Casualties~*~ Chapter 92: A River in Egypt ~*~"
Well. Its long. And it’s… Um. Yeah. I dunno, guys. It’s here, I think, is the point.
I’m posting today because I’ll be out of town on the weekend and will definitely not be posting again until May 2nd - which is a date I am striving to keep this time. As much as life does tend to be busy right now, I at least won’t be throwing a baby shower.
Baby showers. There might actually be a pictorial on my journal about part of this shower. The part where I say to people “I was thinking of doing this” and they look horror-struck. Martha Stewart I am not. We’ll see how it goes.
Anyway - really hope this chapter does what I want it to do. Still setting things up with wild abandon. Very very curious to know what people think - as always, but maybe a little particularly right now (because… Heeeeelp!)
xoxo
~*~*~Chapter 92: A River in Egypt~*~*~
In the dim light of the cabin, Nikolas watched Carly. She was sitting on their glorified berth on the Zephyr, with her feet tucked beneath the full skirt of her sundress. Behind her, moonlight streamed in through the portholes as she gazed back at him with her head cocked to one side. The angle of her head was her only nod towards inquiry. She hadn’t asked him any questions, apart from what he wanted from her. Even that, he hadn’t answered. He hadn’t had to.
Still, he lingered in the doorway because he knew that whatever was going to happen once he moved to her was going to be trouble. Nothing good could come from his present mood. He felt angry and bitter and torn up. But he also felt grateful for her. Slightly and inexplicably hopeful. Over the years, he’d heard a lot of opinions about his relationship with his mother; Carly, if she had one, was keeping it to herself. There was something about her silence, her quiet support, that left him feeling known. Understood. It was an uncomfortable cocktail of emotion, but at the least the hope lead to some kind of action.
Pushing himself off the wall, he crossed to her, feeling the boat move underneath them. She reached out as he approached, grabbing his shirt into her fists and pulling herself up onto her knees. He let her eyes search his, forced himself not to draw away. It felt dangerous, but his encounter with his mother had left him feeling reckless. If he turned away from her, his mind would only travel back to the same old places. Bringing up the
image of his mother. Laura, looking at him like he’d just hit her. Laura, moving her mouth in silent horror right before he turned and walked away from her. God, he hated the way she looked at him - either tentative, concerned or terrified. It made him feel like a mistake.
Because he was a mistake. Or something close to it. Pain flashed through him again and he stepped back from his wife without being aware of making the choice to do so. Carly had a tight grip on his shirt, however, and she pulled him back to her with surprising determination.
He closed his eyes, bowing his head, and swallowed hard. He wanted to know - that the was problem. He wanted to know what would happen. If he just let himself believe - just for tonight - that Carly really and truly felt about him the way he felt about her. Not just that she loved him, but that she loved him with that same desperate, hungry, unconditional fever he felt for her. Because if she felt like that, if she really and truly shared his feelings, then it didn’t matter what happened tonight. It didn’t matter if he was angry or self-pitying, hurt or weakened - he could just be. He could just let himself go.
Defenses low as they were, there was nothing for it but to lean forward and kiss her. And it was a needy, desperate kiss. It was the kind of kiss that begged, in that moment, he wasn’t even sure what for.
He found out, though, when she kissed him back. Her mouth grabbed at his, and he didn’t notice she’d let go of his shirt until he felt her hands in his hair. He’d always known Carly could distract him, soothe him, make him feel better about bad situations. But her ability to burn through his defenses and neuroses was improving, because by the time she broke away to help him pull off his shirt, the thread of his of disquiet was already feeling distant and easy to lose track of. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against him as his kiss grew more insistent. When she broke away from him it was to pull his shirt off his shoulders. Her eyes caught his and she looked fierce and possessive. He felt something like relief wash over him.
He didn’t know what this was - he could only choose what he wanted to believe and hope he was right. And he wanted to believe in her.
~*~*~
“I have to leave the house by 9:30. At the … absolute… latest.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Mmmm. You keep doing… that.” Carly sighed and dropped her head back and Nikolas’s determined kissing of every inch of exposed skin moved from behind her ear to her throat. “Oh my God, Nikolas.”
It was Monday morning and she felt absolutely dizzy. And she shouldn’t. She should be immune. 36 straight hours of nothing short of complete adoration and worship from her husband, it should be starting to get on her nerves. What could she say? Somehow he made it work. Somehow, it did not get old.
She still didn't know exactly what had happened on Saturday but she knew enough. It had something to do with Laura and it had shaken him up. But not permanently and not the way she'd seen him shaken in the past. If Nikolas was upset about Stefan there was nothing anyone could do to help that situation. But this... whatever this was, she could soothe it away.
That was why she wasn’t completely freaked out or annoyed that Nikolas was being mostly silent. He wasn’t being cold and he wasn’t being morose and he wasn’t vanishing for hours on end, so call it progress.
“Ok,” she sighed, allowing herself to sink back into the bed clothes. “Just tell me you’re keeping track of the time.”
“It’s 8:00. We’re fine.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Remember when you used to be the one who had to rush off some place every morning and I didn’t anything to do but - “
“Try to stop me?”
“I was going to say ‘wait around’, but yeah.”
Nikolas dragged himself back up her body, brushing several light kisses over her mouth before allowing her to pull him into something deeper and more expressive. They stopped talking for long enough that she was a bit surprised when he pulled back and asked her “Do you have a lot going on today?”
“Umm…” Carly blinked a few times, then noticed his smirk and stuck her tongue out at him. Struggling to sit up, she pushed him back, announcing, “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Alright,” he murmured, rolling onto his back but pulling her with him. She settled on top of him, forearms propped on his chest and gazed down at him. He met her eyes - she liked that. It was another reason she wasn’t feeling neurotic right now. She gave a half roll of her eyes before she leaned down and kissed him. His hands tangled in her hair as he pulled her closer to him. When she finally brought herself to break the kiss, she lay her head against his chest and let out a sigh.
“Do you realize how revolting we’re getting?”
“Well, we’ve had the decency to keep mostly to ourselves.” It was a good point, so she let it stand as Nikolas lazily ran his hands down her back. “So you’re seeing Kevin at 10.”
“Yep. Then yoga. Then Alexis. To go over the battle plan.”
“And you don’t need me there.”
She scanned the comment for subtext, but there didn’t seem to be any. “I don’t think you need to be. I heard you on the phone yesterday, I know the drums are beating.”
“Cece needs me to take care of something.”
She raised her head. “Like what?”
“A million tiny irritants. It’ll take most of the day, unfortunately.”
She let herself smirk at him. “It’s a tough job, conquering the world.”
Her husband’s face broke into a rare grin and he closed his arms around her, rolling her over onto her back. “Oh,” he murmured, as he bent to resume his exploration of her neck. “You have no idea.”
~*~*~
After seeing Carly off at the hospital, Nikolas opted to leave his car in the underground garage and walk the few blocks to the office tower where Cassadine Inc. was currently housed. He’d avoided being alone for more than a few minutes since Friday night and he hadn’t been looking forward to it. Which was unfamiliar ground, frankly, because alone was how he was used to dealing with things like his family.
He’d unapologetically used Carly to distract himself from everything he’d been feeling on Saturday night and it had seemed likely that he’d just end up feeling that way again as soon as he was away from her. He was finding, though, that it wasn’t going that way. He wasn’t feeling… anything, really.
Well, that wasn’t true. He’s spent years courting numb and was very aware that he wasn’t numb at the moment. But he wasn’t consumed with that sense of being insubstantial that usually followed him around after he saw Laura. There were some remnants of unease, of distress that he could see how much she still had to do with who he had become - or worked not to become… But mostly he just felt over it. Like it didn’t matter that much and he had more important things to worry about.
Worry, however, wasn’t as accessible as it usually was, either. He wasn’t worried about Carly. He wasn’t worried about his father. He wasn’t worried about anything at work, particularly. And while he should probably be worried about AJ and the Quartermaines, he didn’t seem to have access to that, either. As he walked and ran this strange sensation through his head it occurred to him, finally, what he was experiencing.
Peace.
It was such a surreal realization he stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.
It couldn’t actually be that - He must just be suspended in a state of denial, because he knew damn well that he’d crossed a line he’d set out for himself on Saturday night. He’d let loose the reigns he tried to hold so tightly - and the last time he’d let that happen with Carly, that had been a disaster. He’d said and done things he would never be able to claw back - he’d acted out and thoroughly disgusted himself.
He might not have been actually yelling at Carly, but he’d still been a mess and he’d let her see that. And he should care - as perfect as she’d been, as completely accepting… he should care. And the custody case, their relationship had to be on the line there, if it did not go off the way they were planning - it could be the end of them.
He didn’t believe that. That was the problem. Somehow, on some fundamental level, he had stopped believing their relationship was reliant on outside factors.
