Chapter 9
"You know, even when I was in the finest Amsterdam hellholes, I missed this place," Johnny said, grinning as he followed Jason into Jake's. "The smell, the sounds, and even Coleman."
He arched an eyebrow at his friend and shook his head as they headed for the bar. At best, the bar smelled like someone had taken a piss on the floor, and the owner had forgotten to clean it up, giving it time to stew for years on end. Over the years, he'd gotten used to it and didn't know what he would think if it suddenly disappeared. He could understand the sounds, because even Jason enjoyed the low hum of the jukebox as it played, and how the pool balls slammed against each other in a tune all their own.
Coleman was a very, very different story.
One time too many Jason had argued with the man, especially over Elizabeth, who seemed to think she was capable of holding her own in a dump like this. The bartender never failed to make some disgusting comment about her breasts or the way she was dressed, and always tried to get her to go home with him at the end of the night. Granted, she'd picked up a couple men in her day from the bar, and Jason couldn't say anything about that since he did the same thing, but Coleman was in a league all his own. He was the exact kind of guy that you warned women to avoid, and unfortunately, he was a hell of a bartender, and good bartenders were hard to come by.
"Well, who the hell dragged your sorry ass back to Port Charles?" Coleman called out, scratching his beard as he approached the two men, stopping briefly to pull three beers from the freezer. He popped the top off each one, slid two across the bar to them, and kept the other one for himself. "How many countries are you wanted in?"
"Six," Johnny replied, winking as he took a swig from his beer.
"So, that leaves what? Amsterdam? Which I'm sure is your new home," he cracked, popping a bar nut into his mouth.
"Actually Paris," he answered, shrugging when the man gave him an odd look. "My fiancé's family lives there."
Coleman nearly choked on his beer and pounded a fist against his chest. "What sorry broad did you convince to marry you?" he asked, laughing loudly. "You know Russian Mail Brides don't count, right?"
"I said she was from Paris," Johnny replied, laughing into the mouth of his beer bottle. "She's pretty great. She knows I drink and curse, though I try to do less of it around her, and I don't have to pay her to like me. For some reason, she just does."
Jason nodded along with his friend's words as he slid his beer bottle back and forth between his hands. He wanted Elizabeth to hear this side of Johnny, to see that Lulu was actually good for him, and that their friend genuinely cared about this woman.
Though lately, he'd been trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, which lasted until earlier that morning when he'd caught her in his office, typing away and complaining that her laptop had a virus. He'd sent someone over to have a look at it after the last incident, so he was giving up on helping her any further. She obviously had no idea what she was doing, and Jason imagined her having much difficulty when she powered it on.
Thankfully, she hadn't been doing any research, and she was actually typing up some proposals for the art gallery she worked at part time. He couldn't be too annoyed that she had moved everything around on his desk, printed nearly 250 pages, and stolen two boxes of paperclips when she actually had a reason for it.
However, he could be very annoyed about the mess she left behind; stacks of file folders and handwritten notes that had taken him an hour to clean up because he had to sort through them. The last thing he wanted to do was throw something away that she needed, and have her rattling on about how she was coming back for the mess, and how he just didn't give her enough time.
She never came back to clean up, and for once he was relieved. He didn't want to have to confront her about the folded up list he'd found at the bottom of her stack of garbage. It was tucked so far away in the pile of crap, that he figured she wouldn't miss it. Instead of throwing it away with everything else, he'd slipped into his pocket for safe keeping, knowing at some point he'd have to ask her.
And worse, they'd fight.
Jason hated fighting with Elizabeth, which was why they'd only had a handful of confrontations. She knew all the right buttons to push and the wrong words to say, and when he got really angry, she'd start to cry, and he would feel like a jerk.
The very first time he ever upset her was during the first couple of months after waking up from his coma. She was too good to him during all that time, and he just couldn't understand why she cared so much about someone who didn't remember her. She stopped by the hospital every day, sometimes with Johnny, but Jason soon learned that was only when she was really dreading the visit.
It was his fault for making it horrible. He was short and rude, constantly telling her to go away and to stop bringing him books and takeout food. Unfortunately, she was just as stubborn then as she was now, and despite every hurtful word he flung her way, she always came back. He knew now that Elizabeth and Johnny were the two people that had saved him, and he would always be grateful. Sometimes he wondered if that was why he put up with so much of their crap.
