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—Christmas, 2023—

“Ugh, this is hard.”

Trina hates the whiny note to her voice as she scours the racks of the exclusive men’s boutique she and Joss stepped into half an hour ago, as part of their last-push Christmas gift hunting expedition. This isn’t just any regular gift-hunting either since they’re both searching for presents for their guys. Her feet are aching something fierce from hours walking up, down and all around the damn mall like a crazy woman.

“I think the presents I already got for Dex are fine as is, he’s not exactly complicated when it comes to things he wants. And I’m betting Spencer will love pretty much anything you get him.”

“Y’think?”

“Honestly, yeah—you could just put yourself on his bed with a giant bow on your ass, and he’d be delighted.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” Although she files that idea away to ponder later. She did buy some very special, holiday-themed lingerie the other day, with the intention of surprising him with it at some point. It won’t be a giant bow on her butt but she has a feeling he’ll like how that outfit looks on her once she wears it for him.

Which brings her to another snafu in her plans for her first Christmas with Spencer—last year doesn’t count although they technically did spend several hours sharing a couch on Christmas Eve. She was ostensibly mourning Rory and drowning in guilt for all the inappropriate feelings she had for another guy while the one she’d called her boyfriend was still stiff in a morgue.

Once Spencer’d shown up at her house, she’d been hit with several feelings at once. Surprise, because he’d told her he was leaving as soon as possible. Intense relief to note that he hadn’t, in fact left. He’d stayed. And, a selfish, needy, fickle part of her had wondered if she was the reason—hoped for it. The same heavy thrum in the pit of her belly as she ignored all her sensible inner voices to step back and let him in, and shut her eyes just to breathe the scent of forest, and snow, and something intensely masculine filled her nose as he walked by. And guilt. So much damn guilt that she thought she’d choke on it because of how the sight of him on their doorstep made her heart skip and thrill like a character in the corniest of romance novels—when that was the last thing she should’ve been feeling.

That was then. This year, she finally has all the things she’d wanted at the time but never dared to wish for out loud.

Spencer—just Spencer. Hers.

Except, it’s going to be hella awkward trying to find a way to be alone with him. The dorms are closed except to international students who haven’t gone home and those with special permits to stay in holiday housing over winter break, so that’s not an option as it was over Thanksgiving. While they’ve already made plans for him to come to hers for Robinson Christmas decorating fun, and she’s going to have Christmas Day lunch with his family on Monday; plus he’s spending time with Ace, while she heads to the GH annual party—she mostly kind of wishes they had their own space so she could give him his gifts away from prying eyes. The monogrammed pen and journal she got him are easy to give in front of others but the other, more personal present that she’s spent months putting together from photographs, small illustrations is something she wishes she could give to him alone and in private.

Sighing, she runs her finger along the seam of a gorgeous, eggshell blue silk tie. She’ll just have to give him his gifts, and he can open them at his grandmother’s while she opens her own in her bedroom at her parents’. Maybe they can face time with each other while they do it so it at least feels like they’re doing it together, in the same space.

The sexy lingerie will have to wait for a night when they have somewhere they can be alone. And so will the big bow on her ass.

Oh well, maybe one day.

—Christmas, 2022—

All things considered, Spencer can be grateful that instead of spending his Christmas behind bars, dining on Pentonville’s finest festive cuisine of stringy turkey and mushy potatoes covered in congealed gravy, followed by a desert of stale fruitcake smothered in equally congealed custard—he’s here.

Here being a room surrounded by family.

Not his father, of course. He’d declined the invitation to join him and Uncle Victor for what would’ve been a tense, fractious evening at Wyndemere, and, instead, opted to come over to Aunt Alexis’. A great choice. His belly’s full of excellent food, he has a subtle buzz from the special Cassadine port, which his aunt has several cases of in her cellar, and he’s had a solid time chatting with his cousins who are, without a doubt, the most normal Cassadines he knows.

Yet still, there’s a knot in his gut. He can’t explain it. It’s just been in there, this unsettled, unmoored feeling, the whole night. Actually, even before tonight. A few days ago, he’d been planning to leave Port Charles for good—or at least a couple years. So sure that there was nothing left in this city for him.

Because you can’t have the one thing you want, an arch voice in his head reminds him.

And, he can’t refute that. If there’s one lesson his time in prison has taught him, it’s that he can’t lie to himself. No matter how many faces he puts before the world, he knows his own truth. And days ago, as he’d sat on a bench, and veered between watching her with hungry eyes, trying not to get too bowled over by her startling beauty, and fixing his gaze on his own hands, which he held clenched in his lamp because they itched to reach out and touch her. Even though he had no right to want to do so because she was not his—had never been his to touch.

Now, more so than ever with her cop dead, very likely at the hands of his murderous ex girlfriend, the so-called Hook Killer—he has even less right to even dream of touching Trina Robinson. Why would someone as pure and good as she, ever want to be soiled by the likes of him? He’s brought nothing but trauma and terror into her life, he knows. He doesn’t deserve her light, let alone the feeling of holding her in his arms the way he dreamt of every damn night in that miserable cell in Pentonville. The way he dreams of even now.

Yet, as it turns out, he isn't leaving after all.

He may never get what he truly wants but his decision to stay has been an easy one. In fact, he grasped at it like a lifeline. Because how could he leave now when Trina was in very real danger? A danger of which he is likely the cause given the killer's targeting people close to her. Spencer knows of only one person who could harbour this much hatred for Trina Robinson, and one person only. And ultimately, he is responsible for setting this nefarious turn of events in motion by bringing that bitch to town. Thus, it’s his responsibility to put an end to it. To protect Trina in all the ways he can.

To do so when he’s failed too many times before.

So he’s staying. And he feels sure of that decision. Of the sense of purpose it offers. And he’s spent a good night with people who at least care for him in that generous but obligated way of ‘family.’ He’s observed his cousins with their various partners and kids, the happy and functional units they’ve made for themselves with not a small amount of envy.

They all seem so… stable. Not caught up in the craziness that just seems to come with being a Cassadine. And certainly none of the airs and graces that Spencer’s had since he was a kid, and that he cultivated in boarding school, as the undisputed Cassadine heir. They’ve got none of the clichéd bad vibes that one generally associates with their bloodline.

How does one even do that?

So, he broaches it with his aunt, struggling to find the words to express himself. “You all have your own lives…you’re not—you don’t get drawn in by our family. You’re not dependent on us. You don’t get sucked into the drama and the scheming and the treachery.”

“We’re still connected to them. Hell, I fully expected Victor to walk through that door, and refer to this gathering as if it was some light, little soiree while he was lecturing us about family.”

“Right.” It’s certainly not hard to imagine Uncle Victor doing just that.

His aunt pats his arm fondly—she’s always been one of the few people he can count on to offer him the maternal energy and influence he’d always craved as a child. Even though she didn’t raise him, it’s something he’s often treasured. “You can’t escape being a Cassadine, Spencer. But you can survive it.”

A proposition that sounds far easier said than done. “Okay. How?”

“The girls and I, we have our own lives. Because I insisted on that. They insisted on that. And… that wasn’t easy but it just looks easy on nights like this. And yes—Victor has a special interest in you and I’m advising you to be very cautious about that. If you have questions he can’t answer, you ask me instead. Because this band of psychopathic, murdering megalomaniacs are ours. They’re our family and they always will be.”

“So basically I’m doomed like a Brontosaurus in a tar pit then?” The sardonic tone in his voice doesn’t cover the genuine frustration he feels right now.

“This place that you live in is always gonna take space up in your head. But the key is to just accept that. And if you do that, it’ll be easier to forge your own path.”

“Is that how you do it? Is that how you’re able to…,” he waves his hand vaguely, “always rise above the insanity that is our family? Because that is—all that I want to do.” Seriously, it is. And the gods know he’s tried. Especially in the last year or so to redeem himself from his numerous previous fuck-ups, to step away from the looming darkness that seems so intrinsic to being part of this family. He’s failed more often than not.

“I remember that genetics don’t dictate your actions. You’re your own person. And you can never not be a Cassadine. But you can ground yourself in other things.”

“Such as?”

“Find out what makes you feel alive. You, Spencer. Not Spencer Cassadine. Does that make sense?”

His thoughts drift to a few nights ago, when he’d been descending into a pit of despair, the family sherry in hand, fully determined to get himself soused after he witnessed Trina on a date with the cop. Even just recalling it makes him grimace. The way that guy—who may be dead but still the idea of him having even a scrap of her heart grates—all but yelled his love declaration for the whole damn restaurant to hear. It’d been like a direct shot in the heart. Frankly, Spencer’d been shocked no one glimpsed him bleeding as he stewed, and watched, groused at his uncle, and watched, and then, finally, slid into the seat across from her to attempt to plead his case.

He’d left the Grille hopeless. Sure that Trina never wanted to associate with him ever again, let alone attempt to ‘start over’, as he’d put it. Maybe even find their way back to friendship.

The mottled, dark depression that swamped in the weeks at Pentonville had started to weigh on him once more. So, in lieu of sobbing like a fucking child, getting drunk seemed the best solution. He was well on his way to it when his father showed up to offer some, shockingly, decent advice.

But it wasn’t until his phone pinged, and he’d opened it up, and spotted her name and two words—just two—that light had pierced the stifling darkness. Welcome home.

He’d certainly felt alive then.

Just as he did when he ran into her outside Kelly’s, and she’d drawn a startlingly honest confession out of him with nothing but her soft voice, and the way her pretty eyes watched him with a tenderness that left him feeling bruised and exposed, the ice in his veins turned to slush. That had been living.

Even when they’ve fought with one another—when she showed up to visit him in Pentonville, or the night before he left, or the dozens of times before that over the summer, the last couple of years—any moment he spends with Trina, it’s like his entire body, and soul, fires up. A jolt of adrenaline in his veins. The whole world suddenly fills with the light and colour it lacks when she’s not around.

None of his addled thoughts would make sense if he tried to spew them out loud, so instead, he says with a shrug, “I’m not sure. I want it to.”

“Find out what makes you happy. Figure out what that is, and hang onto that. And let that be your guide. And I promise you, this is not going to last forever. At some point, you’ll be able to ignore their attempts to pull you in and you’ll just follow your own heart.”

For the rest of the evening, he shies away from the fixed point to which his mind inexorably leads him any time he contemplates his aunt’s words of wisdom.

Yet, when he excuses himself and takes his leave, he doesn’t hop in his car and immediately drive to the docks to take the launch back to Wyndemere.

No.

Instead, his heart leads him to a doorstep.

His fingers twitch, and he hesitates before he rings the doorbell, a weighted yet hopeful feeling roiling in his belly. And when she opens the door—her face a little strained from all she’s been through lately but still so achingly beautiful beneath the scant Christmas lights that line their porch, her eyes luminous and doe-eyed, her hair caught in a messy bun—that heaviness inside him dissipates, transforms into something warmer and brighter, a lush burst of colour that suffuses his vision with the infinite possibility of the whole goddamn universe. Everything clicks into place.

Just like that.

—Christmas, 2023—

“So, on a scale of one to splendiferous, how was your first Robinson Christmas Ornament-making Day?”

Spencer grins, swiping his wet hands on a paper towel, and turns to face his girlfriend who’s watching him by the kitchen’s island with a soft smile painting her lips. Like always, just seeing her, being with her, makes his chest tighten. Not unpleasantly, it’s just a side effect of Trina. He tosses his towel aside and prowls towards her. “Well, Miss Robinson, even though I have glitter stuck to places I never thought it’d be, it’s been… perfect.”