How the hell had that happened?
He shook his head and made himself start back towards his office. If nothing else, he was finally in possession of just a little bit of concern.
~*~*~
Concern was no stranger to Carly and found it extremely hard to sit still for exactly that reason. She was in Alexis’s office, a catered lunch in front of her, and all she wanted to do was bolt out of her chair and pace. She should have told Nikolas to come. As much as there was nothing for him to do and he had plenty to keep him busy, she really wished she had someone’s hand to hold. Literally.
“Alright,” Alexis announced, indicating the end of their examination of her mental health history by flipping to a new page in her notebook, “Jason.”
Oh, good. This would be fun. She picked up a lonely sprig of asparagus and bit off the tip. “What about him?”
Alexis raised her eyes. She was not amused.
“Ok,” Carly sighed, leaning back in her chair. “Obviously he’ll come up.”
“Yes. And last time they wrote the story of how deeply inappropriate a person he was for you to have a relationship with, let alone charge with the care of son.”
“I’d still say he’s better than the Quartermaines,” Carly snapped. Ah. There it was. The rush of Jason feelings. Feelings of protectiveness. Feelings of inadequacy.
“Well,” Alexis ignored her tone. “That’s one of the questions I think we need to examine. Why did you choose Jason to be the de facto father of your child?”
Carly took another bite of her asparagus and pretended to be occupied with chewing. After a moment she glanced back at her lawyer. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Absolutely.”
She shifted her weight, considered lying, and then gave that up. It hadn’t worked so fantastically in the past, not where this was concerned. “Because I trusted him. Because I wanted to keep my baby and I knew that Tony and AJ both wanted to take him away from me. Because when Tony decided to dump me and sue for custody, the only thing I could think to do was tell him he wasn’t the father and Jason was the safest person to name.”
Alexis gave a slight nod. “We’ve already taken steps towards mounting an argument that you were not in a position to provide adequate representation to go up against the Quartermaine lawyers. Given how things worked out, that fits pretty neatly.”
“Yeah,” Carly felt her throat tighten and she struggled to get down a sip of water. “I guess so.”
“And what kind of father was Jason?”
She let that question sit for a moment, then found herself meeting Alexis’s eyes. She had made a lot of bad decisions where Michael was concerned, but she truly did not believe this was one of them.
“He was devoted. Once Michael was born, he was in, 100%. He just took it on.” She put a hand up in anticipation of the next question. “And yeah, ok. The mob thing, I know. But Sonny had just left town. The fact that Jason worked for him, that wasn’t something I ever paid that much attention to. He was my friend. When I first came here, he was my friend - the mob stuff, it just had nothing to do with that.”
“So to recap, you went to Jason because you trusted him, you knew he’d help you and he’d take care of Michael if anything happened to you.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much it.”
“And you didn’t know that Sonny was gone for good. You didn’t know he’d taken over permanently.”
The statement surprised her, largely because she’d mostly not cared about Sonny or what he did. The truth was, she didn’t think of Jason was being fallible, so the fact that he broke the law and got shot at was easy to put away. And she always had - Always.
“He always talks like Sonny could walk through the door and pick everything up again any day.” She glanced up at Alexis. “And he’s shown up, once or twice. He’s not a fan of mine.”
Alexis’s eyes flicked up and she gave a quick - and unexpectedly friendly - smile before continuing. “So really, this whole thing was about survival. And then it was about love.”
Carly felt the back of her neck prickle and she averted her gaze to the window. “It was. For me.” Deep breath. “And he loved Michael. Michael was really important to him.”
“I think it can work in our favor, that fact that Jason is both a Quartermaine and so thoroughly disturbing a source to run to for safety,” she mused.
“How’s that?”
“Well, extenuating circumstances aside, he is a part of the family, he chose to separate himself from them in direct response to their controlling behavior.”
“How do you know that?” Carly frowned.
“Research,” was the only answer Alexis gave before continuing, “He’s an extreme protector, given that he lives in a bullet-proof penthouse, and carries a gun. Has multiple bodyguards.” She glanced up at “You felt safe with him?”
Carly nodded. She had. Probably for the first time in her life.
“I was never in any danger from Jason. The worst thing that happened when we were together was Michael’s kidnapping.”
There was a momentary frisson in the air as the women looked at each other. Carly felt some distant resentment, but it kept being trumped by the fact that Tony getting away with kidnapping Michael was just about impossible - and Alexis had made it happen.
“Michael was kidnapped by someone who was unconnected to Jason,” Alexis ploughed on, unwilling to give that trip down memory lane much attention.
“Yep.” Carly took another sip of her drink. “Not unconnected to me, unfortunately.”
“No,” Alexis replied, dryly, “But you’ve never driven your brother into a tree, so we’ll call it a draw.”
“Good point.”
“That’s why I’m the lawyer.” Alexis glanced up from her notes, looking over her glasses at Carly in a way that reminded her powerfully of her high school principal. “I’ve been thinking about how to best position your relationship with Nikolas.”
Carly looked momentarily blank. “We’re married.”
“Yes, but before that.”
Oh. Well. Yeah. She considered being affronted but decided there was no point. “You’ve said you don’t want to know.”
“And I don’t. But there’s a good chance that questions will be asked. So … Do you remember the first time you met Nikolas?”
Carly knew Alexis wasn’t talking about the golf course and she had, of course, met Nikolas before that. Technically. “I don’t, really,” she admitted after a moment. “I mean, I worked at the hospital, his family owned it. My mother was married to his father. My boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend was his girlfriend, you know?”
“You just… crossed paths.”
“Yeah.”
“So it would be difficult to pin down when your relationship turned romantic.” The question was leading and Carly fought not to smirk.
“I don’t think it’s that hard to pinpoint when any relationship turns romantic.”
“No,” “But there’s a chance they’re going to want to know about your first date. How long you were seeing each other before you ran off and got married. But if you were just… in each other’s lives for a long time and then things took a turn…”
Alexis clearly knew this was not only inaccurate but bordering on fiction. Carly stared down into her coffee and
“So… We knew each other for years and then, got closer.”
“Though the wedding, I imagine. You were a bridesmaid, he was a friend of the bride.”
“Yeah,” again, she fought the urge to grin. Hey, it was nearly true. “It was through the wedding.”
“So no real first date.”
She flashed, powerfully, back to the golf course, the water hazard. Drinking champagne in a stained bridesmaid dress… “He says we had a ‘meeting of the minds’,” she glanced up at Alexis. “I really hate the idea that they’re going to try to pick this apart.”
“It’s what they’re there for. I don’t want to lead with Nikolas as the reason for custody to be reassessed, because our argument is that you’ve spent the last year restoring yourself to good mental health and well-being. But he’s a factor. He’s why you’re financially secure, you live with him. They’ll try to make that seem like it isn’t stable.”
“But it is!” Carly burst out with that before she really had time to consider it. “I mean, it’s the most stable relationship of my life.” She held up her left hand. “Even without the wedding ring.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Alexis’s expression was unreadable, but not in an all together bad way. Carly felt her stomach turn, all the same, and looked down at her plate. Her appetite had abandoned her.
“So. We’ve covered Kevin and Gail, the last year with Bobbie, Jason and Nikolas. What else?”
Alexis opened a file folder and flipped through, grimly. “There’s the family feud, but I think we’ve handled that as well as we’re going to.” She glanced up. “How’s work?”
“Ok. Nothing’s burned down.”
“Good enough,” she turned back to the folder. “Your last physical was in January. What about your last HIV test?”
Carly nearly choked on her glass of water. “My last… what?”
“It came up last time. I think we should have your most recent test available in case it comes up again. And if you haven’t had one since last year -“
“I haven’t,” Carly hated this topic. She answered the question like she knew the answer, but the fact was, she had no idea whether or not she’d been tested in the past year. She’d pretty much given up her autonomy in regards to her health when she’d moved in with Bobbie. Bobbie had cared about it a lot more than she had, at the time. “I didn’t think…” She felt her face heat and glanced away from Nikolas’s aunt. “It’ll be fine. Jason and Robin are always careful -- I don't know all the details, but he's fine. He gets tested regularly and he's fine."
Alexis frowned. "Right. And it’s been more than six months since you've had any intimate contact with Jason."
“Yeah,” she started to answer, but the words got caught in her throat and she felt a hard chill creep up her spine. She’d been thinking about it like they were talking about how long it had been since she and Jason had broken up - but that wasn’t the right date. She hadn’t even thought about that date. She had to count, but her brain had suddenly tripping over itself. It had been six months, hadn't it? She sure as hell had been acting like it had. It had been… What? After Valentines Day. February to March, April, May, June... June. Nikolas. Four months. Now it was August -- Six months almost to the day.