The last year had been full of their complicated relationship, even with Johnny abroad and halfway around the world. Elizabeth pined for him in a way Jason didn't understand, but he could see now that Johnny was the one constant in her life. Jason Quartermaine left her in the accident, and Jason Morgan spent his entire first year of existence being a complete asshole to her. He figured trying to be there as much as possible in Johnny's absence was the least he owed her.
"Still got the brooding thing going, I see," Coleman teased, grinning at Jason, who was anything but amused.
"That's him at his best," Johnny quipped, smacking him hard against the shoulder as the bartender headed down towards the other end of the bar. He grunted, glaring at his friend from the corner of his eye as he sipped his beer. "Still don't like to be touched either?"
"Nope," he murmured, polishing off his beer and sliding it across the counter.
O'Brien chuckled, shaking his head. "Nothing ever changes around here," he said, his eyes roaming around the room. His eyes shifted back to Jason's and he raised his eyebrows. "Well, almost everything."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, waving two fingers at Coleman and trying to get his attention.
"You and Elizabeth," he replied, nursing his beer. "I just never imagined that you two would ever be this close again."
He nodded, drumming his fingers against the bar as he caught his own reflection in the mirror lining the back of the bar. Even Jason could see how the past made him tense, how his shoulders stiffened and his eyes darkened at the mention of Jason Quartermaine.
"I guess it was bound to happen," Johnny continued, wiping at the condensation on the side of the glass bottle. "You two always connected, even after your accident when you tried to push her away."
"Yeah," he said, clearing his throat uncomfortably. "She genuinely wanted to be there. I was just too angry to see it."
Johnny snickered, his face filling with nostalgia. "She was a firecracker then," he agreed, "and it looks like she still is."
He knew he was referring to her attitude that day in his office. "She gets a bit neurotic when she doesn't get her way," he said, as if O'Brien needed reminding.
"Thanks," he muttered to Coleman, when he slid two more beers across the bar. He tugged at the collar of his dress shirt, before tilting his head in Jason's direction. "I wanted you to know that I talked to her."
"What?" he asked, mostly curious as to why Elizabeth hadn't told him.
"Yeah, I dropped by the same day you and I talked," he said, finishing off his beer and grabbing the fresh one. "Lulu was actually there, trying to make amends. I'm sure Elizabeth would have taken it with a grain of salt, but I asked her to give her a try."
Now Jason understood why she was helping plan the wedding, and even better, the list in his pocket made far more sense. "Was she upset?"
"Yeah, you know how bad I am with talking," he replied, taking a long swig of his beer. "I'm probably worse with words than you…Anyway, I just-I let her know that I understand why she's mad and that we've both moved on, so there's no point in having hard feelings."
Jason rubbed his chin against the side of his hand as he reached for his beer, not exactly sure what Johnny was talking about. Yeah, he'd moved on without a problem, but Elizabeth was stuck in the same place she was a year ago. She wanted Johnny to be her constant again, the sole person her life revolved around, and Jason didn't understand why he would think she had moved on.
He turned on his stool so that he was facing Jason. "I'm not upset about what's happened," he shrugged, flashing a grin. "If anything, after what's happened in the past and how it's created the present, I'm glad things have come full circle. It's kind of like this is how it was always supposed to be."
He swirled his beer around in the bottle, still trying to figure out what his friend was saying. Jason's past with Johnny and Elizabeth existed solely on the eight years since he woke up from his coma, and he knew O'Brien was referring to the years before the accident, the years that none of them ever talked about.
Jason knew the basics; the story about the paper Mache globe and how Johnny teased Elizabeth incessantly through their childhood, and how he was the one that always kept him in line. Occasionally O'Brien would remind him how she'd once been willing to follow him anywhere, so he wasn't surprised that she held on so tightly after his accident.
While neither of them ever addressed the exact stance of Jason Quartermaine and Elizabeth Webber's relationship, he'd hardly ever thought that it was romantic. If anything, he assumed they were the best of friends, and Johnny was their sidekick of sorts, but something told him his friend was getting at something more.
And that O'Brien seemed to think that something more had come full circle.
"Wait," Jason said, furrowing his brow as he turned to Johnny. "Do you think Elizabeth and I are-"
"Hey, losers!" her voice rang out behind them, cutting him off.