Her smile widens even more, and her shoulders drop as though she’d been worried for his answer. He’d have thought that she’s figured it out by now that any moment he gets to spend with her, whether it’s a walk in the park or watching a movie or experiencing a private tour in an art gallery or making dubious but charmingly colourful Christmas decorations—it’s perfect because of her.

“Seriously, I think I might have a future in constructing Faberge eggs—which are a family staple, mind you—if the whole Cassadine Industries thing doesn’t work out for me.”

She giggles, and the sound of it steals his breath. It’s so light and bubbly, and he can’t help but feel like he’s accomplished something supremely important to have provoked that sweetness from this heavenly creature that just so happens to be his.

Trina sidles in close to him, her hands resting on his chest as she tips her head back to meet his gaze. “I’m glad. You were pretty good at the design, although my colouring skills are way better, admit it.”

“We make a damn good team, if I do say so myself.” It’s true. Her eye for the perfect combination of paints and embellishments had ensured that his three Faberge eggs ended up looking pretty good. “Someone did tell me, around this time last year that we’re … what was it—stronger together?”

Her eyes grow round at his comment. “You remember that?”

“Trina, there’s not a single conversation we’ve had that I’ll ever forget.”

Kissing her then seems about as natural and necessary as breathing. He tucks his left forefinger under chin and bows to press his lips to hers. A soft brush of skin-to-skin before he draws back a bare inch and catches her eyelids fluttering open to watch him. They stand there for a breathless moment before mirroring smiles tick up both their mouths and they kiss again, losing themselves in each other for what could be hours. He loses track entirely of the world beyond the taste and touch of the woman in his arms.

Instinctually, he lifts her up, and turns so he can put her on the kitchen island’s countertop, and shift so he’s standing between her thighs. This position helps quite a bit to diminish their height difference. And their embrace grows more passionate with each sweeping duel of their tongues. He drank a little of that spiked cider but he knows, for sure, that the reason he feels so intoxicated is Trina.

Her legs wrap around the backs of his thighs loosely, and tug him closer. He can’t deny himself the urge of caressing every part of her that he can reach, her back, the curve of her hips, and then, because he’s irredeemably greedy, his hands cage her waist as he grazes his thumbs along the swell of her breasts. He can feel her nipples, poking at him even through her sweater. She arches into him, a low whine squeezing through their fused mouths.

If he wasn’t already hardening, that sound alone would’ve had him stiffer than granite with dizzying speed. As it is, he feels drugged and dazed, and so horny, he could burst. His cock’s aching for some pressure. Her touch. Her cunt—damn, anything.

Just as he resolves to lose himself to this overwhelming sensual frenzy, their location and anyone else in this house be damned, a loud throat-clearing pierces through the haze of want that’s doused them both. He tears his mouth from Trina’s, panting like he’s run a marathon. She’s no better, her pupils dilated to almost entirely black and her breath whistling through her parted lips as she blinks back to some form of lucidity.

They both stare at each other in chagrin before turning towards their interruptor (or saviour, really, because they’d been about to do something pretty damn crazy on the kitchen table of all places).

“Aunt Stella!” Trina’s voice is squeaky-high and she cringes in embarrassment as she shoves him away so she can hop off the island. “We had—we didn’t, um—.”

Aunt Stella just raises her eyebrows and snorts in amusement at them both. “Oh, don’t you worry, honey. Just be thankful that it was me and not any of the other residents of this house or young Mr Cassadine over here might’ve ended up with a black eye, and you’d have your ears ringing.”

They both hang their heads in embarrassment. Even so, Spencer rests his hand on the small of Trina’s back and pipes up, “I’m sorry about that—we didn’t mean any disrespect.”

She raises her hand up to halt his apology as she saunters to the fridge to grab a bottle of water. “Not necessary. I remember, vaguely, what it’s like to be young and in love—just maybe try to find less conspicuous spots to get your, erm, engines revved.” She winks and trundles her way out as if nothing’s happened.

It takes them about five gobsmacked seconds before they both lose it to laughter.

—Christmas, 2026—

Letting himself into the penthouse he shares with the woman of his heart, Spencer can’t help but exhale as the familiar hallway greets him. Of course the eaves are decorated with Christmas lights and tasteful bushels of mistletoe that weren’t here when he had to fly out for a lengthy business trip two weeks ago, but Trina’d shared plenty of videos of the decorations she’d put up with a couple of assistants all over the place. Music filters through the apartment, Christmas standards from the sounds of it, and he glimpses the beautiful tree that dominates the living room space and the charming baubles and decorations strewn across its branches. The lights, gleam brightly in the dark. He wishes he’d been here to put it up with her but there’s not a single thing Trina does badly, and this is no exception.

It’s perfect.

He smiles as a familiar scent hits his nose. Ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon—all the best spices—and sugar. On the ivory table in the middle of the room sits a plate, wrapped in clingfilm with a giant card balanced atop it that says, Homemade ginger snaps for my lovely husband. Eat these, baby (because I certainly won’t!) in sweeping calligraphy. Shaking his head with a snicker, he bends down to grab a couple and takes a bite, moaning happily as some of his favourite flavours hit his tongue.

He’s well aware how little Trina likes these things but she’d shared a short clip of her placing a tray-full of them in the oven a couple days ago, with the tag, “Missing you something fierce so making these in the hopes that you’ll come home to me soon!” He’d felt a pang reading it but he’d sent her a drooling and excited emoji in response before promising her he’d be home soon.

Home. Even just thinking that has his cheeks straining with happiness. Because it is their home. Together. Really any place where Trina is would be ‘home’ to him and that’s the truest gift of all.

His stepping into a bigger role at Cassadine Industries has been quite the adjustment for both of them. Sometimes, it almost frustrates him. The juggle of his accelerated business degree, and his responsibilities essentially ‘apprenticing’ with his father, starting to make his own mark in a few divisions—so far the real estate, marketing and acquisitions are the ones he’s taken to best—has been rough but rewarding. The series of meetings at several of their European offices and with the C.I. board had been unavoidable. And despite his efforts to convince Trina to join him for at least the Parisian leg, they hadn’t been able to sync up their calendars to do it, which meant he’d spent fifteen days missing a most essential part of himself—his home. Fiercely.

Speaking of, he’d expected her to be waiting up for him. She knew what time he was coming in. And yet, there’s no sign of her. Shrugging off his coat, he tosses it on the couch and leaves his briefcase and the gift bags he brought with him there. His valet will bring the rest of his bags up in the morning. Perhaps she’s fallen asleep. She did spend most of the day at her parents’ house, celebrating the day before Christmas with them as was their custom. They’d probably made plenty of new, colourful ornaments, a couple of infant-themed ones among them, no doubt. And he does know that she spent a couple hours this evening at General Hospital’s annual Christmas party.

Toeing his shoes off and loosening his tie, Spencer heads for the stairs. He makes a first pit stop in the nursery, very cautiously, because he knows all too well from his time with Ace and now his perfect, adorable, beautiful babies that it’ll be hell getting them back to sleep if they’re woken up. He approaches the huge cradle, and peeks in at them. They’re both on their bellies, tiny bottoms in the air, and emitting tiny, whistling baby snores that make his eyes water a bit. I’ve missed my little angels. He’ll need to get in loads of cuddle time for the next several weeks to make up for the time he’s been away.

Minutes later, he creeps out and heads up to the master bedroom, excitement fizzling through him just at the promise of seeing her in the flesh instead of through a pixellated phone screen. He’ll do his best not to wake her up but nothing’s going to stop him from kissing her, and holding her close as soon as he can. Thankfully, he grabbed a shower on the private jet so at least he can just hop into bed once he’s disrobed.

As he quietly opens the bedroom door, hoping not to awaken her, he freezes mid-step.

He blinks.

Blinks again.

And once more, just to make sure he’s not somehow dead and in some kind of heaven right now.

“A-am I dreaming?”

Trina, who’s posed perfectly on her stomach, her hair caught up at the top of her head in an artful bun, wavy tendrils teasing her shoulders, and framing her lovely face, just smiles, sloe-eyed and sensual. She tilts her head and gives him the sort of come hither gaze that’d make any man, most especially him, bow down and worship.

He swallows. Hard. As he would any time he’s struck with her beauty. But, the added motivation of her everything else makes every nerve in his body stand to attention, and his mouth water.

Because she’s naked—endless swathes of smooth, coppery skin glowing beneath the soft flickering candlelight.

Naked.

Except for the twinkle of diamonds—the ones he gave her—at her ears, throat and the pear-cut ruby on the third finger of her left hand notched under her chin, plus a pair of appropriately holiday themed scarlet pumps, their glittering straps wrapped around her delicate ankles in a way that has him envisioning doing all sorts of sinful things to her, wearing those shoes and those shoes only. He has more than a faint hope that some of those visions are about to come true. Shortly.

The last part of this tableau, which will be engraved on his mind for the rest of his life, probably—is the bow. Bright red, green and gold tartan, perfectly tied with the loops draping on the small of her back, just above the rise of her perfect derriere. He recalls her mentioning this a couple Christmases ago, mostly as a joke, and he’d wished it true then and now, the Fates have delivered. Or rather, his wife has.

“Why don’t you come over here and find out?” Trina sits up on her haunches, her hands folded neatly in her lap. The position offers a tantalising vision of her heavy breasts, dark-berry nipples beckoning to him as they pucker in his direction. The new weight she carries on her bosom, the slight swell of her belly, and the vertiginous curve of her hips and ass are all very appreciated, and the cause of so many of his R-rated daydreams in the middle of critical business negotiations, it’s a wonder he gets anything done.

He obeys her command on slow, sluggish feet, a man hypnotised. “I thought… we were going to do gifts tomorrow?”

“Hm, I wanted to surprise you.”

“Consider me—surprised.” And many, many other things.

“So… don’t you wanna unwrap your gift?”

He growls, deep in his chest, before finally touching her. Ascertaining that she’s in fact real and not some fantastical mirage from the deep, dark depths of a depraved imaginary, he notches a hand on her neck, his thumb tracing her scuttling pulse. Trina gasps, her breasts heavy, trembling orbs, ripe for touching. And licking. And biting. But first, he has to taste her.

He tugs her up and bends down to meet her in the middle, his mouth slotting across hers like they’re two lost puzzle pieces that always, inexorably find their way back to each other. The flavour of cinnamon and chocolate and her near overwhelm his tastebuds. Forget booze or any other substance, he’ll gladly get drunk on this perfection every single day for the rest of his life if the universe allows it. And if it tries to stand in his way, he’ll burn the entire world for it.

Sliding his hands down her silken arms, he then traces the curve of her spine, and further down to her plump bottom, which he squeezes. The ribbon stays on, for now. Mostly because he rather likes how it looks and some salacious part of him already decided—the second he saw her minutes before—that he wanted to fuck her with that thing on, just to see how it’d look.

He sneaks a hand between them, and reaches down to the apex of her thighs. The strip of hair guides him to exactly where he wants to go, and he finds her clit and then her pussy, sweltering hot and so slick he has to moan, thirsty to get his mouth on that.

“So wet—that all for me?”

Trina breathes out, “Yes,” and a new wave of arousal paints his fingers.

