Fic: Love For A Child
Dec. 1st, 2009 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Chapters: Part 2: Chapter 2/2
Author:
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Genre: AU. Romance. Drama.
Ratings: T
Word Count: ~4,000
Pairings/Characters: Jason/Spinelli.
Synopsis: Spinelli gets a call concerning his past and it leads to a significant alternation of his and Jason’s future.
Comments: Okay, I have been working on this fic since December and it is NOW OFFICIALLY DONE. And, I mean, really, my chapters had to be divided into chapters. This is that epic fic of epicness I’ve been mentioning sporadically over the months. It’s set in 2011/2012, but it takes certain liberties (Maxie and Spinelli were never really together, Jason turned Sonny in during the FBI stuff in early 2009, various other little stuff, too. Any questions, just ask, kay?) All in all, characters you recognize are not mine, but the new characters are mine. Enjoy!

Part II: Chapter 1 |
April 20, 2012
Five hours later and Spinelli is awake with a fussy, hungry infant in his arms. He’s moving about the kitchen preparing her bottle with practiced ease. “Just a moment, Baby Sadie.” He soothes her, as he checks the temperature. Satisfied, he slides into one of the chairs and sets about feeding her. Her grabby little hands hold the bottle up some now, which Spinelli allows, but he still watches her like a hawk.
She finishes it quickly enough and soon she is sound asleep in her crib again. Spinelli goes back downstairs to get himself a drink of water before returning to bed himself, only a knock at the door distracts him on his return to the stairs. “Who…” He starts, but finds himself walking towards it anyway.
“Damian!” A familiar voice calls frantically from the other side, and Spinelli flings the door open in shock.
His mother is standing there, her hand still raised and poised to knock again. “Mom?” He gapes. “What are you doing here?” A second later the stairwell door opens and another figure comes racing out. “Diana?” Both look just like they did the last time Spinelli saw them. Older, but the same. Diana with longer brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail like always, and their mother’s barely shoulder length and curly.
She runs up to him and throws her arms around him. “Damian!” She echoes their mother and cries into his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry; she wasn’t supposed to find out!”
“What… what’s going on?” He demands as quietly as he can. He ushers them inside and points them toward the couch.
“I’ve just been informed of Diana’s… indiscretion. Her latest boyfriend showed up in the middle of the night last night demanding to know what Diana had done with his child. I was understandably confused, and imagine my surprise when I find out that I’ve been a grandmother for five months and haven’t known about it.” Their mother, Casey, rants, with a glare somewhere between irritated and frustrated trained on her daughter and a tone that is one part sarcasm, one part aggravation. “And then, as if that weren’t enough, she tells me that she planned to give the baby to you. And where are you? Not with your grandmother. We have been driving ourselves insane trying to find you and if it weren’t for the hospitals records we likely never would have.”
Spinelli stares. He’s been staying with Jason for nearly six years now and no one noticed he’d even left? “I’ve been living here since 2006. And I’ve been trying to contact you,” he motions to Diana, “since I returned from the trip to Tennessee to collect Baby Sadie.”
Diana smiles, momentarily sidetracked. “Sadie? You named her Sadie?”
“Sadie Morgan Spinelli.” He elaborates. “But that’s not the most relevant-” Spinelli finds himself cut off and promptly ignored as mother and daughter begin to argue again. Spinelli doesn’t even know what triggered it, but suddenly there’s yelling and his sister is crying and then there’s even more crying from an entirely new direction.
“What’s going on?”
Jason is standing on the bottom step, looking very much like he’d just like to turn around and go back to sleep in his bed-rumpled t-shirt and sleep pants. But Sadie is quieting in his arms gripping his shirt as if it were her beloved green octopus.
Spinelli looks decidedly relieved to see him and crosses the room to stand beside his lover. “Ugh, Stone Cold, meet the familial unit of the Jackal: Diana, you’ve heard about her, and our Mom, Casey. Family unit, meet Jason Morgan.”
