T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (3 page)

“I think both guns
and
people kill people,” Otter said, obviously contributing to the conversation.

 

The Kid looked at me with some newfound respect. “That was a highly intelligent observation, Bear,” he told me. “Color me surprised.” “Yeah, well,” I said, blushing.

 

“No, seriously. It sounds like you may have actually read something.” “Well, there was this thing online. You know. It just kind of caught my eye.”

 

“Good for you. It’s awesome to see you are broadening your horizons.”

“Yeah. And there was this other thing? On, like, how there’s all these uprisings? You know, in like Egypt and Syria and stuff like that? That looked… bad… for all those people.”

He nodded gravely. “A lot of suffering going on across the pond. I hope one day they can find peace and all the citizens can be free.”

 

I felt relieved. “Me too.”

He clapped his hands together. “Well,” he said. “This has been a most interesting breakfast. I really feel that we all learned something today. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some…
things
… I need to do online.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling at him. “Just remember, you need to start packing up your books this morning too.”

 

He grinned at me and it was dazzling. “I know, Papa Bear. I can’t wait for the Big Move (It’s About Time).”

 

My smile widened. “Me either.”

 

He cleaned his bowl in the sink and whistled as he walked out of the room.

I laughed quietly, feeling strangely pleased with myself. I’d gone toe to toe with the Kid on current events and hadn’t come across sounding like an idiot. I’m not normally one to be topical (I mean, really, who has the time?) but this caused me to want to learn even more. I picked up the Kid’s discarded paper and started to flip through it, wanting to read more news stories that I could talk to the Kid about. Expand my horizons a bit. I wondered who this Newt Gingrich was and why he was crazy, and I started searching for his name.

Otter stood and began clearing the table while I was on my quest for knowledge. When I’d finally found the dude’s name and started to read, he bent down and gripped my chin gently. He brought my mouth to his and kissed me sweetly, his tongue parting my lips and tangling gently with mine. I couldn’t help it when I groaned into him, his lips soft and warm against my own, urging, but not really pushing for more. He pulled away after a minute and touched his forehead to mine. I stared up into that gold-green that meant so much to me and sighed happily to myself.

“Bear,” he breathed. “You know I love you, right? With every fiber of my being?”

 

I nodded, suddenly feeling a bit misty-eyed. He tends to make me like that.

“And you know I think you’re smart?”
I nodded again, squirming at his praise.
“Well, then, I hope you’re not going to be upset when I tell you this.” I shook my head, a little worried.
“The Kid just totally played you.”
I cocked my head.
“Like, seriously, completely manhandled you.”
I furrowed my brow, feeling my jaw grow tense.
“Like, he destroyed you.”
My eyes twitched.
“Like, to the point it was almost brutal to watch.”
My lip quivered in righteous indignation.

Otter sighed. “But, holy crap, do I love you.” He kissed my forehead and left.

 

“
Kid
!” I roared.

O
KAY
, so, what happened then wasn’t done on purpose. You have to believe me. Totally an accident. I’d found the
MEAT ISN’T NEAT
shirt piled in the corner, somehow missed but not forgotten. There were only a couple of boxes left, and I figured I could just put it in one of those to get it moved. How was I supposed to know that there was also a bottle of bleach in that box hidden under other cleaning stuff? How was I to know that said bottle of bleach had a leak in it? That when I shoved the shirt into the box without looking, it’d fallen right into the corner where the leak was happening? It wasn’t done on purpose. I wasn’t looking! I had a billion other things on my mind!

But, my
God,
did that start a war.

I was in the kitchen of the Green Monstrosity (our new house, our wonderful house, the house that was the most horribly offensive color known to man) when I heard the Kid cry out, the horror in his voice sending chills down my spine. I dropped the pots and pans I’d been putting away, and they clattered to the floor as I ran. I can’t even tell you how many scenarios exploded through my head as I rushed toward my little brother, who had cried out again, a sound so long and mournful that it caused me to ache.
Did he hurt himself? How bad is it? Do we need to go to the hospital? Oh God, I hope I know where the insurance cards are. Fuck the cards, I can get them later. What if he broke his arm? What if he found a human skull under the floorboards? I never checked to see if this house had an unsolved murder that’d happened inside it. Why didn’t I check that before we moved here? Oh
God
, what if there are
hundreds
of dead bodies under the floors! Like, what if this was the former home of what will be known as the world’s worst serial killer? Is our house haunted now? I don’t believe in ghosts. That’s stupid. There’s no such thing as ghosts. What if the Kid saw a ghost?

