Losing Balance
by Lionel

chapter 45

"Luke's Place."

"Luke, it's Alexis."

"Speaking of the devil's advocate. Your little ears must have been burning, Natasha."

"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's not polite to talk about people behind their backs?"

"Nah. I must have been playing hooky when they covered that at finishing school."

"Well, it's very rude. And annoying. Like you."

"It's not my tongue wagging here, Natasha. You know me. I'd rather talk about you in front of your back. I get more inspiration that way. But there's not much a barkeep can do to stop the customers from extolling the virtues of a woman such as yourself."

"You told me you burned all the posters, Luke."

"All but one. I know I mentioned that I kept one for my personal collection. I mentioned that, right?"

"Luke … "

"Relax. It isn't your mere - but abundant -- physical virtues that are being resounded. It's the whole of your unequaled womanhood that these slobs are salivating over."

"Excuse me? Who?"

"Your menfolk."

"My menfolk?"

"Your gangster groupies."

"Lorenzo?"

"Yeah, that's one. And the dapper don."

"Sonny?"

"You got it."

"They're talking?"

There was a loud crash in the background. "They're communicating."

"What's going on there, Luke?"

"Oh, just guy stuff. You know. Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about. Why'd you call? Were you looking for me, darling?"

"I've been staring at this picture of the man on Helena's yacht. I think I recognize him."

"Yeah? Spill."

"Mikkos's personal physician. He was an old school friend of Mikkos. He came around for big family celebrations - weddings, christenings. I can't be certain, but this man looks a lot like him twenty years older."

"Fascinating. What does the black widow want with her dead hubby's doctor?"

"And why is she so interested in human cloning all of sudden?"

"You don't want me to answer that."

"No, I really don't. Does it ever bother you that your life is an absurdist science fiction nightmare?"

"It's your family, baby, not mine."

"A family only a criminal lunatic could love. Do you have anything else on Helena?"

"I've been watching her, but she's been as quiet as a dormouse. She's on that yacht all day. She squashed my bugs and tightened security, so I don't know what she's doing in there."

"She's been quiet on the legal front, too. I've been able to consolidate all the Cassadine assets under my own name, and she's barely putting up a fight. I don't know if she's forfeiting because our opening volley was so effective, or if she's decided that those assets are expendable."

"Or maybe she has a trick up her sleeve. Some other way to get them."

"Maybe." She sighed wearily.

"You okay, Natasha? I hear you got some trouble at home."

"I'll feel better once we figure out what Helena is up to. This silence is eerie."

"Yeah. Silence can be like that." A loud slamming noise came from somewhere close to the phone. "Watch it!"

"Luke. What are they doing?"

"They're doing what they have to do."

"What does that mean?"

"They're doing what heartsick mobsters do when they meet up with the enemy and a bottle of Elijah Craig. They get all sentimental. Don't worry. I've got a rag. I'll dry their tears. Gotta run."

Luke was gone with a crash and a click, leaving Alexis staring perplexedly at the phone. With a shake of her head, Alexis hung up the phone, rose from the living room couch and went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. Lady Jane had retired to bed an hour earlier, and Jax was in his office behind closed doors. The lakehouse was achingly quiet, and each step she took, each door she opened, seemed much too loud.

Alexis wandered out to the patio and settled down in a chair to drink her water, wrapping her robe tightly around her body. Though summer was only a month away on the calendar, winter's chill still lingered in places in upstate New York, and it was too cool, really, to be quite comfortable out under the stars alone tonight. But at least the silence was less eerie, hidden behind all the soft noises of a lake in the woods - the gentle lapping of water against the shore, the wind stirring the new leaves in the trees, the late spring potpourri of clicking and buzzing and croaking noises that Alexis thought she should be able to identify but never could despite four years spent on a lakeside campus in the foothills of New Hampshire's White Mountains. Her fingers and cheeks grew numb first, but she stayed outside until she felt frozen through, until the chill had seeped all the way through and her flesh felt as cold as the rest of her, and then she went inside to bed.

An hour later, Alexis was lying deep under her covers trying to get warm and trying to find sleep when she heard the phone ringing in the living room. A moment later Jax knocked lightly at her bedroom door and pushed it open. "It's Mac Scorpio."