"I'll get tested this week," she sat up in her chair. "Better to just have it, right? And there's been no 'contact' in the last six months."
Alexis's look was penetrating. Survival instinct forced her to meet the level gaze.
"There hasn't. There hasn't since before Nikolas. Way before Nikolas." Perhaps not as 'way' as everyone thought, but way enough. Barely. Either way, she sounded certain. There was no quaver in her voice.
Because her insides had frozen completely.
~*~*~
Half an hour later Carly left Alexis’s office and immediately turned into an alleyway between enormous office buildings. She pulled out her cell phone, surprised that her hand wasn’t shaking, and dialed a number from memory. It picked up on the first ring.
“Carly.”
Jason said her name the same way he’d say “finally” when she got off the phone or came downstairs when they had some place to be. He said it like he’d been expecting her call and she had kept him waiting.
“Yeah,” she swallowed, hard. "Jase. I need something."
"Ok."
Amazing how that was still the response. Amazing and incomprehensible to her. She shook her head and turned her body into the concrete wall she was leaning against. "Listen. When was the last time you were tested?"
"For HIV?"
"Yes. For HIV. When?"
"Beginning of the month."
"And?"
"And nothing. Carly."
She pulled in her breath. "So you're negative."
"Of course I'm negative," Jason sounded tense. "I'm always negative."
She pressed a hand to her forehead. "So does that cover... us?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean February. Jake's. US."
"Carly, you're fine."
"I'd better be," she snapped. Like it was his fault. Like she didn't know exactly what she was doing. But, God, she hadn't cared. She hadn't had any clue that in six months it would matter. She trusted Jason, sure. She still did. But that small widow for error... The idea that her complete carelessness with Nikolas might actually have consequences...
"I wouldn't let -- "
"WOULDN'T LET WHAT?" she felt the fear that had been beating in her chest break loose and she yelled into the phone. "Because I was there. You weren't long on self-control that night. I'm supposed to believe you just willed the antibodies to stay in your system and not in mine?"
"There aren't any antibodies."
"Yeah," she choked. "Thank God for that." She forced herself to take several deep breaths, her mind turning new information over, trying to make sense of it. Trying to interrupt the chant of self-revulsion that had been marching through her head since Alexis had aksed the question and she had realized the answer. How how how could she have not been thinking about this? How had she been able to make it unimportant? Hot tears sprang to her eyes and she clamped a hand over her mouth to try to stifle a loud, terrified sob.
“Carly?” Jason barked in her ear and she was forced back to the present. “Where are you?”
She cleared her throat and wiped at her eyes impatiently. “Why?”
“Because you’re freaking out, I’ll send someone to come get you.”
“No,” she let out a choking laugh. “I’ll get a cab, I know what I need to do.” She pulled in an unsteady breath. “God. That night was so stupid. SO stupid. I can't believe..."
"It was a mistake."
She was dimly aware that there had been a time - and it had not been long ago - that Jason saying something like that to her would have torn her apart. That time might have been as recently as this morning. Any time before now, when she was suddenly awake to possible consequences.
"And then some,” she gave numb agreement. "That's never going to happen again."
She blinked her eyes and straightened up. The idea came as a complete shock to her. She was never going to sleep with Jason again. That time -- that fucked up mess of a night, that was the end for them. She tried to remember the second to last time -- she was sure she'd enshrined that one in her memory, but it was hard to access. That was weird. Maybe she'd never truly thought THAT was the last time, either. She'd always thought that, at some point, he'd come back.
He always had. But not this time. And even if he did...
She cleared her throat again and turned to look back towards the busy Port Charles street where she was going to have to hail a cab. "Look,” she managed. “I know you'd never do anything ... I know you wouldn't get me sick. But we were both a little crazy that night, and if that hurt Nikolas --"
"You haven't," she could hear the edge in Jason's voice, the beginning of his never-ending irritation with her. Right. That was exhausting, trying not to exhaust him. And, really, she didn't have to continue this conversation. She knew what she'd called to find out.
"I have to go." He'd think that was because Nikolas had just come in or something and she let him. She closed the cell phone without saying good-bye.
~*~*~
Cece flicked her fountain pen against a pad of paper with practiced irritation, her eyes fixed on a spot just over Nikolas’s shoulder. He knew what she was waiting for. He didn’t want to ask and she wasn’t going to want to answer, but they were running out of new business.
“I’m satisfied with this approach,” he sighed, finally. “It’s always been problematic to run out of Port Charles, if part of our business is done remotely from New York, it will mean more travel for you -“
“Not a problem.”
“Probably less for me. Though, as you’ve pointed out, I haven’t been traveling much lately.”
“Nope.”
“So I’ll have my father sign the documents and we’ll go ahead with the hiring tomorrow.”
“Great,”
None of this was said with anything other than incredible irritation, which Nikolas wouldn’t have put up with from any other person in his life, let alone his employ.
Alright. Probably from Lucky. But he was grandfathered in.
“I take it nothing has moved on the Quartermaine front?”
“Oh, lots of things have moved,” her pen finally stilled and she finally deigned to look at him. “Have you said anything to him?”
Nikolas blinked. “To AJ? As little as humanly possible. And believe me, that is not because I wasn’t provoked.”
Cece shook her head, nearly vibrating with frustration. “He must have ended it. There is no way we’ve missed something - he ended it, they aren’t seeing each other anymore, and we have no proof.”
Nikolas took that in. “And none is forthcoming.”
The fountain pen once again beat out an angry syncopation. “I wouldn’t give my word to it.”
That was pretty serious. Cece’s failures could be counted on one hand - and they were always due to external forces. Which didn’t stop her from taking umbrage. AJ’s sudden lack of stupidity had earned him an enemy for life.
“It’s alright, Cece.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “What was that?”
“I said it’s alright.”
She stared at him a long moment, then shook her head. “Are you patronizing me?”
“I promise I’m not.”
“Really? Because you should be furious right now.”
Nikolas shook his head, slightly. “I know you did your job. Without you, I wouldn’t even know there was something to fail to find proof of.”
Cece submitted him to an x-ray stare. “What is the matter with you?”
It was a straight question, not something she was saying in outrage, and he could only exhale in response. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to be able to get upset about anything right now.”
“And why’s that?”
He frowned as he considered his answer. “Because… I don’t think we’re going to lose.”
“Well, we’re not,” Cece snapped. “But this was going to make things a hell of a lot easier.”
He nodded absently. “I think it might still make things easier. I’ve never loved the idea of dragging Michael’s father through the mud, but if it’s true we don’t need to prove it to have private leverage.” He shrugged. “I think that’s enough.”
“Ok. Because you are kinda freaking me out right now.”
“Well. For that, I apologize.” He glanced back at her. “We’ll find something else.”
Cece tossed down both pen and paper and leapt out of her seat. “But it won’t be as GOOD.” She started to pace. “Prolonged physical relationship with the court appointed social worker. It was a thing of beauty. There is no way we’re going to come up with something that damaging in a few short weeks.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. Quartermaine has a deeply persistent self-destructive instinct.”
“I don’t just want him, I want HER.” Cece turned and leaned across the desk, arms locked, head bowed. “If there is one thing I hate, it’s insubordination.”
“She didn’t owe anything to us.”
“No,” she spit. “She owed something to the state. Look, I don’t have strong feelings about the bending of laws and rules - but I work for the private sector. More than that, I work for you. It suits my temperament. But if you work for the government…”
Nikolas thought, actually, that Cece’s temperament would probably be best suited to Interpol, but made no comment. “She’s a weak link. That won’t change.”
Cece threw up her hands. “But I want to exploit is now. I’ve put months in on this!”
“So we’ll put in another few weeks, see if anything else turns up.”
She leveled another glare at him. “Your preternatural calm is uncalled for. And annoying.”
Nikolas raised his brow to indicate that she was just going to have to deal with it, as it was apparently the only crayon in his emotional coloring box at the moment. She sighed and picked up her pad again. “In other news,” she muttered, “I guess you’re not going the beast-of-burden route with your wife today?”
It took nearly a full minute for Nikolas to come up with a response to that question.
“What route are we talking about?”
Cece looked up at him, then back at her notepad, then back to him. Her mouth moved a few times, and then threw down the pad, stalked around his desk and leaned over to his computer. Taking the mouse in hand, she brought up his schedule in a few short clicks.
Nikolas stared at the page in front of him.
Then he swore.
~*~*~
“Carly!” Bobbie sang out as she spotted her daughter coming off the elevator. “Happy birthday!”
“What? What are you -" Carly stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh my God.”
“You haven’t noticed the date?” her mother asked her as she approached the nurse’s station. “All day?”
“I’ve had other things on my mind,” she pointed out, leaning her body against the counter. Infinitely more pressing things. “Do you have, like, ten minutes?”
