T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (21 page)

And he does, but whatever. That’s not the point. “Did you love him?” I ask him, not wanting an answer, because if he says yes, that means he loved him
and
Jonah before he ever got to me, even if he says he loved me then, as well, maybe above all the rest. I don’t like to share what’s mine with anyone. If he says that he loved them while loving me, then what’s to say he couldn’t love someone else in the future while still loving me? It’s bullshit and I know it, but it’s still there, growing like a burnt tree in my mind, taking root, the tendrils lodging themselves in my brain. It’s bullshit.

Right?
Otter pulls away, and I feel cold arc up my spine like frozen fire. But then he drags me over and sets me down onto his pillow, rolling on top of

me and covering me with his entire body, making it impossible to move, making it impossible for any earthquakes to rip through me. I struggle briefly, but his eyes are on mine, that gold-green bright in the dark, and I try to shield him from whatever he can see there in me, what I’m thinking, but it does no good. I go to turn my head, but he puts his forearms on either side of me, pressed up against my ears, and I can’t move. It feels like I can’t even breathe, even though air is flowing in and out of my lungs and mouth. I can’t look away now, even if I wanted to.

“I told you that it’s always been you,” he says, searching my eyes. “But it’s been others too,” I mutter.
“And you had Anna.”

Dammit. “It’s not the same, Otter. I’m not going to lose you to some chick.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Who says you’re going to lose me at all?” he asks as he shakes me a little bit
“Have you seen the guys you’ve been with?” I grumble. “First Jonah comes in looking all dark and mysterious”—and like an asshole—“and then David Fucking Trent just happened to step out of
GQ
on his way to work out more to make sure his stupid perfect ass stays perfect?”

He’s almost amused at this, but then he scowls. “Why were you staring at his ass?”
“It was either that or stare at the two of you while you held hands!”

“We weren’t holding hands, idjit. I shook his hand. It’s the polite thing to do. If you’d paid attention, you would have seen that. But why are you getting mad at me?
You
were the one checking him out. If anyone here has the right to be mad, it should be me. After all, my boyfriend is apparently hot for his brother’s new teacher.”

“I-I wasn’t! I was just—” I sputter at him. “He was
there,
and you were all like ‘Oh, David, let me hold you’, and I was all like, ‘who’s this asshole?’ Even the Kid noticed!”

He rolls his eyes. “Oh yes, because the Kid isn’t hyperaware of every little thing just like his big brother at all.”
“You haven’t answered the question.”

He sighs. “No, Bear. I didn’t love him. Not in the way that you’re thinking. It was the same with Jonah. I can’t even compare the two to you because it wouldn’t be fair to them.” He leans down and kisses the tip of my nose. “Bear, I don’t want anyone else. I won’t. I don’t know how else I can explain that to you. If you need me to tell you every day, I will. If you need me to make sure you know even more than I already do, I can. But….” He stops as he bites his bottom lip, and something crosses his eyes then, almost like a troubled shadow. I’ve seen that look before. I hate that look. That look says that I’ve done something wrong or that Otter is upset or freaked out by something.

“But what?” I ask him.

 

He drops his forehead onto mine, his eyes never leaving my own. “What about
you
, Bear?”

 

“What
about
me?”

“Aren’t you gonna want to… you know…
experiment
? Like, with other guys? Or whatever? Obviously if you were checking out David, then that means you’re capable of finding other men attractive. That’s different than where you were even just a few weeks ago. Who’s to say you won’t want to see what else is out there?”

I can see the worry in his eyes, but it’s nothing compared to the horror I feel in my own.

“Are you out of your goddamned
mind
?” I say incredulously, because he has to be to ever open his mouth and say something so stupid.
He starts to pull away, freeing my arms. I reach up around his neck and pull him back down on top of me, chest to chest, his heart beating rapidly against mine. “Bear, you don’t know—”
“Oh, I do know, you can trust me on that. No one in their right mind could ever put up with my bullshit like you can. I still don’t know why you do it, but you do. You’re one of the only people in the world who gets me, that allows me to speak even though you know I shouldn’t. Christ, Otter, let’s just say for the sake of argument that I’m… bisexual”—(
For the sake of argument
? it snickers.
Oh please.
)—“and that I can find other… guys… attractive. I would never do that. I can’t do that. I won’t.”