Once the thought of eating her enters his lust-addled brain, it’s impossible not to immediately make it happen. One moment, he’s stroking her, and slipping two fingers inside, revelling at the whimper she lets out as her tight core damn near strangles him. The next, he’s laid her out on the bed, and falls upon her like a starving hound. He kisses his way down from her lips to her throat, sinking his teeth into that sweat-dotted flesh, then lower to her breasts, which he spends several minutes worshipping until they’re daubed with marks from his teeth and mouth, glistening from his tongue. A dip into her belly button, a bite on her right hip, and then finally—finally he makes it to the prize. Her scent, musky and sweet, assails him and he licks her, unwilling to let even a single drop go to waste.

When she comes, he has to pull back and just watch her. Smug and, frankly, salivating at the fact that he made her come that hard. A sort of early Christmas gift of his own. He’s the one that has her crying his name, creaming on his mouth and fingers, pleading for it, and practically yanking his hair out at the root with her need.

But he’s not nearly done with her. Once she’s managed to come down, he starts the process again. And again.

It doesn’t surprise either of them that when he does pull her up on her hands and knees, positioning her so he can loom over her on the edge of the bed, take her from behind, her plump ass cushioning every pass as she throws it back at him with just as much fervour as his—the bow stays on.

—Christmas 2032—

“I want the blue!”

“I had it first—it’s mine!”

“No it’s not. And, yours is ugly anyway, give it here!”

Trina tries not to wince as the twins shriek at decibels that are honestly loud enough to crack windows. “Okay, you two, that’s enough,” she interrupts the bickering in her most serious mom voice.

They both freeze, mid-tug of war over a tube of blue glitter, to peer at her, chastened. She sighs at her two angels who’ve been doing their best impression of grumbling, little demons for most of today during Christmas Crafternoon—as she’s taken to calling the Robinson tradition of making their own special ornaments to add to their trees. This year they’re aiming to make some not only for theirs but their grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins and anyone who’ll take them.

“Seriously, you two've been fighting all morning. Leila Katerina, apologise to your brother for insulting his ornament.”

Kat scowls, her adorably chubby face that looks so much like her dad’s but with a deeper skin-hue that’s a perfect mix of her parents, and mumbles “sorry.” Choosing not to tell the little dragon to say it once more with feeling, she turns to her son, “Maxim, apologise for hoarding the glitter—you need to learn how to share.”

Max, who’s always been the more emotionally expressive of the two, gives a shamefaced look to his little sister and says his own “I’m sorry, Kit Kat,” before he hands the glitter over.

“See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” The pair of them pout in lieu of agreeing with her. “Play nice, please.”

The sound of the front door closing, perks them all up, and both kids scramble to the foyer, yelling for their dad as if he’s been away at war instead of just going in to work this morning for a last-minute emergency meeting with the Cassadine Industries board.

They’ve tried to do Crafternoon together as a family since the twins got old enough to handle glue and other substances without attempting to eat them out the bottle. Emphasis on: together. Today was definitely an anomaly that she’s going to make her husband pay for, with interest, later because having to deal with two rambunctious almost-seven year-olds has kind of tired her out way more than anticipated.

Of course, she knows why she’s so fatigued. And the reason for it makes anticipation and the most wondrous joy course inside her. Patting her lower belly, which is still flat, she grins. Last night she’d taken three tests and each time, a bright blue stripe appeared on the pregnancy kit.

They’ve been hoping for another baby for a while but she’d wanted to get more established with her second and third art galleries opening up in Chicago and San Francisco, and Spencer’s been taking on so much at C.I. that it’d seemed smart to hold off and just learn to manage their little family and busy lives for a bit. Baby number three is something of a surprise, since she’s still been on the pill the last few months, but she has an inkling that one of Spencer’s swimmers must’ve snuck through the week after she got over a particularly nasty flu in early November and had been forced to take antibiotics to beat it.

She contemplates how she wants to tell him. The last time she was pregnant, well, things hadn’t gone according to plan at all. Her husband—fiancé at the time—missed most of her first and second trimesters through no fault of his own, and they’d both been dealing with a helluva a lot of crazy. This time, she’s better prepared. And maybe they can actually enjoy it more.

Trill-like giggles followed by a deep, rumbling voice that makes something in her awaken in excitement—in a wholly different way to her kids, it must be said—floats through the door. They follow the sound soon enough. Spencer’s got the both of them tucked under his beefy arms like child-sized footballs and they’re having the absolute time of their lives. She can’t help but grin at the sight.

He staggers towards her with his precious cargo and drops both kids on the couch, gently so they only bounce a little, before making his way to her, a familiar heat in his eyes as he checks her out, along with her, frankly, casual outfit of jeans and a tank with a wooly sweater that bares her shoulder—although the way he’s looking at her, she may as well be wearing the sexiest piece of lingerie in existence.

“Hi,” he says as he comes to a stop where she’s standing at the dining room table, which is strewn with scissors, coloured paper, glue, glitter of every colour, paint and markers, and everything imaginable.

“Hi there.”

They smile at each other a little goofily. Maybe the kids aren’t the only ones that miss Spencer when he’s not here. She reaches for his tie and drags him close. “I missed you this morning.” And in a low undertone, “You also really owe me.”

He just grins, and reaches behind her for something, raising his arm. Trina frowns in confusion and follows his gaze upwards to find he's found a bough of mistletoe. Rolling her eyes—because when has Spencer Cassadine ever needed the use of a prop to kiss her?—she chuckles and cranes up on her tiptoes to kiss him. It’s a soft, close-mouthed contact—at least it starts that way. But like most times, neither of them can stop at just one. And soon, she’s wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders while he gathers her close, mistletoe abandoned to the floor.

It’s the sound of exaggerated puking and yells of ew, gross that pulls them out. Spencer doesn’t even look away when he says out of the corner of his smirking mouth, utterly shameless, “Can it, kids. It's tradition,” and kisses her some more.

—Christmas, 2023—

“I should go.”

The unhappy sound that comes from the bundle of cuteness beside him echoes his own feelings on the matter.

The thing is, Spencer doesn’t want to say goodbye. To be fair, he never wants to do that when it comes to Trina. He draws her tighter into him as they hug by his car, the cold bite to the wintry air doesn’t really penetrate the cocoon of warmth they’ve made of their arms wrapped around each other. It’s late afternoon but already the sun’s about disappeared, and the sky’s been overcast much of the day. The Christmas lights that litter the street-facing facade of the Ashford-Robinson home only just manage to shed the far reaches of their light here. He’d parked just to the left of their mailbox, so they do have at least the illusion of privacy.

He sways a bit, and she follows the movement, tucking her ear against his chest as her fingers find warmth inside his coat. It’s like they’re dancing to music only the pair of them can hear. Truly, he could do this all day, and not feel bad for it at all.

But he’s lingered too long as it is, and tested her mother’s patience and rare kindness way too much today already. He’s lucky that she wasn’t the one that caught them making out on that kitchen counter or he probably would’ve been kicked out already. They’d spent two-and-a-half hours snuggling on the couch, listening to jazz-infused Christmas tunes, while the Ashford men played cards at the table and their respective women chatted about their plans, and finished off the mulled wine.

Spencer hadn’t really been capable of paying attention to anything beyond the warm body tucked into his side and half on top of him, with both her legs thrown across his lap. The smell of coconut and summertime in her hair, her perfume that’s haunted his dreams for months and that he wishes he could spray on his pillows so he can feel like she’s always with him even when she isn’t.

He thinks of the first sweet gift she’d given him, a journal and a pretty fancy fountain pen inscribed with the words—To the one I love now and forever, always your Trina—and it makes him smile.

There’s another gift, he knows. One she’d been a little more nervous about but didn’t want him to open in front of anyone else. His first thought was that it was a naughty kind of gift. But she’d ducked her head bashfully at his guess, and shook her head.

What did Aunt Stella say about finding ‘less conspicuous places’ to, well, get their rocks off? Yeah, she was on to something. He couldn’t have put it better himself. While he’s always keen to be alone with his girlfriend, he’s kept his plans to make that happen—on a permanent forever basis—on the down low until the ink on the paperwork was dry. Mostly in the hopes of surprising her with it, either tomorrow as one of the many other gifts he’s planned for her. Or at least by New Year’s.

Perhaps he can find his way back here later tonight, to take her there. Once he’s done spending time with Ace, as he’s set to do this evening. God knows he’ll be craving her company. Because as much as he adores his little brother, he’s not exactly looking forward to an evening in Esme’s company.

Even though Trina’s said she’s okay with it. Heck, she even said she was happy about him having dedicated time with Ace over the holidays, given this is his first Christmas. But it’s also their first Christmas—as one of the rotund angel ornaments for the Ashford-Robinson tree he’d made this afternoon affirms. He just doesn’t want Trina to feel, in any way, that she’s not at the centre of his priorities. But she’s been encouraging and easy with this arrangement. That one-on-one conversation (he’d call it a confrontation, if anyone asked him) with Esme must’ve really done the trick.

“Okay, I guess I can’t hog you for the whole night,” Trina says, detaching herself from their hug with a pout on her lips that he’d love to kiss away. But if he does, that’ll just lead to more kisses.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Trina nods at him with a smile. He nudges one last kiss on her forehead, and only just manages, to get into his car. He puts it in reverse and slides out of his parking slot as Trina watches, and he doesn’t stop watching her waving form grow smaller and smaller in his rearview for as long as it’s humanly possible.

He wonders if there’ll ever be a time when being apart from Trina will be easy. When he won’t be filled with this pressing need to just find his way back to her.

—Christmas 2036—

“Did you find him, Dante?”

Trina leaps up from her quiet vigil by her father who’d been injured in the big blast at this year’s Christmas Eve City Council fundraiser at the Metro Court. Police Commissioner Falconeri, Dante to her and hers, offers her a solemn look. His face tells the tale of a life of service in fighting crime but he’s still strikingly handsome and very dapper with the streaks of salt in his dark hair.

“No, Trina—I don’t know how to say this to you….”

She shakes her head, her eyes smarting. “Then don’t say it.”

“There’s no way that he could’ve survived the blast. From what we can see, the attackers took him, my father, Valentin Cassadine, and many others to a room that placed them close to the one of the main explosive caches. The forensics team is still out there cleaning it up as we speak.”

Cleaning it up.

Such a cold, almost callous way to describe the gathering of broken bits and body parts that were being collected to ‘identify’ the—

And yet, still, Trina shakes her head. Because she does not agree.

No. “No, no.” Her voice breaks like shattered glass. “No. You don’t understand. Spencer’s alive. He-he got away somehow, I just know it! You’ve said it yourself a dozen times before that he has nine lives.”

Dante shakes his head, a deep fold in his brow as he looks at her with pity. And wariness, too. Like she’s not all there but he’s too polite and too kind to say so. Or have her put in a psych hold. Someone else had looked at her like this many years ago, as she waited in a cold, sterile room with the body of Victor Cassadine and a baby in her arms.

She’d known then, just as she knows now that Spencer would make it. And no one believed her. So she says, steel in her voice. “He’ll come back to me.”

“Trina—.” He reaches out to place a comforting hand on her arm. She slaps it away and glares at him fiercely.

“No! Look at me—I would know. I would know if Spencer was gone.” She will never bring herself to say the other word out loud. She grips her necklace. It’s an old one, the delicate diamond he gifted her so many years ago. It’s still one of her favourites in a collection of jewels he’s given her that would make a queen jealous. Rubbing her thumb along the solitary gem, like a talisman, she nods once more and pats her chest. “I would feel it—in here.”