“For my daughter, on her birthday, I have five minutes.” Bobbie gave a wane smile. “It’s been a madhouse today. What can I do for you?”
Carly gestured with her head towards the seating area across the floor. “Can we?”
She saw concern flit across her mother’s face. Well, she couldn’t blame her. Alexis had probably read her correctly back at her office and Bobbie was going to see right through this, too. She was beyond caring. She just had to know.
Somehow she made it to the vinyl-covered hospital orange couches and pulled enough breath into her lungs to ask her mother “What is the quickest I get an HIV test?”
All the color drained from Bobbie’s face. “Why?”
“It’s nothing. I’m being paranoid.” Probably true. “Alexis doesn’t want to give AJ’s lawyers a chance to bring it up and I haven’t been tested since last year.”
“But,” Bobbie frowned. “There’s been no reason to test you, you haven’t engaged in any of the risk behaviors.” She was very nearly working at not understanding her. “Have you?”
For a second, she considered telling her mother the truth, but it was a fleeting thought. She would have to be crazy to tell Bobbie that her estimation of Carly’s last night with Jason was probably a year and change off. Let her think it was a little light heroin use, she didn’t care - she just knew exactly how her mother’s face would look if she told her the truth and she didn’t want to see it. “I just want to do this today, if I can, and I want to know the results as soon as possible.”
“Well,” Bobbie brushed her hair back, forcing herself back into nurse-mode. “The newest tests can let you know within an hour. I suppose I could pull some strings -“
An hour. Happy birthday to me. She nearly laughed. “Great. Good. That’s perfect. Can you do that now?”
“Now?”
“It’s my birthday.”
“That’s not fair.” Bobbie sighed. “Alright, I’ll call the lab. Wait here.”
Carly sat stock still on the couch, her brain returning to its favorite new game - counting just how long ago that night had been. It was over six months. The tests were supposed to be conclusive between three and six - so if it was clear then it should really be clear. And it would be. Because Jason was. And she was just being a freak.
But she had to know. She’d never cared before - that was sick, she thought. She had a son; how the hell had she just never cared? Because she’d loved Jason that much, she remembered. And she’d let him be the one that worried about HIV risk, because in a weird way, it was how she knew he cared about her. He might not love her, but he’d make sure she didn’t get AIDS. Ah, young love.
“Alright,” Bobbie jolted her daughter out of her dark reverie. “If you go down to the lab floor and ask for Rita she’ll take the blood, provided you get there in the next five minutes.” She frowned and sank down next to Carly. “Is Nikolas alright? Is it something with him?”
It took Carly a moment to realize that her mother had no idea that Nikolas had never slept with … well. Anyone. That was another fun fact she wasn’t going to be relating today.
“No, Mama!” she stood, gathering up her things. “Nikolas is fine. I’m fine. Everyone is fine.” She kissed her mother on the cheek quickly. “I’ll call you about Wednesday. Thanks for the whole giving birth to me thing -" Carly started off towards the elevators at a clip only to have Bobbie call her back.
“Carly!”
She spun on the spot, eyes wide. “What?”
Bobbie shook her head and threw out her arms. “Just… let me know how it goes. Ok?”
Carly nodded, took a deep breath, then nodded again. “I will.”
Yeah. She wasn’t getting a thing past Barbara Jean Spencer. On some level, that was nice to know.
~*~*~
The late afternoon sun was nearly blinding Carly as she stepped off the launch at Spoon Island. Feeling emotionally wrung out and deeply relieved, she started up the stairs and actively resisting an urge to call Jason. “Ok, you were right. I’m fine. I should have known.” It felt like the natural thing to do - and it felt like a terrible idea. She had been doing her best to ignore the entire forgotten country that was Jason Morgan ever since she’d realized how much she really cared about Nikolas. The two things, they didn’t mix well, and it gave her a headache to thing about them too much. She didn’t want to compare them, she didn’t want to remember how they felt - she didn’t want to examine how she felt about Jason while she was falling more and more deeply in love with her husband. It just seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.
And some part of her loved disasters waiting to happen. She paused on the path and pulled out her phone for the umpteenth time. It wouldn’t be a big deal, really. It was just a call. Interactions with Jason were always way more significant to her than they were to him. And she’d snapped at him. It was just basic decency to call and let him know how it had all turned out…
Right. Except.
She rolled her eyes at herself and shoved the phone back into her pocket. The truth was, if she opened up that door even a crack, she didn’t know what she was going to be letting in. She just knew it had the potential to be horrible. And she didn’t want to be the person unraveling her husband anymore. The reason Saturday night had been so easy, so fluid and simple, was that whatever was going on with Nikolas - however upset he was? It was not her fault. She had not done that to him. She was just going to be the person who undid it.
It was so much better than always scrambling for a foothold - and that, really, was the biggest difference between Nikolas and Jason. With Nikolas, she knew exactly where she stood and she knew how much power she wielded. That had scared her for a long time, but now… Now it made her feel stable in a way she couldn’t even remember. It made her feel like she could do something besides ruin people’s lives. So she wasn’t going to call Jason and she wasn’t going to think about that night, ever again, if she could help it. She was walking away.
And into a whole problem, she thought grimly, as she approached the cottage. Because Nikolas could be a bit intense about hitting the right marks in their relationship and as much as she was completely at fault for his missing her birthday, it wasn’t like she could just pretend it didn’t happen. At some point, it would come up and the math was not hard to do. So she’d have to mention it, and that was going to be awkward.
She had just started to meditate on the fact that her birthday also meant she was now 27 and it was just slightly more scandalous that she was married to a 21 year old man when she pushed the door to the cottage open and realized that - of course - Nikolas knew damn well what day it was.
The living room had been overtaken by roses - and she would bet anything they were champagne. The room was lit only by the sunshine that still streamed in from the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the lake, but there were unlit candles strategically placed around the room. The dinning room table was set for two - and one of her CDs was playing on the stereo.
“Oh…” Carly breathed, taking it all in. “Man.”
Tom Yorke was pleading not to be left high and dry and she honestly wondered if she should sneak back out of the room just so that she could catch her breath when Nikolas walked into the room from the kitchen and came to a stop at the sight of her. She shifted her weight, at the effect of sudden discomfort, and gave a small wave.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” He seemed surprised to see her and put his arms out in a gesture of contrition. “I’m sorry.”
That cut through the feelings of unreservedness and Carly started to grin. Like an idiot. “Did my mother call you?”
“No,” she noticed for the first time that he had a box in his hands as she watched him put it down on the edge of the table. “Did she know I forgot?”
“No, she just knew I forgot, so she might have done the math.” She started down the steps into the living room. “How did you figure it out?”
“Apart from the fact that it was on the forms when we got married?” He reached for her as she left the bottom stair and pulled body flush against his. “I am absolutely capable of finding out something as basic as your birthday.”
Carly let out a sigh and twined her arms around his neck. This was perfect. It didn’t have a lot to compete with, but just coming home to effort - she just felt so loved.
The guilt flared up as he bent to kiss her and she willed it to go away. God, if today had not gone her way - she could tell herself she’d been crazy, that she’d lived her entire life in complete defiance of the facts until just a few short weeks ago - but just how close she’d come to doing some irreparable harm…. That was going to haunt her.
She swallowed it, though, and kissed him back - poured the regret and gratitude back at him, bringing a hand
“So does that mean the jury is officially giving a pass to flowers?”
It took her a moment to understand what he was getting at. “Yes. I like flowers. I like flowers you give me.” She glanced around the room again. “This is a lot of flowers.”
“I wanted to make an impression.” He leaned down to kiss her again, both sweet and hungry. When he pulled back, he ran his hand over her neck a few times before murmuring, “I should have remembered.”
Carly shook her head, biting back another wave of remorse. “I really did forget. Which is mind-blowing. My inner six year old is totally scandalized.” She dragged in a breath and started to talk too quickly. “When is yours? I know I saw it on those forms, but all I remember is that you’re a Scorpio -” She broke off. “Oh my God. I just realized how twisted that is.”
“It’s an astrological sign. I assure you, it was beyond my control. And it’s November 5th.”
Carly squeezed her eyes shut and repeated the date under her breath several times. “Ok, got it.”
“I’ll remind you.”
She mouthed the words “thank you” at him, then moved closer into his embrace, laying her head against his chest. She felt his hands run up and down her spine in a soothing gesture as she took in the room again. “This is amazing,” she said, nearly to herself.
“It would have been better if I’d been organized.”
“It’s perfect.” And it was. She was pretty sure it would continue to be perfect. She shook her head and stood up, raising her eyes to his. “I am so happy right now. With you.”
He took that in, then smiled in a way that was so endearingly shy and un-Cassadine-like that Carly laughed and stood up on her toes to kiss him again.
“I mean it,” she informed him, mid kiss.
