This story is based on two gay men. You must be above the legal age of 18 (or as stipulated by your country/state) to read this story. If this story is illegal in your area, PLEASE DO NOT READ IT. This story is a work of fiction. Any similarity of the characters to any person is clearly a coincidence. All other usual disclaimers apply.
Please send your feedback or criticism to mikeinstudio9344(at)yahoo(dot)com.
The Game
Chapter Five - Single Dad, Super Dad
The next morning, McCall woke up before six.
Judging by yesterday's routine, he had ten minutes before Jake got up. With precise method, he packed up his bedroll and poncho tent, then washed himself as best as could in the near-stinging coolness of the river down the road from Jake's house. He once again tried as much as possible to keep his hand off his hard member. He has been trying for a long time to go celibate. He did gone three days now without wanking and he's planning on saving himself... 'for Jake'.
He then snatched a standing breakfast of two high-protein bars, beef jerky, a tetra-brick of juice and a tepid thermos of coffee, keeping an eye on his paraphernalia of gadgetry that gave him fifteen-seconds updates on Jake and his kid.
He followed at a discreet distance as Jake drove the kid to school. He saw Jake walk the kid in with his arms around the boy in a gesture of loving, possessive fatherhood. Lucky Danny Silver.
At nine-thirty, he pushed open the door of Jake's studio.
"Mr. McCall. Back so soon?"
Jake's sweet voice held only a hint of exasperation he sensed he was feeling. He knew Jake had seen him across the road, seen him follow him to school and back on the motorbike again. Jake had known he'd come in as soon as he opened the door. But Jake wasn't giving him the polite acceptance of his presence.
This dance of words was intricate; two introverted loners both trying to win at Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, outrunning their pasts and memories of love like civilians behind enemy lines. Winning Jake's trust without giving any in return was the hardest assignment Anson had ever given him.
'Thirty-six hours left to get a positive ID and get him out of the country.'
"I'll always come back." He said quietly. "I'll keep coming back. I'll keep watching. And you know why."
Jake frowned for a brief second, his eyes shadowed. Then the look vanished. "I won't change my mind, McCall. I don't date complete strangers who wander into my studio one day and -"
He tried to do it gently, but he threw his bomb. He had to get through to Jake somehow, and soon. "It's time to stop playing games. You're not the kind of man to let me feed you without knowing me."
Jake held his colour, and his composure. "All single fathers need help occasionally. I thank you for that, but it doesn't mean I'm going to tell you the story of life. I've made mistakes in my life, but I won't take chances with my son's well being."
"You have made mistakes in the past, haven't you?" He asked, dark and compelling. "But compared to Robbie's father, I'm small potatoes." He used the name of Falcone's son with gentle care.
"Do you have troubles with hearing ? My son's name is Danny, and mine's Jake Silver. You don't know anything about my life or about Danny's life." He was pale now, but his defiance flamed still. "And nobody in their right senses would discount you, McCall or think you're small compared to anyone." The whites of his knuckles showed he was gripping his work-bench so hard. "I keep telling you, whoever you think I am, you have the wrong person."
'Thirty-five hours, fifty-six minutes'. This felt more like wrestling with an unknown enemy, shadow-boxing with the faceless enemy of suspicion between.
"Have I?" Testing, he touched Jake's cheek with a finger, and he saw the wave of warmth fill his face and throat. No matter what came from that ripe, luscious lips of his, Jake's body betrayed his will, telling him this obsession was far from one-sided. Jake wanted him, maybe even almost as bad as he wanted him. "I don't think so." He murmured. "And your son - Robbie?"
Jake jerked his face away, as if realizing his mistake too late. "Stop it. I told you his name is Danny. Don't touch me."
He dropped his hand, yet stayed close that Jake's scent of lavender filled his head and curled itself around his libido like a purring kitten, begging to be stroked, caressed. "You tell me when you're ready - to talk, or touch. Your call."
Jake shivered, his lashes dropping over his eyes suddenly cold. "Keep your distance, Mr. McCall."
