Still alive. Shocker I know. 2013 shall never be discussed again. The only part of that that applies to you guys is guess who got her laptop stolen in the fall? And guess who doesn't use a cloud drive for her documents.

Story AN: So when I am writing for Gina, I am thinking Alexa Breckenridge. I think she's a good mix of Regina and Gina. You guys think of whoever you want, but hey Nikki Cox scares me a bit and I can't see her with Steve Burton at all.

Coulda, Shoulda, Didn't...Doing

"Hey," Sam said with a bright smile plastered on her face as Spinelli opened the penthouse door. She was not reacting to the modern winter wonderland that was the apartment. "You guys got festive this year."

"Uh yea," his hand waved nervously back, "it was...Needed." Spinelli nodded and firmed up his stance.

"Yea," Sam nodded, "rough year." Her apartment was varying shades of pink and purple after she had let Kristina pick out the decorations. The white and silver, it was as Stone Cold as Christmas could get. "So Jason left me a box?"

"He did," Spinelli spun around the room trying to recall where he had seen the box, "in his room."

"Okay well I'll just-"

"No the Jackal-" Spinelli's eyes widened and the panic overtook him again.

"Do you not trust me in Jason's room?"

"Of course," his voice cracked, "of course Fair Samantha is most trusted. The gentlemanly approach-"

"Spinelli, I'm picking up a box because Jason emptied out my daughter's room." The contents had been in boxes for years, untouched by either of them, but that didn't change the fact.

"Stone Cold did not perform such a task to hurt you, it was a necessity-"

"Yes Brenda needed a place to do physical therapy."

"Actually the room appears to be most therapeutic for Stone Cold. Running therapy according to the internet, there have actually been several papers."

"Therapy? Jason?"

"Not as Stone Cold as originally assumed."

"He never lost his sister before," Sam nodded, "he always had his moments. I just don't think he liked us seeing them."

"He has stacks of medical journals," Spinelli disclosed, relieved to have someone with insight to discuss Jason's behaviors.

"He needed to understand what happened to Alan. He made a choice, I know he regrets. I think he needed to understand why what happened happened because I don't think he understands why he didn't go to the hospital."

"That is heartbreaking."

"It is." Her eyes turned away from Spinelli before she started to cry, "Is she really that vain?" Sam's eyes instantly caught hold of the framed photograph of Brenda and Jason. It was one of the 'leaked' pictures from the photo shoot that Sam had been forced to see while reading the morning paper. Brenda was in a red and black lingerie set, a full side shot with Jason's arm blocking part of her waist as he held her, a laughing smile on both of them.

He wanted to say, 'Actually yes.' "It's a joke. She did it to annoy Jason."

"So why is it still here?"

"They move it around the apartment now," Spinelli admitted. Not admitting how Brenda had brought it in as a joke after her Christmas card statement and Jason had placed it face down. She had lifted it back up. Jason had moved it into her room. She moved it onto the wall directly in front of his bedroom. It had been removed from Brenda's hamper at 5am as they were going to leave the apartment to head down to the city.

"That was buried in there," Jason said looking at the frame in disgust.

"Like you've never pulled jeans out of the hamper and by the way if you're going into my hamper and not doing my laundry, you're a creeper."

"One time because you were injured, never again."

"You are a horrible house husband. You know you could actually do things around the house."

"Because you-"

"WILL YOU LEAVE ALREADY?!" Spinelli erupted after Brenda had kept him up while she packed and then woken him up while she was getting ready to get on the road.

"You're grumpy," Brenda's eyebrows lifted at him as she tried to keep the corner of her mouth from smirking, "you should get more sleep."

"GAH!" Spinelli threw his hands in the air and headed for the stairs.

"You're going to make something blow in his head."

"I'm not cleaning that up."

"So that box," Spinelli nodded ready to take the stairs two at a time.

"I'll walk with you. Don't want to leave me down here unattended..."

-o-NYC-o-

"We're old," Brenda said as she walked beside Jason, the shopping bags between them numerous. There were guards trailing them, but they weren't being used for any purpose aside their intended.

"I don't think I want to ask why," the sigh was just barely kept out of his voice.