Nikolas nodded, pulling her close to him and murmured. “I know.”
Well. That was something, at least.
I’m posting today because I’ll be out of town on the weekend and will definitely not be posting again until May 2nd - which is a date I am striving to keep this time. As much as life does tend to be busy right now, I at least won’t be throwing a baby shower.
Baby showers. There might actually be a pictorial on my journal about part of this shower. The part where I say to people “I was thinking of doing this” and they look horror-struck. Martha Stewart I am not. We’ll see how it goes.
Anyway - really hope this chapter does what I want it to do. Still setting things up with wild abandon. Very very curious to know what people think - as always, but maybe a little particularly right now (because… Heeeeelp!)
xoxo
~*~*~Chapter 92: A River in Egypt~*~*~
In the dim light of the cabin, Nikolas watched Carly. She was sitting on their glorified berth on the Zephyr, with her feet tucked beneath the full skirt of her sundress. Behind her, moonlight streamed in through the portholes as she gazed back at him with her head cocked to one side. The angle of her head was her only nod towards inquiry. She hadn’t asked him any questions, apart from what he wanted from her. Even that, he hadn’t answered. He hadn’t had to.
Still, he lingered in the doorway because he knew that whatever was going to happen once he moved to her was going to be trouble. Nothing good could come from his present mood. He felt angry and bitter and torn up. But he also felt grateful for her. Slightly and inexplicably hopeful. Over the years, he’d heard a lot of opinions about his relationship with his mother; Carly, if she had one, was keeping it to herself. There was something about her silence, her quiet support, that left him feeling known. Understood. It was an uncomfortable cocktail of emotion, but at the least the hope lead to some kind of action.
Pushing himself off the wall, he crossed to her, feeling the boat move underneath them. She reached out as he approached, grabbing his shirt into her fists and pulling herself up onto her knees. He let her eyes search his, forced himself not to draw away. It felt dangerous, but his encounter with his mother had left him feeling reckless. If he turned away from her, his mind would only travel back to the same old places. Bringing up the
image of his mother. Laura, looking at him like he’d just hit her. Laura, moving her mouth in silent horror right before he turned and walked away from her. God, he hated the way she looked at him - either tentative, concerned or terrified. It made him feel like a mistake.
Because he was a mistake. Or something close to it. Pain flashed through him again and he stepped back from his wife without being aware of making the choice to do so. Carly had a tight grip on his shirt, however, and she pulled him back to her with surprising determination.
He closed his eyes, bowing his head, and swallowed hard. He wanted to know - that the was problem. He wanted to know what would happen. If he just let himself believe - just for tonight - that Carly really and truly felt about him the way he felt about her. Not just that she loved him, but that she loved him with that same desperate, hungry, unconditional fever he felt for her. Because if she felt like that, if she really and truly shared his feelings, then it didn’t matter what happened tonight. It didn’t matter if he was angry or self-pitying, hurt or weakened - he could just be. He could just let himself go.
Defenses low as they were, there was nothing for it but to lean forward and kiss her. And it was a needy, desperate kiss. It was the kind of kiss that begged, in that moment, he wasn’t even sure what for.
He found out, though, when she kissed him back. Her mouth grabbed at his, and he didn’t notice she’d let go of his shirt until he felt her hands in his hair. He’d always known Carly could distract him, soothe him, make him feel better about bad situations. But her ability to burn through his defenses and neuroses was improving, because by the time she broke away to help him pull off his shirt, the thread of his of disquiet was already feeling distant and easy to lose track of. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against him as his kiss grew more insistent. When she broke away from him it was to pull his shirt off his shoulders. Her eyes caught his and she looked fierce and possessive. He felt something like relief wash over him.
He didn’t know what this was - he could only choose what he wanted to believe and hope he was right. And he wanted to believe in her.
~*~*~
“I have to leave the house by 9:30. At the … absolute… latest.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Mmmm. You keep doing… that.” Carly sighed and dropped her head back and Nikolas’s determined kissing of every inch of exposed skin moved from behind her ear to her throat. “Oh my God, Nikolas.”
It was Monday morning and she felt absolutely dizzy. And she shouldn’t. She should be immune. 36 straight hours of nothing short of complete adoration and worship from her husband, it should be starting to get on her nerves. What could she say? Somehow he made it work. Somehow, it did not get old.
She still didn't know exactly what had happened on Saturday but she knew enough. It had something to do with Laura and it had shaken him up. But not permanently and not the way she'd seen him shaken in the past. If Nikolas was upset about Stefan there was nothing anyone could do to help that situation. But this... whatever this was, she could soothe it away.
That was why she wasn’t completely freaked out or annoyed that Nikolas was being mostly silent. He wasn’t being cold and he wasn’t being morose and he wasn’t vanishing for hours on end, so call it progress.
“Ok,” she sighed, allowing herself to sink back into the bed clothes. “Just tell me you’re keeping track of the time.”
“It’s 8:00. We’re fine.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Remember when you used to be the one who had to rush off some place every morning and I didn’t anything to do but - “
“Try to stop me?”
“I was going to say ‘wait around’, but yeah.”
Nikolas dragged himself back up her body, brushing several light kisses over her mouth before allowing her to pull him into something deeper and more expressive. They stopped talking for long enough that she was a bit surprised when he pulled back and asked her “Do you have a lot going on today?”
“Umm…” Carly blinked a few times, then noticed his smirk and stuck her tongue out at him. Struggling to sit up, she pushed him back, announcing, “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Alright,” he murmured, rolling onto his back but pulling her with him. She settled on top of him, forearms propped on his chest and gazed down at him. He met her eyes - she liked that. It was another reason she wasn’t feeling neurotic right now. She gave a half roll of her eyes before she leaned down and kissed him. His hands tangled in her hair as he pulled her closer to him. When she finally brought herself to break the kiss, she lay her head against his chest and let out a sigh.
“Do you realize how revolting we’re getting?”
“Well, we’ve had the decency to keep mostly to ourselves.” It was a good point, so she let it stand as Nikolas lazily ran his hands down her back. “So you’re seeing Kevin at 10.”
“Yep. Then yoga. Then Alexis. To go over the battle plan.”
“And you don’t need me there.”
She scanned the comment for subtext, but there didn’t seem to be any. “I don’t think you need to be. I heard you on the phone yesterday, I know the drums are beating.”
“Cece needs me to take care of something.”
She raised her head. “Like what?”
“A million tiny irritants. It’ll take most of the day, unfortunately.”
She let herself smirk at him. “It’s a tough job, conquering the world.”
Her husband’s face broke into a rare grin and he closed his arms around her, rolling her over onto her back. “Oh,” he murmured, as he bent to resume his exploration of her neck. “You have no idea.”
~*~*~
After seeing Carly off at the hospital, Nikolas opted to leave his car in the underground garage and walk the few blocks to the office tower where Cassadine Inc. was currently housed. He’d avoided being alone for more than a few minutes since Friday night and he hadn’t been looking forward to it. Which was unfamiliar ground, frankly, because alone was how he was used to dealing with things like his family.
He’d unapologetically used Carly to distract himself from everything he’d been feeling on Saturday night and it had seemed likely that he’d just end up feeling that way again as soon as he was away from her. He was finding, though, that it wasn’t going that way. He wasn’t feeling… anything, really.
Well, that wasn’t true. He’s spent years courting numb and was very aware that he wasn’t numb at the moment. But he wasn’t consumed with that sense of being insubstantial that usually followed him around after he saw Laura. There were some remnants of unease, of distress that he could see how much she still had to do with who he had become - or worked not to become… But mostly he just felt over it. Like it didn’t matter that much and he had more important things to worry about.
Worry, however, wasn’t as accessible as it usually was, either. He wasn’t worried about Carly. He wasn’t worried about his father. He wasn’t worried about anything at work, particularly. And while he should probably be worried about AJ and the Quartermaines, he didn’t seem to have access to that, either. As he walked and ran this strange sensation through his head it occurred to him, finally, what he was experiencing.
Peace.
It was such a surreal realization he stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.
It couldn’t actually be that - He must just be suspended in a state of denial, because he knew damn well that he’d crossed a line he’d set out for himself on Saturday night. He’d let loose the reigns he tried to hold so tightly - and the last time he’d let that happen with Carly, that had been a disaster. He’d said and done things he would never be able to claw back - he’d acted out and thoroughly disgusted himself.
He might not have been actually yelling at Carly, but he’d still been a mess and he’d let her see that. And he should care - as perfect as she’d been, as completely accepting… he should care. And the custody case, their relationship had to be on the line there, if it did not go off the way they were planning - it could be the end of them.
He didn’t believe that. That was the problem. Somehow, on some fundamental level, he had stopped believing their relationship was reliant on outside factors.
How the hell had that happened?