Diana ignores Jason completely, and her eyes hone in on the baby in his arms. Casey, however, takes in his appearance suspiciously, eyes shifting between her son and the strange man holding her granddaughter. The connection between Sadie’s middle name and this Jason’s last is not lost on her, either.
Jason nods in greeting and then he pulls Spinelli aside. “You wanna help me with feeding her?” Jason says, even though he knows that Spinelli was up long enough to do that before all the racket started and he’d heard Spinelli moving about in her room and singing a quick lullaby when he put her back to sleep.
“I already-” Spinelli tries to argue, but then he gets it and they duck into the kitchen quickly. “I mean, of course.”
“What’s going on?” The elder repeats, once they’re safely behind closed doors.
Spinelli shrugs, because he still doesn’t know that himself. “Mom found out about the baby and they came up here looking for me. They were unaware that the Jackal no longer resides in Oakfield.”
Jason looks hardly relieved by the answer. “And what does your Mom intend to do about this?”
“About?”
“About us having Sadie?” Jason edits. “Is she going to try to convince your sister to take her away from us?” He asks, very much disliking that idea. Sadie may not be theirs, but hell would freeze over before Jason let her go without a damn good reason. He’s already planning to call Diane as soon as possible about this and he’s scolding himself for having not done so sooner.
Spinelli looks thoroughly floored by Jason’s question. Clearly he hadn’t been thinking of ulterior motives for his family’s impromptu visit. “I… honestly don’t know, Stone Cold.” He finally says, terrified green eyes now locked on Jason and Sadie. “What do we do if that’s indeed what they are here for?”
Jason sighs. “I’ll call Diane and get her to look into it in the morning, see what she can do. In the mean time, let’s just try and figure out what they want, okay?” He passes Sadie to his lover and ruffles his hair before heading toward the door.
As they proceed back into the warzone that is currently their living room, Sadie now tucked safely in Spinelli’s arms, it is evident that none of them are going to get to go back to sleep anytime soon. Diana and Casey are at it again, and Spinelli can’t believe he’d forgotten how much they always argued.
“-tell me about it! If you had learned from all of the mistakes I made when I was your age, none of this would even be happening.”
Spinelli steps into the madness, even as Jason tries to stop him. “Ignoring the fact that you have, in fact, just called me a ‘mistake,’ Mother, I must humbly request that you and Diana cease and desist this argument at once. Baby Sadie is attempting to sleep.”
Diana quiets, and looks rather sheepish for taking part in the pointless argument, even as she shoots a final glare at their mother. Casey, however, remains difficult. She puts her hands on her hips in stubborn refusal to back down.
Spinelli knows that look; it means his mother feels she has been ‘betrayed’. Really, it’s kind of reminiscent of Sonny’s tirades whenever someone does something he doesn’t totally agree with. No wonder he and Mr. Sir had never gotten along, he thinks. He also knows a guilt trip is well on its way.
“I drive all the way to New York because you didn’t have the decency to call and tell us you’d left. I drive all the way out here to see the granddaughter I didn’t know I had and this is how you repay me?” Casey scoffs. “By telling me to be quiet and not talk to my own daughter?”
His eyes close. He hadn’t missed this. “I didn’t say-” He cuts himself off. It’s better to just not say anything. Enabling her controlling ways never ends well.
“Well? Damian?” She prods, and clearly she’s had several years of time to build up her need to berate him.
Diana tries to step in, then. “Mom, come on, stop. Damian just doesn’t want Sadie to-”
“Was I talking to you?” Their mother snaps, quite affronted by the double-team effect, and Jason stands on the sidelines of the family war wondering what he’s supposed to do. He’d always tried to avoid conflict even amongst the insane Quartermaine clan. Throwing himself into the middle of a three way argument does not seem the wisest decision for anyone because Spinelli and Diana seem to at least know how to defuse their mother.
“Mom, you need to chill out.” Spinelli warns her, because Sadie is already fussing and squirming and he knows if she starts crying it’s only going to stress his mother out more, which isn’t good for anyone. “If you’re going to come barging into Casa De Stone Cold in the middle of the night you are not going to do it whilst yelling up a storm.” He senses, more than he actually sees Jason inching his way closer.