Alexis sat up and switched on the light. She gave Jax a questioning look as she took the phone from him, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

"Mac? What's wrong?"

"Alexis. I'm sorry for calling so late. Hope I didn't wake anyone."

"No. What's going on?"

She heard the hesitation in his voice. "I hate to ask this, but do you think you could come down to the station tonight? We're having a little problem with a couple of your associates, and I think you might be able to help. And, yeah, I do realize that it's 11:30 on Sunday night. Believe me, I'm not real thrilled to be here either."

"What's the problem, Mac? What associates?"

"We picked up Sonny and Lorenzo Alcazar at Luke's tonight. They had some kind of a knock-down fight."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"They're both a little beat up, but it looks like they kept it between them."

"Tell them to call their lawyers, Mac. This is not my problem."

"I don't need you down here as a lawyer, Alexis. Just between you and me, these charges are never going to stick. We've got a barroom full of broken glasses and chairs, but no one who saw what happened, no surprise."

"So let them go."

"So they can go after each other again? Tonight it was a fistfight, Alexis. What's going to come next? A gunfight down on the docks? A drive-by shooting at Kelly's? I don't want this town to go through another mob war because those two are caught in another pissing contest over a woman."

"What do you expect me to do about it?"

"I'm hoping you can make this thing between them go away. You don't strike me as the sort of woman who gets off on having men fight over her."

"Over me?"

"Over you."

Alexis closed her eyes and exhaled wearily. "Can't it wait until morning?"

"They're here now. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep them."

She stole a glance at Jax, who was still hovering in the doorway waiting for confirmation that nothing terrible had happened. "Okay. I'll be there in half an hour."

She hung up the phone and looked at Jax. "Sonny and Lorenzo were arrested for fighting. Mac wants me to come down to the station to mediate, I think."

Jax met her eyes for the first time and nodded. "Drive safely." He turned and disappeared down the hall.

*****

When Alexis walked into the PCPD thirty minutes later, she found Lorenzo and Sonny sitting in chairs on opposite sides of the empty squad room; each had his hands cuffed in front of him. She sat on the edge of a desk in the middle of the room, arms folded across her chest, and looked them over like a disbelieving and disapproving mom called in to the principal's office to retrieve her misbehaving kids.

Sonny appeared to have gotten by far the worst of it - his face was bloodied in several places, and the first signs of painful bruises had emerged on his temple and cheekbone. He held one arm against his side as if his shoulder ached, and with the other cuffed hand he touched his ribs gingerly as if testing their tenderness. Lorenzo had a small cut to his brow and held a cloth wrapped around his right hand. With their sullen demeanor and their matching black leather jackets, they looked like a pair of overgrown hoods.

Mac emerged from his office and walked up to Alexis. "Alexis, I appreciate your coming."

Alexis just rolled her eyes and took the report Mac handed her. As she flipped through it, she glanced up at Lorenzo, then Sonny. Lorenzo met her eyes and gave her a weak, sorry smile, but Sonny just stared at the floor. "Let's make this quick."

"You're welcome to use the interview room if you like." Mac handed Alexis the key to the handcuffs and disappeared back into his office, leaving her to deal with Lorenzo and Sonny as she saw fit.

She went into the lunchroom to retrieve a first aid kit and ice packs and to dampen some towels. When she emerged, she gestured at Lorenzo. "You first."

Lorenzo struggled to his feet and followed Alexis into the interview room. She pulled out a chair. "Sit." He obeyed, and she pulled out another chair and sat down facing him. She unwrapped the cloth around his hand.

"Ah, ah, ah." Lorenzo winced as she pulled the last layer of cloth away from his bloodied knuckles.

"I'm sorry," she cooed sweetly. "Does that hurt?"

Lorenzo gritted his teeth. "No. It's fine. You have the touch of an angel."

She smirked as she dabbed at his knuckles none too gently with a gauze pad soaked with hydrogen peroxide. "Well, you know, I'm more Ruth Ginsberg than Florence Nightingale. I don't have much experience with battlefield medicine. To tell you the truth, I don't have a clue what I'm doing."

"You're torturing me. And you're enjoying it."