He shook his head and made himself start back towards his office. If nothing else, he was finally in possession of just a little bit of concern.
~*~*~
Concern was no stranger to Carly and found it extremely hard to sit still for exactly that reason. She was in Alexis’s office, a catered lunch in front of her, and all she wanted to do was bolt out of her chair and pace. She should have told Nikolas to come. As much as there was nothing for him to do and he had plenty to keep him busy, she really wished she had someone’s hand to hold. Literally.
“Alright,” Alexis announced, indicating the end of their examination of her mental health history by flipping to a new page in her notebook, “Jason.”
Oh, good. This would be fun. She picked up a lonely sprig of asparagus and bit off the tip. “What about him?”
Alexis raised her eyes. She was not amused.
“Ok,” Carly sighed, leaning back in her chair. “Obviously he’ll come up.”
“Yes. And last time they wrote the story of how deeply inappropriate a person he was for you to have a relationship with, let alone charge with the care of son.”
“I’d still say he’s better than the Quartermaines,” Carly snapped. Ah. There it was. The rush of Jason feelings. Feelings of protectiveness. Feelings of inadequacy.
“Well,” Alexis ignored her tone. “That’s one of the questions I think we need to examine. Why did you choose Jason to be the de facto father of your child?”
Carly took another bite of her asparagus and pretended to be occupied with chewing. After a moment she glanced back at her lawyer. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Absolutely.”
She shifted her weight, considered lying, and then gave that up. It hadn’t worked so fantastically in the past, not where this was concerned. “Because I trusted him. Because I wanted to keep my baby and I knew that Tony and AJ both wanted to take him away from me. Because when Tony decided to dump me and sue for custody, the only thing I could think to do was tell him he wasn’t the father and Jason was the safest person to name.”
Alexis gave a slight nod. “We’ve already taken steps towards mounting an argument that you were not in a position to provide adequate representation to go up against the Quartermaine lawyers. Given how things worked out, that fits pretty neatly.”
“Yeah,” Carly felt her throat tighten and she struggled to get down a sip of water. “I guess so.”
“And what kind of father was Jason?”
She let that question sit for a moment, then found herself meeting Alexis’s eyes. She had made a lot of bad decisions where Michael was concerned, but she truly did not believe this was one of them.
“He was devoted. Once Michael was born, he was in, 100%. He just took it on.” She put a hand up in anticipation of the next question. “And yeah, ok. The mob thing, I know. But Sonny had just left town. The fact that Jason worked for him, that wasn’t something I ever paid that much attention to. He was my friend. When I first came here, he was my friend - the mob stuff, it just had nothing to do with that.”
“So to recap, you went to Jason because you trusted him, you knew he’d help you and he’d take care of Michael if anything happened to you.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much it.”
“And you didn’t know that Sonny was gone for good. You didn’t know he’d taken over permanently.”
The statement surprised her, largely because she’d mostly not cared about Sonny or what he did. The truth was, she didn’t think of Jason was being fallible, so the fact that he broke the law and got shot at was easy to put away. And she always had - Always.
“He always talks like Sonny could walk through the door and pick everything up again any day.” She glanced up at Alexis. “And he’s shown up, once or twice. He’s not a fan of mine.”
Alexis’s eyes flicked up and she gave a quick - and unexpectedly friendly - smile before continuing. “So really, this whole thing was about survival. And then it was about love.”
Carly felt the back of her neck prickle and she averted her gaze to the window. “It was. For me.” Deep breath. “And he loved Michael. Michael was really important to him.”
“I think it can work in our favor, that fact that Jason is both a Quartermaine and so thoroughly disturbing a source to run to for safety,” she mused.
“How’s that?”
“Well, extenuating circumstances aside, he is a part of the family, he chose to separate himself from them in direct response to their controlling behavior.”
“How do you know that?” Carly frowned.
“Research,” was the only answer Alexis gave before continuing, “He’s an extreme protector, given that he lives in a bullet-proof penthouse, and carries a gun. Has multiple bodyguards.” She glanced up at “You felt safe with him?”
Carly nodded. She had. Probably for the first time in her life.
“I was never in any danger from Jason. The worst thing that happened when we were together was Michael’s kidnapping.”
There was a momentary frisson in the air as the women looked at each other. Carly felt some distant resentment, but it kept being trumped by the fact that Tony getting away with kidnapping Michael was just about impossible - and Alexis had made it happen.
“Michael was kidnapped by someone who was unconnected to Jason,” Alexis ploughed on, unwilling to give that trip down memory lane much attention.
“Yep.” Carly took another sip of her drink. “Not unconnected to me, unfortunately.”
“No,” Alexis replied, dryly, “But you’ve never driven your brother into a tree, so we’ll call it a draw.”
“Good point.”
“That’s why I’m the lawyer.” Alexis glanced up from her notes, looking over her glasses at Carly in a way that reminded her powerfully of her high school principal. “I’ve been thinking about how to best position your relationship with Nikolas.”
Carly looked momentarily blank. “We’re married.”
“Yes, but before that.”
Oh. Well. Yeah. She considered being affronted but decided there was no point. “You’ve said you don’t want to know.”
“And I don’t. But there’s a good chance that questions will be asked. So … Do you remember the first time you met Nikolas?”
Carly knew Alexis wasn’t talking about the golf course and she had, of course, met Nikolas before that. Technically. “I don’t, really,” she admitted after a moment. “I mean, I worked at the hospital, his family owned it. My mother was married to his father. My boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend was his girlfriend, you know?”
“You just… crossed paths.”
“Yeah.”
“So it would be difficult to pin down when your relationship turned romantic.” The question was leading and Carly fought not to smirk.
“I don’t think it’s that hard to pinpoint when any relationship turns romantic.”
“No,” “But there’s a chance they’re going to want to know about your first date. How long you were seeing each other before you ran off and got married. But if you were just… in each other’s lives for a long time and then things took a turn…”
Alexis clearly knew this was not only inaccurate but bordering on fiction. Carly stared down into her coffee and
“So… We knew each other for years and then, got closer.”
“Though the wedding, I imagine. You were a bridesmaid, he was a friend of the bride.”
“Yeah,” again, she fought the urge to grin. Hey, it was nearly true. “It was through the wedding.”
“So no real first date.”
She flashed, powerfully, back to the golf course, the water hazard. Drinking champagne in a stained bridesmaid dress… “He says we had a ‘meeting of the minds’,” she glanced up at Alexis. “I really hate the idea that they’re going to try to pick this apart.”
“It’s what they’re there for. I don’t want to lead with Nikolas as the reason for custody to be reassessed, because our argument is that you’ve spent the last year restoring yourself to good mental health and well-being. But he’s a factor. He’s why you’re financially secure, you live with him. They’ll try to make that seem like it isn’t stable.”
“But it is!” Carly burst out with that before she really had time to consider it. “I mean, it’s the most stable relationship of my life.” She held up her left hand. “Even without the wedding ring.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Alexis’s expression was unreadable, but not in an all together bad way. Carly felt her stomach turn, all the same, and looked down at her plate. Her appetite had abandoned her.
“So. We’ve covered Kevin and Gail, the last year with Bobbie, Jason and Nikolas. What else?”
Alexis opened a file folder and flipped through, grimly. “There’s the family feud, but I think we’ve handled that as well as we’re going to.” She glanced up. “How’s work?”
“Ok. Nothing’s burned down.”
“Good enough,” she turned back to the folder. “Your last physical was in January. What about your last HIV test?”
Carly nearly choked on her glass of water. “My last… what?”
“It came up last time. I think we should have your most recent test available in case it comes up again. And if you haven’t had one since last year -“
“I haven’t,” Carly hated this topic. She answered the question like she knew the answer, but the fact was, she had no idea whether or not she’d been tested in the past year. She’d pretty much given up her autonomy in regards to her health when she’d moved in with Bobbie. Bobbie had cared about it a lot more than she had, at the time. “I didn’t think…” She felt her face heat and glanced away from Nikolas’s aunt. “It’ll be fine. Jason and Robin are always careful -- I don't know all the details, but he's fine. He gets tested regularly and he's fine."
Alexis frowned. "Right. And it’s been more than six months since you've had any intimate contact with Jason."
“Yeah,” she started to answer, but the words got caught in her throat and she felt a hard chill creep up her spine. She’d been thinking about it like they were talking about how long it had been since she and Jason had broken up - but that wasn’t the right date. She hadn’t even thought about that date. She had to count, but her brain had suddenly tripping over itself. It had been six months, hadn't it? She sure as hell had been acting like it had. It had been… What? After Valentines Day. February to March, April, May, June... June. Nikolas. Four months. Now it was August -- Six months almost to the day.
"I'll get tested this week," she sat up in her chair. "Better to just have it, right? And there's been no 'contact' in the last six months."
