T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (16 page)

And of course he’ll want to live in the dorms, and he’ll be roommates with some guy who calls himself Tugboat and who will want to share
doobies
with him, and everyone knows marijuana is a gateway drug. Soon, the Kid will be hooked on crack and meth, and then he’ll make the biggest mistake of his life while high on PCP and will sleep with that blonde and busty Tiffani (who’s undoubtedly
waiting
for the Kid to get so fucked-up that he won’t say no) and get her pregnant. He’ll have to drop out of school so he can support his bastard family by working nights at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and then he’ll go home every night to his trailer in a trailer park known for getting hit by tornadoes at least four times a year.

By then he’ll have at
least
three more kids, and he’ll start getting a beer gut from drinking too many PBRs, and Tiffani (that
bitch
, I hate her!) will gripe and complain that he needs to take care of her, that he promised her a life filled with wonder and adventure, but instead they live in this
shithole,
and she had plans for her life, didn’t he know that she had plans? She was going to become a professional cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys! But she can’t now because Tyson has dragged her down with him! He’ll come home one night after getting fired for refusing to sell beef jerky to a trucker in a sleeveless shirt because didn’t that trucker know how they process the jerky? He’ll find her in bed with a rough trick named Desmond who has tattoos on his arms that say neat things like “Fuck” in Aramaic (because that’s how
Jesus
would have said it) and “Mom” in cursive letters because he is a momma’s boy at heart.

Ty will pack up the kids (by now there’s six of them) and hit the road, going from town to town, performing with traveling circuses as part of his band The Kid And The Kids, where he and his children sing and dance, covering songs from such classic bands like Journey and Destiny’s Child. One night, in the middle of performing an a capella rendition of Hanson’s “MMMBop” somewhere in Nebraska for folks in an elderly assisted-living community, he’ll feel a stutter in his heart and will drop down dead, his children gathering around him, tears on their little faces (my poor nieces and nephews!) and some scary carny will start singing “Dust in the Wind” horribly off-key. Tyson’s children (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, Randy, and Michael) will pack up their belongings and start hitchhiking across the country, still trying to perform as just The Kids, but even they can see that there is something missing without the Kid, and so they’ll disband and go their own separate ways.

And this will all happen, I know, before Tyson turns eighteen. “Don’t worry,” I hear the Kid tell Dominic, who’s watching me with concern in his eyes. “Bear’s just being Bear. Sometimes he gets these

thoughts in his head, and they sort of take on a life of their own. You can tell it’s not a good one this time because the skin under his left eye is twitching like he’s trying to wink. Trust me when I saw he’s not winking at you. Just give it another second and you’ll see what I mean.”

“You are not allowed to sing ‘MMMBop’ to old people in Nebraska!” I almost shout at him. “Tiffani is nothing but a whore! I don’t care if she gives you Tito!”

The Kid sighs. “See?” he says to Dominic. “Don’t even try to figure out where that came from. I assure you the logic chain in Bear’s head makes sense if you actually know him, and by ‘makes sense’ I mean in a Bear way, but for a newbie like you, it’ll probably just break your mind.” He turns back to me and glares. “Are you trying to scare him?” he scolds me. “I thought we could save the family crazy for another day. This is why I don’t have many friends, Papa Bear.”

“Oh, please,” I scoff at him, hearing Tito in my head trying to convince my other nieces and nephews to get the band back together again. “You don’t have many friends because of your own weirdness. Don’t blame it on me.”

Please, guys; this is all I have now. Dad would have wanted us to get back together! For old time’s sake! Mmmbop, ba duba dop—
Shut up, Tito!

“And I’m not crazy,” I add.

 

“Who is Tiffani and why is she a whore?” Dominic asks me quietly, his eyes almost amused.

 

“Dominic, don’t get him started!” the Kid begs. “You don’t know what you’ll unleash!”