"Maybe just a bit." Holding his fingers lightly, she pressed an ice pack to the top of his hand. Lorenzo gave her hand a squeeze and tried to entwine his fingers with hers, but she pulled her hand away abruptly. "Here. You hold the ice."

Lorenzo nodded. "Sorry." He wanted very much to push her forward, to press the advantage he felt he had gained when last he saw her, when they kissed, but he knew she needed more time. Pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, her face was bare and her hair was back in a ponytail, and though he thought her all the more beautiful for her nakedness, he could see the tremendous strain of the situation with Jax weighing heavily on her features. "This would be a lot easier for me if you take the handcuffs off. You've got the key there."

Alexis looked at his hands struggling to hold the ice pack in place, the same strong hands that she had wished for, dreamed of, surrendered to before her life changed, hands that still sent dangerously delicious signals to her body, the mere observation of their tactile mastery warming her through. She shook her head. "No. I think I like you in handcuffs."

"Yeah?" He gave her a dark, heated smile that made her flush at her own words.

She smiled nervously. "I meant only that I feel safer with your all too persuasive hands under lock and key."

"I was in handcuffs the first time you rescued me, too." Abandoning the recalcitrant ice pack, Lorenzo raised his cuffed hands to her face. He stroked her cheek gently with the back of his undamaged hand, and she let her eyes fall closed for just a moment.

When she opened them again, she shook her head. "Please, don't." He let his hands fall back to his lap. "We should take care of your face." She opened another gauze pad and began to clean the cut on his brow.

"Not that I don't appreciate this, Alexis, but Corinthos needs medical attention a lot more than I do."

"Yeah, well, dealing with Sonny is going to take time. I'm assuming you're going to make this easy on me, Lorenzo."

"I'll try. What do you need from me?"

Alexis set down the medical supplies and crossed her arms. "You told me you weren't going to go after Sonny."

"And I won't. That's not what happened here. No one was shot, nothing blew up. It was a fight. Man to man."

"Oh, so physical violence is okay as long as no heavy weaponry is involved? People do die in bar fights all the time."

"I'm not saying it's okay. I'm saying it's different. And when I said I wasn't planning to go after Sonny, I told you plans might change if I had to defend myself or you."

"Is that what you were doing? Defending me? I know I was safe at home, so what exactly were you defending? My honor?"

"Something like that."

Alexis shook her head wearily. "I told you I don't need you to do that. And I really didn't need to be dragged down here to bail you out tonight."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'm sure it's inconvenient at best, and probably very awkward. I didn't tell Mac to call you."

"No, it was his brilliant idea. Somehow he has the notion that I can keep you two from killing each other."

"I can't speak for Sonny, but I'm not looking to kill him."

"Then what was this about? What happened tonight?"

Lorenzo shrugged. "I was talking to Luke, Sonny cut in and said some very unpleasant things about you. I told him to stop. He didn't. I hit him. He hit me. We talked about you some more. He told me you were too good for me. Some things broke."

"A lot of things broke if this report is accurate. Luke must have been steamed."

"Not really. He seemed to enjoy the show. And now he has a pair of checks stuffed in his shirt to ease his pain. Believe me, he's coming out way ahead on this one."

"At least someone is."

"I do realize Sonny was goading me, and I gave him what he wanted. It was a mistake."

"Were you drunk?"

"No. I'd had a couple of drinks. That's all."

"Was he?"

"Yeah. A little."

"Hardly seems like a fair fight. He's, what, six inches shorter than you, forty pounds lighter?"

"Are you saying he gets a free pass for his mouth because he's short?"

"No. I'm saying you should try not to gloat so much about beating him up. It's not very gracious."

She wore a teasing smile, and Lorenzo gave her a quizzical look. "Are you mad at me?"

"I'm furious that I had to come deal with this, and I'm not pleased that you resorted to violence. You know how I feel about it. But I do understand. There have been times lately when I've wanted to slug Sonny."

Lorenzo smiled. "He's lucky it was just me, then."

"Yeah. Lucky man." She stood up and gathered together the first aid supplies and trash. "Did you call a lawyer?"

"Yes. He's been on the phone with Mac."

"You're going to be able to get out of here tonight, I think. Just convince Mac that you'll control yourself better next time and that this isn't going to spread to something more serious. And it won't, right?"

