Predator Prey - 18. Near Miss

He woke late, the sun streaming in through the blinds in his bedroom. Life in the Cabrera-Quintana household seemed relaxed, even though it was the middle of the week. He threw on some shorts and a moderately clean tee and stumbled his way out to the kitchen to find Javier sitting at the table, a tiny, empty coffee cup in front of him.

"Morning."

"Morning yourself," Javier smiled. The man really did have a lovely smile, when it happened.

"Coffee?" he inquired, yawning.

At that moment, Oscar bustled in, carrying a large armful of sheets and towels. "Wally, I forgot to ask you. Do you need to do laundry? You can use the machine when these are done."

"Um, yeah, actually, I do. Can I help?"

"No, no, I can handle our own sheets," Oscar grinned.

"Hey, Wally," Javier called out, diverting his attention, "you want coffee? Let me teach you how to make it the right way."

He felt confused. "Is there a wrong way to make coffee?"

He heard Oscar's laughter from the laundry room off the kitchen.

"Oh, man." Javier rolled his eyes. "Come on."

Soon Cabrera was cleaning out an old fashioned gleaming stovetop espresso coffee percolator – he'd already made one pot, apparently.

"First, you need sugar," Javier began, falling into his instructor's persona. Cabrera scooped what looked like a mound of sugar into a small pitcher. “Now you need real coffee – fill the basket with this, and tamp it down.”

Javier handed him the perforated portion of the percolator through which the hot water would run, and indicated a bright yellow bag full of the darkest coffee he’d seen. Following instructions, he loaded the basket with coffee, and they assembled the coffee maker. Javier put it on the stove to boil, and placed three small cups on the counter.

Within minutes, a frothing hiss told them the coffee was ready. He made as if to get up to pour.

“No, stop,” Javier said. “There’s another step.”

Cabrera then poured out a tiny quantity of brewed coffee into the sugar pitcher. Then, with a wire whisk, he proceeded to whip the coffee and the sugar together. “You have to get everything dissolved and bubbly, see?”

Peering into the pitcher, he saw Javier had created a light colored coffee froth.

“Now, pour the coffee.”

He divided the contents of the coffee maker amongst the cups on the counter.

‘”Here’s the best part. Now we add the crema.” And the pitcher was carefully poured out onto the surface of each coffee.

“Seriously, you’ve never done this?” Oscar asked, watching.

He shook his head.

“Well, here’s your regalo.” Javier smiled, handing him one of the minute cups. “Try this.”

Very tentatively, he brought the cup to his lips. The aroma of strong coffee filled his nostrils. He anticipated a powerful, bitter flavor, but instead tasted extraordinary sweetness blended with the rich, strong taste of dark coffee. It was amazing, and his face betrayed his surprise.

“He likes it!” Oscar crowed. “We’ll make you a Cubano yet, Wally.”

“A sunny, blond Swedish Cubano, maybe,” laughed Javier.

And now it was his turn to smile. It wasn’t something he’d done very often lately. “Thanks, Javi. This is great.”

Over breakfast, Oscar announced he had to do some work.

“What do you do?” he’d asked the big man.

“I’m in advertising. I can do a lot of things from home, but I have to drive into Tampa maybe one or two times a week. It really helps with Michael in the house when Javi’s away.”

“That’s good, Oscar, you do your work, and I’ll get outside and do that cutting before it gets too hot.” Javier was clearly getting ready for the day.

“I can help.” The statement was out before he even knew where it had come from. Since when had he gotten so helpful? Doing dishes was one thing, but brush cutting was a much more serious matter. And from the time he’d been shown the door of his parents’ house, he’d pretty much been out for himself.

“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” Oscar started, but Javier looked at him closely.

“Sure, if you want to help, you can.”

"Um, do I need gloves or anything?"

"Yeah. And I have some old jeans you can borrow while your laundry's going. They might fit."

This prompted a skeptical glance – Javier was the shorter man by several inches. As it happened, Javier's jeans did fit, in a way. There was sufficient room in the waist, and while they must have been long on Cabrera, they were a little short on him. But he was glad of them, anyhow as he and Cabrera tackled some of the lush plant growth behind the house.

Several trees had shed large limbs in the past few months, and Cabrera decided they had to come down. They spent what was left of the morning and part of the early afternoon cutting these down, sawing them into smaller bits, and carting these away to the curb for collection. The heat of the day was on them, and they felt it soon enough. But both men knew not to remove their shirts in this work – too much risk of injuries and biting insects. By the time they were ready for lunch, he and Javier were a hot, dusty, grimy sweaty pair.

