The Wild Card
For the first time since McCall walked into his studio last week -- had it been a week? -- Jake felt a peace. McCall had brought him here to his own small property, the haven he had shown no one before. McCall had let him into his life.
Jake wasn't a fool. He knew the reason why McCall had brought him here. He could almost hear the words McCall would use: If I let him into my life, Jake will let me into his. If I become the Brendan he loved, he might become Jacob de Souza again, and give me his secrets.
McCall knew him all too well. McCall had seen that he had long since tired of carrying his burdens alone. McCall had gone right into his soul to the lonely man beneath, aching to share his secrets with someone -- no, with him.
Jake couldn't fight the need any more -- the absolute imperative urge to give him everything. His body, his secrets -- and his heart. It was coming. Now they were alone, and safe -- for now -- from Falcone's men, he could finally give back to McCall.
Jake sat on the porch swing of the sun soaked veranda of McCall's rambling old farmhouse, watching Brendan play with an ecstatic Danny. They had let the football drop almost an hour ago, after spending hours teaching his son how to improve his ball skills. McCall had also shown Danny how to let go of his fear of being hurt and dive "into the ruck" -- a term that mystified Jake and made him terrified that Danny would break his neck.
But Danny was safe, and now on Brendan's shoulders, exploring the flora and fauna to Australia, in the free forty acres around the house. Surrounding that was that was a buffer zone -- the security measure McCall had put in place for them. And some of the measures were courtesy, Jake was sure, of the next door neighbors McCall had introduced when they had arrived here just after sunrise -- Morgan and Leslie McCrery, and their four children -- Mark, Lauren, Jean and new adorable, curly haired baby Nate.
Jake knew the McCrery parents for fellow spies within minutes, with all the unspoken speak between the three of them. The kind of silent talk he had had with Donna.
Had McCall felt as locked out watching him and Donna, as he had watching McCall communicate with the McCrerys? Even knowing that the communications or orders pertained to his safety, Jake resented it, hated being so shut out with. Turnabout didn't feel like fair play. He wanted to know, to be a part of everything McCall was -- to walk in McCall's world.
Then let him into yours. Trust him.
Crunch time. All his fears and obsessive need to keep Danny safe from everything and everyone boiled down to this day, this hour, this moment. Putting his life and that of his beloved child in McCall's weren't going to be easy, but he didn't want to clutch them to his chest anymore.
Jake knew he had two choices now. To admit that he was human and his support system was now exhausted, tell McCall his whole, crazy story... or run again. Walking through the underbelly of life, living a half life and existing in the shadow-world of terror.
Was there an option, really? And if there were would he want to take it?
Danny made frantic hand gestures until Jake looked at his son. "Daddy, look, a kangaroo and her baby," Danny mouthed to him, his eyes alight as he pointed downward from McCall's shoulder.
Decision made, Jake smiled and got to his feet. Goodbye independence; he didn't want it anymore. Jake wanted his time in the sun with his son... and McCall. Brendan. It was Brendan he wanted to share his life with now. It was Brendan who had brought him to life ten years with a smile; and if it had been McCall, his dark sentinel who had brought him back to life again within a day, after years of trusting no one, he had to accept the entire man, murky past and uncertain future.
Approaching with gentle steps, he saw the Grey kangaroo, a baby in her pouch standing with a nervous tension about fifteen feet from Danny and McCall. "The baby's called a Joey." Jake spoke in an undertone to not scare the wild creatures. He couldn't help smiling at the picture they made, the big Gypsy of a man, no longer so dark and remote with the tender smile on McCall's face as he held a bouncing-with-excitement Danny on his shoulders, Danny's puppy frolicking at his booted heels.
His man. His family. He hoped.
Danny's eye grew round. "Joey?" He peered down at McCall. "You weren't joking, Brendan? The baby kangaroos really got named after the guy on Friends?"
Jake choked with laughter as McCall's twinkling eyes met his. "Well, sort of, pal." McCall replied his voice rich with shared amusement and the smile resonated inside his soul. "They..."
"Like Friends so much they named baby kangaroos after them." Jake put in, smiling. "The mothers and fathers have names, but the poor babies didn't. it wasn't fair to them."
Danny's eyes turned round with awe. "Wow. The guy on Friends -- did he come out to do a show about it or anything?"
At that McCall put Danny down, chuckling outright and the startled mother kangaroo turned on her thick tail and bounded away, Bark hot on their tail. "I don't know, pal." Again, his gaze sought Jake's, shimmering like dappled sunlight coming through the forest. Jake caught his breath at the sheer beauty of McCall's expression.
