A note on structure: Each update for Part 1 of Warning Shots will be like an episodic short story to provide a prequel to the main event. It’ll make sense later, I promise.
Written in 60 minutes.
STORY 1: And in the Beginning…
Port Charles, New York
September 1999
It had all started with a letter.
On bright April morning, Elizabeth Webber had rushed to her mailbox, eagerly anticipating acceptance to the New York School of the Visual Arts, Step One on the Lucky & Elizabeth Life Plan, a decorated poster board that held a prominent position on the wall in her bedroom.
Step 1: Get into Art School!
Step 2: Move to New York City!
Step 3: Get Lucky a gig playing guitar in the West Village!
Step 4: Get My First Art Show!
Step 5: Get married in Central Park!
Step 6: Live Happily Ever After!
Each step had been illustrated, and Elizabeth couldn’t wait to check off the very first one—
And then she’d seen the letter.
It was a slim envelope, nothing like the large, thick white ones that rolled in for her older sister Sarah year before or the one her best friend Emily Bowen Quartermaine had been receiving for a few weeks now. Or even the one from Elizabeth’s back up school, PCU.
No, this one could hold nothing more than a single sheet of paper.
She had stood on her step staring at it for a long time, the front door wide open enough that her grandmother’s annoying cat, Gatsby, had escaped, and Audrey Hardy had come to admonish her.
“Elizabeth, what is it—” Audrey had stopped when she saw Elizabeth staring at the letter. “Oh. Have you heard from New York then?”
With trembling fingers, Elizabeth opened the envelope, slid it out —
We regret to inform you…
It had been devastating. Soul crushing. She’d pinned everything on this one hope — they’d even gone to New York City a few weeks earlier to start scouting out their new neighborhood. Lucky wore a subway token around his neck in memory — and now —
She’d cried in her grandmother’s arms, then had gone to the phone to call Lucky. Lucky had been disappointed, but sweet as always. They’d figure out a new plan. No worries. Good thing she’d applied to her back up school, right?
Within a few weeks, Elizabeth had a new plan. Not as carefully or intricately designed — this was more of a paper ripped from a notebook type of thing.
Step 1: Go to PCU.
Step 2: Room with Emily.
Step 3: Graduate.
Step 4: Move to New York.
And now, five months later, Elizabeth was embarking on step two. Emily had convinced that for their first year, they absolutely had to live together in a dorm on campus. It would be the most awesome experience ever. Lucky had been disappointed — he’d been saving for an apartment for them, but Elizabeth had started to warm up to the idea of going to PCU. Especially with Emily. They’d pored over all the orientation materials, gone to all the opening house events —
Today, Elizabeth and Emily were moving into their dorm — Room 314 on the third floor of Barrington Hall, and Elizabeth was driving Emily’s older brother crazy. Not that Jason Morgan would ever admit it — he’d have to talk in order to do that.
“You’re going to be really mad,” she said, a breathless as she came back into the room to see Jason sliding the desk into the spot Elizabeth had just promised was the absolute perfect place.
Jason looked at her, his light blue eyes locked on hers. “No.” Normally, men like Jason made Elizabeth nervous. He wasn’t particularly tall, but everyone towered over Elizabeth’s short height. He was muscular, and Elizabeth knew he could throw a punch. He was Jason Morgan, notoriously mixed up with the local mafia. She’d been at Luke’s the night someone had tried to kill him and snagged Nikolas Cassadine in the throat.
But he was just Jason to her these days, the guy who ran the garage and rented a room above it to Lucky. He was so different around his sister — he even smiled, and even someone happily devoted to her boyfriend like Elizabeth was, could objectively admit he was attractive. Gorgeous. Sexy, actually with light blonde hair always worn with spikes — sometimes she tried to picture him arranging his hair in the morning with gel, and it made her giggle.
But mostly he was just Jason, the guy who would do anything for his little sister. And his little sister’s best friend.
Jason sighed, pressed one thumb to his eyebrow. “Where do you want it?”
“You are the best!” She squealed, actually jumped a little, then darted around him. “I had this vision as I was coming up the stairs — because you know, Em and I are going to be studying but this is going to be like home, too—”
“Elizabeth.”
She broke off, startled because she didn’t think she’d ever heard Jason say her name. Which made sense — how many conversations had they ever had? She bit her lip. “Right. You don’t care why. I promise this is it. We want the beds here—” She gestured by the window. “And then the desk over here—oh, and—” She bent down as if to pick up one end of the desk. “I can help—”
He brushed her hands aside, the callused fingers startling her — Lucky was the only man who’d ever really touched her, and his hands were so much softer. “Thanks, but I can do this quicker by myself.” Then in one light move, he lifted the desk without even exerting himself.