Alexis's look was penetrating. Survival instinct forced her to meet the level gaze.
"There hasn't. There hasn't since before Nikolas. Way before Nikolas." Perhaps not as 'way' as everyone thought, but way enough. Barely. Either way, she sounded certain. There was no quaver in her voice.
Because her insides had frozen completely.
~*~*~
Half an hour later Carly left Alexis’s office and immediately turned into an alleyway between enormous office buildings. She pulled out her cell phone, surprised that her hand wasn’t shaking, and dialed a number from memory. It picked up on the first ring.
“Carly.”
Jason said her name the same way he’d say “finally” when she got off the phone or came downstairs when they had some place to be. He said it like he’d been expecting her call and she had kept him waiting.
“Yeah,” she swallowed, hard. "Jase. I need something."
"Ok."
Amazing how that was still the response. Amazing and incomprehensible to her. She shook her head and turned her body into the concrete wall she was leaning against. "Listen. When was the last time you were tested?"
"For HIV?"
"Yes. For HIV. When?"
"Beginning of the month."
"And?"
"And nothing. Carly."
She pulled in her breath. "So you're negative."
"Of course I'm negative," Jason sounded tense. "I'm always negative."
She pressed a hand to her forehead. "So does that cover... us?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean February. Jake's. US."
"Carly, you're fine."
"I'd better be," she snapped. Like it was his fault. Like she didn't know exactly what she was doing. But, God, she hadn't cared. She hadn't had any clue that in six months it would matter. She trusted Jason, sure. She still did. But that small widow for error... The idea that her complete carelessness with Nikolas might actually have consequences...
"I wouldn't let -- "
"WOULDN'T LET WHAT?" she felt the fear that had been beating in her chest break loose and she yelled into the phone. "Because I was there. You weren't long on self-control that night. I'm supposed to believe you just willed the antibodies to stay in your system and not in mine?"
"There aren't any antibodies."
"Yeah," she choked. "Thank God for that." She forced herself to take several deep breaths, her mind turning new information over, trying to make sense of it. Trying to interrupt the chant of self-revulsion that had been marching through her head since Alexis had aksed the question and she had realized the answer. How how how could she have not been thinking about this? How had she been able to make it unimportant? Hot tears sprang to her eyes and she clamped a hand over her mouth to try to stifle a loud, terrified sob.
“Carly?” Jason barked in her ear and she was forced back to the present. “Where are you?”
She cleared her throat and wiped at her eyes impatiently. “Why?”
“Because you’re freaking out, I’ll send someone to come get you.”
“No,” she let out a choking laugh. “I’ll get a cab, I know what I need to do.” She pulled in an unsteady breath. “God. That night was so stupid. SO stupid. I can't believe..."
"It was a mistake."
She was dimly aware that there had been a time - and it had not been long ago - that Jason saying something like that to her would have torn her apart. That time might have been as recently as this morning. Any time before now, when she was suddenly awake to possible consequences.
"And then some,” she gave numb agreement. "That's never going to happen again."
She blinked her eyes and straightened up. The idea came as a complete shock to her. She was never going to sleep with Jason again. That time -- that fucked up mess of a night, that was the end for them. She tried to remember the second to last time -- she was sure she'd enshrined that one in her memory, but it was hard to access. That was weird. Maybe she'd never truly thought THAT was the last time, either. She'd always thought that, at some point, he'd come back.
He always had. But not this time. And even if he did...
She cleared her throat again and turned to look back towards the busy Port Charles street where she was going to have to hail a cab. "Look,” she managed. “I know you'd never do anything ... I know you wouldn't get me sick. But we were both a little crazy that night, and if that hurt Nikolas --"
"You haven't," she could hear the edge in Jason's voice, the beginning of his never-ending irritation with her. Right. That was exhausting, trying not to exhaust him. And, really, she didn't have to continue this conversation. She knew what she'd called to find out.
"I have to go." He'd think that was because Nikolas had just come in or something and she let him. She closed the cell phone without saying good-bye.
~*~*~
Cece flicked her fountain pen against a pad of paper with practiced irritation, her eyes fixed on a spot just over Nikolas’s shoulder. He knew what she was waiting for. He didn’t want to ask and she wasn’t going to want to answer, but they were running out of new business.
“I’m satisfied with this approach,” he sighed, finally. “It’s always been problematic to run out of Port Charles, if part of our business is done remotely from New York, it will mean more travel for you -“
“Not a problem.”
“Probably less for me. Though, as you’ve pointed out, I haven’t been traveling much lately.”
“Nope.”
“So I’ll have my father sign the documents and we’ll go ahead with the hiring tomorrow.”
“Great,”
None of this was said with anything other than incredible irritation, which Nikolas wouldn’t have put up with from any other person in his life, let alone his employ.
Alright. Probably from Lucky. But he was grandfathered in.
“I take it nothing has moved on the Quartermaine front?”
“Oh, lots of things have moved,” her pen finally stilled and she finally deigned to look at him. “Have you said anything to him?”
Nikolas blinked. “To AJ? As little as humanly possible. And believe me, that is not because I wasn’t provoked.”
Cece shook her head, nearly vibrating with frustration. “He must have ended it. There is no way we’ve missed something - he ended it, they aren’t seeing each other anymore, and we have no proof.”
Nikolas took that in. “And none is forthcoming.”
The fountain pen once again beat out an angry syncopation. “I wouldn’t give my word to it.”
That was pretty serious. Cece’s failures could be counted on one hand - and they were always due to external forces. Which didn’t stop her from taking umbrage. AJ’s sudden lack of stupidity had earned him an enemy for life.
“It’s alright, Cece.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “What was that?”
“I said it’s alright.”
She stared at him a long moment, then shook her head. “Are you patronizing me?”
“I promise I’m not.”
“Really? Because you should be furious right now.”
Nikolas shook his head, slightly. “I know you did your job. Without you, I wouldn’t even know there was something to fail to find proof of.”
Cece submitted him to an x-ray stare. “What is the matter with you?”
It was a straight question, not something she was saying in outrage, and he could only exhale in response. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to be able to get upset about anything right now.”
“And why’s that?”
He frowned as he considered his answer. “Because… I don’t think we’re going to lose.”
“Well, we’re not,” Cece snapped. “But this was going to make things a hell of a lot easier.”
He nodded absently. “I think it might still make things easier. I’ve never loved the idea of dragging Michael’s father through the mud, but if it’s true we don’t need to prove it to have private leverage.” He shrugged. “I think that’s enough.”
“Ok. Because you are kinda freaking me out right now.”
“Well. For that, I apologize.” He glanced back at her. “We’ll find something else.”
Cece tossed down both pen and paper and leapt out of her seat. “But it won’t be as GOOD.” She started to pace. “Prolonged physical relationship with the court appointed social worker. It was a thing of beauty. There is no way we’re going to come up with something that damaging in a few short weeks.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. Quartermaine has a deeply persistent self-destructive instinct.”
“I don’t just want him, I want HER.” Cece turned and leaned across the desk, arms locked, head bowed. “If there is one thing I hate, it’s insubordination.”
“She didn’t owe anything to us.”
“No,” she spit. “She owed something to the state. Look, I don’t have strong feelings about the bending of laws and rules - but I work for the private sector. More than that, I work for you. It suits my temperament. But if you work for the government…”
Nikolas thought, actually, that Cece’s temperament would probably be best suited to Interpol, but made no comment. “She’s a weak link. That won’t change.”
Cece threw up her hands. “But I want to exploit is now. I’ve put months in on this!”
“So we’ll put in another few weeks, see if anything else turns up.”
She leveled another glare at him. “Your preternatural calm is uncalled for. And annoying.”
Nikolas raised his brow to indicate that she was just going to have to deal with it, as it was apparently the only crayon in his emotional coloring box at the moment. She sighed and picked up her pad again. “In other news,” she muttered, “I guess you’re not going the beast-of-burden route with your wife today?”
It took nearly a full minute for Nikolas to come up with a response to that question.
“What route are we talking about?”
Cece looked up at him, then back at her notepad, then back to him. Her mouth moved a few times, and then threw down the pad, stalked around his desk and leaned over to his computer. Taking the mouse in hand, she brought up his schedule in a few short clicks.
Nikolas stared at the page in front of him.
Then he swore.
~*~*~
“Carly!” Bobbie sang out as she spotted her daughter coming off the elevator. “Happy birthday!”
“What? What are you -" Carly stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh my God.”
“You haven’t noticed the date?” her mother asked her as she approached the nurse’s station. “All day?”
“I’ve had other things on my mind,” she pointed out, leaning her body against the counter. Infinitely more pressing things. “Do you have, like, ten minutes?”
“For my daughter, on her birthday, I have five minutes.” Bobbie gave a wane smile. “It’s been a madhouse today. What can I do for you?”
