Author's Note: I'll be going back through at some point and cleaning up the fact that Liz had a boy not a girl and the baby's name.
Forgotten Friends – 6
Dante sits at the top of the stairs, he can hear the low rumble of Lucky's voice and Nikolas' short responses, Lucky sounds pissed, Nikolas sounds irritated. Dante still has his gun in his hand and he's already placed the call.
Tim and Colby will be here shortly to take Nikolas away. He doesn't know, or care where they'll stash him while they wait for their mole hole to be plugged or for it to be safe to move Emily to another property.
He just knows that Nikolas staying with them is not a feasible option.
One, because he's a Cassadine.
Two, because he's a Cassadine that had been married to one of Emily's clones, the one that had taken her name and her whole identity and lived her life for her while she stayed confined in a pretty room masquerading as a cell and no option of leaving.
He hears footsteps behind him and Emily is against the wall, she's found a baseball bat from god knows where and is holding it loosely in her hands.
"It's okay," he says softly and she looks at him.
Her eyes are wide and full of fear and there's a hint of anger there, probably at feeling fear in the first place. She sags against the wall behind him and slides down it so she's sitting, her knees and side are pressed against Dante's back, he keeps an eye on the bottom of the stairs.
"No one came back," she says, he shifts away from the wall and lets her squeeze into the place between his body and the wall, lets her lean into his side and hopes that Tim and Colby take Nikolas out the kitchen entrance instead of traipsing him through the house.
It's dark enough, with no lights on, that he doesn't think that Nikolas would be able to see her but better to be safe then sorry.
"Waiting for Tim and Colby to come pick up our intruder," Dante says. He looks over and she's holding the bat between her knees hands wrapped around the handle.
"I thought," she bites her lip. "I thought I heard Nikolas' voice," she says, she glances over at him out of the corner of her eye.
Dante sighs. "That's because you did," he says.
Emily stares at him, blinking in incomprehension.
"Apparently he wanted to know what was going on and decided that breaking into a WSB safe house in the middle of the night was the way to get whatever answers he thought he was entitled to," Dante says, "he's lucky I didn't shoot first and check his identity later." He shakes his head because he can't figure out why or how anyone would think the right way to go about getting answers was to break into a safe house guarded by guys with guns.
If anything it's going to make Lucky want to keep Emily even tighter under lock and key, Dante thinks that going to a different safe house in a different city (possibly even a different country, but that might be pushing it too far) might not be remiss.
"That's so stupid," Emily mutters. She drags a hand through her hair and they sit there, Emily leaning into his side with her bat and Dante with his gun.
There's the sound of a door opening and closing in the direction of the kitchen and then the sound of raised voices, Colby's then Nikolas', then Lucky's all talking over one another.
Then there's the sound of another door opening and shutting again and silence. Dante still sits there and waits.
Finally Lucky appears at the bottom of the stairs, he looks tired and angry and frustrated.
Dante comes to his feet, Emily following his movements, she holds the bat loosely in her hand and Lucky looks at it then her then trains his eyes on Dante who shrugs because he knows what the look is asking for and he hasn't got the faintest clue where the bat came from.
He walks down the steps and stops right in front of Lucky, he doesn't touch him. Lucky is doing the vibrating angry thing where if Dante touches him Lucky will push him off or say something snide and mean. Times like this it's always better for Lucky to touch him first and it takes a minute of the two of them standing there staring at each other, of Emily coming down the stairs almost to the bottom and stopping on the step above Dante.
She's leaning against the wall and watching them.
Waiting, like Dante is. Finally Lucky leans forward and presses his forehead against Dante's shoulder, his hands hang at his sides but Dante reaches out with one and presses it to the back of his head. Bends down and lays his cheek against the top of Lucky's head.
"Sometimes I hate him," Lucky says, his voice is muffled by his t-shirt.
"And others?" Dante asks. He knows the answer to this question; they've had this same discussion a few times.
"He's my brother," Lucky says. "I accepted Ethan, I should…" be able to accept Nikolas.