And Jason’s movement turns out to be a really good call, because his mother rounds on him with a menacing glare on her face at being called out on her immature behavior.
“How dare you mouth off to me, Damian.” Casey seethes, continuing her tirade. “After all I’ve done for you, you’re going to repay me by… what? Kicking me out of a house that’s not even yours?” Because there’s no way has her son managed to get this kind of a house while she’s still stuck in blasted Oakfield. “How dare you?” She raises a hand as if to smack her son, and that’s when Jason has had enough.
He catches her wrist in his hand a safe distance away from his lover’s face, stone cold glare sufficiently invoked as he steps between her and Spinelli. “Okay. Let’s just stop this right now and get a few things straight. First, Spinelli does live here. I own a large part of the building and Spinelli’s name is on anything my name is on, so by default, he also owns most of this building. Second of all, definitely more importantly, we do not hit Spinelli. Ever. And we definitely don’t hit him when he has a defenseless baby in his arms. Got it?”
“Get off of me.” She replies with venom in her voice, pulling her arm from his grip. She does sit down on the couch again, though, which at least appeases the rest of them. Even Sadie settles down in Spinelli’s hold.
Jason sighs. “Look. You can stay here for the night if you want, there’s a guest room. Only if you don’t start arguing again.” He offers, because now he has a headache on top of wanting to go back to sleep and he can’t see any reason why they can’t wait until morning to yell at each other some more. “And we can talk about this more in the morning.”
“Can I hold her for a little while?” Diana asks, and her eyes have been locked on her daughter for the most of the night.
Spinelli nods, and shifts the baby into her mother’s arms. “Of course.” He says, and he pulls Jason aside for a moment. “You go back to sleep. I’ll come to bed once they’re out.”
Jason considers the potential for more arguing between family members for a moment. “Wake me up if the arguing starts again.” He agrees and ruffles Spinelli’s hair. “Night.” A quick kiss and he’s halfway up the stairs before all hell breaks loose.
“I knew it!” Casey declares, and whatever it is she had known does not sound like good news. She’s standing again, pointing an accusing finger at her son. “I knew there was something suspicious going on here!”
From the landing, Jason watches, frozen in place as the woman who gave birth to the love of his life turns on her child. He watches Spinelli’s face fall and he can only think that all of the times Sonny picked on him, they were absolutely nothing compared to the way Spinelli looks right now. Hands shoved deep into his pockets, eyes fixed on the floor, looking as if he’d very much appreciate it if it would just open up and make him disappear. His mother is on one hell of a hateful tirade. There’s an abundance of words like ‘faggot’ and ‘queer’ and all sorts of things that make Jason wonder how humanity has actually survived this long with such closed minded people running about.
“Always knew you were.” She says in what is almost a singsong type of voice, coupled with a kind of unnerving cackle. Diana is standing by the couch holding a very distressed Sadie, and everything is insane, and Spinelli looks like he’s about to fall apart.
“Enough.” Jason orders, stepping in front of his lover once again.
Casey laughs at him. “I’m not taking orders from the man fucking the kid who used to be my son.” She throws her hands up in exasperation.
Jason really, really wishes she knew what he did for a living, maybe then she would think twice about even considering insulting Spinelli. He knows that if Sonny had pulled a stunt like this, it probably would have gotten him killed. The only thing saving her is the fact that her blood is in Spinelli’s veins. And her blood is in Sadie’s veins. And he wouldn’t, he can’t, do that.
“Get out.” He says, a note of finality in his voice that actually shuts her up. “Now. Or I’ll drag you out of here myself.”
Begrudgingly, she steps toward the door. “I’m going to get a lawyer and I’ll make sure you never see my granddaughter again.” She says, as Jason slams the door in her face.
Diana is still inside, looking small and quiet where she stands holding Sadie. “Ugh, is it okay if I stay? I… I don’t care about any of that.”