"Right. Can you wait until they spring me? Give me a ride home?"

"Call a cab."

Lorenzo nodded. "I understand. Are things any better with Jax?"

"No. Listen, I'm going to see if I can get anywhere with Sonny. I'll talk to you later."

"Did you bring a guard with you?"

Alexis nodded like an obedient child. "Yes, sir. Mike is just out in the hallway."

Lorenzo smiled. "Good girl."

With a roll of her eyes, Alexis left Lorenzo and went back out to the squad room. Sonny's chair was empty. "Mac?" she called. Mac poked his head out of his office. "I'm finished with Lorenzo. Where did Sonny go?"

"He asked to be brought down to lock-up."

"You're keeping him here overnight?"

Mac shrugged. "No one's asking to get him out."

"His lawyer hasn't shown up yet?"

"Nope. Must not know his client very well."

"Can I still see Sonny?"

Mac extended his arm and ushered her to the elevator. "Be my guest."

*****

When Alexis made her way down to the holding cells in the basement of the PCPD, she found Sonny in a darkened cell lying flat on his cot staring at the ceiling. She leaned against the bars.

"Sonny?"

"Yeah." He didn't look at her.

"They said your lawyer hasn't shown up yet. Do you want me to call him again?"

"I didn't call my lawyer."

"Why not? Anyone even slightly competent could get you home tonight."

"I don't want to go home, Alexis. I'm fine here."

"What are you talking about, Sonny? You want to spend the night in lock-up?"

"It's not so bad."

"Maybe not compared to a four-by-six service elevator, but compared to your very spacious penthouse?"

"It's not so bad."

"Why don't you want to go home? Did something happen?"

"Something always happens, Alexis. You know that better than anyone."

"What's wrong, Sonny?" Her voice was much quieter now, and full of deep concern. He was beginning to frighten her.

"Things are a mess, Alexis. Everything is a mess. And it's my own damn fault." His voice seemed to come from miles away, the place where he beat himself up so badly no one else would bother.

"What happened, Sonny?"

"That's what I can't figure out. I've been thinking about it. A lot. But I can't quite figure it out. Will you help me?"

He looked over at her finally, his eyes unfathomably deep and dark and burning in the dim refracted light of the jail cell. She felt a physical ache in her heart. "Help you with what, Sonny?"

"Help me figure this out."

"I don't know if I can."

"Please. I need you, Alexis."

She nodded, swallowing a lump that had made its way to her throat. "Just hold on a minute. Let me get someone to let me in."

A minute later the cell door slid closed behind her and Alexis took a seat at the foot of the cot. Sonny sat against the wall at the other end with his knees drawn up to his chest. He winced every time he moved his left arm.

"Do you want me to get you a doctor?"

"Nah. It can wait."

"What are you trying to figure out, Sonny?"

"My life. How everything got so ugly." He rested his forehead against his good arm. "Sam McCall is pregnant with my baby."

Alexis was grateful for the darkness. She was silent for a moment as she struggled to grasp the implications of the news, but she gave up and instead filed the information away to consider more carefully later. "Congratulations, I guess."

Sonny snorted. "Thanks. I moved her in with Jason across the hall, cause, you know, Carly moved back into the penthouse and we're trying to give the marriage another try for Michael and Morgan. But it's hard. There's a lot of anger and not enough trust. I know she --- "

Alexis felt the old familiar queasiness. "Stop." She held up her hand and shook her head.

"What?"

"I don't want to hear it. I'm sorry. I thought I could help you, but I can't do this."

"You can't do what?"

"Listen to the latest installment of the tasteless soap opera that is your personal life. I'll get you a lawyer, I'll get you a glass of water and some aspirin, but I'm not going to do this, Sonny. You don't want my advice about your family any more than I want to give it to you." Alexis stood up and walked to the cell entrance, where she rattled the bars roughly.

"Yes, I do, Alexis. I need it."

"Why?" She turned around. "You've made it abundantly clear to the entire world that whatever insights I might have into your domestic drama are just the bitter rantings of a scorned woman."

"Because you get it. Better than anyone. You've been there since me and Carly started. You know what goes on with us better than we do. You see it clearly when I can't."