Sighing heavily, but feeling perhaps generous enough to not hassle her any further, he glances at her dad. “How’s Taggert?”

Trina looks at him too. Marcus Taggert, now retired Police Commissioner, a post he held for eight years with distinguished service, is so much older now, and frailer than he’d ever like to admit to anyone. Yet he’d not hesitated for even a moment to leap in front of her, and shield her from the bulk of the explosion with his own body. He’s lucky to have only walked away from it with a concussion and severe bruising to his spine and shoulders that’ll keep him in hospital for at least a week.

“He’s okay. The doctor’s said he’ll just need to stay in a few nights until the swelling around his spine goes down. He saved me out there. Just like he always has.” She smiles sadly, her eyes prickling with tears as she bends down to kiss him on top of his bald, bruised head. “Thank you, daddy.”

She turns to leave the private room so her father can at least rest peacefully, and Dante follows. “You gonna be okay? Should I call a car for you?”

“I’m not going anywhere, Dante. I have to wait for Spencer—he’ll probably make his way here first. Or your people will bring him here for treatment when they find him.”

Dante opens his mouth as if to refute her version of reality but swiftly, wisely, thinks better of it.

Offering a curt nod, he swivels on the balls of his feet and heads for the main reception area where dozens of attendees to the ball are either seeking treatment or asking after their own loved ones. Trina tightens the lapels of the too-big coat she’s wearing. Just before the terrorists had made themselves known, he’d put his coat across her shoulders when he noticed her shiver slightly from the A.C. She smiles as she recalls how smooth he was with it, sliding it on her and murmuring something about how good she always looks in his clothes.

Typical Spencer. Always a charmer.

She sits down on one of the hospital’s chairs, wrapped in her husband’s coat, his comforting scent filling her nose and waits.

And waits.

And waits, some more.

She can only be thankful that the kids are spending this year’s Christmas Eve with their grandparents—her mom and Papa Curtis—and so they weren’t in attendance at the ball, and they’ve managed to contain information from reaching them until at least tomorrow afternoon.

Hopefully by then, there won’t even be any need to relay any information because Spencer will be back, safe and sound.

Hours pass, and still, she waits. Her faith, never wavering. Several people pass by to ask if she’s okay or offer their premature condolences—to which she has to bite her tongue to keep from snapping at them to fuck all the way off. She has to remind herself that she’s a Cassadine and a Robinson, with a side order of Taggert and Ashford. When she needs to have ice in her veins and present a stoic face, she’s more than capable of doing so. And now’s about that time.

She still waits.

The medical personnel on duty change over, and still, she sits there, her eyes wide open, and sleepless, watching the sliding doors, afraid that if she looks away for even a moment, she’ll miss him.

At some point after dawn, she decides to take a walk through the hospital. Her left leg and ass have gone to sleep, and it feels like thousands of tiny needles are digging into her skin, she needs to move around to get the blood flowing better.

She takes the elevator down to the lobby, steering clear of the E.R. entrance, she moves around and observes some of the other people who’re in much the same situation she’s in. A familiar sign pointing to the chapel pulls a smile to her lips. She has a lot of memories in that room, some comforting, and others not so much. But, a little prayer never hurts. She reaches for the door handle and then, the strangest thing happens.

The hairs on the back of her neck rise. Something inside her awakens—everything inside her.

She freezes.

Turning around, her gaze sweeps the room, in search of—

Spencer?

—in between the newest cohort of survivors extracted from the rubble of the Metro Court, a tall man stands at a pillar near the entrance, his tuxedo ripped to shreds with only a few bloodstains. Exhaustion lines his slumped shoulders, and his body lists leftward like he’s about to collapse.

But his eyes meet hers, as if he’d been watching for her all along. Searching. His mouth, a little bloodied and swollen from what may have been a scuffle, curves in a crooked smile. A beloved smile. The warmth she’s known for at least half of her life with this man, this love who has her entire soul entwined with his, takes over her entire being. She sways, then staggers to him.

“Spencer?” This time out loud.

The next moment she’s running. Maybe even flying, with wings for feet.

—Christmas 2043—

“That’s right, baby….”

Those three words slip from Trina’s lips, a hot, honeyed moan. She claws at Spencer’s shoulders as he pushes into her, every marble-hard inch of his dick tunnelling into her pussy, which is caught between wanting to push him out and swallow him whole.

He’s just—god, he’s just so big. And she’s not just putting on her best porn actress impression when she thinks that and hisses it out loud, when he pulls out an inch or so, and then plunges back in, deeper still. He’s getting her used to his girth and ever impressive length, making sure she’s not in any pain. It’s so sweet—he’s always been such a considerate lover. From the first time they made love and every time since. But by the time he’s balls deep, and filling her up so full that she has to bite back a scream, she’s just about ready to kick at him to hurry up.

There’s a time for tenderness and sweetness, but right now, she wants him to fuck her. Hard. To make sure she feels it all damn night as she walks through the party that’s taking place in their ballroom right now, a floor below.

She tells him just that, and Spencer, who’s occasionally very good at following orders, obliges her request. He shoves her up against the bookcase that lines the walls of his study, and with one hand holding her up and the other gripping her thigh, he starts to fuck her just like she wants.

The tinkling of music from the party they’re meant to officially open with a toast at some point this evening fades into static noise as Trina clasps his shoulders and does her best to meet him, thrust-for-thrust, electric pleasure sparking her entire body until she’s lit up like a Christmas tree. His towering body cages her in, and it makes her feel trapped in the best way. There’s no place she’d rather be than trapped with this man here, and forever.

He licks into her mouth, a filthy kiss that leaves her breathless. She bites at his lower lip, and the growl he lets out at the small bit of savagery resonates all the way in her sex. She’s already so close—the sound of her wetness, sucking him in every time he slams home, is a little obscene in here, carnal and shameless.

“Yes, oh god—please, Spencer—I need—.”

“I got you,” he grunts into her shoulder as he sneaks a hand between them to flick at her stiff nub.

One stroke, two more, and she comes with a shriek that possibly the entire castle can hear. She doesn’t care, right then. Because it’s like he’s detonated a bomb of blinding pleasure inside her and all she can register is what a mess she’s making on him, and how his thrusts have gone jagged before he fills her with his release, her name a tortured groan.

A half hour later—certainly too late to ‘open’ the festivities with a toast—they’re both giggling and attempting to make themselves presentable.

“This is really your fault, you know that right?”

“My fault! How is it my fault—all I was doing was minding my own business, greeting our guests before you corralled me with claims of some emergency that we needed to attend to, only to drag me in here and have your wicked way with me.”

She knows she ought to sound a little more put out by this turn of events but honestly, the two orgasms she just had still have her on a high so good that she could float to the ceiling. There’s never been a day in her life that she’s not wanted Spencer to have his way with her. And tonight’s possibly one of their most wicked. The filthy slide of their combined enjoyment, slick inside her, should probably irritate her and prompt her to take a quick shower. But, she kind of likes it. Likes that she’ll be walking around the room below with the evidence of their desire apparent to no one but her and Spencer, who’d watched his come leaking out of her with a wolfish leer just minutes ago, before offering to do something so dirty in his effort to help her out with that, that her pussy clenches at the memory of it.

“You’re so lucky my hair isn’t a complete disaster right now,” she says as she fixes the complicated twist she’d put it in earlier using the mirror on the north-facing wall of Spencer’s study. “How do I look?”

“Good enough to eat,” Spencer declares without a beat, his eyes sliding over her, embers of want glowing hot in them despite how well they’ve satisfied each other. That’s the thing though. He’s insatiable, and so is she. It’s like a mutual addiction that feeds on the other, ad infinitum.

She’s smart enough to see that as a compliment and a threat, so she steps back, warding him off with her hand out. “Down, boy. We can do that later. Now, we need to go and be good hosts for a few hours.”

“I’m giving you exactly two hours and fifteen minutes to get rid of them before I throw you over my shoulder and bring you right back in here.” That’s certainly a threat.

Ignoring the way her body’s already melting in excitement, she rolls her eyes and leaves the study, doing her best to ignore her husband who never strays far.

As much as she’d love to be irked by his neanderthal behaviour, she can’t help but be smug. Because, if nothing else, the fact that they’re still this hot for each other after twenty odd years, two-and-a-half marriages (she tends to count their vow renewal as only half) and four kids is a good thing.

Her body twinges deliciously as she reaches the ballroom’s entrance.

Oh yeah, a good thing indeed.

—Christmas, 2023—

The universe has a funny way of working things out.

Instead of having to hang out with Ace at Esme’s home—with Esme, the woman in question had dropped the baby off in the early evening with some dodgy explanation about ‘being busy with something’. Spencer’s spider senses had pricked up at that and the strange way that Esme appeared to be simultaneously avoiding his gaze and then looking at him with intent, almost fearful eyes as if she was seeing him for the first time. He’d picked up on the weirdness but once his grandmother and Kevin pooh-poohed his concerns, he’d kept quiet to think on at another time. After all, it was an overall good that he could spend the evening with Ace, who’d giggled and reached for him in that pure, eager way of his, without having to tolerate an awkward situation.

And running into Trina at General Hospital’s kid’s holiday party, as he listened to his grandmother and Doctor Finn read Twas the Night Before Christmas, and other seasonal classics, seems like some kind of message from the great beyond. He eyes her legs, sleek and perfect in those heeled Mary Janes of hers and it takes all sorts of reserves of strength to tear his gaze away to greet her properly. He’s caught between abstraction because he keeps sneaking glances at his girlfriend, getting caught up in her finely-etched profile, and rocking his brother any time he gets a little fussy. Each time the latter happens, Trina reaches over to chuck the toddler’s chin, or rub his back, and Ace immediately settles with a happy gurgle. At least he’s not the only Cassadine completely taken by Trina Robinson.

After story time’s done, he hands Ace over to his grandmother, who’s more than happy to take him home to put him to bed. He and Trina head over to a nearby café where they grab some warm drinks, and then try to figure out where to head now that they have a nice stretch of time to hang out.

He’s still curious about this special present she got for him, and the additional excuse to spend just a little more time with her prompts him to suggest, “Hey, I know it’s late but do you think… well, there’s somewhere I’d like to show you if it’s okay. One of my surprise gifts to you, actually.”

Trina tilts her head back, her hair covered in a cute, pink beret she’d shoved on once they left the hospital, to keep out the cold. She grins, mystified. “A surprise… place…now?”

He nods, holding his breath in wait for her answer. She could very well say no. It’s after ten, she’s probably exhausted. But then she shrugs, seeming to discard her usual penchant for being the responsible one between the two of them. “Take me away then.”

“Your carriage awaits, princess,” he says with as gallant a bow as he can muster. He can’t stop himself from ducking to kiss her softly, taste the remnants of hot cocoa on her lips. She tickles the hair at the nape of his neck and kisses him with just as much eagerness. They lose at least a quarter of an hour, just like that as snowdrifts flutter around them on the dim-lit street.

—Christmas, 2049—

Trina’s tired. So very tired.

The ache in her cranium feels like some troll's taking a hatchet to her skull, really rather gleefully. She takes a moment to herself in one of the nooks she had installed here at Wyndemere, to give it less of a cold austerity, and make it feel like home. She presses her forehead to the window overlooking the gardens, and lets the cool glass seep into her skin. The sound of raucous laughter, chatter and cheerful holiday music leaks through the walls and she smiles.

Maybe I should’ve taken the migraine pills.