“If I can’t worry about the future,” he says quietly, “then you can’t be worried about the past.”

Damn him and his logical logic. “I’ll still worry,” I mutter. “It’s not my fault that you have hot exes and everybody in the natural world wants to jump your bones.”

He snorts against my neck and it’s gross, but I love it anyways. “Oh, please,” he scoffs. “What about all the people that check
you
out? You don’t hear me bitching and moaning about that even though I want to knock them all into next week. You don’t know how hard it is to have that kind of restraint. Just because you haven’t seen me act jealous doesn’t mean I don’t get that way.”

I laugh, a small sound that escapes before I can stop it. “What the hell are you talking about? No one looks at me.”
He raises his head to look into my eyes, apparently trying to find out if I’m being serious or not. And I am. No one looks at me twice, except for maybe Otter, and I’m okay with that. I don’t have time for anything else, not that anyone would be looking. “You’re being serious,” he says, as if not believing it.

“You’re being dumb,” I tell him.

“How can you not know? Jesus, Bear. How can you not see it? You… you’re so goddamn beautiful. Like, as in you walk into a room and take my breath away kind of beautiful. There’s times when I feel like I’ve been knocked flat just by seeing your face. How the hell can you not know that? That other people would think the same thing?”

I roll my eyes, even as I begin to blush. “Even though you’re biased, you’re still laying it on kind of thick, don’t you think?”

He looks at me like
I’m
the one spouting crap. “You’re hot, Papa Bear,” he says, as if trying to convince me. “Trust me when I say that. If you’d look around once in a while, you’ll see that plenty of people think so too.”

Oh, gag
, it whispers.
This Ego Strokefest Palooza is so lame. And yes, Bear, he’s saying that just to make you feel better. You only have to ask yourself if you have an alibi.

Alibi?
U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no—

You’re an idiot. Maybe when I go to therapy with the Kid, the doc can make you go away.

 

Doubtful. He’ll take one look inside your head, and you’ll go straight to a padded room. Do not pass go. Do not collect two—

You’re annoying, for a conscience.
I love you too.
“All the time,” Otter insists. “It pisses me off.”
“Why pissed off? You know I would never….”
His eyes grow shuttered for a moment, the gold-green muted and dark.

But then it passes. “It’s not you I don’t trust,” he says quietly. “It’s everyone else.”

 

“I don’t care about anyone else,” I tell him. “I’m a big boy. I know how to say no.”

“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re still fucking hot,” he says, and I can feel his half-hard length

against my hip.
“Well, even if that’s true—which I highly doubt—all it takes is me
opening my mouth and that whole illusion just dies right there. Literally, it’s

like a black hole, even light can’t help but getting sucked down.” I stop for a moment and think about what I just said as Otter starts to grin. It looks evil and full of teeth. “You took that dirty, didn’t you?”

“Way dirty,” he assures me as he begins to grind his body into mine. “Sex doesn’t solve problems,” I manage to get out as he rubs up and down my body with his, his mouth latching onto my neck.

“But it certainly makes things more fun,” he says as he licks his way up to my earlobe, breathing heavily into my ear as his teeth scrape along the shell. “Besides, the problems will still be there tomorrow. And so will I. I’m not going anywhere, Papa Bear. I told you that and I meant it. What do I need to do to prove that to you?” He reaches down between us and grabs my cock and gives it a rough pull. “You can’t possibly think you’re going to get away from me.” He reaches down my shorts and grips my dick, that big paw of his so familiar, so hot. He thumbs over my slit in the way that he knows drives me nuts. I squirm under him. “You even try, and I’ll hunt you down myself.” His voice is still rough, but not with sleep. He lifts up my shirt, his tongue swirling over one nipple and then the other. He allows my arms to go free and my hands go to his hair, holding him, pushing him further. I can’t speak yet, I have no words. I need to hear his voice.

“It doesn’t matter what goes on in that head of yours,” he breathes, trailing his tongue down my stomach, his hand starting to jerk me off, “or what you could possibly be thinking. Just as long as you know this is mine.” He shakes my dick before swirling his tongue over the crown. “And this is mine,” he says as he rises up to kiss my chest, where my heart beats underneath. “And this is mine,” he says before kissing me deeply. I groan into his mouth, trying to go further, suddenly confused when he pulls away, putting his forehead against mine, breathing heavily. His breath is ragged in my face, and I breathe deeply, trying to take him in. The gold-green is flashing in the dark, but it’s almost angry. He’s no longer smiling. “Do you get me?” he asks, that warning tone of his in full force.