"And that's my misfortune. I didn't enjoy having a front-row seat to the demolition derby that is your marriage, Sonny. And I certainly don't enjoy expressing my opinion only to be told that I'm wrong, insane, jealous, shrewish, bitter, or chasing after another woman's husband, all of which I have been told in the past, usually by Carly, and usually just before you disregard my advice entirely. I've learned to keep my mouth shut. Seeing things more clearly than others is a curse. Ask Cassandra."

Sonny struggled to stand, showing his first substantial sign of life. He held out his hand to her. "Okay, okay, okay. Don't leave. Please. I get that you don't want to talk about Carly. Just sit down. Please."

Alexis hesitated a moment, and finally returned to her perch on the cot.

Sonny nodded his gratitude and leaned forward slightly. "You and me," he ventured.

"What about you and me?"

"That's what I need to talk about. We were friends, right? You trusted me?"

"Yes, we were. I did trust you."

"But now you hate me. You're afraid of me. You look at me like you're waiting for me to hit you or something. Why?"

"That's complicated, Sonny. I don't have a simple answer."

"I don't need a simple answer. Just throw some stuff out there."

Alexis shrugged. "You did a lot of things that frightened me. You put Zander in the hospital, a boy who I thought meant something to you and who did mean something to me. I remember a lot of yelling, a lot of threats. When I was pregnant, you yelled at me in my apartment, in my hospital room. I yelled at you over my sister's grave. I went to you for help trying to hold onto my daughter and you slammed the door in my face and threw in some more threats of your own for good measure. There was a lot of ugliness."

Sonny shook his head as if he wasn't satisfied with her answer. "I know what happened, Alexis. I mean, I remember the events and the conversations. I remember all the lousy things I've said and done. I remember the things you did that hurt me and made me angry. I just don't know how it got so ugly so fast." He watched her intently, with his head tipped slightly and his eyes narrowed in that way of his that made her feel like he was looking inside her, and it was all made more ghoulish by the cuts and bruises on his face. "I remember how it used to be between us, and I can't figure out how we ended up here. What happened to us, Alexis?"

"Please stop asking me that, Sonny." Her voice was weak and pleading. "You were there."

"But I can't make any sense out of it, Alexis."

"I can't help you make sense of it. It doesn't always make sense to me. Why is this so important to you?"

Sonny leaned back against the wall again as he struggled to pinpoint the answer. "Because the night we made love was the last time I felt okay. It all went bad the next day."

Alexis felt herself flush in the dark, and the flush turned to anger. "Oh, you mean the night you took pity on me? The night you indulged your loyal and long-suffering attorney with a little romp? One night in your black satin sheets for her to treasure the rest of her frigid days?"

"Don't --- "

"What? Isn't that the way you think about it?"

"Alexis --- "

"It's the way you talk about it. To anyone that will listen, it seems."

Sonny ran his hand roughly through his escaped curls. "I know I've been a pig. I'm not asking you to excuse that. But sometimes if you hear something enough times, you start to believe it. For two years, I've had Carly, Ric, everyone else telling me that's the way it happened. That you had some schoolgirl crush on me and I broke your heart by taking you to bed, by making you think you meant something to me, and then going back to my wife. And that's why you hate me. But that's not the way I remember it. That's not the way it happened, is it?"

Alexis realized her nails were digging into the rough wool blanket on the cot, and she forced her hands to relax. "No."

Sonny waited for Alexis to elaborate, but the silence stretched out between them. When it became obvious she wasn't going to speak further, he shook his head. "I remember the way you used to look at me, Alexis. Like you really wanted to believe that I was a good guy, that somewhere underneath the amoral criminal there was this worthwhile man. I miss that so much. It made me want to be the man you hoped I was. It made me want to be good enough for you. And then when you let me make love to you, I felt so good, so proud. But then it all went to hell. Carly was gone, and I thought I was being punished, and then after she came back you acted like it was a mistake, you just walked away, and I knew I was fooling myself. That you could never love a man like me."

"That's not why I walked away, Sonny. You and Carly just seem to have an inevitability about you. I never wanted to get in the way of that."

