Bear, Otter, & the Kid 01 - Bear, Otter, & the Kid (MM)

by TJ Klune

  “You’re right,” he agrees, and this causes me to deflate slightly. “You took care of it all on your own, didn’t you? But that’s not what I’m saying, Bear. I’m saying that while you can do it, you shouldn’t have to.”

  I throw my hands up in the air and start to pace in front of him. “We’re quite fine on our own, Otter. We’ve been fine for three fucking years. So the last three months have been great, so it’s been over the fucking moon. We don’t need you to take care of us!” Who is this person talking? Who is this person who only moments ago was wanting him to tell me what to do? Why can’t I shut up for once in my life? These same old arguments keep rearing their heads, and it’s always me bringing them up. “He’s the only thing I’ve got!” I say, my voice breaking.

  “You’re wrong.”

  I spin around. “What?”

  He steps to me again and wraps his arms around me. He’s so big, and I’m just a little guy, and I can’t move. I try to fight it, try to pull away, but then his hands are rubbing over my back, and his lips are near my ear, and his hot breath slides over my cheek. “You’re wrong,” he says harshly. “You’ve got me.”

  “Why?” I cry out. “I push and push and push you away, and you keep coming back. Why!”

  “Because I fucking love you, you idiot,” he growls in my ear. “Why the hell do you think I would buy you a fucking house if I didn’t love you?”

  I jump out of his arms again. “You what?”

  “Uh, shit,” he says sheepishly, rubbing his hands through his hair. He then points at the green monstrosity behind us. “Surprise.”

  “You bought me a fucking house!” I scream at him.

  He looks around quickly. “Yeah, but tone it down a little. I don’t want our new neighbors to think a woman is being murdered outside.”

  “Our neighbors!” I bellow at him.

  He flinches. “Yeah, our neighbors. This house is for you and me and the Kid. He’ll get to stay in the same school district and everything. I know it doesn’t look like much now, but—”

  “You bought a house in two weeks?” I yell.

  “Well, no, Bear, it can take a couple of months to buy a house. I offered a quick cash buyout, and I was able to close on it in forty-five days, which was”—he looks down at his watch—“seventeen hours ago.”

  “You’ve been buying a house for the last two mon—” My shout is blocked off as his hand covers my mouth.

  “Jesus Christ, inside voice,” he hisses.

  I glare at him over his fingers. I want to spit a loogie into his palm, but he would just rub it on my face, so I roll my eyes, and he drops his hand. “You started buying us a house two months ago?” I whisper loudly, showing him my inside voice.

  “Have you always been this quick? Or is it something you’ve developed over the last few days?”

  “You’re not funny, and don’t change the subject.”

  Otter grins at me. “I’m hilarious. And yes, I started buying the house about two months ago. Why, do you want to stay in your apartment? No offense, but it was kind of hard to drill you into the wall when you share a room with your little brother.”

  My blood starts a slow slimmer, working its way to boiling. “But I broke up with you,” I spit out, the sludge still pouring out of me. “You closed on the house even though we had broken up? You could have backed out on it.”

  “I could have,” he says slowly. “But I didn’t.”

  “And nothing about this screamed at you that this was happening way too fast?”

  He shakes his head and grins that Otter grin. “Nothing’s too fast if it means forever, Bear.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I have faith,” he says simply. And with this, every argument, every doubt, every single thing that has held me back dissolves into nothing. I leap at him and he catches me (of course), and I press my mouth hungrily against his and a low moan escapes him and enters me. I taste it, taste him, his hot lips and tongue as they work me over. Who knew buying me a house was one of my turn-ons? I wonder what would happen if he bought me a yacht. Or shares of Microsoft.

  We make out for a little bit longer (making out may be too light a phrase; really, I’m eating his face) until he pushes away, gasping. “We need to go inside so we don’t give everyone a show right here.”

  My cock is rock solid and wouldn’t object to that. I grind up against him to show him as much. “You better have the fucking key to our fucking house, or we’re going to break the fucking door down right fucking now,” I pant at him.

  “It’s in my pocket,” he says, and he groans when I reach into his pocket and roughly knock his dick around while I look for the key. “My back pocket,” he says, leaning in to bite my lip, licking the sharpness away.

  I reach around and shove both hands in his back pockets, handling his ass roughly until I feel the familiar shape of a key. A house key. Our house key. I grasp it and pull it out, and I’ve never seen anything more wonderfully frightening or catastrophically inevitable in all my life. He takes my hands in his and kisses them gently and pulls the key from my trembling fingers. Otter drags me to the front door that’s the same weird shade of green as the rest of the house, but I don’t seem to mind it much anymore. The lock clicks. He pushes the door open. I see a button attached to the side of the house and push it. The doorbell rings, so very much like my own. It is my own.

  “It needs a lot of work,” he warns me as he shuts the door behind me. “We’ll need to pull up the carpet, but I’m told there are some really nice hardwood floors underneath. I think we’ll have to—”

  I’ve heard enough. I don’t care about the house right now (but seriously, though, he bought us a house? How stupidly insanely stupid/epic is that?). I cut off his words about hardwood floors and carpet and whatever else he’s going to say as I press my mouth feverishly against his. The way his hands are instantly upon me show me that he doesn’t mind the interruption. I marvel at his talented fingers, going right to my ass as he pulls me roughly against him. I groan into his face.

