by T. J. Klune
I hear Otter grunt, and I know he’s about to break, to interrupt me and comfort me in the way that he always does. I shake my head just once in warning, knowing if I don’t finish now, I never will. He sighs but doesn’t speak.
“I have to lie to Creed. I can’t tell him that I’ve spent the last three days wrapped up in his brother. I can’t stand to see him look at me like that. He’ll be hurt because he would think that I couldn’t come to him with this, and he’ll be right. He’ll feel cheated out of something. He’ll feel like I could never trust him. And then there’s the part about this being you. You’re his brother, and I’m his best friend. I can never do anything that would hurt him.”
The words come faster now.
“And then there’s the Kid. Did I tell you that he asked if you were gay? That’s kind of what started the whole fight between me and Anna. We told him the truth, but how can I ever tell him that about me? I don’t even know what I am. How can I be expected to raise him right when I can’t even figure myself out?
“And you. Oh God, it all comes back to you. You scare me more than any of the rest. I’m scared that you’ll listen to me now and think badly of me. I’m scared that I’ll never be able to give you what you want, that you’ve built up this image of me in your mind that I will never be able to live up to. I’m scared that you’ll see this and leave, and I’ll be alone again.”
I take a deep breath. “But I’m scared most of all that Anna may be right. You told me it was like the fight for me is all you’ve ever known. I think about that a lot and someplace inside me, some secret place that I can only look at for a little bit at a time, I know you’re right. I know this because I’ve been fighting for you to come home. I’ve been screaming and dying and praying for you to come home, and it’s taken so long, but now it’s like you never left, and I can’t seem to fit that together in my mind.”
Tell him, it whispers. You’ve gone this far. What’ve you got to lose?
Everything, I think.
“I’ve never told anyone this, but anytime that I’ve felt sad or alone or angry or upset, I would pray to God to just make you come back. That I would do anything He wanted me to do if only you would walk through my door. You were the only thing that made me feel safe when the earthquakes threatened to break me. I needed you to come home because when you’re not here, I don’t have a home. So, that’s why I got so mad at Anna, so afraid at what she’d said. She had gotten closer to the truth than even I had, and I didn’t know what else to do.
“I can’t promise you very much, Otter. I want to, but I can’t. I can promise to take this one day at a time. I can promise to try and tell you everything. I can promise to try and make you feel the way you make me feel. I want you to be safe and protected, and I want to be the one to do it because sometimes, oh God, sometimes, the fight for you is all I’ve ever known. And I’m so very tired of fighting. I’m tired, Otter, but if you’re here with me I know it could all be okay. I know I can take another step.” I stop, drained, exonerated, terrified.
I take a chance and look at Otter. I don’t see horror or pity like I’d feared. No. What I see is a fierce pride, a wild-eyed look that takes my breath away. He moves quickly and picks me up, and before I can protest he’s carrying me down the hall to my room. I have time to think how strange it is that I fit so perfectly right where I am. He sets me gently down on my bed and steps back and takes off his jacket and flings it to the ground and pounces on top of me. His mouth smothers me, and I open my eyes, and all I can see is him and me, and we are all that’s left in the world. His hunger spills over, and I press back, opening his mouth with my tongue and groaning lightly. I’m tired of waiting and wondering, so I reach for the bottom of his shirt and pull it above his head. He struggles to take it off, and we both hear it rip, but we don’t stop, we don’t care, we just keep pushing on. My shirt is gone, vanished as if by magic. He lies down on top of me and attacks my mouth again, and I smell burning because wires are shorting out in my brain again. His skin is warm against mine, and then it’s hot, and then it’s blazing. I gasp as he lowers his head from my mouth and drags his tongue down my chest and flicks it wickedly against my nipples. I rock my head back, gripping the edges of the blanket.