So I explain my entire logic line to Dominic and the Kid, who by the very end has his face pressed hard in his hands, like he’s trying to smother himself to get away from me, and Dominic nods with each of the points I make. His dark eyes do a little dance when I say the names of the Kid’s kids. For a moment, I think he’s just humoring me (but who cares if he is? He’s, like, only fourteen, and I can do grown up stuff when and if I want to without having to ask anyone permission. Okay, I usually ask Otter first, but that is so not the point. Crap. I usually ask the Kid too. Fine. That was a bad example. Whatever). But when I finish, Dominic is not running in the opposite direction, screaming as he flails his arms over his head. He’s not even looking slightly petrified as people normally do when I open my mouth and words fall out. No, he’s watching me like he’s taking me
seriously
, and before I can call him on it, he turns to the Kid and says gruffly, “Makes sense to me. Tiffani is obviously a whore.”

The Kid’s jaw drops as he glances between the two of us, starting to sputter in such a way that only he can do, so filled with righteous indignation that you would have thought we had lambasted every core ideal he’s ever fought for. Maybe there’s something to this Dominic besides an uneasy façade.

Before I can tell the Kid to calm down, before I can so much as form a thought to put his mind at ease, Dominic reaches out a hand and drops it on the Kid’s shoulder, and wonder of all wonders, the Kid silences almost immediately. I’m sure this has to be a momentary thing, that the Kid will start up again, his protestations louder, his eyes wider, and his stance almost combative, but it doesn’t happen. The Kid stops talking, takes a deep breath, rolls his eyes, and shakes his head.

And that’s it.
Who the fuck is this kid?

Apparently, he’s God
, the voice says, slightly amused.
Because only God himself could have shut the Kid up that quickly. And that easily. Lord knows you’ve never been able to do that.

It’s right. Holy shit, maybe he
is
God.

“Do you want to come in and have some Kashi?” I hear myself ask. “If that sounds gross, it’s probably because it is. I have Lucky Charms, instead.”

“Papa Bear never had a childhood,” the Kid explains darkly. “So he’s trying to have one now. It only gets worse from here. Trust me. Pretty soon, he’ll have you watching
SpongeBob
and your brains will be leaking out your ears.”

“You used to love SpongeBob,” I remind him. “You even had that SpongeBob blanket when you stayed—”

“Bear,” the Kid groans, drawing my name out for six or seven syllables. I’m further amazed when I realize he’s blushing. “Do you have to tell him
everything
? We’ve talked about this. Better seen, not heard. You
know
this.”

I grin evilly at the Kid and he looks fearful. “I’ve even got some pictures of the Kid as a baby,” I tell Dominic conspiratorially. “There’s one of him playing in the bathtub when he’s like four, where he made a beard out of soap on his face and he used to call himself Major Awesome of the Awesome Brigade.”

The Kid starts after me, and I take off running back toward the house, laughing at him over my shoulder, a look of pure murder on his face as he shrieks after me, his voice high-pitched and hilarious. We reach the door and I throw it open, sidestepping the Kid neatly. He runs past me before he can stop himself, his shoes sliding on the tile in the entryway, and I pull the door shut in his face, holding the handle as he yells at me through the door, trying to jerk it back open.

Kids. Mother Nature’s hilarious miracles.
“You coming?” I call out to Dominic, who’s still standing where we left him, that quiet smile still on his face. At hearing my words, the smile fades slowly, and he looks over his shoulder, glancing down the street as if undecided. “Look,” I tell him. “I don’t want you to do anything that’ll get you in trouble. Do you need me to call your parents or something? Clear it with them? I should probably meet them at some point if you’re going to be around here. Gotta make sure they’re okay with it, you know?”

He turns back to me quickly, schooling the troubled look on his face a little too late for me to miss it. Dominic smiles quietly at me again and walks toward me, waiting to speak until he’s standing next to me, looking at the door that’s still shaking against the Kid’s wrath. “They won’t mind,” he tells me, averting his eyes. “I can tell them later.”

So he’s big. And quiet.
And a liar.
Great.

T
HE
Kid calls a truce momentarily as he watches with an almost religious euphoria as Dominic takes his first bite of Kashi and pronounces it palatable. The Kid immediately runs to the fridge and pulls out every bit of his diet we have in the house, sure that his new friend (
best friend
, I hear him whisper in my head) will want to try tofu at nine in the morning. Dominic just watches him, sampling everything the Kid puts in front of him, quietly telling him it tastes good. He even looks like he means it.

I’m about to tell him where I hide the Lucky Charms when my cell phone rings, playing a polyphonic rendition of “Achy Breaky Heart.”
Fucking Otter
, I think as I grin and reach for the phone. I leave the boys at the table and look down at the display. Speak of the devil.