"That was us and then I blinked," Brenda said looking at the teenage pair several feet ahead of them.

He chuckled.

"I made you get me a limo from the city for prom."

"Port Charles has limos."

"Not city limos."

Even though he knew he'd regret it, he couldn't help but ask, "What made a city limo special?"

"I could tell people it was from the city, which back then was the coolest thing."

He laughed again.

"I wanted to be grown up so badly."

"You make it sound as if you've grown up."

"You are so lucky you don't remember," Brenda let out a laugh.

He chuckled again.

"I wish I had been a better friend," Brenda's smile fell as she looked.

He gently bumped his side against hers just as he had watched the teenagers do moments prior. "You can't have been that bad. Robin and I still talk to you."

"You forgot me," Brenda loudly laughed causing the teens to turn back.

"Guess you were that bad," Jason smiled.

She laughed and bumped him back.

-o-o-o-

"Actually the press were pretty bad after the interview, Jason and I are just going to stay in and crash I think."

Jason frowned as he walked out of the bathroom, toweling off his hair as his towel hung low on his hips.

Brenda didn't make an effort to divert her eyes, "Oh yea..." her voice fell, "I guess we could do that. Uh yea 7:30 sounds good. Yea see you then."

Jason's eyebrows lifted.

"My sister and Ned," Brenda nodded uncomfortably.

"Definitely not," Jason said heading towards his room.

"She's my sister, I can't tell her I don't want to see her."

"You can see her, I'll go out," he closed his door behind him.

"No, no Jason you cannot," Brenda rushed the door and let out a screech as she encountered a naked Jason.

"Brenda!"

She pulled the door shut smiling, "Running's really paying off."

-o-o-o-

Jason took in a deep breath as Julia's subtle assault grew less subtle and the sisters were poised on the edge to attack. Ned was actively trying to stop it, Jason kept the beer to his lips.

"Why don't you just say what you came over here to say?"

"I was just trying to have a nice dinner with my sister, I see you once a year."

"This is why."

"I just-"

"You just what Julia."

"Your life is finally almost together and you take that as a sign to go back to Jason? I mean what the hell is this? What are you doing?"

"I was trying to have a nice dinner."

"I mean with him."

"My ex husband, Ned's cousin, he, who has a name and it's Jason."

"I can't even count how many times he's been arrested Brenda, he is not someone you need in your life now. You finally have the chance at a normal life and you leave the Quartermaines and get involved with him again?"

"I'm not a teenager whose living arrangements you can dictate."

Jason realized the flaw in his plan as his bottle emptied and getting up would draw attention to him.

"If you were a teenager I wouldn't be worried because you wouldn't be interested in Jason because he was a nice guy."

Jason frowned to that.

"Was? Was? Seriously he saved my life just weeks ago, but he was a nice guy. He married me when I thought I was going crazy because who the fuck else was going to take care of me."

"I-"

"Would have written a really nice check. Would you have even called once a year to see if I was still alive?"

"You let us all believe you were dead, so don't you dare start with me about family." Julia pointed her finger at Brenda.

"Yea that probably says a lot about us. I thought I was dying and I trusted a stranger to take care of me before my own family."

Jason decided to risk it for a beer.

"You are the one-"

"I am the problem that got dumped in your lap by our father."

"Don't start Brenda, you know I love you."

"No you love the sister that will come in a designer outfit and make all your friends laugh and takes a great photograph. Your actual sister is a fuck up. I make the wrong decision pretty much every single time."

"You know this and yet you-"

"I tried to marry a nice guy. A nice Julia approved guy. You didn't even show up to the wedding."

"You told me it was fine," Julia defended herself.

"It is not fine for a sister to not show up to her sister's wedding."

"You mean the wedding that he called off because-"

"The wedding that I was devastated from? That's what you get from a nice guy. You're not surprised when an asshole does asshole thing."

"It doesn't occur to you that you're-"

"Okay we need to go," Ned said standing up from the table in the middle of the suite.

"If you don't. I will," Brenda said taking Jason's beer.

"You've been running since Daddy put you in boarding school, how's the working out for you?"

Julia was still standing by the table.

"I have a home. I have a family. You know those people that accept you for the fuck up you are and on that note I'm leaving."