Then he performs another trick, and suddenly my pants are gone and any clothing that was underneath them is gone. I fumble for his belt buckle, and I hear someone whispering, “I need you, I need you,” and I don’t know which one of us it is, but it doesn’t matter. His pants slide off, and his cock springs free, and before I can do anything, he stretches his entire body against me. I think the friction will be enough to make me crazy. There are so many things I want to do, but I don’t know how. I reach for him, but he grabs my arms and holds them over my head and says, “No, Bear, no. Now is for you. This is only about you,” and I nod, and his mouth lowers again, past my chest, and my hands go to his hair as he kisses my stomach, my side, my hip bone.
Then my dick is in his mouth, and it feels like this? Oh God, how could I not know it could ever feel like this? I babble incoherent nothings and push myself further down his throat. My eyes roll back into my head, and I count the stars that are shooting past, and there’s one, and there’s two, and then there’s an entire sky filled with stars, and it gets so very bright. I arch my back again and say, “Otter, oh my Otter,” and then he rises and kisses me again sweetly, beautifully, painfully. His breath is ragged in my mouth, and my breath is the same back, but that’s okay because it’s just him and me, Bear and Otter, and at this moment, I don’t care what anyone thinks, what anyone knows. I don’t care what has happened in the past or what could happen in the future. The only thing I care about is feeling his heart beat against mine, and I think how funny it is that they’re beating in time with each other and how it seems that we’re one person and one mind and one everything.
But I want to go further, I want to crawl inside of him and stay there forever, and I say as much, or as close to that as my mind allows. He nods, sweat dripping from his brow onto my chest. He licks it off and then pulls me up and over him and lays on his back and says something about his pocket, it’s in his pocket. I reach down and find a tube of something (when did he get this?), something I don’t know because my mind is fried and unable to form any kind of comprehension. It feels cold against me when he rubs it on, and I feel slick and boiling, and my skin is alive and rumbling, and he is alive beneath me, and I put my hands on either side of his head as he raises his big legs up closer to his chest. I feel him grab a hold of me and guide me, and I gaze at him, and he smiles back at me, that same crooked smile, and I know this is Otter. This is Otter, and he’s home. He leans up and kisses me gently, and I find his tongue, and then tightness suddenly envelopes my dick, and it’s warm and weird and wonderful, and I press gently because I don’t want to hurt him, but he growls at me, a low, hungry growl, and I push until my hips are against him. He moans, and I put my forehead against his because the fight for him is all I’ve ever known, whether I’ve always known it or not, and then he pushes back, and I rock against him, and he rocks against me, and my eyes squeeze closed, and as he says my name over and over and over again in my ear, all I can see are the stars again, and every single one is gold, and every single one is green, because every single one is the color of his eyes.
SOMETIME later (okay I won’t lie. It’s not that much later; I didn’t last very long), I’m lying on top of him, my head propped up on my hands near his chest. He’s pushed up against the wall behind my bed, his hand once again in my hair. I’m trying hard not to think about what I just did, what that makes me, and for the most part I succeed. It helps that he is staring at me, his eyes filled with wonder. I can’t help grinning like an idiot, and my face burns, and I bury it against him, and he laughs softly. It’s starting to get cold in the room, but he’s radiating against me, and I sigh, seemingly content for the first time in a long time.
“So… that was good,” he says, amused.
“Yeah?”
I say, sounding like a child hoping for praise.
“Yeah,” he says, and I smile against him. There’s white noise in the back of my head that I’ll have to deal with sooner or later, but for now it’s staying quiet. For now, it’s letting me have this moment.
“So what does this mean?” I ask him. And then I lick him, a quick dart of my tongue.
He laughs again, a great rumbling sound I feel crawling out of him. “Bear,” he says chidingly, “it means whatever you want it to mean. We can write our own rules now. It doesn’t have to be something that already exists. We are whatever you want us to be.”
I think for a moment. Whatever I want us to be? I don’t even know what I want me to be. The noise in my head grows a little louder.
“What do you want us to be?” I ask him, trying to ignore the sudden unease I feel.
