3. Dennis #2
“And you’re still naked,” Dennis finished, wiping a hand down his face in exhaustion. “What the fuck is my life?”
“I bet your life is actually pretty awesome,” Bjorn said reassuringly.
“I – whoops, hold on, I feel it coming.” And before he could get out another word, an enormous brown bear had appeared in front of Dennis.
It immediately dropped to four feet, forcing Dennis back a step, and snuffled at him. If bears could smile, this one was.
“Motherfucker,” Dennis muttered as he noticed a loaf of bread crushed under one front paw.
It must have gotten knocked off the counter during Bjorn’s change.
“Give me that.” And he started trying to pry the bread out from under an uncooperative paw as big as his head.
It was tipped by three-inch-long claws, which flexed when he made contact.
It belatedly occurred to Dennis that his face was within easy chomping range of Bjorn’s teeth and his hand could easily be impaled by those claws.
He tensed, preparing to move away, when the bear made a mournful sound and lifted his bread-holding paw.
Was that…an apology for squishing his bread?
He didn’t actually know how much of Bjorn in his current form was animal instinct and how much was human brainpower. “Can you…hear me?” he ventured.
Bjorn cocked his head to the side and grunted what sounded like an affirmative, then tried to step back and bumped loudly into the kitchen island, rattling the cabinetry.
He huffed and shuffled to the side, then tried again to back up.
This time, he gained a few feet before flopping down on the floor like an oversized dog.
Dennis stared down at this man…shifter…who was supposedly his mate.
What was he supposed to do with an eight-foot, thousand-pound bear in his kitchen?
In his cabin? In his bed? Wait, would Bjorn want to sleep as a bear?
He wasn’t sure the bed could take that. “You’re in the way,” he said sullenly instead of voicing any of these questions.
Bjorn looked around at the clear kitchen floor around him, then back at Dennis. He snorted.
“Don’t back-talk me,” Dennis snapped. “You’re taking up space, and this cabin is not that big to begin with. Change back to human.”
Bjorn’s head went to the side again, and the muscled body tensed for a second, but nothing happened.
Oh, right, that thing about shifting going involuntary after meeting your fated mate.
He wondered how long he’d be stuck with a bear.
While the bear was gratifyingly quiet compared to human Bjorn, on the other hand he couldn’t debate with the bear which of them got the bed.
Grumbling to himself, Dennis pulled out his phone and checked again to see if the cabin’s owner had answered his ping.
Nothing, dammit. This guy was getting a one-star review, between the double-booking and the lack of responsiveness.
“Still no reply,” he told Bjorn, who gave a bear-ish shrug.
“Ugh. Go...” He waved a hand toward the great room. “Go lay by the fireplace or something.”
Obediently, Bjorn clambered to his feet and crossed to the…was that a bearskin rug in front of the hearth? Oh, shit. The bear studied the bearskin, sniffed it, and huffed out a breath, then collapsed down on it dramatically.
“Drama queen,” Dennis muttered. “It’s probably fake anyway.” He put away the last few grocery items and then sighed. Now what was he supposed to do?
Well, he supposed, whatever he’d have been doing if he was here alone.
At least now he didn’t have Bjorn chattering in his ear, so he should take advantage of the silence.
He walked to the bed nook and pulled open his backpack, retrieving his Kindle, then debated whether to sit on the bed or the couch.
He decided he didn’t really want to draw attention to the bed, so he crossed to the couch and plopped down, tapping the Kindle’s power button and waiting for it to load his latest read, a non-fiction book about experimental archaeology.
He was just getting into the facts it was presenting when he was disturbed by a scratching noise, followed by a groan.
He looked up. The bear - and the bearskin - had migrated a foot closer to him, he was pretty sure, and Bjorn was giving him those puppy-dog - bear-cub?
- eyes again. “I’m not reading out loud to you,” he said, then felt stupid for assuming that was what was wanted. “I mean…”
The bear climbed slowly and ponderously to his feet and sidled up to the couch, then dropped his muzzle into Dennis’s lap.
Dennis was frankly pretty unsure whether he was okay with having that maw so close to his dick, so he gave it a push, but failed to move it.
The puppy-dog eyes intensified. Bjorn sat down like a dog, his head still on Dennis’s thighs.
“Fuck. You wouldn’t like this book anyway,” he protested. “It’s non-fiction.”
Bjorn grunted inquiringly.