When you hear your little brother cry out like that, it’s not always going to be rational thoughts that go through your head. I suppose I could continue on in that same vein, but you get the idea. I’ve learned in my short time being a brother/parent that it’s way too easy to automatically believe the worst has happened. I expected there to be blood or a severed limb or maybe a big python wrapped around his little body, choking the life out of him.

What I didn’t expect was the fury in his eyes.

I rounded the corner into our new living room, glancing around wildly until my gaze skittered onto the Kid. He stood before an opened box, a dripping white/blue
something
in his hands. I rushed over to him and heard Otter running in behind me.

“What happened?” I gasped out. “Are you alright?”

“Who did this?” he whispered, looking down at the fabric in his hands, moist and splotchy. At first I couldn’t tell what it was, and I began checking him roughly to make sure his bits and pieces were still attached. As far as I could see, he was fine, and I allowed myself a brief moment to relax.

Until I
really
saw what he held in his hands.
Then, I knew the shitstorm that was coming.
“What is it?” Otter asked, his tone worried and sharp. “Are you okay?” “Who… did…
this
?”
“Did what?” I said, exasperated, my heart thumping in my chest.

He held up the blue and white fabric in his hands, his little fingers trembling. The fabric was soaked with something, and a bright smell bit my nose and eyes. I looked at the words on the front of his shirt and paled. The words that now read
ME IS NEAT.
Oh, fuck
, I thought.

“I dunno,” I mumbled.
Liar,
my conscience chided.
Shut up
, I said back.

“Bear, why won’t you look at me?” the Kid said through gritted teeth as I found something neat to stare at on the other side of the room. “What?” I glanced back at him, then looked away again. “I’m looking at you.”

“Uh-oh,” Otter said succinctly.
“Did you put this in the box with the bleach?” the Kid asked me. “There was bleach in there? I’m sure I didn’t know that.”

“The fact that the box is labeled
cleaning supplies
wouldn’t have given it away?” His voice was rising, and I took a step back, only to run into a wall of resistance that was my boyfriend. My big solid, stupid boyfriend who wouldn’t move to let me run out the front door and to the next county. Or even take the blame for this one. Otter felt me twitching and to ensure I couldn’t get away, grabbed my arm and held me tightly. I glared back up at him for just a split second. The traitor.

“You did this on purpose,” the Kid accused me with an angry tremor in his voice. “You did this to get back at me for the whole nudist colony/penis food/veggie sex shirt thing.”

“I did not!” I said, indignant.

The Kid shoved it toward me. “How the hell am I supposed to wear this anymore! You won’t let me buy more shirts because you’re scared of the vegetarian message and now you go and ruin the ones I have? I demand retribution!”

I looked down at the shirt again, reading its words.
ME IS NEAT.
“Well, you gotta admit, it has a new message now,” I told him optimistically. “Like, if you needed a self-confidence boost one day and didn’t mind bad grammar, you could still wear it.” I heard Otter snort behind me, and his body started to shake as he attempted to keep his mirth at bay to avoid the wrath of the Kid.

The Kid’s eyes narrowed. Apparently he didn’t think it was funny. “One day, Bear, and one day soon,” he warned ominously, “when you least expect it, I’m going to get you back for this. You won’t see me coming but, my God, it will be epic. You’ve been warned.”
He turned and left the room.

I turned and smacked Otter across the chest. He winced and growled at me, “What the hell was that for?”

 

“You could have helped me,” I snapped at him. “You should have said you did it!”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re joking, right? Did you see the look on the Kid’s face? Bear, I would take a bullet for you, I would jump on a grenade for you, but I would
never
get between you and the Kid when he’s pissed. You’re a goner, Papa Bear.” He grinned the Otter grin at me, but it took on a melancholy curve. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.” The smile faded and his lower lip quivered. “I am just going to miss you so damn
much
—”

“Shut it down,” I barked at him. “You’re not helping me at all.” He started to back away. “I promise I’ll do my best to raise Tyson as you’d want me to. Somehow, I think we just might make it and I’ll—” I took a menacing step toward him and sneered at him. “Bullshit. You wouldn’t make it a single day without me. You’d miss me too much.”