“I want for us to be happy,” he says softly. “And to do that, you need to be happy. With this. With me.” He smirks. “I can’t force you to do that, as much as I’d like to. I can hear the gears turning in your head from here.”
I slap him playfully, trying to make light of it, but it gives me pause. Now there are two people who can read me like a book, I muse. “I don’t know,” I tell him with a straight face. “We may have to do this quite a bit more before I am completely happy.”
He rolls his eyes and pulls me up his chest, and I dizzily enjoy the short friction-filled ride up his body. He kisses me gently and then lays me on his shoulder, a place I’m already starting to think of as my spot. This is mine. “We’ll do it until you’re 100 percent satisfied,” he whispers in my ear, sending chills running down my body like ice flowing within me. He hums happily as he feels me shiver.
We’re quiet for a while, just him and me, each lost in our own thoughts. The noise in the back of my mind seems to have stopped its rise, and I touch it gingerly, testing the waters. It doesn’t ripple as much as I thought it would, but still I don’t submerge myself into it. I don’t need to. Like the ocean, it has waves, and the tide is still low, but it laps dangerously at my feet. I close my eyes and glare angrily at it, wishing what stretched before me was a desert. I imagine a wind blowing sweetly through my hair, but with it comes disjointed voices, saying things like what are you doing? and is this who you really are? and oh God, Bear, oh my God. I try to ignore them and focus on the heat I feel beneath me, but the wind has brought seeds and while they still haven’t sprouted, they’ve started to take root. I grimace bitterly against them, angry at myself for doubting this, for doubting him. He’s the only thing I’ve got! I shout at the sea. Don’t you think about taking this away from me! I start to feel better as the ocean recedes, but then a voice calls out: It won’t be us that drives you away, Bear. Pretty soon you’ll want to come for a swim, but it won’t be us that makes you.
“Hey,” he says, breaking me from my insanity. I look up at him, trying to mask my face so he won’t see any of my thoughts. He kisses my forehead and says, “You get to ask me something now.”
“Huh?” I say, unsure of what he is speaking of.
“You said that if you told me what Anna said that I had to tell you something. What do you want to know?”
Oh. That. I lie back down in the crook of his neck and inhale briefly. He smells like Otter, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever known. I feel him chuckle as my breath tickles him as I exhale. Go ahead, the ocean says. Go ahead and ask him. Maybe he’ll save you from drowning.
I think I’ll ignore it, that I will tell him that I’ll ask him something later. When I open my mouth to speak, of course, what I really wanted to say falls out. It’s my curse.
“What did you and Jonah talk about when he called?” I whisper into his neck, and I feel him tense.
“You heard that, huh? I thought you had,” he says, his voice even.
I push off of him, needing to see his face. When I do, it’s smiling weakly at me, and his hand brushes my hair again. “I didn’t mean to,” I say quickly. “I just… shit. I don’t know. I—I wanted to make sure you were okay. I saw the expression on your face when you answered the phone and….” I trail off, unsure of how to continue.
His grin widens, and it almost looks normal again. “You wanted to make sure I was okay? I’m a big boy, Bear. I know how to handle those things.”
I scowl at him, not really meaning it. “I could tell you the same thing about me. That doesn’t stop you from doing it anyways.”
Otter shakes his head. “I know, I know.” He shrugs. “I can’t help it, though.”
“Then let me worry about you,” I tell him seriously. “Stop thinking I’m the only one who can break here.”
He snorts. “Yes, sir. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“So,” I say, raising my eyebrows, “are you going to tell me or what?”
He sighs, ever briefly. “That was the first time I’ve talked to him since I left,” he says. “He’s called a few times and left a couple of messages, but I’ve never called him back. It’s not really fair, I guess, but I didn’t know what to say to him. He’s—he was—a big part of my life. You can’t just wipe somebody completely away and think it won’t have repercussions.”