She slid onto a stool beside Jason, flashing him a smile as she leaned over and grabbed a handful of bar nuts. In the past week, she'd grown more comfortable around Johnny, and at first Jason wasn't sure why, but if Johnny had talked to her, it had to of helped.
"I stopped by the penthouse, then the warehouse, and of course, this had to be the only other place you would be."
"Yeah," he replied, taking a long sip of his beer, understanding exactly why Johnny would think there was something more going on between her and him.
"We were just talking about you," Johnny said, waving at Coleman to bring another round of beers.
She arched an eyebrow at Jason in the mirror, letting him know that she didn't appreciate such a topic of conversation.
Like he did.
The last thing he needed was Johnny thinking he was dating Elizabeth, let alone sleeping with her.
Like he wanted to do that.
The last thing he needed was to get involved with someone like Elizabeth, who was too hung up on another to guy to notice anyone else.
Not that he wanted that either.
Leave it to Johnny O'Brien to fuck things up real good by coming back to town like he knew what the hell was really going on.
Johnny O'Brien was ruining everything.
"Hey, sweetheart," Coleman cooed, setting three beers on the bar as he gave her a quick once over, his eyes lingering on her chest far longer than they should have. "Haven't seen you here in a while."
"Been busy," she muttered, wrapping a hand around the neck of the beer bottle. "You know, planning O'Brien's wedding and all."
"You're planning the poor broad's wedding?" he said, propping himself against the bar and looking her up and down again. "That means you know her. Does she speak English?"
Elizabeth laughed, rolling her eyes. "Unfortunately," she muttered softly, so that only Jason and the bartender could hear her. "She's nice."
"Nice?" Coleman laughed, shifting his eyes to Johnny. "I don't think you've got Lil' Lizzie's approval, which means you're in for hell."
"Oh, they're warming up to one another," O'Brien replied, leaning forward and smiling at Elizabeth.
"Before the first cat fight?" he asked, tipping his head back at her. "If you choose to fight her, let me know. I wouldn't mind seeing you scrap a foreigner." He looked her over again. "I wouldn't mind seeing you at all," he murmured, with a wink.
"The come ons never change, do they?" she teased back, flashing him a flirty smile.
"You like it a little dirty," he replied, winking again. "Even if you don't know it." He started to say something else, but someone called for him at the other end of the bar.
Jason was relieved when he walked away because he kind of wanted to punch him.
Partly because Lulu wasn't a foreigner, and they weren't going to scrap, and partly because Elizabeth was wearing a fucking t-shirt and jeans, not some low cut top and short skirts like most the girls who came to the bar. She wasn't asking to be drooled over or picked up, so the man just needed to leave her alone and let her drink her goddamn beer.
"Oh, I need to take this," his friend said, sliding off his bar stool as he looked down at his cell phone. "It's Lulu."
He nodded, watching his friend disappearing into the hallway at the back of the bar, before turning to Elizabeth. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."
"Who shit in your Cheerios?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at his harsh tone. "I didn't think you'd be with Johnny. I figured you'd be with some guys from the warehouse."
"I'm not," he answered, finishing off his beer and reaching for Johnny's, mostly pissed off that he was so angry and didn't know why.
"I can go if you want to have your boys' night or whatever. I'm sure it's hard for him to get away from Princess Purity," she said, digging through her purse for cash to pay for her beer.
"I've got it," he said, tossing money down on the bar.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asked, smacking him on his arm with her tiny clutch. "Are you still pissed off about this morning? I thought you had meetings all morning and wouldn't be using your office. I came back to clean up the rest of my mess. I just had to get those proposals down to work." She clenched her jaw, staring him in the face. "I guess you just threw everything away, right?"
"Except this," he replied, tugging the paper from his pocket and slamming it down on the bar. "What the fuck are you thinking?"
She snatched the folded piece of notebook paper from the bar and clutched it tightly in her fist. "Snoop much?"
"It was in my office, Elizabeth," he growled, shaking his head at her. Reaching over, he attempted to take the paper, but it was only after grabbing her fist and prying it open, that he was able to get it back.
Glancing towards the back of the bar for Johnny, he unfolded the paper and slammed it down on the bar in front of her. "Why do you have a list of every place Johnny stayed in Europe?" he asked demandingly. "Along with every business deal, every connection he made, and how in the hell did you get this information?" Her face fell and she looked away, infuriating him even more. "Did you get this from my office? Were you even using my computer for work, Elizabeth?"