"Tired yet, Wally?" the shorter man asked with a raised eyebrow, as they entered the house through the back kitchen door.

He didn't want to admit it, but yes, he was beat. "I'm okay."

"Baby, I'm sorry, but you stink!" Oscar exclaimed as he thought better of giving his husband a kiss.

"Don't you love me the way I am?" Javier grinned beatifically.

"Go shower – Then we can make lunch," Oscar said, pointing.

He couldn't help a smirk at watching the pair of them together. Javier was so unlike the gruff engineer he had encountered aboard the Feigenbaum.

"You, too, Wally." Oscar smiled and jerked his head in the direction of the corridor.

He didn't need to be told twice.

They bantered pleasantly over lunch, and for a few moments, he felt completely at ease and unguarded. But his old wariness and detachment returned when Javier took his plate over to the sink to rinse it off. "Thought I might take a nap this afternoon," he said.

Oscar rose and stepped up behind his husband and wrapped him up from behind. "Sounds like a plan," he spoke into Javier's ear.

Suddenly, he was the houseguest again, the third wheel. Javier and Oscar needed some time alone again, and soon, he reckoned.

He cleared his throat. "Do you guys have a bike I could borrow? I thought I might try to exploring a little."

Oscar turned, letting Javier go. "Michael has one in the garage you could use. It's in decent shape."

"You sure he won't mind?"

"Michael? No. He hasn't used it since Trey got his license. Now he's too cool to ride to school on a mere bicycle."

Javier showed him where it was in the tool-filled garage a few moments later. "You sure you'll be okay?"

"No problem, Javi. I need some time on my own."

"Will you be back for supper?"

"Yes, mom," he smirked.

"Good. We'll eat at six thirty." Javier's eyes twinkled.

As he biked through the sleepy town of Sand River, he couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of his hosts. He felt a familiar stirring in his groin, knowing it wouldn't be satisfied that day. And another ache ranged alongside it: Javier and Oscar loved each other – he doubted he'd ever know how to do that with another man.

Eventually, he found his way to the main road running through town, though he didn't recognize it from their trip to the house a day earlier. He crossed what had become a divided highway and chose to turn left. He noticed more things at this slower speed. A diner. A couple of bars. And on the right, a sign pointing to way to "Sage Island Beach." He followed it.

The road wound through an area of upscale homes shaded by large magnificent trees. Vacationers and winter tenants clearly predominated there, if the license plates in the driveways meant anything. As he biked, he idly wondered how many permanent residents actually lived in Sand River. He passed a golf course. Eventually, residences gave way to scrubby brush, stands of palms and spindly oaks. He crossed several lazy streams leading through marshy wetlands. Eventually, he realized he was on a road parallel to the channel the Feigenbaum had taken on its way to the Gulf.

He was well out of the shady suburban developments now, and the sun beat hotly on his back. He wished he'd asked for a hat. But it was kind of peaceful and lovely out beyond the town, too. And he enjoyed being on his own, not being someone's guest or dependent. It was good just to ride and see where the road would take him.

Perhaps an hour after he left Javi in the driveway, he rounded a sharp bend to discover a wide, bright sandy beach area on his left. He stopped and gazed out at the sparkling waters of the Gulf of Mexico stretching out to the horizon. There were perhaps a dozen cars in the parking area – all with out-of-state plates. Even so, the beach hardly looked crowded.

Leaning the bike against a convenient guardrail in the parking lot, he toed off his sneakers and walked out onto the sand. Within minutes, the gentle surf caressed his shins and ankles as he stood at the margins of the water. He lingered there, mesmerized by sound of the waves, the water's sheen and the cries of gulls in the distance.

It was a beautiful day.

He strode a few yards back onto dry sand, stripped off his tee and turned back to the water. It hardly mattered that his shorts would get a soaking. They'd dry. But for now he would head into the Gulf, swimming or floating as he pleased. He felt utterly free. He flopped and flipped in the waves, letting them draw the heat of the day out of him. He hadn't felt this good in…almost forever. An urge to go deeper overtook him, and he followed it. Long, languid strokes propelled him further and further from shore until he suddenly realized the water had gotten quite deep. No stranger to the sea, he stopped to tread water and examined the beach from his vantage point, looking for odd tides or currents. He found none.