“Kind of like how we couldn’t do that to each other?” I ask, trying to keep the hopefulness out of my voice.
He shakes his head, and I grow cold. “It’s not like that at all, Bear. You have to want to be rid of something like that to be able to do that. I never wanted to brush you away. Not fully. I told myself I did, and God knows I tried, but it didn’t happen.
“And I’m not saying that’s what I want to do to him; I don’t. I’m not saying that I want to be with him or anything, but when you share as much with a person as we’ve shared, it almost becomes impossible.”
I keep a straight face, but inside there’s a storm brewing over the ocean. Thunder rumbles, and it’s distant, but the winds are blowing again, and I fear it’s bringing the storm inland.
“I think I did love him in a certain way,” he says softly, staring off as if remembering some happy memory. “I think I did as best as I could. But when he called, it was almost like talking to a stranger. I couldn’t think of what to say, how to act. Then he starts asking me when I’m coming home, how much longer I’ll be here. He tells me he thought I just needed a little time away, to work through whatever it is I need to work through. And I felt a little sad then, Bear. I say this not to hurt you but because I want to be honest. I felt a little sad because I knew that I would never consider him my home again. It was like a door had shut and was locked, and I don’t have the key to open it.” He sighs again and rubs my cheek. “I didn’t know how to tell him this, so… I didn’t. I told him that I didn’t want to talk anymore and that I would call him soon.” He looks away again. “I don’t know what I’d say if I did,” he mutters, more to himself than to me.
“What do you want to say to him?” I say slowly, the water warm as it washes around my ankles. I’m starting to wade out, but I can’t stop. The wind picks up and whips briefly through my hair. “What would you say if you could say anything?”
“Honestly?” he asks, and I nod, trying to keep the storm from my eyes. “I would thank him,” he says. “I would thank him for what he has given me over the past couple of years. I would tell him I want nothing more than for him to be happy, like he made me happy. I would tell him that I wish that I could have given him everything he gave me.” He rubs his eyes with his big hand. I kiss his chest and an irrational thought bowls through me, telling me to bite him, to mark him as my own. I’ve never met the man we are speaking about, but I hate him. I hate that he’s been able to share in a part of Otter’s life that I never will. I hate him because I drove Otter to him. I hate him because he doesn’t sound like somebody who should be hated.
“But,” Otter says, “the main thing I would want to tell him is that he shouldn’t wait for me anymore. That looking back, I feel like I was just biding my time. That sounds harsh, I know”—(I actually think it sounds perfectly
fine)—“but it’s the truth. He gave me a lot, but it would have never been enough.” He looks thoughtful as he gazes back down at me. “It would never have been enough,” he tells me,” because it would never have been you.”
“Are you sure that I can be?” I ask hoarsely. “Are you sure I can be enough for you?”
He captures my face in his hands, and once again there’s only him in the world. His eyes flash, and at least for now, I feel the storm recede. The waters dry and the clouds dissipate, and I think it’s because of him.
“Whether I knew it completely or not,” he tells me, “you were the one I compared everything to. You will always be enough because it’s you I’ve always wanted. I still don’t think that any of this is real, that I’ll wake up, and I’ll be in San Diego, and it will be back where it was. Where we haven’t spoken in years, and all I have of you is a picture, and all you have of me is a letter.” His voice becomes soft and thick. “If that happens, if I wake up and none of this is true, I will be on the next flight here to make sure it all becomes real. I will find you. You have to believe me when I say that, Papa Bear.”
“Why, though, Otter? Why do you think that?” I ask him, suddenly needing to be sure, needing him to say it. I know it’s there, lurking on his lips, and even if I can’t say it back, I need to hear him say it, to give me the assurance my heart is aching for. “I’ve never done anything to deserve you,” I say, sniffing. “I chased you away, and you still came back.”
He grins, and it’s the Otter grin. “Why? Why do I think that? Why did I come crawling back, practically begging for forgiveness? I thought you were smarter than that. I thought you knew.”