"I figured some of it out on my own," she admitted slowly, chewing her lip. "But I just-I didn't have everything Spinelli said he needed, and-"
"You got a hold of Spinelli for this?" he asked, throwing his hands up at her. He hadn't even heard from the damn tech-geek since he'd hightailed it to Canada about six months ago, saying he'd found a better job.
It was official; she had completely lost her mind.
"Ritchie gave me his number," she replied, shaking her head at herself, her face turning flush with embarrassment. "I knew you wouldn't give me what he needed, so I-"
"You lied to me," he said seriously, not sure what else to say. "I asked you why you were in my office, and you said it was for work. You fucking lied to me."
"Jason, I didn't lie to you," she murmured softly, reaching out for the piece of paper, but he jerked it away. "Spinelli called me when I was in your office and told me what information he needed, and how to look it up in the system, and I just…Jason, I'm sorry."
"I can't believe you," he replied, gritting his teeth as he glared at her. "I thought I could trust you, Elizabeth. You can't just use my computer to gather information like that. I get that you dug up the dirt on Lulu to satisfy some need, but this is me and Johnny. We're your friends. His life in Europe and our business is none of you fucking business."
"You should have never looked stuff up about Lulu in the first place, and you sure as hell shouldn't have lied to me," he repeated, wondering why she just hadn't come to him if she was so concerned about Johnny.
"I was worried," she interrupted, ignoring his comment about Lulu as she wrung her hands in her lap. She chewed her lip and lifted her teary eyes to his, but he refused to let it faze him.
"Then you should have come to me."
"I didn't need you to get involved, Jason, regardless of the fact that you think you deserve to be. Just because something involves me and Johnny doesn't mean it involves you too," she replied angrily.
"And that's exactly why you always get me involved," he snarled, looking towards the back of the bar in hopes of seeing Johnny, so they could drop this before it got worse.
"Look, Lulu just said some things; that Johnny was a real mess when she met him. And yeah, he's always been a mess, but the way she talked about him…I just-I almost think something bad happened."
"You're being dramatic," he said, shaking his head at her. "You're just upset that he's marrying Lulu, and you want something to fixate on."
"Well, you just think you know everything, don't you?" she snapped, getting up from the stool. "I'm telling you…I just didn't like the way she said it. It's not like Johnny to be so distant and strange, and no sooner than he left town-"
"You just think that because you didn't get what you want," he interrupted, balling the paper up in his fist before shoving it back into his pocket.
The last thing he wanted was for Johnny to get wind of this, because if something had happened in Europe, he didn't want them to know. Whatever it was, he'd survived and that was all that mattered. If he wanted them to know, he would tell them, and until then it was none of their damn business.
"You're being a real son bastard," she hissed, folding her arms over her chest. "This has nothing to do with the fact that he's marrying that fucking shrew."
"Oh, please, it has everything to do with that," he replied loudly, causing heads to turn in the bar.
Swearing under his breath, he stood up and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her towards the back door and into the parking lot. "You have to stop this," he said, slamming the door closed behind them. "You can dig your heels into the ground as much as you want, but he's going to marry her. You can throw in as many red socks and blatant jabs and puns, but he's going to marry her. You can probably tell him you love him, but he's going to marry her. You get it?"
She nodded, her lower lip quivering as she stared past Jason and into the dark parking lot. "I get it," she whispered, "but you don't." She shook her head as her eyes welled up with tears. "I'm planning this stupid wedding for the man that I want to be with, and the bride is completely perfect in every way. She's blonde and perky and gorgeous and rich, and I'm just some fucked up girl you think is harboring a ridiculous crush. Right? Just say it."
Regardless of the fact that he was so angry and wanted to keep pushing her buttons, he just couldn't. This was no longer about her going behind Johnny's back or sticking her nose where it didn't belong. It was about her heart, and he was treading on delicate ground that he'd already managed to stomp on a couple of times.
"I never said you were ridiculous," he muttered, hating that he hurt her, but knowing all the while she needed to hear it. "You're past the point of being objective because you're hurting. You can't see that the Johnny O'Brien in the bar is not the Johnny O'Brien you fell in love with."