  “There’s no bed, Papa Bear,” he growls into my mouth as he licks and nips.

  “You said something about drilling me into a wall?” I say breathlessly. I have a moment to regret my words when his eyes flash dangerously. Otter paws desperately at the button of my jeans. My cock bobs free, and the air is cold until his mouth is on me, trying to suck my brains out. My eyes roll back into my head, and the edges of my vision grow hazy, and all rational thought is gone. That’s okay, though. I think too much anyway.

  He licks the tip of my dick and looks up at me, eyes lidded and beautiful. “I don’t have any lube,” he says as he nuzzles my balls. It’s the most romantic thing he’s ever said to me until I actually understand his words.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I howl. I jerk him up to his feet with strength I don’t know I have. I rip at the front of his jeans and the button breaks off. We don’t care. Making sure he’s watching me, I spit into my hand and slather it over his heated cock. His eyes go wide as he rocks his head back and groans.

  “That’s going to hurt, baby,” he says, not really fighting me on it. I shudder at his endearment: he’s never called me that before. It shakes me. It moves me. It makes it all the more of a necessity that he is in me right now. I grab the back of his head and pull his eyes back down to mine. I bring his hand up to my mouth and suck on two of his fingers greedily, getting them as wet as I can. I spit them out ungracefully, drool hanging from my lips.

  “Get me ready,” I hiss at him.

  He does.

  When he enters me, it burns, the sting traveling up and down my body. I think maybe it will be enough to actually say this was a bad idea, but then he angles himself differently, and heaven breaks open, and angels spill down and a choir sings the gospel according to gay sex: PROSTATE! Wave after wave crashes over me, pleasure and pain, but I’m tethered to him and he’s got me and in that moment it starts it starts—

  it starts as a wind begi
ns to blow past me, over me, through me, pushing the gathering storm out to sea. The sun breaks through the clouds and there begins a deep rumbling noise deep from within the waves. The ground shifts and shakes and eventually breaks apart. The ocean, that damnable ocean, beings to rush toward the chasm that has opened, forming a whirlpool that howls and screams as it spins. Lightning flashes, thunder rumbles, but it is so far away now. As I watch, the ocean gives a dying gasp as the seabed is transformed into a desert. The storm dies. The sun shines. The dusty surface is cracked, parched. But it holds together. A small breeze ruffles my hair, reminding me of what I’ve done to get to this point. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, and from there, from there

  —and from there, the only thing I can do is hold on for dear life, hold on while this man, my Otter, shows me just how much he loves me. I only hope he feels it in return. I hope he sees that I will give him all I can. I hope he sees that I’m in this for the long haul.

  And you know what? All of you that have stuck with me through to the end?

  I think he sees it just fine.

  Epilogue

  or

  Otter’s Perspective, As It Were

  (Bear’s Gonna Freak)

  Six months later

  THE Kid shouts at me as he gets off the school bus. He turns and waves to some girl hanging out the window screaming at him. He rolls his eyes as he turns back to me.

  “Who’s that?” I grin at him.

  He scowls. “Some sixth grader who’s got it in her head that it’s adorable for a nine-year-old to be in the fifth grade. She told me I’m precious.”

  I laugh. “Older women, huh? Don’t let Papa Bear know about that. He’s still a wreck over letting you skip a grade.”

  He grabs my hand and pulls me inside. “Don’t remind me,” he grumbles over his shoulder. “He wrote another note and put it in my lunch again.”

  I groan as I slide his bag off his back. “What did it say this time?”

  The Kid scrunches his face up, and when his voice comes out, it’s an eerie imitation of Bear. “‘Kid, please don’t correct your teacher again in class. I don’t want to be called in for another Brother-Teacher conference about how you need to skip to your freshman year in college. My heart can’t take it.’”

  “Well, he’s got a point.”

  The Kid shakes his head. “How can a certified teacher not know how to spell constitution? No wonder Anderson Cooper says our school systems are failing the students.”

  “And we all know that if Anderson Cooper says it’s true, it must be.”

  His eyes narrow. “I would agree with you, but you’re obviously making fun of me.”

  I ruffle his hair. “Obviously. Speaking of the system, don’t forget the social worker is coming over tomorrow at three.”

  “How could I forget about Olga Ehrlichman?” he scowls. “I swear she makes her German accent worse just to weird me out.”

  “I don’t think she’s German, Kid.”

  He throws his hands up in the air. “That’s what you think. I know she’s trying to get me to be a part of the Schutzstaffel. Can’t we scare her off and get a new one? We could tell her we’re Jewish.”

  I shake my head, trying to hide my smile. “I don’t think that would be such a great idea. We’ve got another court date coming up next month, and we don’t want to take the chance of it being the time your mother actually shows up.”

