to her, holding it only a few inches over her clasped hands, and he hesitated. Then he pulled his hand back, as though he were afraid to touch her-even with the protection of both of their gloves.
He stood and he walked away from her, not looking back, but there were promises of the future in the air.
"I can love him enough for the both of us," she whispered to the night air, and she smiled so that the world could see it. It was only the beginning.