Jason stood to follow Brenda, "Deal with her," he ordered Ned regarding Julia.

-o-o-o-

Jason caught up to Brenda at the hotel bar. An empty shot glass before her and another sitting in front of the seat next to her.

"I hate all those people on tv that have happy families."

He threw back the shot.

"Chris has one of those families. They like each other and they do things together. He moved back to town to be closer to them."

"So did Gina."

"It's weird."

"I drove a motorcycle into my parents' living room," he stated matter of factly.

"That seems sensible to me," Brenda nodded.

"It was at the time."

"Chris invited me to go to his cousin's wedding in February."

"And?"

"They're normal Jason. No one's going to flip a table, no one's going to be arrested, no presumed dead spouses are going to show up."

He accidentally laughed.

She laughed back. "This is serious. I've been left at the altar twice. I've had five different wedding dresses."

He laughed harder.

"This is horrible. He's this great guy with a house and a yard and I...I've been in Maxim? Arrested for murder twice?" Brenda sighed.

"He likes you. For some unknown reason. He likes you. Don't make me crazy over-thinking it."

She snorted. "I'm glad you're my family Jason," she nodded and lifted her beer.

He clinked it with hers. "I wish I had any idea how that happened."

-o-The Following Day-o-

"Are-" the words got trapped in Spinelli's mouth as he made an awkward gesture as Jason and Brenda walked through the door with the guards behind them, all of them carrying bags and packages. "Are you wear cashmere?"

Jason looked at Spinelli, then down at the cream crew necked sweater, then back at Spinelli.

"Not that Stone Cold does not look most hand-distin- this is big."

"It's a sweater."

Brenda snorted at the debacle taking place in their living room.

"It's cashmere," Spinelli repeated this fact.

"It's comfortable."

"He got it in blue too, it's really pretty."

Jason shot her a look. "You had them scan that when I wasn't looking."

"But it really makes your steel blue eyes pop," Brenda smirked referencing the sales girl that had latched herself to them and their commission.

"I can't wait for you to go to work tomorrow."

-o-o-o-

"Spinelli, you need to breathe," Maxie frowned as she desperately looked towards the window of Kelly's hoping to see her sister appear.

"This is altering the entire face of Stone Cold. His entity."

"It's a sweater.," Maxie repeated, Georgie

"The sweater, his room, the decorations, the laughter oh god the laughter."

"Do you hear yourself," Maxie couldn't help, but laugh. She really didn't like her little sister's weird friend, really she didn't.

"Pretty soon he's going to be tying a sweater around his shoulders and going for lunch at the club. What's next tennis?"

"Jason actually used to be really good at tennis."

He screamed and threw his hands up in the air.

"So do you think Jason's actually learning how to be a human being?"

-o-o-o-

Jason reluctantly headed up to the sixth floor with Gina's keys in his pocket. Regretting pulling on the gray half zip mock turtleneck, which he continued to be bothered immensely that style information Brenda had introduced into his brain remained. He hadn't been thinking as he quickly got dressed that morning after Spinelli had delayed him working out. Spinelli yelling out 'Charley horse' and dropping to the ground at the park in the middle of their run, had not been how Jason planned to spend twenty minutes of his life, he had practically carried the young man back to their apartment. Jason hadn't had time for more than a quick shower and had thrown on the new clothing still sitting on top of his dresser without thought and headed out the door with Brenda who handed him his after workout shake in another oddly domestic scene, which she corrected by telling him Chris would be coming over after work.

The catcall from the stylist and Maxie made him regret the decision regarding the sweater.

He had finally realized what it was that made him uncomfortable as he walked into GH. He looked like him. He looked like Jason Quartermaine. It wasn't as if he looked different from anyone on the street, but that was just it. He didn't. 'Age appropriate,' Brenda had laughed at him in the store. This was how he could have looked, should have looked.

He had been a reaction for so long and then for some reason he became set in his ways. He found whatever worked well enough and stuck with it. Sonny, their life. He didn't want that anymore. Any of it. He didn't want to look like a thug, he didn't want to look intimidating, he didn't want to be concerned about wearing something that would leave fibers at a scene. He also though, didn't want to look like Jason Quartermaine, especially in the hospital. He didn't want Monica to see him like this. Not as an awful mix of the son she loved and the son she hated. The gray sweater and the leather jacket.