But swift on the heels of that weak thought, she scolds herself. There’s a reason she chose not to, today. Although the headaches have plagued her for several weeks, if not months, now. She’d not wanted to spend the entirety of the festive celebrations bleary-eyed and dozing off, having to find some excuse to give the kids, and her husband, and everyone else for why she was so out-of-sorts. It would’ve ruined everything and she’d not wanted that for this special time of year.

Not this Christmas.

She can’t afford to miss even a moment of this one.

She’s been attentive to the point of obsessive compulsive with every single thing, from sorting out the decorations, dressing the tree with the kids and her grandchildren and their cousins, to prepping the various roasts and other dishes with their chef. It’s been years since she took it on herself to cook the entirety of Christmas dinner for her family but she’ll always insist on being the one to make the pies and the cookies. Spencer outright refuses to eat ginger snaps that are made by anyone but her. Grinning at the thought of her silly, stubborn man, she traces a heart in the mist her breath’s made in the glass.

It’d been important for her to make those cookies for him this year. She bites at the inside of her cheek as she thinks of next year, and if she’ll even be around to make them for him. Her eyes heat up. She’s been smart to make sure the twins both know how to make them, too. Aria's are pretty decent, to boot. Although Sasha's are frankly horrific, how that boy manages to create tar-black stones every time he even breathes near an oven is something to be studied scientifically. She’ll have to make sure to remind Spencer that theirs are just as good as hers, and not to be funny about eating them.

Don’t—

She forces her mind to swing to a less fraught notion—the preparation of this year's cookies themselves. It’d taken her quite a bit of time as the strong flavours—cinnamon, nutmeg, old spice and all the rest had made her wretch a few too many times. She’d been careful to use the downstairs toilet to puke, the one farthest away from anywhere Spencer or someone else would hear, for fear that they’d worry or ask questions. And she hasn’t been ready to answer questions. Not yet.

After this Christmas, and perhaps in the New Year, I will, she promises herself and her loved ones. I’ll be honest and it’ll be all right, we’ll make it through somehow. But she needs this one to be perfect. As perfect as she can make it.

Standing up straight, she presses her hands to the skirt of her dark crimson velvet dress, which Spencer had taken one look at earlier and threatened to cancel the entire dinner party so he could make love to her in it for the rest of the evening.

The man is an idiot, but he’s my idiot.

She heads back downstairs, and with each step, she cleanses her thoughts of the burdens that weigh on her—chief among them, the constant terror festering in her heart, poisoning her far quicker than her actual biology will. The source of this nerve-wracking fear is sitting in the top drawer of her bureau in her study. A ticking time bomb in the form of a large brown envelope with the damning diagnosis from her personal doctor, and second opinions from two of the most respected oncologists in the country.

But she cannot think about all that right now. She refuses to.

“Hey, pretty girl, there you are—I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

Spencer’s coming towards her, the sweetest grin on his face in his bespoke suit, a wintry green that's so dark it's almost black and gilds his impressively fit, muscular body like a glove. Seeing him shouldn’t still make her heart do this daft pitter-pat flutter after nearly thirty years knowing each other should it? And yet, it does. There’s also a more intense feeling, fiery. One that she’s felt any time she’s in his vicinity for just as long as the fluttering business, and with more urgency lately. The desire, no, need to taste that smile smashes into her, a tidal wave—as it always has done. So as soon as he’s within a foot, she reaches for the lapels of his dinner jacket, and tugs him close, murmuring, “I’m right here, always,” before she does just that.

If happiness is a choice one makes, then she’s making her choice now to cling to this last, worry-free Christmas with all the strength she has left. Not to quote Scarlett O’Hara of all people, but in this case, it’s entirely apropos: tomorrow is another day.

If the two of them spend a further fifteen or so minutes making out like silly teenagers in the shadows of the ballroom doors, right outside where the party’s in full swing, that’s neither here nor there.

Chapter Text

—Christmas, 2021—

“I know you put on a brave face for your uncle but there’s no shame in being nervous about going to Spring Ridge.”

He almost flinches at the tender concern in Trina’s voice. Almost. He’s still a damn Cassadine. He learned how to hide his weaknesses behind a complex of well-constructed masks from the cradle. Is he scared about Spring Ridge? Hell, yes. But he can’t and won’t let anyone see that.

“No, my uncle’s right,” he says with what he hopes is a cool shrug. “I need to man up. I took the action, I need to face the consequences. And I know I got a lighter sentence because of my privilege. You’ve made it more than clear that you think I’m a spoiled, entitled baby.”

“True.” She shoots him a wry smile that melts into something gentler and more imploring in the space of a blink. He marvels at how so much of her feelings are reflected on her face. How can one person just go around being that honest all the time. Surely it must be exhausting. Yet she never seems to tire of it. “But—I also think you’re human. And it’s nice to see.”

Ever the realist, he responds in a flat, sardonic tone, “Humans are terrible. Flawed. Selfish. And indulgent. You can’t like seeing that in me.”

“Hey! Humans are also vulnerable. Worthy of love. Capable of change.” She’s stepped toward him now, and reaches out to grasp his hand. His fingers tingle just from that light touch, and the electricity of it travels all the way up his arm and through his body, a bolt that lights him up from the inside, makes him feel inexplicably breathless.

It’s also the words she’s said. He doesn’t know what to make of it. The fact that Trina can still be so… hopeful about someone like him, even after all he’s done to her and people she cares about is baffling. He’s not done a single thing to deserve such grace from this girl and yet she offers it to him so freely. It—shames him. Yet it also sparks something far more dangerous, somewhere in the deepest part of him—

—hope.

“I wish I could see myself through your eyes,” he utters in a low undertone, tangling their fingers even more, allowing himself to just revel in the warmth of her touch. It feels profane. Like he’s committing daylight robbery in a cathedral. Desecrating something he has no right to even breathe the same air as let alone place his grubby paws on. Yet he doesn’t let go.

She doesn’t let go either. Instead, she smiles, and tilts her head, her dark-honey eyes sparkling. “You’re perfectly imperfect. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a person of value. I see you.”

Her thumb strokes his knuckles in hypnotic rhythm. He bites the inside of his left cheek, unwilling to look away from her for even a moment. She’s confounding him again. How on earth can she see him as she claims to, and still find something worth loving? Or, at the very least, rooting for. He’s not sure he’ll ever deserve it.

But my god, she makes me want to try. To really work for it.

“Thank you.” He means it, for real. That fact surprises him and yet it doesn’t. He can’t think of a single other person in his life that he’s ever allowed himself to be so honest as he is with Trina Robinson. He’s not sure why, she compels it out of him and it’s addictive. Maybe that’s why he’s been so drawn to this girl from the second she lobbed a remote control at him. Why he’s kept finding excuses to place himself in her orbit or seek her company. To glimpse her thoughts and try to figure her out even when she’s reaming his ass off. Except every time he thinks he’s got a handle on her, she throws him for a loop.

“Any time.”

It would make sense to unlatch his fingers from hers now but he doesn’t and neither does she. He has orders to fill and dirty dishes to collect but her eyes, they just keep pulling him in, and so he just stands there, a smile playing on his lips as Trina smiles right back at him. And for the first time since his plea deal came through, the world feels a touch less precarious.

“Hi guys!” A sharp voice cuts through the air, and they drop hands. His fingers twitch, bereft, yearning to snatch hers right back. He gulps as he glances sideways to find Esme—my girlfriend, a thought that should fill me with more joy, surely?—approaching with a pep to her step and a wide smile that shows all her teeth. She squeezes herself into the scant space between him and Trina—he hadn’t realised how close they were standing to one another—and smushes her lips into his. He doesn’t quite kiss her back. “Once I tell you my news, you’re gonna love me even more than you already do.”

His mouth twists into a smile. “What’s going on? What’s up?”

As she gushes about the whole ‘couples weekend’ idea, and ‘their’ friends, Joss and Cam, and how much fun ‘they’re’ going to have before he has to go to jail, irritation flecks at him with every word that comes out of her mouth and the way she seems to go out of her way to exclude the third person in their conversation.

“Ooh, nice.” He raises his eyebrow to remind her, “But it’s not just for couples, right? We want Trina to feel included….”

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry I misspoke—of course we want you, Trina.”

Instead of placating him, something in Esme’s tone disquiets him. It’s not an unfamiliar way of speaking. After all, he knows plenty of people that talk with that same sort of saccharine-layered solicitude. It’s meant to come off as polite and well-mannered. But watching Esme as she turns around to face Trina, her mouth creased in a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, he sees it for the vacuous, ugly, ultimately empty charm that it is.

There’s something offensive about seeing that kind of insincerity deployed on Trina—the most candid, to the point of blunt, person he’s ever met. Sure, her directness can be a bitter pill to swallow but he appreciates it. There’s not many people in his life he can count on to just be straight with him. Esme, clearly doesn’t. She wouldn’t know truth and sincerity if it reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. Either way, however much he’s used to the patronising shit she pulls on most people—including him—he does not enjoy seeing her pull it now.

He doesn’t want to think too deeply about why there’s a part of him, driving and insistent, that wants to do everything in his power to shield Trina from it—from Esme. What that could mean is... complicated.

So, he doesn’t.

—Christmas, 2050—

Spencer blinks blearily at Wyndemere’s front door for several seconds before he recalls that he has the wherewithal to open it himself. This is his castle, isn’t it? He does so, rather clumsily, and pretty much trips his way over the threshold, landing on the hardwood, parquet flooring with a cracking thud.

“Ow—fuck! Motherfucker, that hurts,” he curses his knees which are juddering like they want to just give up the ghost and dislocate right then and there. They’ll join his knuckles, which were taped up before he got out of Volonino’s an hour or so ago. The secret underground entrance, to the secret underground spot where guys like him can go beat the tar out of each other to feel a little better about life and shit.

He has to remember that he’s not a kid anymore. Pushing fifty. Just as quickly as that logical thought flits into his brain, it flits away like so much smoke and he gets distracted.

“Wow, that’s so pretty,” he mumbles, the tiles are really well laid. It’s like a pretty shape. And the wood has all these different colours in it that make the floor seem like one of those mosaic things you find in Istanbul or Marrakech. He bends down to get a closer look, so close that his nose smushes into the floor.

He might’ve continued with his appraisal if it wasn’t for the click-clop sound coming his way. Like a train. Or gunshots. He’s not sure which. Only that they hit his head with every damn clop so he has to groan in agony.

A pair of pumps, pale grey, come into the tops of his vision. He peers through his growing headache—thanks to the half-bottle of whiskey he consumed at his new nightspot of choice, the ever classy Highsider bar in the shittiest part of Port Charles—at a pair of pretty feet to whom the pumps belong. The feet lead to ankles that he has the really weird urge to crawl to and lick. Maybe even take a little nibble. But the ankles aren’t a patch on the legs that follow, shapely gams, that look made for wrapping around his waist or hoisting over his shoulders. He’s not picky about which.

“Are you done?”

He jerks at the irritated drawl and swings his head back to find—

—oh shit.

“Uh, hey—baby.”

“Hey, baby? Hey. Baby. That’s what you have to say to me?”

He shrugs, doing his best to blink back the cloudiness the alcohol granted him because even in his booze-sodden state, he always wants to pay attention to his wife.

“Where. Have. You. Been?”

“At the office,” he starts.

She cuts him off with a stomp of her foot that shouldn’t look as cute as it does. He opens his mouth to point that out but the glare she spears his way silences him, and, quite magically, starts to sober him up. “At the office? And—what, you now have meetings that end at, what time is it—two o’clock in the morning?”

