A/N: All done! I love finishing older stories. Enjoy, one and all. -Dl
Chapter 11
Scott smiled at the antics of the kitten gamboling around his feet. She was a six-week-old Persian/Siamese mix with huge blue eyes and a fluffy, silvery coat. He’d decided to call her Missy Moonlight, or just Missy for short. He’d fallen, and hard, for those huge eyes when he’d walked into the local animal shelter to look over the pets up for adoption. She was just so adorable!
The bell in the plastic ball that Missy was playing with jingled merrily as the kitten chased it across the floor of the apartment. Her lively energy delighted Scott. He’d never feel as lonely now that he had her around to keep him company. And, having taken Antonio’s advice about this one thing, he’d also taken his lover’s advice on the other matter and gone out looking for new friends. While he understood why his old friends had deserted him, he still felt that he couldn’t trust them anymore. So he’d gone and hung out at clubs and bars and coffee shops until he’d met a handful of new people and had made friends with them. He wasn’t really tight with any of them yet, but that might change in the future. For now, he was happy with casual friendships - and with his close relationship with Antonio, of course. His lover was his best friend, and that would never change.
He bent down and scooped up the kitten in his arms, to a an indignant mewping protest. He grinned as he carried her into the kitchen. “You won’t be complaining when I give you a treat, little girl,” he told her, scratching the top of her head between her ears with his fingers.
Missy decided to forgive him when he produced the aforementioned kitten treats, and greedily gobbled five of them before he cut her off. With the kitten clinging to his shoulder like a small, furry epaulet, Scott set to making dinner for himself.
Scott was lying sprawled on his couch, watching his cat stalk the floor of his apartment. He was amazed at how fast Missy was growing. An adolescent cat had replaced the adorable kitten. It was fun to watch her grow up, and the changes in her helped him mark the time that passed as he waited for Antonio to finish his sentence. Soon, now…just a couple of more months, and Antonio would be released. They could finally be together again, somewhere away from that frightening little prison cell. Scott was in a lather of anticipation by now. The waiting, with the finish line in sight, was becoming almost unbearable. Without Missy and his new collection of friends, he didn’t know that he would have been able to stand it.
Antonio always chuckled at Scott when he prattled on about all of his plans over the phone during their nightly telephone conversations. Scott’s enthusiasm amused and delighted him. Scott knew that Antonio was really looking forward to leaving prison as well, and his poor lover didn’t even have a pet or any friends to make the time left on his sentence more bearable.
Among other things, Scott couldn’t wait for Antonio to meet their new pet. He just knew that Antonio and Missy would get along like a house on fire. He couldn’t wait to see Antonio petting and making much of the cat. He just knew his heart would melt into a giant puddle of mush when that happened. Soon now, soon…
Scott came home from work, balancing several bags of groceries in his arms. He’d bought stuff to make Antonio a huge, delicious homecoming meal next week when he was set to be released. He couldn’t see under his feet as he walked in the door, so he called out: “Missy, don’t run under my feet, sweetie! I don’t want to step on you.”
“She’s not underfoot, Scott,” a familiar voice replied.
He was so shocked that he dropped the bags of groceries. Oranges rolled across the floor as he gaped at the sight of his lover sprawled on the couch waiting for him. “Wha…? How?” he said feebly, gaping.
Antonio smiled as he rose lithely to his feet. He was wearing a suit, such a strange sight after his prison jumpsuit that Scott’s brain could barely take in the change. But damn did he look good in it! “I was released a bit early by the warden,” Antonio explained as he began to walk toward his shocked lover. “So that I (could come home and surprise you. Are you? Surprised, Scott?”
“Oh, my God, yes!” he cried, beginning to cry. He hurled himself into Antonio’s arms, burying his face in his lover’s neck. “I’m so happy,” he sniffled, crying outright as he clung to his lover like a monkey. “Oh, Antonio, I love you so much!”
“I love you too, Mi Tesoro,” his lover crooned, kissing his hair. “Come then, Scott, and show me how much you’ve missed me…” and he carried his desperately happy lover off to the bedroom, which he’d already discovered in his explorations of the apartment while waiting for Scott to return home.
Later, lying entwined with Antonio in the big bed, Scott rested his head on his lover’s shoulder contentedly. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” he murmured drowsily. “This is so cool.”
“Yes, it is,” Antonio agreed, his arms tightening around Scott. He paused, then began in a quiet, serious voice: “Mi Tesoro?”
Scott lifted his head. His eyes were filling up with anxiety at the tone of Antonio’s voice. “What is it?” he asked worriedly.
Antonio sighed, his hands drifting soothingly over Scott’s pale skin. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to leave the country, Scott,” he said.
“What?!” Scott shoved himself upright, his eyes wide. “What do you mean?! Why?!”
