Forgotten Friends - 10
I apologize for the delay, hopefully we can get things back on track now.
Emily wants to talk to Nikolas, she does.
She just… she's not ready. She thought she would be, she thought, he married me, and some little tiny part of her that was still the teen-ager that had been completely in love with him had swooned a little bit, a sighed even more.
But then she looked at him, really looked at him. And he'd married her, yes, a version of her that had been play-acting at being her and had managed to completely snowball everyone that she had considered family and friends and she just… she can't.
She leans into Dante's side, lets him shelter her and bites her lip and Nikolas is looking at her, eyes expectant.
He's expecting her to say yes, to say 'I'll talk to you' and she, right now, doesn't know what she'd even say at him.
Because she wants to rail at him, she wants to beat her hands against his chest and scream 'how could you not know she wasn't me'. But she can't, she doesn't. Because they hadn't been like that before the DVX had taken her and if she screamed that at him then she'd have to scream it at everyone else as well.
She doesn't think that Dante will let her hide in the curve of his shoulder if she was screaming at Lucky for not knowing that he spent years calling a clone his best friend.
LS&DF
The nurse has him sign what seems like a million papers, getting out of the hospital shouldn't be harder then getting in and he'd thought Frisco was going to take care of all of this.
Apparently the mighty arm of the WSB only goes so far, Frisco signing his name had probably not been covered under that.
Nikolas is still standing there staring at Emily; Emily is staring intently at the bedspread on his hospital bed. Dante just looks as ready to not be there as he feels.
He tears a blank corner off the bottom of one of his pile of papers, 'the care and feeding of Lucky Spencer'; Dante probably already has these forms in triplicate. He scrawls a phone number across the paper and holds it out.
Nikolas raises his eyebrow at him but takes the paper from his fingers.
"My cell," Lucky says.
"Does it work?" Nikolas asks and Lucky doesn't think he's imagining the snide, sarcastic tone in his voice; he kind of wants to pluck that little piece of paper out of his fingers and shove it in a pocket. Let Nikolas find then all on his own again.
But the phone number means that they might have a few seconds of warning before he descends and that possibly he wouldn't try his hand at B&E again. They're not in a safe house anymore, but that doesn't mean that their security measures are going to be any less severe.
They'll probably be more severe because everyone is going to know where they are. They'll be sitting ducks for the DVX and he wonders idly if Frisco is using them as bait to try and lure them out of hiding.
This is Port Charles, if there's not DVX agents already in the town then Lucky will eat his shoes. He's kind of hoping he's not staring one in the face, he doesn't think that Nikolas is the kind of guy to do that, but he doesn't really know Nikolas anymore either.
People change.
"Call before you decide and stop by, and hey how about not in the middle of the night this time," Lucky says.
"No street address?" Nikolas waves the snippet of paper at him, glances over at Emily and Dante still standing in the door.
"Please, if you don't already know where we'll be staying then I'll hand my gun back in," he looks over at Emily, she bites her lip and looks back, she looks tired and he wonders if she or Dante slept at all the night before. "It's Emily's choice to talk to you, if you show up and she doesn't want to see you, you leave, no questions asked. Don't make me throw you out or get a restraining order."
LS&DF
"I hate this," Lucky says, Dante rolls his eyes, he's facing away from Lucky but he's sure that Lucky knows he's doing it.
"It's her choice to talk to him," Dante reminds him, "you're the one that said that it was her choice if she wanted to talk to him."
"That's when I thought it would be like five years before she'd be ready," Lucky mutters.
"She wants her life back," Dante says, he turns around and is faced with a Lucky Spencer in full pout mode, he sits down next to him on the bed, laces their fingers together and squeezes. "Nikolas is part of that life, so is Elizabeth and the Quartermaine's that will be descending on us this afternoon and Morgan who will be by at some point I'm sure."
He feels like a fucking butler, forever answering the door and shuttling people in to see Emily and back out again when the next group came.
"Well the Elizabeth visit will be interesting I'm sure," Lucky grumbles.
"Yeah, I'm thinking I might go run some errands at that point," Dante says, his nose wrinkles and Lucky raises an eyebrow at him. "I met your ex, back before she knew that I was your current, and if she doesn't have at least three plans on how to win you back, one of which, I'm sure has something to do with the kids that she's bringing with her, then…" he shrugs.
"You know you don't have anything to worry about."
"Still, I think I'll go touch base with my mom."
"That means that you'll probably have to see Sonny as well," Lucky points out. Sonny seems to have some sort of radar that tells him when he's planning on seeing his mom; either that or he has people watching his every move. Missions should be loads of fun if they can't get him to back off.
"He's playing new dad, eventually he'll realize that I'm an adult and not a child and he'll go away."
Lucky makes a noise that Dante thinks is meant to convey disbelief. But at least he doesn't articulate what Dante fears; that Sonny Corinthos will back off once he's got Dante firmly entrenched within his family.
Dante has a family; he doesn't need Sonny and the baggage in the shape of the mob and a past with his mom that he brings with him.