“And maybe someday,” he continued, the glint in his eyes growing brighter, “I’ll be able to find love again, and it’ll be like one of those romance novels that Mrs. Paquinn reads. Where a widowed man is responsible for a smart child and finds a new love who’s a doctor or a fireman who’ll break through the walls the sad man has so hastily constructed, and they’ll all live happily ever after as a family. My God, the clichés that will be our lives will be immense and wonderful.”

“Like hell,” I snarled. “If the Kid takes me out, you’re going to be alone forever. Nobody can put up with your bullshit like me.”

“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Oh?”

“Only me,” I insisted. He stopped moving and I bumped into him, looking up into his eyes. He smiled down at me, causing my breath to catch in my throat. I still hadn’t gotten used to the way he sometimes looked at me, that regard that threatened to flatten me.

He brought up a hand and cupped my cheek before kissing the tip of my nose, a spot he knows I hate but still allow him to do it. I’m not so very good when it comes to saying no to Otter Thompson. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, and his stubble was wonderfully rough as he rubbed his cheek against mine, like he was trying to embed his scent onto me to mark me as his own. My dick began to fly at half-mast, and it was almost enough to make me forget about the threats on my life by a nine-year-old.

“Only you,” Otter said before kissing me deeply.

 

Mushy bastard.

I
WAS
on my guard for the next day or so until I said something that caused the Kid to laugh hysterically, and he jumped in my lap and started babbling as he always did. After that, I figured we were in the free and clear. It was hard to imagine that someone like him could be so diabolical as to consider psychological warfare.

But that’s exactly what he did.

It started out with a simple observation. I had just gotten home from work at the grocery store, a ten-hour shift that exhausted me. I collapsed onto the couch as the Kid wandered in, smiling as he sat down next to me. We talked for a bit about our days while Otter cooked dinner in the kitchen. Then, as if distracted, the Kid stopped midsentence and reached up to brush off my shoulders.

“What?” I asked, looking down where his hands had been.

“Just a few hairs or something on your shoulder,” he replied with a shrug before continuing on about how he’d just finished watching some program on the effects of radiation poisoning. I tried to keep a straight face, but then he started talking about fingernails melting, and I had to gag.

“I can’t believe that shit doesn’t bug you,” I told him.
“Why would it?”

The next day, we were eating breakfast when he passed by me and gave me a hug. I was used to these little attacks from him, growing more and more frequent, much to my pleasure. His head rested on my shoulder for a moment before he looked up at me and smiled. Then I watched as the smile slid from his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to keep the worry from my voice.

He reached over and brushed my shoulder again. “You keep shedding,” he muttered. Then his eyes rose to my head, and he frowned slightly before beckoning me to lean closer. I did, keeping my eyes on him. “Well that explains it,” he said quietly, almost somber.
“What?”

“The hairs I keep seeing on your shoulders.”
“What about them?”

The Kid looked slightly sad before he spoke. “You’re losing your hair, Papa Bear.”

Silence.
Then, “Excuse me?”

“Your hairline,” he explained carefully. “It’s starting to recede a bit. Was your dad or grandpa bald?”

 

I laughed uncomfortably. “Shut up, Kid. You’re just trying to freak me out.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding dubious. “Maybe look in a mirror or something. You’re still pretty young for that to be happening. Wow, can you imagine if that were true, though? Bald by the time you’re thirty? Gosh, that would just suck.”

He walked out of the kitchen.
I stared after him.

Once I was sure he was gone, I leapt up from the chair and ran the opposite way, past boxes not yet unpacked, down the hall, until I reached the master bedroom and shoved my way into the bathroom, steam spreading across the mirror since Otter was in the shower. I could see him through the curtain, and for a moment, my mouth went dry at the thought of naked Otter all soapy and wet, those long legs, those big arms. Water falling in tiny rivers down his chest and stomach, leaving trails just begging to be licked. I adjusted myself, the front of my pajama shorts suddenly uncomfortably tight.