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He pulls me tighter against his body and breathes me in again. “I never….” His words get caught in his throat, and I feel him shake behind me, and it’s like the earthquakes have followed us here, in this safe place, but then he stops and clears his throat, but it still does nothing to hide the wetness pressed against the back of my head. “I never wanted to be the cause of this. To have to make you feel like you needed to hide in here. I told myself a long time ago that if you or the Kid ever needed to come in here, I’d be right there with you because it’s my job to protect you both now. You’ve done enough all these years, and I promised myself that I was going to be the one to keep you both safe from now on.”
He squeezes me tighter, and I want to tell him everything, that I love him and only him and that there will never be anyone else for me, that if only he’d hold me like he’s doing now for the rest of our lives, it still wouldn’t be long enough.
But he continues: “And now you’re here because of me, and I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed you, that I’ve broken my promise.” A light kiss behind my ear, lingering and sweet. “And I didn’t think I could do that, that I could be the one to make you scared. I’m sorry,” he says, his voice cracking, my big, strong Otter, my unflappable man, is breaking behind me, his arms starting to shake again. “I’m sorry if you thought I doubted you.
I’m sorry if I made you doubt yourself. I never meant for that. I never meant for any of this. The thought… the thought of losing you terrifies me, Bear.
It’s not that I don’t trust you… but, Christ, you’re so fucking young, and this is all so new to you. What if there is something better out there for you?
What if I’m just holding you back? I could never forgive myself if I kept you from being happy, from finding out who you are, no matter if I thought I knew who you already were.”
He sighs in my hair, his voice stronger, another soft kiss. “I love you, Papa Bear. Like I’ve never loved anyone else in my life. I will always love you, no matter what happens in the future, no matter what has happened in the past. You are my family now, you and Ty. You know you’ve always been a part of our family with my parents and Creed, and you both still are.
But now you belong to me, now you’re both mine, and I get to call you my own, and I promise to remind you of that every day, to make sure you know that I could never want anything other than you, that I will support you no matter what. It’s because of you that I am the way I am. If I’m a good person, if people see me as such, it’s because you made me that way. And I promise to spend the rest of my life making sure you know that.”
His voice broke at times, the words sometimes rushed and sometimes halting. His voice was low and rough, the words building up steam until the last came out breathlessly harsh in my ear. His grip across my chest grew in strength until it felt like I was trapped in a vise, fused into the chest behind me. I could feel his groin against my ass, and I could almost resist the urge to press back against him, grinding myself into him. But it was his words, his words that negated all the rest, his words that caused me to gasp into his arm, that let the tears fall from my eyes in a hot rush all because—
you belong to me
—while I knew how he felt, I’d never heard him say it with such clarity, and I’m annihilated, my heart shredded, and body weak and loose. He’s waiting for me to say something, anything, and Christ, I’m dragging this out, but I can’t even think, much less process any coherency that would be remotely close to the gift he’s just given me.
Well, it says, chuckling. You could always ask him to marry you. That’d top his speech for sure. Could you imagine the look on his face? Four words, Bear. Four words is all it would take. It might not solve everything, but don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it, that it’s not there at the back of your mind like a gnat buzzing in your ear. You see him and you wish and you hope and you pray, but you don’t name it. You never do. It has a name, though. You could give it one and finally admit to yourself what you really want.
I don’t… I… I can’t….
It sighs. Of course you can’t. I don’t know why I would’ve thought otherwise. Give him what you can, Bear, and hope it will be enough.
Otter starts to tense behind me, and I’ve let my silence drag on too long.
I’ve gotten so lost in my own neurosis that he’s taken it for rejection, that I won’t speak because there’s nothing left to say. There is, there’s so much to say, so many words that one more eloquent than myself should be saying to him, but he’s stuck with me, for better or worse—
in sickness and in health for as long we both shall live amen amen amen
—and I turn over, his arm sliding off my waist, facing him, still using his other arm as a pillow, and he’s watching me, the gold-green wet and bright. He must see something in my eyes, because his shoulders start to relax, and when I tell him that there will only be him for me, he looks relieved and his body starts to shake again, and I pull his face to mine and kiss his cheeks, his lips, his forehead and hair, and then I cradle his head against my chest, and he floats away in that relief, but it’s okay, because I’ve got him. He’s attached to me, a part of me, and there’s no way I’m letting go.
We breathe in and out. And for the moment, we live.
6.
Where Bear Contemplates
Brotherhood
“WHERE were you last night?” the Kid asks Otter the next morning, a look of suspicion on his face, eyeing the both of us in the kitchen.
“I had to work late,” Otter says cheerfully as he comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, nuzzling against my neck. I lean back against his chest as he hugs me tightly, whispering something I can’t quite make out, but it doesn’t matter. I get the meaning. I understand the point of it. We might not be fixed, but we’re on the mend, like stopping a leak with duct tape.
“And that’s all?” the Kid asks. “Nothing else going on that I need to know about?”
Otter squeezes my ass before he sits down at the table with the Kid.
“Nothing else you need to know about,” he says with a grin, reaching up to ruffle the Kid’s hair.
“Otter!” the Kid complains. “It just took me ten minutes to do my hair so that people would take me seriously when I walked into class this morning! Now I have to go redo it, and it’ll make me late. I’ll get a tardy mark on my permanent record, and then I won’t be able to get into an Ivy League school, and I’ll be stuck here with you two for the rest of my life while I wallow in my own self-pity and work at McDonald’s!”
“Bullshit,” I tell him as I hand him his bowl of yogurt and granola. “You wouldn’t work at McDonald’s if your life depended on it.”
“I feel bad for those people,” he says with complete seriousness. “Could you imagine having to listen to the bovine screams all day? I would think it would be enough to drive a person crazy.”