"No," he said more fiercely than he intended. "See that's what I used to think. That's where I went wrong. I stayed with Carly because I thought that was what I deserved. It's easy with her. I don't have to try to be any better than I am. But god, everything's been falling apart ever since. I can't stand to look at myself in the mirror any more, Alexis. I hate the man I've become."

"So change. You can choose differently, Sonny. There is a worthwhile man in there, but you need to make better choices."

"I know. I'm going to try, but it's hard. Do you know what I did when I found out about Sam's baby? I showed up at her door good and angry and started making demands, just like I did to you. I don't know what's wrong with me. It's no wonder you hate me."

Alexis shrugged tentatively. "So maybe you can start with Sam and her baby. Try just respecting the fact that she is the baby's mother. Try to respect her decisions. Don't make it all about you."

"I'll try, but that's a tall order. Will you help me? Can you help me be a better man again?"

"I don't hate you, Sonny, but I can't do that. I can't be that person for you anymore. It takes too much out of me."

"Do you think we could ever be friends again?"

Alexis waved a hand helplessly across the air. "I don't think so. It didn't work out very well for me. Your instinct is to take and take, and mine is to give. That's a really bad fit. I gave up some things I had no business giving up to be your friend. And you let me."

"I never asked you to."

"No, not directly. But you kept asking for what you needed from me. Not once did you ever say, 'I'm going to do without what I want right now because it's not a good time for Alexis.'"

"I'm a selfish bastard. You knew that from the start."

"Yes, you are, Sonny. Admitting it with a smile doesn't make it charming or okay. And it doesn't excuse you from the responsibility to improve yourself." Alexis rose from the cot and went to the door to call for the guard. "It's getting late."

Sonny watched her silently for a minute as she waited for the guard to appear. "I don't know if it's worth anything to you, Alexis, but I'm sorry."

Alexis turned back again. "What are you sorry for?"

Sonny shrugged, and his eyes wandered the cell. "For being a selfish bastard. For all the times I frightened you. For the ugly things I've said. For turning you away when you asked for my help. For letting our friendship slip away instead of fighting to protect it. For making you think I thought that night was a mistake."

His voice was very soft and distant, but she heard every word. "Wow. You go all out."

Sonny smiled. "I've been saving it up for awhile. But if you ask me tomorrow, I'll blame it on the alcohol."

"Well, it is worth something to me, Sonny. It's worth a lot. Thank you. But you're not the only one who made mistakes. There might be things I would do differently."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I'm going to have to practice my mea culpas a little more before I'm as good as you. And unlike you, I haven't had a drop to drink."

The guard arrived to open the cell door, and Alexis stepped out. Once the door was closed again, she heard Sonny's voice behind her. "Are you going to end up with Alcazar?"

Alexis turned around sharply. She was too surprised to deny the possibility. "I don't know."

"He's determined, you know. He's crazy about you."

"I know. Lorenzo is very upfront about the way he feels. And I'm already well aware of how you feel about him, so you can save your breath."

"Okay," Sonny said softly. "Did you hear what happened at Luke's tonight?"

Alexis nodded. "I heard one version. You said some offensive things about me, and Lorenzo felt that he needed to defend my honor."

"Yeah, well, that's not quite right. I heard Alcazar talking to Luke about you. He was talking about what an idiot he would have to be to let you push him away. Only a fool wouldn't fight for a woman like you, he said. I'd been sitting there all night, trying to figure out how it all got so ugly, and when he said that I think I knew deep down inside. I was a fool. I was an idiot. And I needed someone to hit me, so I said what I had to say to make Alcazar do it."

"It doesn't seem to have made you feel any better."

"No. But it got me a visit from the best damned attorney I've ever had, so it wasn't all bad. Sitting there in cuffs, seeing you walk in the station was like old times." He flashed her a dimpled smile.

"Like a hundred old times," she smiled. "Do you want me to get you out of here? I can dig up a judge and get you released tonight. You don't have to go home. Go check into a hotel or something. Go check into Ferncliffe."

"Nah. You go home. It's the middle of the night. You should be with your daughter."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah. I may be a selfish bastard, but even I can be taught new tricks once in a while. I don't know if it really is the first time ever, but here, tonight, I'm going to do without what I want right now because it's not a good time for Alexis."

"Good night, Sonny."

"Good night, Alexis. Sleep tight."

chapter 46