"Ethan didn't betray you the way that Nikolas did," Dante says. Lucky makes a sound against his shoulder, his 'I know you're right' sound. Lucky's never gone into the exact circumstances but Dante knows enough to know that Nikolas had slept with someone that Lucky had been in love with. That was as much detail as Lucky had been willing to go into.
When Dante had met Lucky he'd still been raw from that happening. Might still be raw from it though Dante likes to think maybe not as raw as he'd been.
Dante glances over at Emily and she's looking at them with a fond expression on her face.
"So how do we feel about sharing a room for the interim?" Lucky asks. His head is still pressed against Dante's shoulder but Dante can see Emily shrug and look at him with a questioning expression on her face.
Dante knows this is Lucky's way of keeping all his important people in one room, so that he can keep both eyes on all of them without running the risk of them running off with one another.
"I could sleep a bit more," Emily says. Dante nods.
They'll put Lucky in the middle; make it a little less awkward. Dante might even close his eyes and actually try to sleep.
LS&DF
"I used to have such a crush on Nikolas," Emily says when they get up a couple of hours later, it's almost eleven but Dante pours them all bowls of cereal anyway.
She thought she'd wake up and feel out of place, weird. Especially since when she woke up she could look over Lucky's body and see Dante curled up on his other side, arm tossed over his chest and Lucky's head sharing a pillow with him.
Lucky had always been all about Elizabeth and Sarah… about girls when she'd known him before. She's never known him to even think about looking at another guy, at any guy.
It's going to take some getting used to, take time to actually wrap her mind around the reality of it.
She likes Dante though; he's been nothing but amazingly kind and patient with her since they got her off the island. He remembered a conversation that she only half-remembers having in the first place about breakfast cereals and how she likes her coffee and how she's a Coke not a Pepsi person and he managed to stock the kitchen so that almost all her comfort foods are represented.
She likes him. More then that, she trusts him.
Because Lucky does, yes. But also because he sent her to Lucky and he let her lean on him and talk to him when she knew that he really just wanted to be unconscious.
"Yeah, your taste in guys was pretty bad, I mean he's a better choice then Juan or Zander, but…" Lucky says, he shoots her a sidelong glance that is full of mischief and humor and also tells her that he believes that.
"Just because he's a Cassadine doesn't make him a bad person," Emily says. Nikolas has always been more then his name in her eyes, it was the friendship that they shared for a lot of years and the fact that when she needed her friends, he was definitely counted among them.
"He's not a bad person," Lucky says. His nose wrinkles and his eyes are far away, he looks over at Dante and Dante raises an eyebrow at him. "I still won't be leaving him alone in a room with Dante for, I don't know, ever."
Emily blinks at him and Lucky concentrates intently on his cereal and Dante just shrugs at her when she looks at him.
She'll have to corner Lucky later and find out what exactly he's talking about.
LS&DF
"Nikolas and Elizabeth had an affair," Lucky says. It doesn't even take any prompting for him to say it and Emily is kind of taken aback.
And also a little in shock.
"What?"
"Yeah," Lucky runs a hand over his head, he looks at the door that Dante had disappeared through, supposedly to start putting together the stuff for three cheese stuffed manicotti and blueberry cheesecake.
Emily thinks that Lucky would rather be tripping over his feet in the kitchen trying to help Dante then having this conversation.
"Elizabeth got pregnant," Lucky says, he crosses his arms over his chest and Emily almost calls for Dante, instead she walks up and wraps her arms around him, hugs him tightly.
It takes a few seconds for him to relax and then his arms go around her, hugging her back.
"I'm sorry," she says. Long forgotten dreams of being Mrs. Emily Cassadine are fluttering away in the breeze, it hurts a little, she hadn't thought she'd had any feelings left for Nikolas, thought every warm feeling that she'd had for him had been firmly pushed into 'friends only' space.
Apparently not.
"It's not your fault," Lucky says, he presses a kiss to the side of her head. "They had a boy, Aiden," he says. "To add to the other two boys that she had that weren't mine, so maybe it was the last thing that I needed to be able to move on."
"I like Dante," Emily offers, she swallows another apology and questions about who the father of Elizabeth's other children is.