"My name is Brendan." He growled, his hands curled into impotent fists at his sides. If he could be one hundred percent honest with Jake, it would bring out Jake's natural honesty in return. But with Nighthawk security at risk from the faceless assassins in the ranks, he couldn't do a thing about it. One wrong word, one indiscretion and Jake will have the ammo to hit the media rounds. If the Nighthawks were destroyed, more innocent lives would be lost in unsanctioned wars that couldn't go into full swing without Falcone's guns and mines and dirty bombs.
He had to keep silent. His carrier might survive the indiscretion, but others would pay with their lives.
As if he was reading his mind, Jake put out his hand with a bright smile as fake as his words, "Hello. My name is Jake Silver."
Jake had put up another roadblock between them - and it was as big a boulder. It half killed him to laugh as he took his hand, but he did it - and touching him in any form was no hardship, even just the work hardened hand lying in his rough palm.
Then, as he held Jake's hand in his, a haunting sense of undone déjà vu came to him. Doubts. Shadows. Uncertainty. Something fundamental had changed from ten years before...
"It can't be." He murmured beneath his breath. Not 'Marcus'. He had never met the cousin Jake claimed to be almost his double, but...no. A strong similarity in looks could only do so much for a man. This man, and this man alone drove him to the edge of sanity's cliff with slamming, scorching-hot waves below - and he wanted to drown in it, bathe in the liquid fire torching a searing path between them.
He 'couldn't' be Marcus. Obsession with a man to the point of exclusion - being lost inside and consumed by Jake was his fact of life. Saving Jake was his mission, whether it was on the Nighthawks' agenda or not. Wanting, needing to lose himself in him was his private hell, the torture he showed no one. If he could have him just once...
"Things must be bad for you if you've started to talk to yourself." Roused from the furnace burning his soul, he looked at Jake.
Jake had tilted his head with a little inquiring smile, A simple thing, sure but a massive leap forward from the 'go-back-to-the-hellhole-you-crawled-out-of' tone Jake had kept with him since he had tried to connect with him yesterday.
A step up in getting him and his kid out of here?
He laughed going for common ground. "Man, I'm from L.A. - the home base of actors, musicians, directors, plastic surgeons, walking, talking Barbie dolls and therapists. We're all nuts, and believe me, talking to ourselves is the least of our problems."
A little grin peeped out from behind his barriers - a genuine, honest-to-God smile that reached his eyes. Jake's cheeks flushed a delicate rose and he ached, seeing the transformation. The star-king vanished, another being sat in his place at the potter's wheel. A woman of gentle, big-eyed loveliness, and his sweet shyness socked him in the guts with masculine awareness. Jake had become a normal 'man' he could smile at, talk to and maybe, God help him, touch... not just feed him, but explore the combusting sensuality he knew wasn't one-sided. To have Jake's mouth, his lush body beneath his -
"And which of the above are you?"
'Keep going, just keep chipping at his barriers. Thirty-five hours and forty minutes...' "Not guilty." He returned with a wink, "I never had designs on Hollywood after living near it half my life. I can't manage the over inflated sense of self-importance."
Jake's head tilted a little more, his eyes twinkling. "You don't want a hundred-foot trailer on set, imported water and French-milled soap to keep your manly beauty intact?"
"Twenty feet's ample, and water from the tap and good old Dial soap will do me just fine, Chlorine and flourine can't do me anymore damage than living in that crazy city did."
Jake laughed. Oh man, Jake laughed as if he meant it, as if he'd spent years needing to laugh again. The husky sweet music of it sucker-punched him, and sent a king hit right to his heart... because if it wasn't quite Jake's laugh, it was close enough. A man's version of the boy's husky giggle that IDed him ninety percent accuracy. The knowlegde spared him the guilt, pity and the ruthlessness of duty.
It all added up. The food, the coffee; Jake's reaction to hearing Danny's real name; his fear, the security system - his laugh. His response to him, as white-hot as his was to him. This man was Jacob de Souza, ID virtually positive, unless by some crazy quirk of fate Marcus de Souza also had the same laugh, the same taste in food... and in men.
McCall was no stranger to duty. He had only two choices now - to find solid evidence of Jake's identity, or call Anson and tell him of his past with Jake and his certainty that Jake Silver and Jacob de Souza is one and the same.