“It’s about experimental archaeology. People running experiments to determine what people in history wore, how they smelled, what historical foods that no longer exist were like…”
Another grunt, and this one, he would swear sounded interested. Could a grunt sound interested? It was just a grunt.
“Fine. Fine.” And he started reading the fictionalized excerpt in the book about a Bronze Age hunter looking for game. Before long, he’d lost himself in the book and didn’t even realize he was still reciting.
After who knew how long, the bear in his lap tensed, shivered, and suddenly turned back into a naked man kneeling at his feet.
Dennis’s dick twitched traitorously at the concept and he prayed Bjorn hadn’t caught that.
He raised his knee slightly, putting pressure on Bjorn’s ribs. “Up. I’m not reading to a naked man.”
“But I was enjoying it!” Bjorn protested. “It’s a really interesting book.”
Dennis gave him a flat look. “You can get your own copy. Get up.”
Bjorn huffed, but stood in one smooth motion that Dennis wasn’t sure he could have emulated. He had a flash of satisfaction at the obedience before he realized that he was now face-to-dick with the naked man. Fuck. “And put on some pants,” he snapped.
Bjorn shrugged. “They’ll just shred next time I shift.”
Dennis growled. “And how many times do you think you’ll do that today?”
Another shrug. “I haven’t the slightest idea. This is the first time I’ve met my mate, so…” He let his voice trail off meaningfully.
“Goddamn it.” He considered insisting on pants nevertheless, but then he imagined Bjorn bursting through every pair of pants he owned and then ending up naked anyway. Probably better to let him keep them for when he left and needed to drive home. “Fine. But back the fuck up.”
Bjorn looked down and seemed to belatedly realize the position they were in. He grinned. “Admit it, you like what you see.”
Dennis rolled his eyes and directed a smack at Bjorn’s hip. “Back.”
“Fiiine.” Bjorn turned and walked to the armchair, plopping down in it with a sigh. “Man, that floor is fine as a well-cushioned bear, but it’s hard on human knees.”
“Not my problem.”
“Well, you were the one who told me to lay down on it, actually.”
“You -” Well, he hadn’t had to obey. Dennis spiked a frustrated hand through his hair again.
“Ugh. You know what, I’m gonna take a walk.
I’ll be back…eventually.” He needed to get out of here before he…
did something. He wasn’t entirely sure what that something would be, but he was betting it was undesirable for at least one of them.
Without waiting for a reply from Bjorn, he stood from the couch and strode out the front door. Just as the door was swinging shut behind him, he heard an aborted noise that might have been the beginning of “No”, but he ignored it and kept walking. He couldn’t deal with this.
***
After walking - ok, stomping - around behind the cabin for ten minutes and not really feeling any better, he realized he needed to bring out the big guns and pulled out his phone.
Myrah picked up on the third ring, just as Dennis was beginning to think she wouldn’t.
“What’s up? It’s the middle of the day, boo.
You never call me in the middle of the day. ”
Dennis groaned reflexively. “Don’t call me ‘boo’. You know this. And sorry. I know you have meetings and stuff.”
“Eh, if I’d been in a meeting I wouldn’t have picked up,” his ex-wife verbally shrugged. “And I’ll call you ‘boo’ all I want. I got it in the divorce.”
He snorted. Their divorce had been so amicable that people had kept asking them why, why they were splitting up.
Neither of them had felt the need to inform people that Myrah had come to the realization that she couldn’t be happy with a man, any man; they’d figured it would become clear when Myrah brought home a girlfriend someday.
That day hadn’t happened yet - Myrah claimed she was still finding herself - but since the split, they’d stayed the best friends they’d always been.
Case in point, she was who he was calling in this moment of enormous what-the-fuckery.
“You got shit in the divorce,” he shot back, nudging his thought train back into the background. “I definitely didn’t sign any papers assigning you ‘boo’. Snookums.”
“Ewww.” Myrah made a shuddering noise. “Do not call me that.”
“Truce?” Dennis offered, to which Myrah huffed but agreed.
“Fiiiine. Now, what’s going on that you’re calling me in the middle of the day?”
He sighed. “I have had the weirdest fucking day. The. Weirdest.”
“Oh?” Now she sounded intrigued. He was glad someone was having a good time with his angst, because he sure wasn’t. “Tell me all!”
“So…” How did he even start this tale? “You know how I rented a cabin to take vacation for the next couple weeks?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m here. And I was taking a walk around the property and I came across this…” He huffed. “This sounds ridiculous. I can’t believe I’m about to utter this sentence.”