Okay, when put like that, she has a point. He finished work hours ago. Then he’d sat at his desk in the dark after dismissing his staff, and wrestled with the monster clawing at his insides—that’s been feeding on him from within, a parasite barnacled to a spot between his ribs—before heading to the gym to workout. Except, he bypassed the usual treadmill and other more common workout equipment to head down to the basement three floors down where the ultra secret ‘fight club’ his cousin Morgan started for men and women of all walks in need of an… outlet for stress. He’d only used it a couple times over the years before this March. Post-April or so, right about the time Trina started looking at chemo and other aggressive treatment options, he’s been down to the club at least once every two weeks. To get his ass kicked, yes. But, due to his own training in martial arts, which he’d picked up in his twenties, he gets to do a lot of kicking himself. Rip his knuckles to shreds and almost shatter his ribs and sometimes much worse.

The deal is to keep all the hits below the neck so they’re easily hidden, and to not kill anyone. It’s a pretty good deal. He gets to pummel some other bastard with problems into the canvas, and feel, for a moment that he’s in control. That the problems in his life are easily solved with fists, like some common thug. And he can leave the blood and sweat and grime in there where it’s far off from the less navigable reality where he is wholly incapable of coping with the thought of losing her. That he's tried his damnedest to match her unflagging strength and bravery when all he is, is weak and flailing.

But he can’t tell his wife all that. So he says something vague in the affirmative.

She gusts out a frustrated sigh. There’s something else in it that chills him to the marrow. A brokenness. Sadness. And, pain. That he caused.

He clambers to his feet, still unsteady but coming to his senses real fast. And even faster once he glimpses her fully, and sees the shadows under her eyes despite the full business attire she’s wearing—she must not have changed from her own workday. But the thing that really alarms him, under the sparse flickering light from the massive Christmas tree they put in the foyer a few days after Thanksgiving just last week—are the tears. The ones filling her eyes, threatening to overflow.

Shit. He’s got to fix this. Fast.

“Trina—.”

She shakes her head and sniffles before she says, a diamond-hard edge to her voice, “Y’know what—fuck you, Spencer.”

She turns around, her hair whipping behind her in her rage as she strides away from him.

He’s not sure how he knows, even in his tipsy state, but letting her walk away from him right then without—an apology, an explanation, something will be the greatest mistake of his life. And god knows he’s made a shitload of those. So he chases after her. His longer strides easily catch up with her, he snags her left elbow. “Wait, we need to talk.”

She tears her arm out of his hold, or tries to, but he holds on. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Well, that’s too bad. We’re gonna talk, now.”

She hisses like an outraged cat, before she stomps her pointy heel down on his foot, merciless and understandably so. He yelps in pain and the brief distraction allows her to slip his grasp and scamper out of reach. “Talk? What’s there to talk about, Spencer? How you’re drinking too much and you’re never home? How the last six months I’ve basically been living alone in my home because my husband’s too busy getting shitfaced and-and—screwing other women?”

He’s bowing his head, taking her ranting, which is far less than he owes her, but that last has his head shooting up with the quickness because what the actual fuck is she talking about? Screwing other—

He asks that out loud. And Trina sneers at him, then strides back at him to shove at him with a surprising amount of strength. “Really? I hate you!”

She makes to turn around again but he stops her, yanks her back into his chest while she struggles, twisting and wriggling in her efforts to escape him. He winds one arm around her ass and lifts her up in his arms, tossing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry to get her to a more confined space so they can have what’s clearly a much needed conversation. A conversation he’s been running from for close to a year now. She makes it difficult every step of the way, kicking her feet at and yelling imprecations at his back, pummelling at it. He’s almost tempted to slap her butt to get her to quiet down but reconsiders—while they’ve never shied away from that sort of play in their sex life, this is a situation in which she wouldn’t appreciate it. At least not until they’ve cleared this murky air, which is teeming with so many misunderstandings, and lies, and his own damn cowardice nearly destroying the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

At least he’s stone cold sober now. If nothing else, even the whiff of an allegation that he’d touch another woman when, for the greater part of his life, this one’s the only one he’s wanted from the second he met her—is a surefire way to knock the stupid (and liquor) out of him.

Once he reaches their bedroom, he finally puts her down. When his wife tries to make another run for it, he side-steps in her path and quirks his brow. “Don’t even think it, Trina Cassadine—I will find and chase you down wherever you go. In this castle or around the entire goddamn world. And you know I can do it and I will.”

The threat’s certainly not an empty one. He’s been stalking her successfully from the night he met her, and she well knows it.

Folding her arms across her chest, she marches to their bed and plops down on it, a pissed off pout on her mouth that, again, shouldn’t look as adorable as it does. He stoppers the urge to tell her that, and instead makes his way to slump down beside her.

Searching for words, the best way to begin to explain what’s been going on in his dumb head, he’s quiet for a long moment. He’s pled his case in plenty of situations over the years. In boardrooms, and in this bedroom. In front of delegates from some of the most powerful nations in the world, men and women with troves of wealth and influence that rival and even surpass his own.

Not a single one of those instances has filled him with as much trepidation as this one.

He exhales, and resigns himself to being honest. She’s demanded little else from him in all their years together. And he’s held the line for the most part until he couldn’t these last few months. Until he lost his damn mind and fell into an abyss from which he refused to escape. The fact is, he’s been hiding.

Baring his neck, metaphorically in this case, has always been hard for him. It flies in the face of all his basest instincts. Of everything he’s been taught to be—as a Cassadine to the core.

But this is Trina.

The only fact that matters. The sole truth. His guiding star. Perhaps the closest thing he’s ever held that’s close to religion.

“I’m—I’ve been—afraid,” he confesses.

She stiffens for a moment. He hears her sharp intake of breath. Yet she doesn’t say anything for a minute or two, and then, in a haunted whisper that rips at the air, leaves it bleeding, “So have I.”

He reaches across the inches between them, sliding his hand along her arm, tentative at first for fear that she’ll pull away again. She doesn’t. So he finds her hand, traces the lines on her palm, weaving his fingers through hers. When she clasps his in return, her grip firm and yet surpassingly gentle as she grazes the bandages questioningly, he fights to swallow the searing-hot lump in the back of his throat. This—this is a gift that he doesn’t nearly deserve.

But isn’t that a summation of their relationship?

It unlocks something in him, and the tears he’s been too stubborn, too scared—too cowardly—to shed, since he learned of the diagnosis, fall. His chest shudders. But he doesn’t let go of her, not for a moment. He can’t.

He’s not sure who moves first—him drawing her close or her curling into him, but soon enough, she’s on his lap, and the two of them are just clinging to one another, limbs intertwined, in the roiling dark.

The time to bare his soul to her will come. To apologise and beg forgiveness for his foolishness. To fix what he’s bruised and almost broken with his dumb shit and failure (fear) to communicate over the last several months. To put the pieces of them both back together again, and glue them up with all the love he has in his body to give to this woman, and this woman only. To figure out what happens next in her treatment journey, and what she needs from him so that she doesn’t feel scared anymore. And if that’s not possible, they can at least be terrified and face it all together.

But for now, holding each other, just like this, it feels like grace.

—Christmas, 2023—

Learning that Spencer bought his own apartment has been quite the shock tonight. A penthouse in midtown Port Charles, that’s close enough to his grandmother’s that he can still drop by to see her fairly easily, and close enough to Ace that he can do the same all while being pretty close to PCU.

He’s shown her the rooms, which actually look quite similar to Laura and Kevin’s place, although this is more of a loft style space, suitable for someone his age. While he fiddles with her fingers, he tells her about decorating plans early in the New Year. He also informs her, an uncharacteristically shy tilt to his head as he struggled to look her in the eye, that he’s been hoping that she’ll be open to spending time with him there. Maybe—if she’s okay with it, even moving in together so that it’ll be truly theirs.

That left her more than a little speechless before she nodded frantically and threw herself in his arms with a thrilled “Yes, yes, yes!”—in between enthusiastic kisses.

It’s uncanny how Spencer sometimes just knows exactly what she needs before she has to ask. Less than two days ago, she was wondering about the two of them having a place of their own and now? He, with a prescience that makes her wonder if they’ve been eavesdropping on each other’s hearts or something, has made it all happen.

Despite the bareness of the apartment in terms of decor, the living room’s got a massive fireplace and several plush couches, an expensive and likely vintage rug and, very importantly, an adorable Christmas tree, with all the trimmings.

“I—just wanted us to have our first Christmas together here,” he’d uttered, rubbing at the back of his head, his cheeks flushed. “Even if it’s just a couple hours.”

All she’d been able to think when he said that and she got up on her tiptoes to kiss him was, and continues to be, I love this man so much. I love him. I love him I love him—

Now, they’re cosy and comfy in a makeshift fort of pillows and blankets in the living room, some warm eggnog and a toasty fire going. It’s about as romantic a Christmas Eve as she could ever wish for, really. And Spencer’s sitting in front of her with his gift.

She watches him, trepidation twisting her fingers in her lap as he unwraps his gift from the gold-dusted tissue paper she’d swaddled it in. She hopes he’ll like it but he might find it… she doesn’t know. Lame?

He finally lifts it out, and studies the fairly sizeable collage. She’d used a mixed media style that she’s so often admired in her favourite artists. Oils for some of images, and to give some life and weight to the vines and other plants she’d etched throughout, preserving real leaves and prints of them. Photographs with pencil sketches and fine watercolour extensions of him smiling, laughing, looking more serious and even one with him taking a nap on his grandmother’s couch. In each image, is his baby brother, the bond between the two of them palpable—almost as much as it is in real life. At least she tried hard to capture that. There’s one image she did in black ink on the left corner near the bottom, a simple one, two figures—one that’s obviously her boyfriend and a much smaller one, Ace, gripping his hand against the backdrop of a hazy sunset in orange, pinks and sunny yellows. Spencer traces it, his face slack with surprise. “Y-you made this for me?”

“Yup. Took me a while to get the photos besides the ones I’ve taken on my phone—your grandmother helped with that. Kind of wish I could’ve included a few from tonight, you two were adorable at story-time.”

He swallows visibly, and she can see his unfairly long eyelashes fluttering, his jaw clenching as if he’s holding something back. Suddenly a scooch nervous, she rushes to explain a little further. And—apologise? That seems appropriate.

“I wanted something that you could keep—or hey, maybe hang up here. Even though Ace isn’t living with you anymore, to remember all the good times and to know that you’ll have plenty more. I know it’s n-not, you know, fancy or anything extravagant. I hope it’s not overstepping….” Spencer looks at her then, and her words drift to nothing as she takes in his face, and the emotion filling every beloved patch of it. The wet shine in his eyes as he finally smiles, the softest smile she’s ever seen.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice thick and husky. “This is… it’s perfect, Trina. Just—.”

“Are you sure—I mean, I—?”

“No, it’s perfect. Maybe the most beautiful and kind and sincere gift I’ve ever gotten.” His voice cracks on the last word, and he clears his throat as he looks back at the painting.

“Well, that’s a relief! Because I was gonna go with Joss’s suggestion and surprise you by showing up in your bedroom at your grandmother’s, with a giant red bow pinned to my ass. Logistically, this was actually much easier.”

Spencer gapes at that for a split-second before he bursts into warm laughter that fills the room like music. She chuckles too. In hindsight, that really would’ve taken a lot of manoeuvring.