Antonio’s face was grave in the light of the bedside lamp. “I am not a regular prisoner, Scott,” he began solemnly. “Just a car thief who can live life quietly on parole and leave his past behind. The federal government is out for my blood. And they WILL find a way to return me to prison, even if they have to trump up charges against me to accomplish that. They will keep me in prison by any means necessary until I admit that I stole that federal reserve gold deposit shipment, and tell them where either the gold or the money from the sale of the gold is. Although if I admit to the crime, they will simply keep me in prison for forty years or so anyway. My only recourse is to flee as quickly and quietly as possible, and never return to the United States. I’m sorry, Scott. I wanted to see you before I left, though it’s dangerous for me to linger here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?!” a stricken Scott cried angrily.
“Because I could not, “Antonio sighed. “All calls from the prison are recorded and monitored. I couldn’t very well tell you my plans to flee the country, now could I?”
He could see the logic in that, but Scott felt a vast wasteland of hurt and despair open up inside of him. “You’d leave? Without me?” he said miserably, his head hanging.
Arms enfolded him as Antonio held him close. “I can’t ask you to come with me, Scott,” he said softly into one small ear. “To live ‘on the lam’, without ever being able to return to your home country, for the rest of your life. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Fuck fair!” Scott cried furiously, shoving him away so that he could glare at his lover out of eyes shining with tears. “I’m coming with you, no matter what, Antonio! Wherever you go from now on, I’ll go with you! I spent almost a year waiting for you to get out of prison! I’m not going to lose you again now!”
Antonio’s chiseled lips lifted in the faintest of smiles. “Are you sure, Scott?” he asked, his eyes searching his lover’s intently.
Scott nodded. “So where are we going?” he asked.
Antonio laughed softly. “The Cayman Islands, for a start,” he told Scott. “I have several bank accounts there, where we can get funds. Then, I thought we might buy a boat and take up sailing. What do you think?”
Sailing? Scott considered this. He found he liked the idea. A lot. “That would be cool,” he said aloud.
Antonio chuckled. “Wonderful. Pack anything that you want to take with you, Scott. Do you have a passport?”
He nodded. “Excellent. You, of course, will have on problems leaving the country because you’re not wanted for anything. I will have to be more circumspect, of course, but no country will extradite me back to the United States for simply breaking the terms of my parole. I have passports already under assumed names in a cache at a local bank. We should be able to depart in a few hours.”
Scott drew in a long breath. “You really are a criminal, aren’t you?” he said to Antonio.
Antonio grinned. “Yes, I am. Is that a problem, Scott?”
He shook his head. “No. I guess I don’t care that you stole a bunch of gold. You did steal it, didn’t you?”
“I liberated a good deal of it from a shipment bound for the Federal Reserve,” Antonio admitted. “But I assure you, Scott, that no one was hurt in the process. I am not a killer, only a very accomplished thief.”
“That’s okay, then,” Scott told him simply. “Besides, I knew what kind of a ruthless bastard you are after all of the stuff you did in prison. If I didn’t care then, I’m not gonna care now.”
Antonio stared at him, then laughed again and swept Scott up in his arms. “I adore you, Mi Tesoro,” he remarked.
“What about Missy?” Scott said, suddenly remembering.
“Missy? Who is that?” Antonio asked, pulling away to look at his face.
“My cat. I mean our cat,” Scott told him.
“Ah. Well, I hope that Missy likes boats,” Antonio said.
Scott searched his face, then grinned. “I hope she does, too,” he said.
Scott lay on the deck chair of the sleek, thirty foot cabin cruiser that Antonio had christened Mi Tesoro, soaking up the sun with his eyes closed. He was only wearing a tiny pair of bikini bottoms, a garment that Antonio thoroughly approved of. He’d just come back from a swim in the glorious, stunningly blue, warm waters that cradled the boat on all sides, and now he was drying off while getting some sun. He heard a meow, then a furry bundle hit his stomach as Missy jumped on him unexpectedly.
Scott oomphed and shoved the cat off of his mid-section so that he could breathe. “You weight a ton, Missy!” he complained.
The feline, who was large and sleek and(let’s face it) a bit chubby, purred and stretched out next to him so that he could pet her. Scott obliged, shaking his head at himself. He was such a pushover.
He loved this life. Hanging out, doing nothing much, playing in the sun and the water an(when they made landfall) the sand…he’d never have believed before this that he’d enjoy such a lazy life, but he did. He had Antonio, and he had Missy. He didn’t need much else to make him completely happy. Though this gorgeous boat, and getting to sail wherever they felt like going, was a wonderful perk…
“You look like a mermaid, Mi Tesoro,” a teasing voice remarked. Scott looked up at his lover, who stood over him looking down at him and the cat. There was a smile on Antonio’s handsome face.
“That’s right. But I’m YOUR mermaid, Antonio,” he remarked aloud. Then he let his eyes go lidded and full of sensual promise. “Want some tail?” he purred, sounding a lot like his cat.
Antonio’s smile widened, and his eyes filled with dark promise in return. “I believe that I do,” he replied, just before he swept Scott up in his arms off the deck chair and carried his own personal mermaid away to the opulent cabin in the mid-section to show him just how much he wanted that…
The End