I nod, turning my head to the side, trying to avoid that gaze, those knowing eyes.

He grabs me by the chin and forces me to look back at him. Before our eyes can collide, I close mine. I get him. I do. I really do. But it’s times like these, times that his voice is sharp with control and hungry with desire, that I almost can’t take it. It’s too much. It’s too strong. And I know it’s exactly what I need. No one gets me like he does, not even the Kid. I don’t know how Otter got so smart or how he’s able to pierce me so, but he can and he does. I don’t know why he chose me, for the life of me, for all the trouble I’ve caused. How can he think this is worth it? I tell him I love him, I tell him how much he means to me, but does he know how much I need him? That without him I would be nothing? I don’t know if he does, or at least not to the full extent in which I think it. And I don’t know if I can tell him that. I’ve always been told you should never speak your wish aloud for it won’t come true, that it’ll go away.

Otter can’t go away. I won’t allow it.
“Bear,” he says from somewhere above me. “Look at me.” I do. I do because he’s everything.

He watches me for a moment, letting go of my chin and reaching up to cup my face. “Do you get me?” he says harshly.
Ah God, I do. I do. I do. And he must see something there because that Otter grin pulls slowly at his lips, and I finally say, “Yes,” and my voice breaks, and he falls on top of me then, his hunger spilling over. His hands are everywhere, and my shirt is torn up over my head, and his mouth is on me in ways that only he knows how, in ways that only he can do. I arch my back as he again finds my dick and the wet heat that envelopes it is so hot so fast that I almost shoot right then. I gasp his name (“Otter,” I say, “Oh, my Otter”) as he swallows me whole, and I marvel at him, this man who seemed to give up everything, his life and job in a place so far away, just to be with me. I need to show him what he means to me, what he does to me. He has to know.
I pull him off my dick and roll him over, straddling his chest, my legs under his arms as his hands stroke my thighs. I reach behind me and shove his shorts down past his knees, feeling his dick spring up and slap against my hand. I stroke it gently while I reach over with my left hand and grab the lube from the nightstand. As I pull my hand back, he captures it in his and kisses each finger gently. Even I notice when he hesitates over the ring finger. But the kiss there lasts the longest. I don’t know what that means.

You sure?

He takes the lube from my hand (“I like getting you ready,” he told me once, a low blush on his face. “You look hot with my fingers in you”) and he sits up, holding me in his lap, his lips on my neck as he pours the lube onto his fingers and begins to stretch me. I rock my head back as I wrap my arms around his neck, my hands at the back of his head, cradling him against me as he works me open. There’s a brief moment when he leaves my body that I whimper at the loss, but then he enters me again in a swift thrust of his hips, and I cry out softly, his body rolling underneath me, like I’m sitting on top of an incoming tide.

There’s a moment, somewhere deeper into the night, when he’s above me, rocking into me with slow movements, that he sighs, “Bear,” and my name on his lips is like the greatest thing I’ve heard. It’s a single syllable stretched, drawn out like it’s air and he’s breathing it out. His shoulders begin to shudder, and I feel a burst of heat rush through me, and I hear his voice in my head, telling me that he has fought for me, that the fight was all he knew, and I shake beneath him, the earthquake around my heart exploding as I come between us, my hands like claws on his back, my eyes rolling back into my head.

I can’t lose this
, I think wildly.
I can’t lose him. I won’t survive. I’ll be nothing.
As he collapses on top of me, that weight so comforting, I know that problems have not been solved. I know that there are still issues there, and that they are mostly my own. But there is a moment that none of that matters, that all I care about is his heart against mine, his breath against my neck, his mouth leaving trails of slow kisses around my throat. All that matters is the look in his eyes when he props himself up on his elbow to look down at me, that grin flashing as the weak dawn light starts to glow through the window. He tells me he’s not leaving ever again. He tells me I’m all he’s ever wanted. He tells me he loves me. But I can see something behind his eyes that’s almost like fear, that knowing look that he’s not so successful in covering up, that he believes every single thing he’s said, that while he does not doubt me, he might just doubt himself. Like he thinks he might not be good enough for me.