He carefully puts the piece in its wrapping to protect it and slots it against the coffee table. Then he turns to her, leaning his chin on his palm as his eyes move over her like he’s not quite sure she’s real. It’s a look that has parts of her she can’t even name shivering in response. The longer he gazes at her, the more a newer awareness smoulders between them, and the inside of his room starts to feel less cheerfully toasty, and sultrier, tension thrumming-hot.

With a smirk, he asks, “So, this bow idea, I assume you would’ve been nude.” A heated glance downward to her body which is pretty covered up. Yet still, she shifts, her thighs rubbing together, responding in spite of herself. Her breasts immediately grow heavy, desire spiking to a fine-tipped point as her nipples grow extra sensitive and achy beneath her bralet and sweater.

“Oh! Well—um, possibly.”

“Hm.” He licks his lips and she barely manages to hold back a jealous whimper.

Before she can ask him what’s going through that shady mind of his, he leans close to press a kiss onto her mouth. It’s a kiss that feels so full of feeling—of desire, of gratitude. Of love.

She flounders for a second before her hands land on his shoulders, and she drags him as close as she can have him, and kisses him right back with everything she has.

The promise of their make-out session in the kitchen finally comes true as they, by silent mutual agreement, strip each other off, slow and studious.

Because tonight will be their first time together in this place. Their place. Their home. It’s a huge step. And most might think it’s too soon, especially since they’re so young. But it feels absolutely right. Perfect.

His hands, big and bold, move over her body as he lays her out before him, and proceeds to drive her mad with his fingers and his lips. The fireplace is rendered completely superfluous because she soon begins to feel like she’s housing the inferno, inside her, and on every patch of skin he strokes, and licks, kisses and nips. When she comes with a startled wail that echoes against the tall ceiling above them, she almost allows herself to float off into the ether like a hot air balloon with it.

But, she’s too damn greedy for that. Sitting up, she shoves him onto his back, and returns the favour tenfold. Exploring every inch of him, laying her claim in ways she’s not done before. She leaves bruises on his neck, his ribs just above the thump of his heart, his pretty pink nipples, the soft skin on his lower abdomen, the muscles flexing against her lips. Then she nuzzles him through his briefs, breathes in the musk and sandalwood scent of him with a ravenous moan.

And soon enough, it’s his turn to rattle the rafters with his shouts and growls of pleasure.

They come together eventually, bodies locked-tight, him filling her up and she opening for him, just as if they were carved to do just that, matched pieces of some arcane puzzle—a perfect fit.

—Christmas, 2052—

Spencer takes a sip of his nog and laughs at the joke TJ’s just made but his eyes flit about the room full of guests at his cousin Sam’s—who’s hosting Christmas this year—searching. In this space are at least four generations of Cassadines, the same number of Robinson-Ashfords and Corinthos, and others he considers family. But there’s only one person he needs to find.

A coil of panic, one that’s sat with him for the better part of three years, unfurls in his belly, a menacing snake.

He swivels around, searching.

And just as he’s about to ask someone, anyone where she is—he spots her.

The agitation that’d already started to overwhelm him eases somewhat as he observes her, chatting comfortably with their youngest daughter and her mom, Portia—whom he still calls Doctor Robinson in his head after all these years—and several other folks he doesn’t bother to recognise.

He blinks furiously then ducks his head to hide it. It’ll be weird if people look up to find Spencer Stefan Niklosovich bloody Cassadine randomly weeping in the middle of a dinner party. Although he is close to pushing sixty, they might just think he’s having a stroke or it’s a symptom of his growing senility or whatever.

But no. It’s just sheer fucking terror that grips him. That’s gripped him by the balls since that January morning two years ago when his wife took his hand, and laid with him in the middle of their bed, as she told him all about her cancer diagnosis.

He’s been even more of an emotional basket case ever since—and he’s always been something of a drama queen, according to the love of his life. He can’t deny the charge—not that he’d deny her anything in the world, really. She’s fully cancer-free but he hasn’t yet shaken off the habit of hurtling straight into panic mode.

Gulping back the lump that’d appeared in his throat, he feels safe enough to look up again. Without thought, his feet start moving, taking him to her, just as they always do. He admires her from as he approaches, takes time to greet those who greet him, but never taking his eyes off her.

He can’t. He won’t. She’s the North Star, even in this house with a roof over their heads, she’s the sole thing that lets him know where he is. Without her—well, he already knows he’d be lost.

She’s tiny as ever, and yet she brightens the space around her with her sparkling smile and that irrepressible, gamine spirit. As magnetic as she is, it’s no wonder that so many people just love talking with her or seek her out at parties. He gets it, hell, he got it the night he chased after her in that alley behind The Savoy and pretended to be a server, and he’s never forgotten since.

It’s hard for him to look at anything but her at the best of times. But tonight, with her hair only just growing out of the close-cropped style she’s kept for months, curling about her like crown, black coils threaded with silver, and her face subtly made up to accentuate her god-given features—the slanted cheekbones and doe eyes, and her plush mouth painted in her favourite red lipstick—she robs him of breath.

In practically no time, he’s within a couple feet of her, and, as though she’s been aware of him all the time, Trina turns to him and her smile brightens, in a way that he’s trained his eyes to notice. It’s a smile she gives only to him. She holds her left hand out to him and he grabs it, and tries not to hold on too tight. Just her touch alone calms the ghoul that’s been riding him ragged even if he knows, beyond any reasonable doubt, that she’s completely healthy and well.

The very real possibility of losing her—his person, who’s become the very air he breathes in many ways—is a hard thing to let go of, and he’d lived with that for close to three years. So the universe will forgive him if he’s still a little clingy.

As if she knows exactly what he’s thinking, she draws him behind her so he can cradle her against his front. He raises her hand up to kiss it softly, and just holds her like that, uncaring of the eyes on them because if he can’t love his wife out loud after over thirty years of marriage, then he’ll have to fight everyone that tries to tell him he can’t.

He doesn’t pay attention to the conversation that she continues with the group. Just lets himself be with her and reassure himself that she’s safe and here, and not going anywhere any time soon, and therefore everything’s okay.

It works.

—Christmas, 2023—

He stares up at the ceiling, oddly wakeful after the very… energetic night they’ve had, and this followed a pretty busy day as it is.

Trina’s half-sprawled on top of him, her head notched on his chest, one leg flung across his middle like she’s seeking for warmth, even in her sleep. He kind of loves that she knows, however subconsciously, that she can find it in him.

Tilting his chin down, he strains to press a tiny kiss on her temple and then relaxes against the pillows. He skates his fingers along the silken line of her back, from the top of her vertebrae to the bottom, her breath whistling cooly across his throat, and all he can think is how damn thankful he is.

He told her once that when he’s happiest, it’s always with her. And this whole day, this year, in fact, has done nothing but prove that point again and again.

Thinking of the top drawer on the right side of his enormous bed upstairs, his belly swoops in anticipation and nerves. A box that he’s been hanging onto for months, already. He’s gotten a few adjustments here and there, doing his level best to create something that Trina would genuinely love. The necklace and the earrings, those had been easy. Honestly, he’d even forced himself to be kind of restrained with them, knowing how she might side eye more extravagant jewellery—one day he’ll gift her gemstones the size of a baby’s fist, and he won’t let her talk him out of it.

But this—this had required a lot more creativity.

He’s thought about hundreds of ways to pop the real big question. From the wildly melodramatic—like sky writing will you marry me, Trina Robinson across the the Port Charles horizon to those same words percolating on his tongue until he’s ready to blurt them out in the most mundane situations. He keeps wanting to get it just right.

When he feels her stir awake, and push up so she can glance at him with sleep-fogged eyes to smile and husk, “Hey,” he knows that whatever else, he’s not going to allow the New Year to pass him by without asking. He refuses to take time for granted—not when it comes to Trina.

Wrapping the mussed tresses of her hair in his fingers, he grins, and says, “Hey, beautiful,” before tugging her up for a kiss.

—Christmas, 2083—

The soulful strains of Nat King Cole and his daughter, Natalie, swapping lines of the Christmas Song fill Wyndemere’s ballroom on Christmas dawn. It’s empty, however, apart from the two forms, huddled close together as they shuffle-sway to the music.

The man’s belly’s softened with age, yet he still holds himself with the bearing of a prince, upright and regal, and ever so dashing. His broad shoulders only a little bit curved in do nothing to diminish his height. He gazes down, with eyes the deep brown of polished mahogany, at his wife, whose delicate frame fits perfectly against his—still, after all these years. Her hair’s a perfect cloudy afro of silver-grey, and he’s let his own grow to his shoulders, completely grey but still a pretty impressive mane.

He’s started to forget things. Small ones—where he left his bifocals the night before, what his favourite colour is, their kitten’s name. Big ones—to take his blood pressure medicine in the mornings, that one time they got kidnapped by his crazy uncle, their lastborn’s name, and once, where he parked his Land Rover back in the city.

But still, he’s hers. And how can she tell? It’s in the way he looks at her, just as he always has with his eyes so full of love that it makes her belly flutter. It’s in the way he draws her hand up to trace her knuckles with his lips, like something out of an old Disney cartoon or something. A prince from a fairytale.

Trina grins, her dimples still so charming that he can only lean down to press a kiss to her cheek and gruff softly, “You always take my breath away, Trina Cassadine. My pretty girl.”

She giggles like the young girl she no longer is—he’s always made her feel this way. Her hands trace the lines on his jaw, tenderly, and she says, a musical lilt to her husky voice, “I love you, Spencer, so very much.”

And he smiles, like the young man he’s not been in years, because her love is perhaps the one thing that makes him remember himself truly. Brings him back to surer ground when he feels lost.

They dance, and dance, pale yellow morning light dappling through the bay windows, with eyes only, always, for each other.

Chapter Text

—Now—

Spencer’s never been one for believing in miracles. Certainly not Christmas Eve ones. This isn’t some Charles Dickens fable. Nah, real life never works out like those stories does it?

So, standing here on the southward balcony overlooking Wyndemere’s craggy beachfront, the waves crashing along the shore, long after the sun’s set, he’s not expecting any sort of break from the universe. The moon’s turned the sand greyish-white and stark, and the cool night air nips at his nose and fingers. He’s not bothered with a coat or scarf though. What’s the point of doing so? Maybe if he stays out here long enough he’ll freeze his ass off and his outside will match the cold misery of his insides.

Rotating his shoulders, he winces at the loud click of the tense joints in his neck. His body’s still recovering from being in a coma for the better part of two years, and the lengthy recovery he underwent in the small medical facility on his grand-uncle's island in the Mediterranean. His head’s no better. A severe traumatic brain injury will do that to you. But he's alive, at least. A small win that doesn't feel like much of one.

He picks up a snifter of whiskey that he’s been nursing all night. A step up from the sherry he’d downed a few years ago, in a similar state of angst. And, unironically, the cause of his emotional state is the same as it was then—

—Trina.

He blinks, his eyes stinging as he takes a gulp of the bittersweet liquid. His brain’s only just started getting foggy from it. And he can only pray that the state of drunken unconsciousness he craves comes quickly.

Because he can’t deal with the reality of what’s happening right now as he’s standing here, on this balcony, alone on Christmas Eve. Impotent. Unwanted. Rejected. Broken.

Because across the water, a few miles away, in one of Port Charles’ oldest Episcopalian churches, the love of his life is pledging her life to another man.