  “I don’t know why we have to keep going to court,” he mumbles. “If she had the balls to try anything, I think it would have happened by now.” I think he’s right, but I don’t tell him so. Not until Bear and I can be sure. And we won’t be sure until the Kid legally belongs to Bear. It shouldn’t be that much longer, at least according to the attorney. The judge had tried to throw a little fit about the whole power of attorney thing (“This illegally obtained power of attorney was acquired with an exchange of cigarettes?”), but Erica Sharp of the illustrious Weiss, Goldstein, and Eddington had grinned her shark-like grin and tore the judge a new asshole. It was brutal to watch, especially when she trotted out the Kid like a show dog and the Kid had hammed it up by giving his best Oliver Twist “Please, sir, can I have some more?” look that he does so well. His eyes were wide and his lower lip trembled ever so slightly, and I swear to God I could hear the judge’s heart melting from where I sat in the galley twenty feet away. Hell, I almost stood up and demanded to adopt the Kid myself right then. He was that good.

  The social worker visits have gone well, no matter the Kid’s observations of her heritage. He’s not stupid and is always on his best behavior when she’s here. I had wondered before her first visit if she would have said anything about Bear and me. But of course, she didn’t bat an eye when she walked in on Bear kissing me sweetly, even when Bear started blushing and grumbling to himself about getting caught. She’s probably seen shitloads worse in other homes to worry about two guys kissing.

  “We’ll see,” I tell the Kid. “Just go easy on Frau Ehrlichmann.”

  The Kid goes to the fridge and pulls out his after-school snap peas. “Everything ready for tonight?” he says, tactfully changing the subject.

  I sigh. “As ready as it’ll ever be.” I reach down and pat the two small objects in my front pocket. For the thousandth time in the last hour. “Are you sure about this?”

  He crunches on the vegetables and looks at me. “Are you?”

  I nod once.

  He shrugs. “Well, then, of course I’m sure.” He pauses and then snickers. “Papa Bear’s gonna freak out. I wish I could be here to see it,” he adds wistfully.

  “Thanks, Kid. As if I wasn’t nervous enough already,” I growl at him.

  He laughs. “You’ll do fine. You get everything I said to?”

  I nod again.

  “And you have what we wrote?”

  I roll my eyes. “Seriously? You really think I should say that?”

  The Kid smiles. “Seriously. You think he’ll get the hidden meaning in it?”

  “Kid, you may be the smartest person alive, but a master of subtlety you are not.”

  He starts to walk toward his room. “With Bear,” he says over his shoulder, “you kind of have to be blatant. Otherwise, he’ll miss the whole point.”

  “And that’s the point of what I’m about to do?” I yell after him.

  “I can’t hear you!” he yells back. The little liar. “I have to get ready before Mrs. Paquinn gets here. And you need to go get dressed. I got your suit ready this morning.”

  I groan and sit down at the table, feeling the two small pieces of metal press against my thigh. I pull out my wallet and find the slip of paper the Kid had stuck in there a couple of days ago. We had spent hours agonizing over it, but in the end, got it just right, at least according to the Kid. I grin to myself as I read over the words I’ve long since memorized.

  The Kid is right: Bear’s gonna freak.

  Bear! Bear! Bear!

  I’ve something to say! Don’t be scared!

  Bacon is bad! Beef is wrong!

  Mad Cow Disease stays with you for a time that’s long!

  I want you to be mine, can’t you see?

  That’s why I am down, down on my knee!

  It may not yet be legal,

  but it’s better than eating a beagle,

  so won’t you please marry me?

  About the Author

  When TJ KLUNE was eight, he picked up a pen and paper and began to write his first story (which turned out to be his own sweeping epic version of the video game Super Metroid—he didn’t think the game ended very well and wanted to offer his own take on it. He never heard back from the video game company, much to his chagrin). Now, two decades later, the cast of characters in his head has only gotten louder, wondering why he has to go to work as a claims examiner for an insurance company during the day when he could just stay home and write.

  He lives with a neurotic cat in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. It’s hot there, but he doesn’t mind. He
dreams about one day standing at Stonehenge, just so he can say he did.

  TJ can be found on Facebook under TJ Klune.

  His blog is tjklunebooks.blogspot.com.

  You can e-mail him at tjklunebooks@yahoo.com.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue or Where Bear Gets His Feet Wet

  1. Where Bear Sees People Come Home for the Summer

  2. Where Bear Attempts to Explain Some Things

  3. Where Bear Looks to the Past

  4. Where Bear Throws a Party

  5. Where Bear Learns Several Truths

  6. Where Bear Hears a Story and Makes a Decision

  7. Where Bear Keeps Secrets

  8. Where Bear Stares into the Sun

  9. Where Bear and the Kid Plot and Plan (And Write Bad Poems)

  10. Where Bear Sees the Eye of the Storm

  11. Where Bear Is Forced into the Ocean

  12. Where Bear Drifts Out To Sea

  13. Where Bear Comes (Out) Clean

  14. Where Bear Makes Like Moses and Parts the Sea

  15. Bear and Otter

  Epilogue or Otter’s Perspective, As It Were (Bear’s Gonna Freak)

  About the Author