“You’re really the best. I’m so sorry Lucky ditched us. He had to do something with Laura, and well, Emily would have invited Juan—”
Jason looked at her and Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “Right. I know. That’s why she didn’t. Plus, um, she didn’t tell you this yet, but I thought I’d warn you. Juan’s step dad is making him go back to Puerto Rico.”
“Warn me?” Jason said, furrowing his brow. He slid the desk into the space she’d indicated, then moved the beds. “Why do I need a warning?”
“Emily’s trying not to be upset about it, you know, but when she told Lucky and Nikolas they practically cheered in her face. They really don’t like him—and I know you don’t either, but she was hurt—”
“I might not like the guy,” Jason said, his tone changing, a bit more serious now. “But my sister does. And until he gives me a good reason to punch him, she doesn’t need to know that.”
“I figured, but you know, I just wanted to protect her.” Elizabeth looked over her shoulder. “Here she comes now. Remember, you don’t know anything, okay? This will be the first you’re hearing about it!”
Jason just shook his head, but nodded, clearly humoring her. Emily came in now, a forced smile on her face. “Oh, you changed it again. I like this so much better.”
“Good, because I have to go. I should have been gone already, but—” Jason looked at Elizabeth, whose cheeks pinked up. He hugged Emily. “Call me if you need anything. I mean it. Don’t make any headlines.”
“I’ll walk you down,” Emily said, wrapping her arm around Jason’s bicep. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
—
Though he didn’t think he’d needed the forewarning, Jason was glad Elizabeth had previewed Emily’s news for him. He hadn’t cared for Juan Santiago the minute the little bastard had rolled into town over the summer, but Emily had hearts in her eyes almost immediately. Her first real boyfriend was leaving abruptly, and she’d probably never see him again. She’d been hesitant about sharing the news, prefacing it with —
“I know you don’t like so you’re probably glad—” she’d said with a heavy sigh.
“I care about you,” Jason told her, and had hugged her, reminding her again to call him with anything she needed. He knew Emily could take care of herself — and he was glad she was going to be with Elizabeth. He’d seen her around this last year and knew Elizabeth was tougher than she looked.
He left the campus and headed downtown to the garage he’d opened two years earlier. He left his motorcycle parked in the usual spot, and went inside to the office where Lucky Spencer was tapping away at something on the garage’s ancient computer.
Jason had snagged the mail on his way in and didn’t notice the younger man until he was almost on top of him. He furrowed his brow. “I thought you had something to do today.”
“I finished an hour ago, thought I’d get a head start on logging the new inventory.” Lucky looked over at him. “They get moved in okay?”
“Yeah, all set.” He tossed aside the junk, set the bills on his desk. He didn’t really care that Lucky hadn’t shown up to help move the girls in — Jason could have done it in twenty minutes if Elizabeth hadn’t kept changing her mind on the set up. But it was the first time either had lived on their own, and he wanted his sister to be happy.
But Elizabeth had spent the first half hour apologizing over and over again for Lucky not being there — it had been an emergency, and Lucky said he’d try to hurry up because he hadn’t seen their dorm yet — and yet here he sat, no emergency in sight.
“I wanted to run something by you,” Lucky said twisting on his stool. “Going back to courier jobs.”
Jason grimaced. “Lucky—”
“I know you didn’t get me involved again after you, uh, left the last time,” Lucky said quickly, “and I was supposed to be leaving for New York so it was no big deal. But we’re stuck in Port Charles now, and we’re not going to have the money we thought we’d have for an apartment. That’s why Elizabeth is stuck on campus this semester—”
Jason frowned, looked at him. He knew all about semesters from Robin — this one would end in December. “Just this semester?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m saving up for the security deposit for us to get a place together. That was the plan in New York, but we had to put it on the back burner.”
That wasn’t the impression Jason had gotten, moving pieces around the room a thousand times until Elizabeth had been sure it was comfortable — it was going to be their home away from home, she’d told him, hadn’t she?
But it wasn’t any of his business, so he just shrugged. “So you want some courier work again?”
“Yeah. Just something extra. I can do it—”
“I don’t doubt that. I just—I figured—” Jason shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell Lucky Spencer about getting involved with him and Sonny wasn’t a great idea. Lucky had grown up at Luke’s feet. The kid had been raised inside the life. If he wanted to make stupid choices — “I’ll talk to Sonny.”