“You know,” I say as I answer the phone and head up the stairs, “it was cute the first four hundred times you did it, now I just really hate that song.”
“Is that so?” he growls in my ear. Uh-oh. Either something’s wrong or something is very right.

“Uh-huh,” I say carefully. “So… what’s up with you?”
“Where are you?” Otter asks me.
“In the bathroom,” I tell him, obviously not checking my hairline in the

mirror. “How’s work going?”

 

“I didn’t call you to talk about work,” he snaps at me. “Where’s the Kid?”

“In the kitchen with his friend Dominic. Dude, he’s not imaginary, but you should totally see him. He’s got to be like the biggest fifteen-year-old I’ve ever se—”

“Later,” Otter says, his voice low. “Our bathroom?”
“Well, yeah, I’m not going to—”
“Lock the door.”

Without even thinking about it, I do. The lock clicks into place, and I glance at myself in the mirror again, seeing that my neck is flushed, my eyes a little wider than they were just a moment before. I know this voice now, this one that’s breathing heavily into my ear. I can’t believe what the fuck we’re about to do, especially given the fact the Kid and Dominic are literally like twenty feet away. This is so fucking wrong.

“You know,” Otter says heatedly, “when I left you this morning, you looked so fucking edible curled up in the blankets. I was awake awhile before the alarm went off, just watching you, wondering if I should wake you up.”

“Yeah?” I manage to say, my dick already half-hard, pressing against my sweats. “Why didn’t you?”

 

“Because I was in no mood to be gentle with you,” he grumbles. “And you looked like you needed gentle.”

Oh fuck. “I don’t always need it gentle,” I tell him as quietly as I can. “You know you can….”
“Can what, Bear?” Otter asks. “What can I do?”

I swallow past the desire lodged in my throat. “Whatever.”

He laughs, and it sounds harsh in my ear, raking against my skin, causing me to shudder. Say what you want about the man, but he knows exactly what buttons to push. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he tells me. “You hard yet?”

“Fuck you,” I snarl at him. “You know I am.”
“Grab your dick, but don’t jerk off.”

Rational thought tries to break in for a moment, and I curse myself for allowing it. “Aren’t you at work?” I ask him as I thrust my hand down the front of my sweats, squeezing my cock but not pulling on it. “People can hear you!” I bite back the moan threatening to burst out.

“Only one in the studio today. Where’s your hand?”

 

“Where do you think? We can’t do this, Otter. The Kid and Dominic are in the kitchen! They’ll fucking hear me.”

“Then you better shut up and let me talk, don’t you think? But, I do have to say I like the little noises you make. There’s times when I’ve got you spread out in front of me, your face pressed into the pillow, that hot ass of yours sticking straight up into the air.” His voice drops again. “Those are the times I just want to break you in half. You should see yourself like that. Like the only thing you want is me. Like the only thing you see is me. God, how you fucking moan my name.” He groans softly. “Words can’t do it justice, Bear. Maybe next time I’ll record it so you can see exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Ah… Jesus.” This isn’t something we do very often, the dirty talk, the words I can barely get out, knowing how stupid I sound when I say them. But Otter must have his master’s in smut because the words that pour out of his mouth sometimes are not something that I would ever hope to hear repeated outside the bedroom. But he knows exactly what kind of an effect it has on me, the bastard. Lately, it’s turned into a sort of game, to see who comes first. The score is currently eight to zero. Yeah, who do you think has eight?

“You like that, don’t you?” he asks me, his breath quickening. “Want to make a movie with me, Bear? We could play it later, when I’m fucking you again, so you can watch yourself getting fucked. See what you look like when I’m buried in your ass?”

“You’re not going to win this time,” I tell him through gritted teeth. “You’re gonna go first.”

“Bear,” he sighs in my ear, his voice having just the right timbre, the right amount of love and cadence that I jerk my hand once up my shaft and spill over my hand, a strangled noise bursting from my throat as my hips buck, knocking against the sink. I try to curb it so he doesn’t hear, but he hears it anyways, chuckling deeply as he listens to me finish.

“How the hell do you always win?” I snap at him, leaning over to catch my breath, my hand sticky and warm. “You totally cheat, don’t you?”