___________________________________________________________________

The Longest Night

This chapter takes place on February 7th in the city of Port Charles, New York between the hour 7pm and 8pm.

Chapter Four

The Second Hour- Part One

7:00 pm

"You know there is no way in hell I'm gonna let that bitch get her claws any deeper into Spinelli, right?" Maxie asked

She sat on the edge of Kate's desk, with one leg crossed over the other, passing a bottle of vodka back and forth with Johnny. She was still reeling over the fact that Spinelli brought Winifred as his date to this charity benefit and, to make it worse, he didn't even tell Maxie about it beforehand.

Sure he had tried to explain that it was last minute and about some kind of 'job' they were doing together, but Maxie knew better, even if Spinelli didn't. Winifred was using him to get ahead in her career. She would chew him up and spit out only bones- if Maxie let her. But she wouldn't.

No way in hell.

He was her best friend and she would protect him.

It just pissed her off that he so easily fell for Winifred's act. What the hell was that all about? How could he get things from her that he couldn't get from Maxie? It made her feel sick....and less...and angry.

Angry enough to destroy someone or something. Maybe just her best chance at happiness. Maybe her illusions. Maybe Lulu....that used to be her favorite pastime.

She honestly didn't know what she wanted that night. But she knew she didn't want to be alone- thinking too hard. And that is where Johnny came into the picture. So she had pulled him into the elevator, taken him to the Crimson offices and they were having a private party all of their own.

Johnny said "Just tell him you want him. Problem solved."

"Uh, excuse you? Presume much? Did I say I wanted Spinelli? We are best friends. That is beyond sex...mostly."

"Mostly?" His eyes glazed over slightly.

"You're imagining it. I can't believe you. You are standing there and fantasizing about what it would be like to see me in the sack with another guy."

"You're crazy."

She smiled widely. "Oh, I get it. You're picturing me and you together. Well, that figures. Not like it would be the first time you've done that. Dating Lulu, I'm really not surprised that you have a vivid fantasy life. You would have to."

"What is it with you two? You diss each other but you also are tighter than most chicks I know. You work together, live together, and risk prison together. Not to mention you screw each other's men on the regular."

Maxie slapped his chest. "That only happened once...so far."

"What about Spinelli?"

"You think Lulu has slept with him?"

"You don't?"

Maxie popped off the desk. "Did she tell you that? I swear I better not be the last to know because if I am..." She grabbed Johnny's shirt and tugged him very close to her lips. "Payback is a bitch."

Then her mouth was on his. Not for the first time....and with the way it felt to kiss him...more than likely not for the last either.

XXXXXXXXX

7:06 pm

Carly knew she should be down at the benefit but she couldn't work up the energy to pry herself off the couch in penthouse three of the Metro Court, where her and Jason had just spent the last half an hour talking about everything from why Jax had once again run off to help someone in his family-this time his mother, he said- to why Jason had to get Spinelli out of trouble with the Feds, while at the same time not getting his own self killed by a rival mob family who would want to take him out for snitching.

And talking about Michael, their little boy that she still couldn't stop believing would wake up one day. Carly could see fear in Jason's eyes when that subject came up, warring with the guilt and chased by the regrets, but she knew he didn't have to worry so much about her. She wouldn't lose herself in delusions this time, like she did when she ended up in the mental hospital a few years back.

Then Jason's memory was lost and he couldn't save her from herself....and she couldn't save him back. They were both lost, grasping in the dark for the other.

But now they were together. Now they could bear this pain and misery holding hands, and that made all the difference.

No matter how crazy things got, Carly never felt like she was drowning when Jason was by her side. He was more than her lifeline, he was the breath that went back into her lungs when she was nearly dead and about to give up on this life.

He called her a fighter. It was because he gave her the strength to be that tough. She hoped she gave the same right back to him.

"Michael would like this," Jason told her. "That you're helping other kids who need it."

"Yeah, he would. He hated to share his stuff with Morgan but every year at Christmas he loved taking gifts to the kids at the hospital. It wouldn't have been same going to the holiday party without him this year. I had Mercedes take Morgan, I couldn't be there if Michael wasn't...."

Jason nodded. Without saying a word, he pulled her into his arms, letting her head rest on his shoulder, where she stayed for a few more minutes, minutes when she should have been playing hostess but the rest of the world could wait.

She needed Jason right now. And he instinctively knew that. Soon she would gather up her nerve and push down her memories, and face the whole town with a smile on her lips again, but for the next couple of minutes she would just let Jason hold her.

Nothing on earth felt as safe to Carly as being in his arms. Nothing else felt as right. It was home for her.

(I'm going home

to the place where I belong

where your love has always been

enough for me.

I'm running from?

I think you got me all wrong.

I don't regret this life I chose for me.

But these places and these spaces

are getting old.

So I'm going home.) (Daughtry)

XXXXXXXXX

7:07 pm

Johnny stood there stiffly, as Maxie kissed him, fighting the urge to give into her, haul her back onto the desk and see what she was wearing underneath her sexy low cut couture gown.

Satin? Lace? Nothing at all?

But he didn't.

Images ofa different blonde...memories of promises whispered in her ear....thoughts about who he should be and should want....warred in his mind, keeping him stiff and unresponsive. Making him wonder if he was crazy to be in Kate's office with Maxie, guzzling back top shelf vodka and talking about everything but the intense vibe that sparked between them every time their eyes met. Was he nuts to be here when he should be with his girlfriend? Or was the crazy thing not kissing Maxie back?