Caught in a net he didn't want to escape from. The latent heat came to life, radiating like raw power from within as McCall's gaze locked with his for that one moment.
Jake bit a corner of his lip, and smiled. Personal . Intimate. Welcoming. A look McCall didn't have to read -- it was all there for him to see, the need and the yearning.
"Hey Danny-boy, I think you'd better grab Bark before he falls into the McCrery's waterhole. I can see Jean, Lauren and Mark there, too -- looks like they are trying to catch tadpoles, if you feel like playing for a while."
"Oh! Tadpole!" Danny's eyes were enormous now as he lifted his face to Jake's. "Can I, Daddy? Can I?"
Jake's heart squeezed tight, then faltered to rhythm again. Poor baby. It was time for him to believe in fairy tales and his right to play. " Of course, buddy."
"Woooooohooo!" Danny bolted over the low wooden fence to the neighbouring farm. "Hey guys, can I catch tadpoles too?"
The three very grubby McCrery kids turned with friendly smiles. Jean handed him a net and Mark put a jar beside him.
"He'll be cold." Jake said softly, watching as Danny got his track pants wet wading into the waterhole.
"He can warm up later. He won't notice the cold -- or mud." McCall's voice was warm with affectionate laughter as he watched Danny wipe mud on his face like a warrior's paint the way Mark and Lauren had. "He'll come back home coated in muck, happy and hungry and will whine his way through a shower -- that is, if he comes home at all. Knowing Morgan and Leslie, they'll keep him until at least tonight if you'll let Danny stay."
McCall didn't look at him as he spoke. No inflection resonated in that deep smoky voice. Yet in its smallest corners Jake heard the lingering... the expected rejection of anything he suggested. McCall expected him to disrespect anything he said, to argue with anything he wanted. Why, why did he only seem to hurt the people he would give his life to protect from pain?
"I think that would do Danny the world of good, especially since he didn't get to camp with Ethan for long."
"I'll call Leslie and let her know we'll pick Danny up later, then." He didn't look at Jake; he nodded, watching the kids play. Keeping a distance from him greater than the few feet that separated them. As if they hadn't shared laughter minutes before, or he hadn't even seen the look on his face moments ago, or as though he couldn't bring himself to trust it. Couldn't trust him.
A deep breath for courage, then Jake softly, "Why are we here? I can sense tension, the secret you're keeping. What is it?"
McCall hunched into his long coat, then said it. "You want to be safe, right? You want to be safe from Danny's father for good."
Not knowing what to say to that, Jake nodded.
McCall turned toward the sun, which was slowly falling behind the western hills. He lifted his face, as if needing the warmth, or maybe he didn't want to look at Jake. "I can arrange it."
When Jake didn't speak, surprise rendering him silent, McCall went on. "They are not just idle words, Jake. It's all arranged."
"What is?" Jake whispered, aching to touch McCall, to take the frozen night inside of him and bring him to the sun he sought so desperately.
"Say the word, and your former life is wiped, yours and Danny's both. I can give you both new dates of birth, whole new lives. All you have to do is agree. I can fix it so that you have been my partner for the three years and we have been dating for six years before that. You'll have a birth certificate and Australian citizenship, and Danny, my legal son. In the eyes of the law, he'll be my flesh and blood child." McCall still didn't turn to Jake, even when Jake gasped. "I have all the legal paperwork; the data is ready to go into the register. Leslie and Morgan are waiting to enter the partnership into the courthouse register and sign any documents as our witnesses. Another operative is at a Sydney hospital, ready to enter Danny's name as having been born there, three months before his real birth. As far as the world would be concerned, Cody Jacob McCall-Silver is my husband, and Jermaine Daniel McCall-Silver, our son." He shoved his bunched fists inside his coat pockets. "All you have to do is agree."
Oh, sweet heaven, Jake thought. And he had mistrusted this man? His eyes stung and burned. "You can do all that? You would do that for me?" Jake couldn't seem to talk above a whisper.
A single jerk of McCall's averted head. "But it won't hold up in court if anyone can verify your ID with fingerprints or DNA as another person's husband, and there is a full investigation. It's legal so long as you are a single man as you said you are."
Jake didn't know if this was a wild card or if McCall was bluffing, but he knew he had a huge decision to make.
Accept McCall's offer to become Mr. McCall-Silver?
And what will happen?
Run?