The later would be enough for Anson to move the equipment in tonight. The full show - mikes, cameras - full regalia of watchers, as much to protect Jake as to keep him from running. This man was the only one who could give the Nighthawks the irrefutable proof they needed to give the World Court, the only ones left who might be able to extradite Falcone from Minca bel Sol, his luxurious little bolt-hole in the Pacific -
'And because Anson doesn't know Jake, he'll take me off the point. And if Jake doesn't trust me, how much chance has any of the other Nighthawks got, apart from forcibly abducting him and the kid? Then we'd never get the evidence - and we've got a snowball's chance in a volcano of finding it where we'd never find it without his cooperation.'
God help him, he had to keep silent, both to Jake and Anson. He had to find physical evidence of his identity by the end of his day or they could all go down in a hail of bullets.
The bell above the door gave a violent jangle as the door flew inward. McCall wheeled around, reaching for his weapon, training his eyes on the target - but his gaze fell by two feet to find the culprit... a kid erupting into the room, a kid with a shock of thick dark hair, a thin build and intense soulful eyes.
Danny. Maybe - almost definitely - Robbie Falcone. The resemblance to his father was uncanny.
The boy tore in, straight past McCall without noticing him, traipsing mud through the showroom, a football under his thin arm and his dark-eyed face alight with joy. "Mr. Brandon says if I practice hard I might get off the reserves bench next week!"
"Oh Danny, that's wonderful."
Stuffing his Glock back in his jacket, McCall turned around to see Jake's face, stricken pale - he'd seen the gun, all right - but he infused his voice with happiness as strong as the boy's, his eyes as bright as the Pacific sky. "Do you want to practice again this afternoon? I can close the store early."
The boy's eyes fell, his thick dark lashes covering them. "Daddy, you play like a girl. Mr. Richards said I can go over now and play with him and Ethan."
McCall smothered a grin; but any urge to smile faded away when he saw the flash of panic that came and went in Jake's eyes, so fast an untrained eye couldn't have seen it. "Sweetie, you know I think Mr. Richards is very nice but..."
"But we don't know he well enough. We don't know what he might do." Danny said with an adult-sounding weariness that told him Danny had said this many times before. Was the poor kid only six? He sounded forty; and suddenly, he wasn't "the kid" anymore. As in smuggling the dog in at night, in this, Danny Silver was a brother in arms, a little kid whose life necessitated that innocence must be shattered for survival.
Poor kid. Poor Danny.
Jake gave a swift, unreadable glance at McCall then turned away. "Exactly. Good boy."
The boy's face turned earnest, pleading. "But Daddy, we know them. Mrs. Richards is your friend. And Mr. Richards he's not like the other guys' dads... he goes to church."
"Danny, I'd rather play with you myself. You know just you and me." Jake's face had haunted, hunted look to it now.
"No! I don't wanna!" The boy stamped his foot, red-faced with fury, lapsing into childish speech. "I wanna play with Mr. Richards and Ethan! I want someone who can really play!"
Jake gave another swift glance McCall's way. "Danny we have a customer here. Can we wait until he's left the showroom to continue the conversation?" 'Please leave' Jake's eyes pleaded.
What was he doing here? He had no right to listen, not even for their protection. He turned to leave the room.
"But Daddy they're playing now, and you always talk and talk until it's all over and I can't go!" Danny's face was blazing with indignation and pleading combined. "I don't wanna talk 'bout it again - we talk all the time. I wanna go!"
Jake closed his eyes, but not before McCall, looking over his shoulder saw a warrior-size guilt spear through the indigo depths, acknowledgement of a six-year old's unwanted perception. "I said now, Daniel." With a swift movement, Jake twitched the curtain to the washstand and drying room.
"But I gotta go to the park right now or they'll be gone - and Mr. Richards says he's gonna show and Ethan how to do a catch an' pass, and I could get into the team next week - "
"I said now, Daniel Silver!"
Oh, boy, Jake was pulling ranks on Danny. A decision made in fear, if he knew anything at all - and though Jake didn't know it yet, he'd regret this later, with bitter tears. McCall pulled open the door, but couldn't resist another glance, and his heart twisted. Danny's shoulders had slumped; his mouth trembled in silent mutiny but he went ahead of his father into the storage space. Obedient, maybe, but McCall would net his eyes glittered with the fire of resentment he felt. He knew; he'd been there.