LS&DF
The car is stopping and Monica looks out the window that back over at her seatmate.
"Eduardo is going to get Emily some flowers," Edward says, he looks small and tired but the expression on his face is happy, Monica thinks that it might mirror the expression on her face.
Emily is alive, and she has Jason and Luke's assurances that it is indeed Emily.
Monica taps her fingers against the box in her lap. There's pictures in there, of Lila and Edward and Alan and AJ and Emily is in some of them because these are memories that this Emily will have, and Monica has to make sure.
Has to know for sure before she hugs this girl to her and cries.
The door opens and flowers are handed to Edward and these are Emily's favorites, had been even the apparent clones favorites. Edward's hand clenches around the stalks, plastic paper wrinkling at the motion of his hand and Monica leans over and lays her hand on Edward's leg.
"I keep thinking it's going to be a dream," Edward says, he's staring at the partition separating them from Eduardo, he doesn't look at her, though he lays a hand over hers, clutching at her fingers. His hand is shaking slightly and his breathing is slightly irregular; hitching every so often. She allows him to hold onto her and has to force herself to not move her fingers up and take his pulse. "That this can't possibly be real."
"Jason and Luke both said it's her, and Lucky hasn't left her side," Monica says, "And Nikolas has been to see her multiple times."
"Nikolas," Edward grumbles. "What do you want to bet that he's trying to get his sneaky little fingers wrapped back around her?"
"Emily's a smart girl…" Monica starts.
"Emily's a smart girl except when it comes to that boy; at least we don't have to contend with any of her other former suitors."
"Emily's a smart girl," Monica repeats. "She's also an adult and whether we like it or not as an adult she gets to make decisions that we might not agree with."
"Then maybe we'll make some strong suggestions that possibly she might want to spend some time with her family and to leave the romantic entanglements for some undesignated time in the future."
Monica rolls her eyes at him and looks out the window. It's not like she doesn't agree with him, she just knows that however Edward tries to work this that Emily will do exactly what she wants to do regardless and that it will most likely be the exact opposite of whatever Edward wants.
LS&DF
Emily has an album of pictures on the table in front of her, in the living room she can hear the quiet hum of Elizabeth and Lucky talking, their tones sound as angry as they can get with a child in the same room with them.
She's not sure what Elizabeth is trying to do, she's pretty sure that Lucky will tell them when she and the boy, Aiden, leave.
And when Dante returns, she looks over at the clock on the microwave and makes a face, Dante has been gone for almost two hours, he'll hopefully be back soon because she doesn't really want to deal with an angry Lucky by herself.
She flips a page and there's a picture there that she barely remembers, the four of them look impossibly young, happy. She stares at it and tries to remember what it felt like to be that happy.
The door behind her opens and she turns, Dante is there, bags in hand.
"Do you need…" she pushes her chair back and goes to help him, unwinding bags from his fingers.
The rustling of the plastic bags as they sit them on the table and the counter drowns out the noise in the living room.
"You could have made more then one trip," she says, she peers into the bags. Fresh vegetables, packages of meat, milk and juices.
"It's starting to rain just a bit," Dante shrugs; he casts a look at the door to the living room which is closed. Emily bites her lip and waits.
"You," she shakes her head a bit, then runs a hand over her hair, "this is a lot of groceries. I thought Colby and Frisco took care of all that."
She'd looked in cupboards and refrigerator when it had been decided that Lucky and Elizabeth needed to talk without her there, she probably could have brought Aiden into the kitchen with her, given him some paper and crayons to play with the table.
She'd been a little mad that Elizabeth had come to the house under the guise of seeing her but had really come to see Lucky, so she hadn't offered and Elizabeth probably couldn't come up with a good way to foist the kid off on her while she and Lucky fought about whatever they were fighting about.
"They bought a lot of junk food, but not enough food that can actually be cooked and not kill us within a couple of months."
Dante is unpacking the bags on the counter; he seems to have a system so Emily leaves him to it and sits back down in front of the photo album that Monica had given her. She's crap in the kitchen, even just unpacking the bags she'll be more of a hindrance then a help.
"Did it take over two hours at the grocery store?" she asks, she's never been one to do it, but she guesses it could take that long.
"I went to see my mom," Dante says.
"And Sonny?" she says, she's forcing herself not to smile, bites her lip and focuses on her album, she still sees when Dante turns and makes a face at her.
"It's like he has me bugged or something, I didn't even call my mom ahead of time…" he shakes his head.
"You guys are spies, don't you have gadgets that would check for that sort of thing?" she asks, she hears the front door slam and she flips the page.
"We don't have a Q, we just have Lucky, who despite his propensity for gadgets, doesn't actually spend a lot of time inventing them," he says lips quirking, Emily grins at him.
The door to the kitchen opens and when she glances over at where Lucky is now standing she can see that he's upset about whatever he and Elizabeth had been arguing about.