“Great. Thanks. This whole thing is just a bump in the road. Elizabeth being stuck at PCU. Maybe she can transfer after a year or something, and we can go to New York. Just as long as we’re together.” Lucky gathered up the things at his desk. “I’m gonna head over to my mom’s and see Lu. If Elizabeth stops by or calls, let her know.”
Jason opened his mouth, then closed it. Lucky had supposedly been with his mother all morning — but it wasn’t any of his business.
Jason was done minding the business of other people. After ending things with Robin and losing custody of Michael earlier that spring, all he wanted to do was stay in his own lane and stay far away from anyone else’s problems.
—
A few days later, Jason was stretched out underneath a Honda with a leaking oil pan. He heard the outside door open, and then a pair of legs appeared in his view. Long, slender, and bare — at least from the calf to the ankle. The toes were painted a bright pink and encased in a pair of sandals with at least two inches of platform underneath them.
“Hello?”
Jason slid out from the car and Elizabeth danced back, not having seen him. She had a messenger bag slung diagonally across her chest, over a white shirt. The legs weren’t completely bare — she wore a pair of cropped jeans that stopped just below her knees.
“Hey! Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I’m supposed to be meeting Lucky here.” She checked her watch. “He told me to just come in and grab him because he’d be in the office.”
“Lucky’s not working today. I don’t know where he is.”
“Oh.” She bit down on her bottom lip. “That’s annoying. And he refuses to get a phone, you know? Gram made me get the one second she found out I was going to be on campus.” She removed it now from a pocket on her bag, flipped it open. “Maybe I messed up the message. He’s been impossible to get a hold of the last few days.”
Maybe Sonny had called Lucky directly and hooked the kid up with a job, Jason thought, though he didn’t really know how say that to Elizabeth. She’d known Lucky was working for him the year before, but Jason didn’t think it was his place to mention it now.
Jason frowned. “You don’t have a car,” he remembered, and she looked at him with some surprise. “Emily said you take the bus,” he added. “You won’t even borrow her car.”
“Well, no, have you seen it? It’s brand new. I can’t park to save my life. Gram and Lucky won’t let me borrow theirs either.” She rolled her eyes. “How am I supposed to get better, I ask you? But whatever. No, I take the bus everywhere. It’s pretty reliable.” She fished into another pocket, waved the PC Bus schedule at him. “I’ll just leave a message at his mom’s and you tell him I was here, then I’ll head back to school, I guess.”
Jason didn’t know why it bothered him — except now he remembered hearing Lucky make the plans with Elizabeth that morning on the phone in the office. She hadn’t messed them up — he had.
But he wasn’t going to tell her that and cause problems. No one else’s business but his own, he reminded himself.
Elizabeth started for the door, then turned back. “Since I ran into you, thanks again for putting up with me the day we moved in. It was really nice of you not to just dump everything in the first place I pointed to. I know I was super annoying—” Her cheeks flushed, the color spreading down her neck. “But I’m pretty sure Emily went to PCU because I did. She could have gone lots of places, you know? But she picked PCU so we could do it together, and I really wanted it to be perfect. The dorm room is gonna be like —”
“Home,” Jason finished and she lit up, her eyes sparkling.
“Exactly! And it’s the first one I’ve ever really had that I get to sort of do my own thing in. It’s just ours. And maybe next year, we could do suite apartment thing so we could—” She stopped. “Anyway, like I said, it was really nice of you. And whatever you said to Emily about Juan, she felt so much better. It’s really cool of you not to make not liking him her problem. She’s lucky to have you.”
“She’s my sister,” Jason said as if that said everything and she wrinkled her nose.
“It should be that simple, right? But it’s not all the time. Family is—well, they can be the worst. Anyway, Lucky called him a loser, and it made her cry. I didn’t tell you that then but—I don’t even know why I’m telling you now except it made mad because we’re supposed to be a family, too, of sorts. Me, Em, Lucky, Nikolas—we made a pact—” She shrugged. “Anyway. It bothered me. And just because it’s the right thing to do, it doesn’t mean you doing it should go unnoticed.”
“Thanks,” Jason said, feeling a little like a heel staying quite about Lucky being the one to screw up her plans. “Listen, I’m about done here for the day. I can run you back to campus so you don’t have to deal with the bus.”
“Oh, thanks, but I’m gonna stop by my grandmother’s anyway. Thanks. Tell Lucky I was here when you see him!” She tossed him a wave over her shoulders, and he watched her leave.