"Mr. McCall."
About to close the door behind him, McCall turned to Jake.
His words were innocuous, but somehow filled with meaning when combined with the blazing message in his eyes.
"Thank you."
Jake had thanked him for leaving? Refusing to show how much he'd shocked him with that unexpected leap forward in his trust, he nodded. "Sure. But Jake?"
One eyebrow lifted, but his eyes were softer. Open. Jake was listening to him.
He dragged in a quick breath, and said what he had to - for Danny's sake. "I understand what you want - better than you know. But Danny will remember today and whether he thanks you or hates you for it is up to you." He gazed into Jake's eyes and went on, knowing he risked shattering the trust he'd felt from him moments ago. "I was only eight when my mom left, and I still remember her last words to me, the look on his face as he said them."
"And?" Jake asked his gaze intent on his face. "Besides the fact that I don't need to keep making that teapot for her."
"No. You don't." He gave Jake a brief, self-mocking smile of acknowledgement. "What I'm saying is, Danny's trying to find his way in life and friends and sport are vital to a child's self-esteem. And not blending in is fatal. He might be bullied for it all his life. No matter where you go."
Jake's face closed off. "What do you know about it?"
He shrugged. "Maybe not much. I'm not a father. But I was a boy once and some boys believe the same credo. If you keep over-protecting him he may make it to twenty-five, but if all he remembers is you stopping him from living the life he wants fro himself, he won't thank you, Jake - and you should know that better than anyone. Your parents turned you into a model, their pride all centered on your looks and your future in politics, and you resented them for making you live the life they wanted for you."
Jake whitened, his eyes dark and shattered. "Thank you for your honesty." He wheeled about, heading for the curtain where heavy tapping sounds indicated Danny's obedience was wearing thin. "I'll be right back." Jake said, his voice filled with quiet bitterness, "You seem to know all about me."
Yeah, that precious moment of trust between them had been just that - a moment; but what choice did he have but to do it? He couldn't gain his confidence at the cost of Danny's happiness. he might be a lowlife, but he hadn't gone that far down yet.
McCall let the door fall to behind him, trying not to listen in as the man on the run fought with the loving dad, faced with a vivid, passionate boy who just wanted to play - a child's birthright that had become a rare privilege to him.
"It's just practice, Daddy. I need to practice so hat I can make the team! An' you know Mr. Richards is nice."
Jake said something to Danny, low and pleading. McCall squelched the temptation to use his earpiece to hear better.
"Why can't you be like other dads?"
Silence for a few moments, then Jake asked something. Even muffled by the curtain, McCall could hear the bewildered hurt in his voice and he ached for him.
"The kids all make fun of me cause of you. I just wanna play football, Daddy. I just wanna play with my friends."
The throb and lilt of anguished passion came so clearly through in Danny's voice, McCall ached for him, too. He'd never realised how hard life must be for both...
Jake's next words were again muffled and indistinct; but Danny's were not. "Why?" He cried, kicking something and it thudded with the impact. "I never go anywhere without you but at school. All the other kids get to play and their dads don't watch them all the time. It's not fair. It's not fair."
Jake's voice, discernible now, throbbed with anguish. "I'm sorry," He muttered in a thick tone, obviously fighting tears. "But that's the way it is."
The halting words touched McCall's soul. Why hadn't he ever realized what Jake had been through, what he had sacrificed to have this strange half life of fear? What price had he paid for his son to live untainted by Falcone's corruption?
"I'm almost seven, Daddy! I'm big. I wanna play football! An' I'm going to play with Ethan an' Mr. Richards!" Danny pulled the curtains open, storming out.
Reacting on instinct, he reached out, snaking an arm around the boy's waist and lifting him off his feet and whirling him around in a playful motion. "Hey, there big guy. Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
Taken off guard, Danny giggled and squirmed.
"Let him go. Put my son down!"
Another chapter there. Jake is already insecure and he is infecting Danny with his fear. Will he run again or will give in to McCall?