Dante keeps putting the groceries away, he doesn't even look at him and she waits, teeth worrying at her lower lip as she closes her photo album and taps the tips of her fingers against the cover.
He makes an inarticulate sound and Dante finally looks over at him, they stare at each other and Emily wishes she were somewhere, anywhere else.
It doesn't work, she's still there, sitting at the kitchen table while Lucky and Dante have some sort of wordless conversation in the twitching of the muscles in their faces and the blinks of their eyes.
"It's okay," Dante says, he leans against the counter.
"You don't even know what she said."
"It doesn't matter; we'll deal with it, like we always do. It's okay."
Lucky licks his lips, sighs. "Aiden is my son."
Emily looks at him in shock, when she looks back over at Dante she sees him still standing there, blinking. Whether he's as shocked by the revelation as Lucky and her she can't tell.
He's just standing there.
"Well," he says finally, his voice quiet. "Well."
Maybe he is as shocked by the revelation as they are.
LS&DF
Dante is not sleeping, he wants to be, he wishes he was. Sleeping would mean he wasn't sitting up in the dark thinking. But…
He can't say he's surprised by the revelation, he'd known Elizabeth would try something; any idiot with eyes can see that she's not completely over Lucky.
That she still considers him hers.
He leans his head back and stares at the ceiling. He can feel exhaustion weighing him down, but if he curls up on the couch and falls asleep Lucky will think that he's mad at him, when Lucky really doesn't have anything to do with why Dante can't sleep.
It's just Dante's mind thinking through every scenario and not managing to come up with one that will let him keep Lucky. There's a kid now, Lucky's kid… that gives Elizabeth way more leverage in this situation.
It's not going to matter that he loves Lucky, that Lucky loves him, it's not going to matter that they've been to hell and back and had each others backs and that he can't ever see a day where Lucky wouldn't be able to trust him or he wouldn't be able to trust Lucky.
There's a kid now, though.
"Do you want me to apologize again?" he hears from the direction of the stairs.
"What do you have to apologize for?" he asks. Lucky's been nothing but honest with him since they became partners, when they started sleeping together they'd been even more honest, each listing in almost clinical manners those people that they'd had in their beds.
Lucky's list is a lot shorter then his, his lovers can be counted on one hand; while Dante'd had a bit of a wild phase right after he got of school, one guy, a whole bunch of girls and then all of a sudden there'd been Lucky. Fearless and smart and shining so bright that sometimes Dante thought he'd blind them.
He doesn't even really remember how they started, he vaguely remembers that there was a mission where they were undercover; their cover was posing as lovers, and the realization that first night that the room was bugged with both audio and video and if they neutralized the bugs their covers were going to be blown.
They'd done what they had to do, and Dante had tried to make things as good for Lucky as possible. No reason for anyone to walk away being traumatized or anything.
The last thing he'd done after they got what they'd been sent for was make a secret trip and collect the videos for their room; he'd told Lucky that he'd take care of it and he had, destroying the evidence and hopefully any and all copies in the process.
There'd been a few weeks of awkward silences and hands shoved deep into pockets and Lucky not being able to look him in the eye probably freaking out in the privacy of his apartment about the destruction of his heterosexuality and damning the DVX for using resorts catering to gay men to pass their information.
Then there'd been Lucky coming to him right before their next mission, almost three weeks from the day that he'd last touched him, standing there wanting to know why it had been good, why it had felt right and normal and why did he maybe want to do it again without the threat of unmasking by the DVX hanging over their heads.
And Dante had been slightly speechless, he'd been expecting a speech about how they couldn't work together anymore, that their partnership had been compromised by the fact that they'd been intimate; he hadn't known what to do or say in the face of a speech about how Lucky maybe wanted to touch him, to let himself be touched again.
"I don't know, it just feels like you're mad at me, feels like I should be apologizing or something," Lucky says, he comes around the couch, sits down next to him, leaving a few inches of space between them.
"She was your wife, throw a kid into that mix and…" Dante shrugs, Aiden being Lucky's son isn't the thing throwing him for the loop, it's the fact that if Elizabeth had found out a few weeks earlier he wouldn't have Lucky as a partner, in any sense of the meaning.
They'd probably be together still, probably have had another kid, would be happily married and stable and he definitely wouldn't have had anything to do with the WSB.
He wonders if Colby would have been his partner then, if there'd been no Lucky if that's how Frisco would have paired them off.
"She slept with Nikolas," Lucky says quietly. "Even if I'd found out that Aiden was mine before I joined up, she slept with my brother, that's…"
"You would have had a kid together," Dante says.
"We still wouldn't have ended up together," Lucky says. He sounds sure of that fact, there's no doubt in his voice that Dante can hear.
"We still wouldn't have ended up together," Lucky repeats. He lays his hand in the space between them, palm up and Dante breathes, lays his own hand over top and lets Lucky lace their fingers together and squeeze.
"We'll be okay," Dante murmurs.
"Yeah," Lucky looks over, squeezes his fingers again. "Yeah, we will be."
LS&DF