Another door slams and suddenly Spinelli is nowhere in sight. Upstairs, Jason thinks. He ran upstairs. “Ugh, yeah. You can stay. I’m going to need to take her for a little while though.” Nothing cheers Spinelli up like Sadie does.
Spinelli’s sister nods in understanding and passes the baby back to Jason. “Ugh, the guest room?”
He leads her upstairs and they part ways at the first door on the right before Jason continues on to his and Spinelli’s room at the end of the hall. The doors locked. “Hey, come on.” He knocks. Nothing. “Spinelli, lemme in. Sadie’s here to see you, too.”
The click of the door unlocking sounds and Jason enters, finding Spinelli already halfway back to the bed. He proceeds to just kind of collapse face first on it, and he can hear sniffling coming from his lover. “Did she leave?” Spinelli asks, voice strained and cracking slightly when he speaks.
“Yeah.” Jason answers simply as he sits on the bed beside his rather distraught lover. Spinelli doesn’t move to curl up against him like he always does and he knows then that this is even worse than it looks. He sets Sadie down between them, the sleepy baby’s eyes drift shut nearly immediately. “Come here.” He says, with a tug to Spinelli’s t-shirt.
Another sniffle, and Spinelli’s still not moving.
Jason leans down and presses a kiss to the back of Spinelli’s neck. The hand that had previously been tugging on his shirt slides beneath the thin material to rub soothing circles on the younger’s back. “What she said…”
“Is just the same as the countless other ignorant and hurtful things she has said over the years concerning that which she does not agree with. But this was...” He swallows what Jason can only assume are more tears, and sits up. He wipes his arm over his eyes and suddenly there is a just-shy-of-twenty-five year old wrapped up in his arms as opposed to the five month old previous inhabiting them. Arms curled around Jason neck, face buried against his neck. “A compilation of several of the most damaging insults she could have possibly used. More severe than any she has previously employed.”
For the handful of years they’ve been together, no one has dared to say anything outright negative about their relationship. Sure, there have been a few strangers here and there who’d commented a little louder than strictly necessary, and a couple of rival mobster’s who’d try to provoke attacks with some choice words, but no one who mattered had seemed bothered by the concept of Jason and Spinelli. Casey was the first all out attack they’d had to face, and damn it all if Jason was letting her words decimate the best relationship he’d ever had.
Jason falls backward against the pillows with careful maneuvering – as he has certainly not forgotten about Sadie sleeping soundly beside them. In lying down, Spinelli comes with him, snuggled up against his side like he always is, and he knows that’s at least calmed Spinelli down a little. “There’s no excuse for it.” His fingers run absently through his lover’s hair as he talks. “You… you know what you mean to me, and you know that you’ve been my best friend for years now. I know you’re amazing and caring and one of the most giving people I’ve ever known and anyone who can look past all of that just because you happen to come home with me at the end of the day…” He struggles to find the right words to end that thought. He’s not the walking thesaurus that his lover is, and aside from a select few people, talking is not one of his strong points. “Then it’s their loss.” And, yeah, it’s a little bit cliché, but Spinelli looks a little less caved in on himself because of it.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway draw Spinelli’s attention away from Jason, and he half rolls over to look at the closed door of their room as if it is proposing entrance for the root of all evil. “What was that?”
“Diana, probably.” Jason answers with a shrug, given that the footsteps sounded from the direction of the bathroom. “She’s staying the night.”
Spinelli nods, and answers with a quiet “Oh.” He feels bad about hiding out in his room, but after the verbal blows he took from their mother, he doesn’t think he can talk with her just yet. Not to mention now the fear of losing Sadie is all too real.
Jason reads the distress on his face and uses the hand that is not resting easily on Spinelli’s hip to nudge his chin so they’re eyes lock. “You okay?”
“What if she makes good on her threat against us, Stone Cold?” Spinelli inquires. “We are not Sadie’s parents. They can take her from us without much of a fight.”
“I’m not gonna let that happen.” Jason says with so much conviction behind it that Spinelli is compelled to believe him.