She'd always thought Lucky and Elizabeth were that couple, the one that would last through everything. When the DVX still had her, when she allowed herself the memories of home and family and friends she'd always imagined them married with two or three kids.
"Hm," Lucky steps back a little, grins down at her. "At least he can't get pregnant by someone else."
"These hips are in no way child bearing hips," Dante says from the doorway, he's holding a cheese grater in one hand and the other is on his hip. He makes a show of perusing Lucky. "Those aren't child bearing hips either, Emily, how do you feel about kids?"
"Um," Emily looks between them. "That's a little above the asking price of damsel rescuing… isn't it?"
Dante sighs, he looks so sad for a moment that Emily almost offers up her womb to the job, but then she notices the twitch in his lips and when she glances over at Lucky he's grinning. "I suppose."
"Did you need something?" Emily asks. She's completely not changing the subject, she's just wondering why he's standing there with the cheese grater.
Although she does wonder if Dante had known about Elizabeth getting pregnant by Nikolas, if he would know who the father of her other kids is.
"Help grating cheese," Dante says, he crooks a finger at them and turns on his heel and heads back into the kitchen.
"I thought I wasn't allowed into the kitchen," Lucky calls after him.
"I'll give you detailed instructions, grating cheese is very hard to mess up," Dante calls back.
"I'm going to weigh five hundred pounds by the time I get to leave, aren't I?"
"Colby's supposed to be bringing a treadmill tomorrow," Lucky says. "And luckily he doesn't make Italian food and cheesecake from scratch every night."
LS&DF
Frisco arrives with the treadmill and Robin in tow. While Colby and Tim set the treadmill up on a spot apparently already pre-determined Robin takes Emily away to do a follow-up and Frisco sits at the table with Lucky and Dante.
"I'm going to steal Dante for a couple days," Frisco says, Lucky raises an eyebrow at him and Dante frowns.
"I'm kind of in the middle of a job right now," Dante reminds him, like he might have forgotten that Lucky and Dante aren't having a vacation in this house with Emily as a constant observer.
"And I need you for a different one," Frisco says, he's got the 'because I'm the boss' voice going.
"What about…?"
"I'm gonna leave Tim here with you," Frisco says, he glances at his watch. "It's only for a couple of days, you'll be back by the weekend."
Dante pushes himself away from the table, "I guess I better go pack a bag then."
Lucky can tell he doesn't like this by the stiff lines of his back when he walks out of the room.
"We're going mole hunting," Frisco says, his voice is quiet enough that Lucky knows that he doesn't want to be overheard, that he doesn't want this conversation shared. Lucky wonders if he's afraid of bugs or of something else.
LS&DF
Emily is standing in the doorway watching him shove stuff in a bag.
"Are we leaving?" she asks and Dante stops, sets the bag on the dresser and turns.
"Frisco's got a job for Colby and me," he says, he smiles at her, "He's leaving Tim here with you guys and he said it'd be a couple of days at most, I've left food in the refrigerator."
"I'm sure we could muddle through," Emily says, she has her arms wrapped around her middle and her eyes won't lift to meet his.
Dante grabs his bag and drops it on the bed, stopping in front of her.
"He used to talk about you," he says, she glances up at him through her lashes and he smiles gently at her. "He said that you were his best friend, that you had always been someone he could rely on, a shoulder that he could lean and that he knew would always be there," he touches the side of her head, leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead.
Lucky wouldn't have stood for anyone else being in charge of her safety; but they shouldn't be the ones staying with Emily, or at least Lucky shouldn't be. He's too close to her, has ties to her and through him Dante has those same ties.
He raises his hands and unclasps one of his necklaces. He can tell the one he wants by feel, it's the only thin chain and the cross that hangs from it is simple, plain.
"Lucky gave me this," he says, he holds it in his hands. "Right about the time we decided to…" Dante grins to himself. "The church, my church isn't that accepting, when we decided to be what we are I knew that I couldn't walk through those doors again, that I couldn't and still be true to myself. Lucky gave me this to remind me that I can have faith regardless," he leans forward fastens it around Emily's neck.
Touches the cross with the tips of his fingers.
"I'll want it back when I come back," he says. "But you can keep it safe for me until I do."
LS&DF