He wondered if it would be better or worse if he taken the coat Brenda had picked out out of the wardrobe bag. It had been black and warm, but with a designer tag. To walk in wearing the sweater and an Armani car coat.

How it should have been.

What it was supposed to be.

He should have tried harder.

He should have tried at all.

-o-o-o-

"My hero," Gina smiled at him as she headed to the Nurse's station after Epiphany had paged her for Jason. "So it was seriously just the battery?"

"It's pretty cold outside."

"And I haven't changed it in seven years, you can say it again Jason."

"I think you learned your lesson," he smiled.

Epiphany's widened, was Jason Morgan flirting?

"Yes Dad," Gina nodded and her eyes lifted up, "another reason you're my hero. I didn't have to call my dad because I told him I would get the car checked out before I drove it here."

"That probably would have been a good plan."

"Yea I meant to I just ran out of time." Gina shifted her stance. "So what's the wifey doing?"

"Chris."

"Horrible wife," Gina laughed.

"Always has been."

"So since you won't let me pay you for the battery or installing it. How about dinner, my treat?"

"You don't-"

"Oh come on, are you really going to send me home to have dinner with my parents again?"

Jason laughed to himself, a family dinner.

"So that's a yes right?" Gina's eyes twinkled.

"Sounds good," he nodded.

"K let me go change out of these scrubs, I'll be right back."

Jason turned as she left, sensing Epiphany's eyes on him. "What?"

"I don't know," she regarding him with a wary look and decided to go back to work.

-o-o-o-

Gina returned as Jason was talking to Robin, who was laughing over Brenda's interview and they said their farewells.

They were almost free as he spotted her and she spotted him. The devastation was blatant in Monica's eyes as she saw him, it was amazing how quickly she was able to hide it.

He was struck by the inexplicable urge to run to her arms. He watched Michael and Morgan do it often enough, had watched AJ. There was something about running into a mother's arms. The desperation, the complete belief that they would be able to solve whatever problem, protect them from anything.

Emily hadn't hugged like that. Not like AJ and the boys.

The videos were once more haunting his thoughts.

He could have had that. He could have had a mother he could run to, depend on. He could have had the family dinners and traditions Brenda kept talking about. It had all been there waiting for him.

His choices had deprived Monica of that.

Gina had that. Just as Emily had. Just as Robin had.

"I have a lot of work I should be doing at the garage."

"Oh," Gina's face fell. "Raincheck?"

"Yea," he nodded before saying his quick goodbyes.

-o-o-o-

Jason made his way back into the apartment just past one. Every box had been inventoried and put away, the computer system was up and running, he swapped out a few light fixtures and scrubbed the bathrooms as clean as they got and then debated tearing them out and starting from scratch. He took that as a sign that he should head home. The apartment was quiet as he made his way down the hallway, the bedroom doors all shut.

Jason dropped into a dreamless sleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

-o-o-o-

Dreamless sleep did not last long. He awoke with a strange sense. An emptiness only for once it wasn't of sorrow. He simply felt empty. As if he was the soulless monster many had accused him of being.

Habit though. He was good at habit. He was good at simply continuing on. He pulled on shorts over the boxer briefs he had slept in, a black tee shirt, his socks and sneakers and headed for the treadmill in the other room.

"I really thought the no sleep thing was a Brenda exaggeration," Chris said walking into the room ten minutes later.

"Sorry," he wasn't really, but he did like Chris.

Chris shook his head, "It's your place. You barely slept four hours, how are you moving?"

Jason shrugged.

"He's a vampire, explains all the black," Brenda said finishing with a yawn as she walked into the room. "Are you driving me?"

"Morning to you too."

Brenda grunted.

"Yea."

"I want breakfast."

Jason wanted to point out that was Chris' responsibility, but instead he just said, "Fine."

-o-o-o-

"So do you want to talk about the fact that you bailed on Gina when you saw Monica?"

"No."

"She's really nice Jason."

"I know."

"And that's the problem," Brenda nodded and let it drop.

Thanks for reading.