Breaking The Silence

I started this a while ago, but recently started working on it again, with major help from suerum, who is - for the record, awesome - it's not quite done yet, but it's getting there. Set a bit in the future (November 2010-ish) and assumes Maxie and Spinelli broke up and that Jason and Sam have also called it quits again. Mix between a casefile fic and a regular drama/hurt/comfort/romance kind of fic. Original characters aren't mine, even though I may not actually want them. Reviews are awesome, and enjoy!

Sorry for the delay. I happened to be looking through files and realized I hadn't updated this one in a while. It's a short one, but the next is longer.

Jason woke to the muted, familiar sound of fingers flying quickly over a keyboard. Opening his eyes, while nearly unnecessary, proved that it was Spinelli. The younger man was wide awake, leaning against the side of the bed on which Jason slept, with his laptop up and running. It sat balanced on his pajama clad knees and the hacker was obviously intent upon his work.

"Couldn't sleep?" Jason yawned, reaching out a hand to lazily drag through Spinelli's messy, unkempt bed-head.

Spinelli nodded his head sharply in response, leaned back into Jason's touch and let his fingers keep moving.

It didn't take a genius to read Spinelli's tense posture – how he was as curled in on himself as both his cast and the laptop would allow, how his eyes scanned around the room every few seconds as if waiting for something to jump out and attack from the shadows. He'd had another nightmare.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" The elder asked, moving to watch the screen over Spinelli's t-shirt covered shoulder. The clock in the corner of the screen alerted him that it wasn't even five in the morning just yet.

As he expected, the word document they'd been using on and off popped up on screen and Spinelli typed out his answer. 'There is no need for both of us to be sleep-deprived, Stone Cold. Your Jackal will be fine, you should go back to sleep.'

Jason shook his head in protest. "Not happening. You're up, I'm up," he countered. "What're you working on?"

Spinelli pulled up the cut-together security footage and pictures that followed the trail from Courtland Street to the abandoned jewelry store. Spinelli had been working on this most of all, on top of running checks on the stolen credit card that had paid for the hotel room and tracking down various other leads. Some originated from the evidence that the PCPD had processed from Spinelli's files and from the crime scene, and some he found on his own. But so far, nothing had led them to the man responsible for the eight brutal killings.

"Still nothing new?"

'I remembered something.' Spinelli typed out for him, and those words definitely got Jason's undivided attention. He kept tapping at keys before Jason could ask what that something was. 'He was coming back. I don't know why he left, but he said he would be back to deal with me, do to me what he did to Ben and Tyler - but then you showed up instead.'

More and more startling news came up in the course of investigating this nightmare, Jason thought. First, he had to cope with the fact that Spinelli wasn't the blameless victim of some opportunistic abductor, but rather that he'd put himself in harm's way with no form of backup. Now, Jason had to process the realization that if he had taken mere moments longer in getting to Spinelli – if he'd so much as taken a wrong turn or waited a bit longer before he started looking – it could have been too late. Spinelli would have been dead. Not only that, but it also meant that Spinelli hadn't been meant to escape. It meant that Spinelli had seen or heard something that was potentially damning to the man who'd done this, and that meant that Spinelli could still be at risk.

He wanted to call Max – who had opted, along with Milo, to leave Sonny's employ as well – to have him up their security right this very second. Even Mac and the PCPD could help, if it meant that Spinelli would be safer.

"I don't suppose you'd want to disappear for a while, would you?" Jason asked, as thoughts of some isolated tropical beach – not the island, that was Sonny's now – or some famous city that would interest Spinelli, came to mind. Someplace so far away from Port Charles that it would undoubtedly be safe for him.

But, he knew the answer even before Spinelli answered him with a shake of his head. As traumatized as the hacker had been, Jason knew he wanted the man responsible for these horrendous crimes to be brought to justice. Even if it meant staying here and being at risk.

"Didn't think so." He sighed, sliding off the bed to sit beside Spinelli on the floor.

They sat there in companionable silence for a few long minutes while Spinelli typed faster and faster on his keyboard until suddenly he stopped, his face contorted with frustration as he gazed at Jason in despair.

Jason didn't need words to read what was so plainly evident in Spinelli's eyes, he was angry, frightened, and felt helpless to combat this unknown presence whose very shadow lay across Jason's room, invading their privacy and destroying their peace of mind. He reached over and with a gentle tug pulled the laptop from the hacker's grasp. "That's enough," Jason said firmly, closing the computer with a decisive click. "It's time to get some rest and tomorrow we'll figure out we're going to do. You're no good to anyone – me, those boys, or most of all yourself – if you worry yourself sick over something that you can't fix, at least not right now."

Spinelli looked at him, forlorn and anxious, as he listened intently to Jason's words. He responded with a minute nod of his head and when Jason stood up, he accepted the hand that was offered and arose from the floor to hop ungainly on one foot toward the bed.

"C"mere," Jason mumbled, pulling Spinelli down to settle against his side, always wary of his injuries. He let his hand snake under Spinelli's baggy t-shirt and absently traced random patterns on soft skin. "You'll be okay; we'll be okay, alright?" He pressed a kiss against the nape of the boy's neck and then one against his lips and smiled when he felt Spinelli start to relax. "Sweet dreams, Spinelli."