He jerked away from her. "Whoa, slow down. You don't want to do this."

She let out a sigh, searching his eyes, then confessed "I haven't known what I wanted since the moment I saw my sister laying dead on the steps in the park...so what else is new?"

XXXXXXXXX

7: 09 pm

Lucky Spencer didn't know what to make of seeing Sam arrive at the party on the arm of a stranger. He wasn't even sure they were broken up.

He had asked her to think long and hard about what she wanted and then call him. Obviously she didn't call. She just moved on.

It stung. Even if his heart was bruised, battered and confused. After all he had been through in the last three years....getting married to his high school sweetheart, cheating on her, getting hooked on drugs, thinking he would have two more kids and finding out later that Maxie was lying and so was Liz, grieving that loss, then the loss of his best friend Emily, learning to put one step in front of the other and move on, forgiving himself and others.....trying to make it work with Sam....even though all that he hadn't learned one hard lesson. Yesterday's hurt didn't mute today's heartbreak anyway.

Seeing Sam laughing and smiling with some other guy was like a knife slowly being twisted and turned in his chest.

She really didn't believe Lucky loved her. Huh. If it wasn't love, why did it hurt like this?

Cruz noticed Lucky glaring at Sam's date and as Lucky started toward the other man, Cruz grabbed his shoulder. "You really should not start something here. Talk to her later."

Lucky shook him off. "I'm all right. Have fun, you two," he briefly smiled at Cruz's date, Lainey Winters before heading across the restaurant to talk to his girlfriend.

Or rather...his ex- girlfriend, by the looks of things.

"Sam."

She froze for a moment, just long enough for Lucky to notice, then turned and smiled brightly at him. "Hey. I didn't know you would be here tonight. Where's Liz?"

"Working."

"So you will see her later then? Spend some time being a big happy family? Maybe you should head over to the hospital so you can wait on bended knee outside the doors for her. Just so she knows you are really there for her."

"Sam," Lucky warned her to stop.

"What?" She smiled and then wrapped her arm around the arm of the man next to her. "Lucky you haven't met Ethan yet, have you? Ethan Lovett, Lucky Spencer."

Ethan said "Hey, mate. G'day."

"Nice accent you got there. Australia?"

"Round bouts that way."

"Hmm. What brings you to Port Charles?" Lucky asked.

Sam made a screwed up face. "That's enough with the interrogation routine."

Lucky asked "Can I speak to you alone?"

Sam sighed but followed him a few feet away. "What? Seriously. What I do is no longer any of your business."

He said "I'm just concerned about who you are getting involved with. How well do you know this guy?"

"Not well enough to say his name to you right before we have sex." With that said, she walked back to Ethan and pulled him onto the dance floor again.

XXXXXXXXX

7:14 pm

Claudia silently fumed as she walked around the Grille, weaving through the crowd of party goers. Being married to Sonny was a pain in the ass.

Not only did she have to waste away her day soothing his fragile ego but she also had to worry about her own emotions getting caught up in this marriage of convenience. Emotions like anger, bitterness, and fear. Things she didn't want to feel ever second of every waking day. But Sonny brought that all out of her- kinda like her father did.

The one emotion she didn't have to worry about ever feeling for Sonny through was love.

That was not on her agenda.

The devil would be holding ice skating parties in Hell before she gave her heart away to someone like Sonny but that didn't mean she wasn't territorial over the fact that he was her husband.

She wanted the respect she was due as Mrs. Corinthos, was that too much to fucking ask?

Apparently, it was. Because when Claudia had climbed out of the limo she wrapped her arm around Sonny's, ready to head inside and away from the annoying Mayor, D.A., Old Man Quatermaine and his lush of a daughter, but Sonny had shook her off and walked back to the limo- just in time to reach his hand out and help Alexis out of the vehicle.

It pissed Claudia off big time.

Where was Alexis when mob shit was going down? What did Alexis know about their world?

Sure she had his kid but Claudia was the one who was putting in work being married to the asshole. She thought that should earn her something from him....but it would never get her even one look from Sonny that compared to the way he looked at Alexis.

It burned her to know she wasn't winning him over the way she wanted...maybe even needed to in order to stay alive...but she would make adjustments to her plan and fix that. She would have Sonny eating out of her hand and believing he was in love with her sooner rather than later.

Count on it.

She was willing to go to any means necessary to assure that. She didn't come this far to have the power she now held slip out of her grasp. It was just a lot more frustrating to be his wife then she had bargained for.

Her anger tonight wasn't about Sonny- not really- but about the fact that he had disrespected her and treated her as a castoff, like her father did her whole life. It made her feel more alone that ever.

There was a reason she never wanted to be married. She never wanted to feel like a discarded wife, the same thing her mother eventually became. And all over a man she had no feelings for, while the one she really wanted slipped further and further out of her grasp each day. She thought Ric might be the kind of man who could understand that everything she did was a piece of a plot....part of a master plan...that the lies were weapons and the way she acted only a facade. She had thought he got her.

But obviously he didn't.

Claudia never cried over any man before in her life. So she wasn't about to shed any tears over Ric. Besides maybe it wasn't too late to convince him what she was doing would work and that, in the end, it would be all worth it.

She had almost talked herself off the ledge when she suddenly spotted Ric kissing Claire.

What Claudia would have done for a gun at that moment. Somebody really ought to die if she was feeling this fucked up inside.