Spinelli reaches out and lifts the sleepy infant onto Jason’s chest, where she moves about and kicks for a moment before she falls back to sleep nearly the second her tiny fist curls up in the material of Jason’s shirt. “Princess Sadie does not deserve the same childhood that Diana and I had.”
With Spinelli wrapped against his side and Sadie resting on his chest, Jason doesn’t think this could get any better. “We’ll talk to Diana about it, okay? And I’ll call Diane to help us, too. Do whatever we need to. But, whatever happens, I won’t let your mom get her. In the fifteen minutes she was here she tried to hit you and nearly hit Sadie in the process. And she verbally attacked you and Diana.”
“And you as well, Stone Cold. I was not the only target in her angry tirade against all things homoerotic.” The younger points out. Jason hadn’t even registered that he had been attacked in the verbal pitch-forking as well, having been too focused on Spinelli.
They lay in a comfortable silence for a few moments, just relaxing after the hectic insanity of the last half hour.
Spinelli finally breaks it when he reluctantly sits up. “I should take Sadie back to her room.”
Jason nods as Spinelli wrangles the infant into his arms once more and watches as he walks through the door.
Only… a few moments pass and Spinelli doesn’t return. Jason smiles. He’s not worried. He’s done this before. When Sadie had a bad cold for a few days, a fever, a cough. Her doctor had given them medicine and told them what to look out for, but otherwise it had been mostly a waiting game. Spinelli had hardly left the pink room the whole time she was sick.
He grabs a pillow and a blanket from the bed and makes his own way down the hall, knocking on the door to Sadie’s room. “Care for some company?”
The door opens, and a sheepish looking Spinelli is standing in front of him. “Just… you know, in case she comes back.”
“Yeah.” Jason agrees and closes the door once he’s entered the room. They lie on the floor, Jason using the pillow and Spinelli’s head on Jason’s chest, the blanket strewn over them. If anyone tries to open the door, Jason will probably feel it more than he’ll see it, but he’s okay with that because they can see Sadie sleeping soundly and safely through the bars in her crib from their spot.
***
Just a few hours later, Diane is sitting across from Jason and Spinelli in the back of the recently rebuilt coffee shop, with Sadie in her carrier on the desk between them. Diana is in the main part of the shop enjoying a cup of coffee.
“The question is: How far are you two willing to go to pull this off?”
Her two clients exchange glances, before replying nearly simultaneously. Once Spinelli-speak is subtracted out both answers equate to “As far as it takes.”
She nods. “Okay, then.” A sigh. “Not the easiest thing you’ve ever asked of me. Not the hardest either.” Diane amends, when thoughts of the FBI and mysteriously disappearing charges of treason come to mind. “I can easily make a case for you. Financially stable. About as committed as you can get for now. The baby’s mother has left her in your care for five months and in fact abandoned her child at the hospital. And with what Jason told me about over the phone regarding last night’s events, I’d say you have a chance at this.” She’s more musing aloud than actually telling them anything they don’t already know, but they’re still listening intently. "The only thing working against you would be your criminal history. I don't suppose you'd be willing to find a more... legitimate... line of work?”
That is the one thing Jason is hesitant to do. Without someone in charge, even when it’s calm like it has been lately, if he leaves, there would be a war over his territory and it would be just as unsafe on the streets of Port Charles. Not to mention that just because you’re out of the business, it does not mean you are no longer a target. Sonny was proof enough of that.
“There’s always Jackal & Stone: Private Investigators.” Spinelli suggests helpfully, spotting the turmoil over the decision written all over Jason’s face.
Jason shrugs. “I’ll work on getting out from under the business and finding a replacement.” He promises. And that’s really all he can do for now.
“Alright. More than I expected.” Diane acquiesces. “I’ll start working on the paperwork to legally adopt her. I would suggest trying to get your sister on board, Mr. Spinelli. ”
And that’s all they can do for now: try. But, at least they’ve put the process into motion.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-05 10:17 pm (UTC)