Carly gestured with her head towards the seating area across the floor. “Can we?”
She saw concern flit across her mother’s face. Well, she couldn’t blame her. Alexis had probably read her correctly back at her office and Bobbie was going to see right through this, too. She was beyond caring. She just had to know.
Somehow she made it to the vinyl-covered hospital orange couches and pulled enough breath into her lungs to ask her mother “What is the quickest I get an HIV test?”
All the color drained from Bobbie’s face. “Why?”
“It’s nothing. I’m being paranoid.” Probably true. “Alexis doesn’t want to give AJ’s lawyers a chance to bring it up and I haven’t been tested since last year.”
“But,” Bobbie frowned. “There’s been no reason to test you, you haven’t engaged in any of the risk behaviors.” She was very nearly working at not understanding her. “Have you?”
For a second, she considered telling her mother the truth, but it was a fleeting thought. She would have to be crazy to tell Bobbie that her estimation of Carly’s last night with Jason was probably a year and change off. Let her think it was a little light heroin use, she didn’t care - she just knew exactly how her mother’s face would look if she told her the truth and she didn’t want to see it. “I just want to do this today, if I can, and I want to know the results as soon as possible.”
“Well,” Bobbie brushed her hair back, forcing herself back into nurse-mode. “The newest tests can let you know within an hour. I suppose I could pull some strings -“
An hour. Happy birthday to me. She nearly laughed. “Great. Good. That’s perfect. Can you do that now?”
“Now?”
“It’s my birthday.”
“That’s not fair.” Bobbie sighed. “Alright, I’ll call the lab. Wait here.”
Carly sat stock still on the couch, her brain returning to its favorite new game - counting just how long ago that night had been. It was over six months. The tests were supposed to be conclusive between three and six - so if it was clear then it should really be clear. And it would be. Because Jason was. And she was just being a freak.
But she had to know. She’d never cared before - that was sick, she thought. She had a son; how the hell had she just never cared? Because she’d loved Jason that much, she remembered. And she’d let him be the one that worried about HIV risk, because in a weird way, it was how she knew he cared about her. He might not love her, but he’d make sure she didn’t get AIDS. Ah, young love.
“Alright,” Bobbie jolted her daughter out of her dark reverie. “If you go down to the lab floor and ask for Rita she’ll take the blood, provided you get there in the next five minutes.” She frowned and sank down next to Carly. “Is Nikolas alright? Is it something with him?”
It took Carly a moment to realize that her mother had no idea that Nikolas had never slept with … well. Anyone. That was another fun fact she wasn’t going to be relating today.
“No, Mama!” she stood, gathering up her things. “Nikolas is fine. I’m fine. Everyone is fine.” She kissed her mother on the cheek quickly. “I’ll call you about Wednesday. Thanks for the whole giving birth to me thing -" Carly started off towards the elevators at a clip only to have Bobbie call her back.
“Carly!”
She spun on the spot, eyes wide. “What?”
Bobbie shook her head and threw out her arms. “Just… let me know how it goes. Ok?”
Carly nodded, took a deep breath, then nodded again. “I will.”
Yeah. She wasn’t getting a thing past Barbara Jean Spencer. On some level, that was nice to know.
~*~*~
The late afternoon sun was nearly blinding Carly as she stepped off the launch at Spoon Island. Feeling emotionally wrung out and deeply relieved, she started up the stairs and actively resisting an urge to call Jason. “Ok, you were right. I’m fine. I should have known.” It felt like the natural thing to do - and it felt like a terrible idea. She had been doing her best to ignore the entire forgotten country that was Jason Morgan ever since she’d realized how much she really cared about Nikolas. The two things, they didn’t mix well, and it gave her a headache to thing about them too much. She didn’t want to compare them, she didn’t want to remember how they felt - she didn’t want to examine how she felt about Jason while she was falling more and more deeply in love with her husband. It just seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.
And some part of her loved disasters waiting to happen. She paused on the path and pulled out her phone for the umpteenth time. It wouldn’t be a big deal, really. It was just a call. Interactions with Jason were always way more significant to her than they were to him. And she’d snapped at him. It was just basic decency to call and let him know how it had all turned out…
Right. Except.
She rolled her eyes at herself and shoved the phone back into her pocket. The truth was, if she opened up that door even a crack, she didn’t know what she was going to be letting in. She just knew it had the potential to be horrible. And she didn’t want to be the person unraveling her husband anymore. The reason Saturday night had been so easy, so fluid and simple, was that whatever was going on with Nikolas - however upset he was? It was not her fault. She had not done that to him. She was just going to be the person who undid it.
It was so much better than always scrambling for a foothold - and that, really, was the biggest difference between Nikolas and Jason. With Nikolas, she knew exactly where she stood and she knew how much power she wielded. That had scared her for a long time, but now… Now it made her feel stable in a way she couldn’t even remember. It made her feel like she could do something besides ruin people’s lives. So she wasn’t going to call Jason and she wasn’t going to think about that night, ever again, if she could help it. She was walking away.
And into a whole problem, she thought grimly, as she approached the cottage. Because Nikolas could be a bit intense about hitting the right marks in their relationship and as much as she was completely at fault for his missing her birthday, it wasn’t like she could just pretend it didn’t happen. At some point, it would come up and the math was not hard to do. So she’d have to mention it, and that was going to be awkward.
She had just started to meditate on the fact that her birthday also meant she was now 27 and it was just slightly more scandalous that she was married to a 21 year old man when she pushed the door to the cottage open and realized that - of course - Nikolas knew damn well what day it was.
The living room had been overtaken by roses - and she would bet anything they were champagne. The room was lit only by the sunshine that still streamed in from the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the lake, but there were unlit candles strategically placed around the room. The dinning room table was set for two - and one of her CDs was playing on the stereo.
“Oh…” Carly breathed, taking it all in. “Man.”
Tom Yorke was pleading not to be left high and dry and she honestly wondered if she should sneak back out of the room just so that she could catch her breath when Nikolas walked into the room from the kitchen and came to a stop at the sight of her. She shifted her weight, at the effect of sudden discomfort, and gave a small wave.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” He seemed surprised to see her and put his arms out in a gesture of contrition. “I’m sorry.”
That cut through the feelings of unreservedness and Carly started to grin. Like an idiot. “Did my mother call you?”
“No,” she noticed for the first time that he had a box in his hands as she watched him put it down on the edge of the table. “Did she know I forgot?”
“No, she just knew I forgot, so she might have done the math.” She started down the steps into the living room. “How did you figure it out?”
“Apart from the fact that it was on the forms when we got married?” He reached for her as she left the bottom stair and pulled body flush against his. “I am absolutely capable of finding out something as basic as your birthday.”
Carly let out a sigh and twined her arms around his neck. This was perfect. It didn’t have a lot to compete with, but just coming home to effort - she just felt so loved.
The guilt flared up as he bent to kiss her and she willed it to go away. God, if today had not gone her way - she could tell herself she’d been crazy, that she’d lived her entire life in complete defiance of the facts until just a few short weeks ago - but just how close she’d come to doing some irreparable harm…. That was going to haunt her.
She swallowed it, though, and kissed him back - poured the regret and gratitude back at him, bringing a hand
“So does that mean the jury is officially giving a pass to flowers?”
It took her a moment to understand what he was getting at. “Yes. I like flowers. I like flowers you give me.” She glanced around the room again. “This is a lot of flowers.”
“I wanted to make an impression.” He leaned down to kiss her again, both sweet and hungry. When he pulled back, he ran his hand over her neck a few times before murmuring, “I should have remembered.”
Carly shook her head, biting back another wave of remorse. “I really did forget. Which is mind-blowing. My inner six year old is totally scandalized.” She dragged in a breath and started to talk too quickly. “When is yours? I know I saw it on those forms, but all I remember is that you’re a Scorpio -” She broke off. “Oh my God. I just realized how twisted that is.”
“It’s an astrological sign. I assure you, it was beyond my control. And it’s November 5th.”
Carly squeezed her eyes shut and repeated the date under her breath several times. “Ok, got it.”
“I’ll remind you.”
She mouthed the words “thank you” at him, then moved closer into his embrace, laying her head against his chest. She felt his hands run up and down her spine in a soothing gesture as she took in the room again. “This is amazing,” she said, nearly to herself.
“It would have been better if I’d been organized.”
“It’s perfect.” And it was. She was pretty sure it would continue to be perfect. She shook her head and stood up, raising her eyes to his. “I am so happy right now. With you.”
He took that in, then smiled in a way that was so endearingly shy and un-Cassadine-like that Carly laughed and stood up on her toes to kiss him again.
“I mean it,” she informed him, mid kiss.
Nikolas nodded, pulling her close to him and murmured. “I know.”
Well. That was something, at least.