Returning towards shore, but unwilling to leave the water, he swam until he could stand on the sandy bottom, his head and shoulders above the quiet waves. From his place in the sea, he observed the others with whom he shared this lovely stretch of sand.

A middle aged man and woman stretched out in the sun on colorful beach towels; a mother supervised two small children building sandcastles. And there, to his right, the inevitable young couple, with eyes only for each other, strolled hand in hand. Her long blond hair hung down her back and riffled in the light breeze. Her boyfriend's short dark hair contrasted with hers; they made a very cute couple, he supposed. And even from his vantage point, the quiet, shy smiles they traded told of love, and perhaps a promise of lives shared together.

A surge of envy bloomed inside him. Why should they be happy? Why couldn't he have found that? Just because he was born different; because he was gay. Because his parents and his friends couldn't deal with it. Because...bullshit. It was bullshit, and the little voice inside that he'd managed to freeze out for years was calling him on it. There, in the warm Gulf waters, under the Florida winter sun, his inner voice told him the plain truth he'd known all along.

Love passed you by because you made that choice, the voice told him bleakly.

He had chosen his bitterness and rage; he had made self-interest his highest priority. He had lived with it, fitted himself to it and worn it for years since he'd been turned out of his home. He'd never fought his parents. He'd just focused his anger elsewhere. And ultimately, onto his own heart, which had turned as cold as theirs.

His eyes blurred. It could possibly have been a bit of salt spray. Possibly.

The water seemed cold now. He shivered a moment. Heavily, he made his way to the beach, where he sat on the sand under the still warm sun, drying off. He reflected on what he'd learned in his years at the University. How to manipulate. Control people to get what he wanted from them, to sell them his wares. To take. To pretend he was happy.

Despite what had been done to him, Marc learned something different. Lee had taught him to love. They would have what Javi and Oscar knew. Something he'd never have. Oscar would have told him to put on sunscreen, he reflected ruefully. He hadn't brought any. Funny that the sun seemed weaker, grayer, somehow.

He rose, brushed himself off, and retreated up the sand, gathering his things as he went. It was time to head back, he reckoned.

Even as he cycled the road that would carry him back into town, the image of that couple stayed etched in his brain. And even as he gave himself over to longing for what they had, he despaired, knowing it had passed him by like a stranger on the strand who would never pass that way again.

He barely took in his surroundings as he rode. His standard responses to uncomfortable feelings meant either losing himself in his business or taking someone new to bed. Or both.

Not this time.

As he began to pass houses, he thought idly of Michael. The boy was beautiful, and given how protective his fathers seemed to be, quite possibly innocent. His cock stirred as he pedaled. He had a vision of the tanned boy, face down and naked on his bed. Suddenly, the daydream in his mind's eye changed; it was himself on the bed, being held from behind by a pair of brown, well- muscled arms. Javier Cabrera. Where had that come from? He very rarely bottomed, not voluntarily, anyway. And yet, he could practically feel the man's cock pressing into him, breath warm on his neck. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to push back against it, to give into it, to abandon himself to Javi in his daydream.

Yes. Oh god, yes, please.

The scene in his mind was so vivid, he sped straight through an intersection and was only brought back to reality by the blaring of a car horn. He jerked and swerved; a woman driving a dark blue Lincoln missed wiping him out by a fraction of an inch.

He caught a glimpse of the surprised and furious driver, but the hulking SUV didn't stop.

Shaken, he paused wide eyed and panting on the side of the road for a moment. What was the meaning of that unbidden daydream? That he wanted the father and not the son? He shook his head, as if to clear it.

No.

Javier and Oscar and Michael were off limits. Period. He was just horny, that was all. Slowly, deliberately, he remounted the bike and pedaled back. Past the bars, past the strip stores, down through the neighborhoods, and up the driveway where Javier's car waited in front of the garage. Oscar greeted him as entered the kitchen.

"Hey, how'd the exploration go?"

"Good. Found a beach and went swimming."

"You went that far? Wow, no wonder you were so long. Michael was waiting for you," the big man grinned.

Though the sliding door, he saw Michael doing laps in the pool. He didn't really feel like swimming again. He was hot from riding and gritty from salt and sand.

"Can I do something about supper?" The kitchen smelled wonderful, so he knew whatever help he could offer would be minimal.

"Nah, it's covered, thanks. Go clean up, it'll be ready soon."

He really needed a shower.

Not long after, under the hot cascade, his dick inevitably rose again; his mind wandered back to his daydreams. As his hand pistoned on his shaft, he came powerfully, imagining Javier drilling him into the wall.