And there’s not a goddamn thing he can do about it. It was all very tragically pathetic. Almost Shakespearean, really.

He laughs at himself. The sound is cruel and ugly in the nighttime gloom. Lonely, too. Desperately, stupidly, lonely.

The taste of defeat is sour on his tongue as he recalls his one last gambit earlier today. One final attempt to make her see, convince her to take a leap and be with him.

—Earlier that day... —

Finding Trina in her beloved gallery on the morn of her wedding day had been something of a lucky guess on his part. He’d thought of places where she’d be on the brink of such a monumental event—marrying the man she apparently loved—and of course she’d be where she felt the most like herself. A space that still, even now, held such warmth for him. In so many ways it was theirs. Their place.

“You can’t be here, Spencer,” Trina said, her eyes wide as she held a hand in front of her as if to ward him off.

But he’d never been one to give in so easily. She knew that as well as he.

“Yet here I am.” He’d tried to project an air of confident insouciance. “I guess congratulations are in order on the upcoming nuptials—my invitation must’ve got lost in the mail.”

Something like shame had shone in her pretty eyes before she distracted herself with a pile of folders on her desk. “I-I didn’t think it’d be wise.”

“You? Or the football star?”

“The guest list was very controlled, we wanted to keep the wedding intimate given Kai’s in the middle of his first season and there's a lot of media crawling all over the city.” Rolling her eyes, Trina huffed, “Besides. You know very well that Kai has no reason to think anything about you.”

It hurt. The dismissal hurt but he couldn’t resist poking, “Doesn’t he?”

“No!” Trina burst out. Inhaling deeply, she made an effort to gather her cool demeanour, to put up the wall she’d been trying so desperately erect between them from the moment he resurfaced in Port Charles at the end of the summer—right in time for her engagement party to the jock.

She stepped out from behind her desk and continued, voice a tad firmer, “No. You’re… you’re just my ex boyfriend who was gone for a couple years. Dead and gone. Spencer, you’re my past. And Kai—Kai’s my future. The man. He’s the man I’m going to m-marry. Have kids with. And be happy with forever….”

Like the predator he’d always been, Spencer honed in on the note of hesitation that perhaps only he was equipped to detect when it came to Trina Robinson. She'd gotten so much better at hiding her thoughts but not from him. Never from him.

He moved closer to her until there was maybe half a foot between them. Until he could glimpse the dark circles under her damson-coloured eyes, the hint of strain around her mouth. He could also scent her, that heavenly fragrance—lilies and sandalwood and something inimitably Trina, that’d always made him long to draw her into his arms. His hands twitched with the effort to not do so.

Instead, he asked, “You sure about that?”

She’d not answered him then, simply stared at him, the conflict within reflected in her gaze as she clenched her tiny hands into fists. “You can’t do this,” she let out on a sob. “You can’t—you can’t keep doing this, Spencer.”

“Doing what?”

Shaking her head, she shifted closer to shove him in the chest with enough force that someone else might’ve staggered back. But he stood his ground.

“What happened on Thanksgiving, it—never should’ve happened. I told you that already!”

He smirked then, completely incapable of not doing that as he remembered exactly what happened that night. The way she’d done her best to avoid him for much of the General Hospital fundraiser banquet to which they'd both attended stag. Until they’d both found themselves seeking some air and a bit of quiet on one of the hospital’s balconies. They’d conversed—or at least attempted to before it descended into what had become their increasingly usual mode of exchange. Sniping and petty arguments.

And then—

—and then she’d kissed him. With a hunger that he’d felt all the way down to his toes.

Their first kiss in almost two years and it’d been—heaven. And hell.

Because one kiss hadn’t been enough. Nor had two. And in what seemed like mere seconds, he’d found himself hoisting her against a wall, shoving the tastefully sexy crimson cocktail dress she’d worn up her thighs as she helped him unbuckle his pants as their bodies moved with the ease of familiarity and the desperate need of long-time deprivation. Because, god it'd been too long without this.

They'd made love like the very universe and Time itself were chasing them. The feel of her fluttering around him, taking him as perfectly as she always had, sighing his name with the same breathless wonder that she used to before—even just recalling it made him hard as a rock in this gallery.

He’d been back in Port Charles for months by then but that moment with Trina had been his true homecoming. The sort that was only possible in her arms.

At least until they’d finished, and reality had come hurtling in with all the subtlety of a mack truck. She’d pushed him off, and done her best to clean herself up as she cursed herself and him, and the whole damn world, and all but run away in panic, right after telling him, “This never happened.”

Of course, with the way her lipstick had smudged courtesy of his mouth and teeth, and the wrinkles in her nice dress, and the blooming love bites on her throat, it hadn’t quite landed the way she’d wanted.

She’d done a great job in the subsequent weeks of avoiding him.

He’d heard through Cam and Joss about the surprise wedding announcement, and had only been slightly disheartened when his invitation didn’t come.

All sorts of ideas and plots had plagued him for ways to make Trina see that they belonged together—not her and the walking jockstrap. That she was his just as much as he was hers. Some of them had been the nefarious sort that could only be borne of a Cassadine’s imagination.

One phone call, and the perfect Kai (whom Spencer'd met and had been annoyed to discover he really was a genuinely nice guy) could be taken care of, never to be seen or heard of again. He had the resources to do it and make it look like an accident.

The only thing that’d stopped him was the woman standing in front of him right now. It’d hurt her. And hurting Trina was something he didn’t want to do, not if he could help it.

“And you can’t, you can’t come and—.” She cut herself off in frustration.

“Can’t come what?”

“You can’t come and make things hard for me. I’ve made my choice. I—love Kai. I do!”

Jesus, that hurt to hear out loud.

He knew it, of course. She wouldn’t be marrying the guy otherwise. But hearing her say it? Not something he wanted or needed. Ever. It made a longstanding rage inside him uncoil and strike out like a snake. “If you loved him so much then you wouldn’t have let me get within a foot of you, Trina. Let alone fu—.”

“Shut up! Just shut up,” she shouted, slamming her fists into his chest. He let her. “That was a mistake. A stupid, shitty, stupid horrible mistake!”

“Was it? You didn’t seem to think so when you were co—.”

“Oh my god, will you just stop! You know, that’s the problem with you—you think that everything is about sex or… or this crazy, unhinged, misguided … passion! It’s not! It’s about trust. And genuine friendship as a foundation to something good and true. And knowing that someone chooses you, and wants you, and loves you. No lies. No games. No crazy ex girlfriends popping out of the woodwork and hanging over us like a dark cloud.”

He flinched. Because everything she was saying was a perfectly-aimed poisonous dart at their past, and some of the very real obstacles that’d messed up their path to being in a relationship.

Trina ran a frustrated hand through her braids and the glint of her engagement ring, an enormous pearl and diamond thing that didn’t seem much like what he knew of her personal taste, made him grimace.

“It’s knowing that love doesn’t have to be this constant uphill struggle. That it can come easy. Be—perfect.” She chuckled then but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Natural. Stable. How many years did we fight just to be together through all the lies and craziness? And we didn’t even make it a year. With Kai it’s different. And—and I like it.”

“Really? That’s what you want for yourself, huh?”

She looked him right in the eyes, and said with the ruthless surety of an executioner, “I choose him. I’m going to choose him tonight when I marry him. Kai Taylor is the man I want and love.” She paused for a moment before she delivered the final blow, “I-I don’t love you anymore, Spencer Cassadine.”

It’d felt like she’d shot him, right in the heart.

—Now—

There were so many things he’d wanted to say to that . To remind Trina of the woman she’d been before. The one who’d been passionate and fiery for all that she’d been the most responsible person he knew besides Cam. That what she was describing sounded dull to his ears and nothing like the girl he’d known, the one who’d loved deeply and intensely, with her whole entire heart, like the artist she was at her core. The one who'd treasured the things that woke her innermost being not this woman who seemed so focused on walling herself off from that.

But instead, he summoned the tatters of dignity and the Cassadine pride he still had. He wasn’t above begging but seeing the certainty in her eyes, he’d denied the part of him that wanted to drag her close and kiss her. Kiss her so damn hard that she’d be forced to forget the other guy and remember how much she loved him.

That she’d choose him.

Choose them.

“She’s not yours to have anymore, champ. Never will be.”

His chest aches. A splatter of rain lands on his forehead. It’s going to be a rager of a storm later tonight but for now, it’s a light drizzle. Not enough to drive him indoors. Besides, it suits his foul mood.

Another sip of his whiskey as he wonders how the wedding’s going. They’re probably at the reception now. Maybe they’ve gotten through the speeches and all the other rituals that he’d once dreamed of having with her on their own wedding day. Except she’s doing all of it with someone not him. He lost. Bitterly, he clenches his jaw to stop from crying into his liquor—he’s not quite drunk enough for that level of pathetic brooding yet.

She’s very likely dancing in the football hero’s arms. A picture perfect couple. He tries not to hope and wish one of them trips while they’re at it but he’s a petty asshole and a sore loser at heart, always has been.

He reaches for the decanter he brought with him when a flash of white catches the corner of his eye. Frowning, he turns to see what it is and his mouth drops open. He plonks his glass down and tries to comprehend what he’s looking at.

A vision in a strapless white princess-style wedding gown, a pair of heels clasped in her left hand, is walking towards him along the beach.

He blinks. Then blinks again. And a third time for good measure. Just to make sure he’s not hallucinating.

The bottom of her dress is soaked and streaked with mud from when she must’ve got off the launch. She’s holding the front of it up and he can see her stockings, which are just as soiled. Her braided hair, which must’ve been caught in some complicated up-do is half tumbling to her shoulders. She’s shivering, and probably freezing to death despite the short coat that keeps slipping off her shoulders. The rain’s still light enough that he can see her face clearly enough thanks to the lighthouse and the moon and the lamps the grounds staff lit hours ago, and she’s glaring right at him and she’s not got the happiest expression on her face.

In fact, she’s scowling quite impressively beneath the damn strands sticking to her forehead.

Yet, somehow, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more beautiful bride in his entire life.

She comes to a stop just beneath the parapet, tosses her shoes and folds her arms across her chest. He meets her gaze and sees the fondness tinged with exasperation and—

—love there. So much love that it’s like gazing at an inferno.

For him.

He’s afraid to believe his own eyes. Afraid to believe the flutter of happiness that’s started up in his belly, and is rapidly spreading through to every part of his body. It’s like being warmed up from the inside by the sun itself. Afraid that this is a dream and if he says anything, he’ll wake up, alone and miserable in the dark again.

So, he simply swallows in a suddenly dry throat.

Seconds, perhaps minutes, pass as they simply stare at one another, like they’re taking each other in. Savouring this moment and everything that it means. It’s almost like a spell’s been woven between them, one that makes questions or new recriminations or any words quite unnecessary because she’s here.

"Hi," she calls into the quiet.

"Hi." That's all he can say, really. 

Because Trina’s here.

With me.

And the absence of any rings on her left hand is impossible to miss as she lets the ruined bottom of her dress fall and then puts her hands on her hips, somehow managing to look adorably put out and incandescently gleeful at the same time. And then, with a sparkle in those lovely eyes of hers, soft and a little sarcastic, she says, “Well, Romeo—you gonna come down here and get me or what?”

Spencer grins.

Then he’s dashing for the exterior stairs on the balcony’s edge before he even consciously thinks to do so.

When he hauls her into his arms then and kisses her, so hard and so deep that it feels like breathing, he’s still smiling.