Part I

Chapter One: "Twice"

By SRC

The first time he visited Michael after the successful, un-successful surgery, he was still asleep. He only meant to peer through the tiny three-inch wide window encased in the door leading into the ICU suite. The boy was lying on his back, light ginger hair stuck half-heartedly out of thick white bandages wrapped around his head.

Parts of the Frontal, Parietal and Temporal lobe, he thought.

The patients jaw was slack and he looked both young and old at the same time. His brow was furrowed in a puzzled expression, and his hands were clenched into loose fists. There was little to no movement behind pale eyelids that were tinged pink under cheap florescent lighting. Long light eyelashes rested peacefully against lightly freckled cheeks.

He pushed open the heavy door, noting it was cold to the touch. Upon closer inspection of the younger man, he could see full pink lips and pink medical tubes shooting out of various appendages.

He had read somewhere that pale pink was supposed to evoke soothing, tranquil feelings.

The room smelled nice, though. Not like a hospital, but a florist shop. Fresh cut flowers and vases of roses sat on available counterpace, giving the room a fragrant disposition and spots of color to an already drab room. He wondered what Michael thought of the flowers. If he too would feel a sense of melancholy when he witnessed the cut flowers die from being severed form their roots, oxygenated at an abrupt pace; would he too see the sadness when the small potted amaryllis began to wither away from starvation due to lack of sunlight to complete the reaction of photosynthesis.

The balanced reaction for photosynthesis is 6CO2 + 6H2O [plus energy in the form of sunlight] yields C6H12O6 + 6O2. The most important reaction for life.

Or would he not care at all about the fuckin' flowers? Real men weren't supposed to care about things like that; flowers were for prom dates and anniversaries. Jason did not have flowers in his house. Or maybe, Michael was allergic to the plants and he just spent a year in his head wishing someone would just throw them away so his eyes would stop twitching and his sinuses wouldn't be congested. Or maybe he was just hoping someone would put some god-damn Claritan-D in his IV drip.

He stood there, just staring at the kid, listening to the steady cadence of the heart monitor before a nurse in purple scrubs came and silently ushered him out.

+/-

The second time he came to visit Michael he didn't stop to observe through the glass.

After his first visit, he had gone straight to the penthouse. On the gray, modern style sofa, his roommate was nursing a green bottled beer with the label slowly and tediously being stripped away by its imbiber. Three empty, label-less beers were abandoned on the coffee table on top of an old Us Weekly that Maxie had left behind one day. He threw his keys in the bowl on the desk that already contained Jason's set and proceeded to tell him about his visit with the oldest Corinthos child. Jason only grunted and shot him that look that was only reserved for his younger roommate and employee, the one that so clearly stated that he is both socially awkward and incompetent to be left to his own devices. The one that made him feel unworthy of any type of affection, the one that could demoralize him in a nano-instant.

Jason didn't say anything else that night, just nodded at the few insignificant facts that the Jackal was able to surface on Ian Devlin and Michaels shooting and then he bid the man goodnight and ran up the stairs two and three at a time, in an effort to escape the cold stare of Jason.

So, a few days later, when he went to visit the teen again, he marched right into the room, so he wouldn't dwell on the look that Jason had sent him when he told him about the first visit.

On one hand, his timing was better. The boy in question was sitting up, appearing very alert and… angry? But, on the other hand, Jason and Sonny were both there on either side of the white hospital bed. Jason had been speaking in low calm and sympathetic voices while Mr. Corinthos was rapidly talking with lots of emotions and hand gestures. All three of the rooms' current occupants turned sharply at the intrusion of the unwelcomed new comer and he could feel the icy stares hit his epidermis and he bit back a shiver.

"Hi." He remarked blankly. He held out his small potted houseplant in a sort of 'waving-the-white-flag' maneuver. Cause he's absolutely sure two mobsters and a mobsters kid were terrified of a lanky computer hacker.

"Freaky-boy," Mr. Corinthos was the first to speak, "just turn around and walk straight out of this room, back to whatever dark room you just crawled out of."

He could feel his face flush and he was able to meet Michaels clear blue eyes for a second before his own hazel eyes dropped to the linoleum floor in embarrassment. He quickly set down the plant a foot from the left side of the door and turned around to quickly shuffle out the door.

"And Spuh-nelli, if you have any of that information we talked about, you better be around to give it to me."

He didn't think it was lucrative to his health if he mentioned that Mr. Corinthos, Sir, would not be able to find him if he returned to his previously vacated dark room, so he kept his gaze on the floor and went to go bum a cigarette off of a nurse or doctor in the ally behind the Hospital.

+/-

AN: I don't own anything you recognize. Improve your Karma today and Review!