It bothered Wyatt that Carter obviously had a longer memory of their relationship, before and during, than he did. To him, there had just always been Carter–his cub. Beyond that was just fuzz–it didn’t exist, not in the same way this did. It wasn’t true anymore, and so it wasn’t worth bothering to even remember. But now, their truth was fading already, and after feeling so solid, that fleeting realization was, if Wyatt was honest with himself, terrifying. It was always terrifying. He hated changing, he always had. That was why he threw himself into every new life as hard as he could, and tried his best to forget everything before. It was…easier, than trying to grapple with your own transitory nature–that your body would go on, but it would look entirely different, and everything else would simply evaporate into the void. Some bears, he knew, suffered from such anxiety that they almost never left their private spaces. Some couples, so deeply in love, they were walled in with each other, terrified to leave lest one of them disappear forever. But what kind of life was that? As unsettling as this was, it was still better to live–and you could live so much! Losing yourself was daunting, but then he thought of Levi, and his heart swelled again. There would always be love, at least, even if he was a stranger to him now.
“Let’s go out tonight,” Carter said into the silence, and Wyatt jerked from his thoughts.
“What?” Wyatt said, “Really? I don’t…know.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun! You and your daddy dive bars, let’s go somewhere fun! You never wanted to go to a club with me, but you won’t be able to help yourself.”
It did sound fun, actually, and he smiled.
“See? You’re thinking about it. No, ‘I’ll just stay home with a book and smoke my pipe,’ for you anymore. ” Carter said, mocking his daddy’s low baritone, “You’re a new man!”
Wyatt looked shocked at Carter’s words, which confused the cub, and Wyatt hauled himself up from the table and went to his study, threw open the door, but the wall where his pipe rack had been–it was gone. All of them, gone, overnight. He’d had fifty pipes in that collection, meticulously cared for, all of them with a history, all of them with a story, all of them important, and just like that–gone. “My…my pipes. I lost my pipes…”
A smoke in the morning after breakfast, a smoke in the afternoon, and a smoke (or sometimes two, or three) in the evening. That was his routine, he had done it for years–he’d felt like he’d done it for years. It had been such a comfort, and he hadn’t even noticed it waning away. He hadn’t had a chance to even say goodbye to them all. The worst part was that he didn’t even really miss them–he wasn’t craving a smoke, but a hole had opened up, and looking around him, how many other things would fall into it? He turned and he gripped Carter tight, sobbing, “I don’t want to lose you, Carter, I don’t want to lose all of this! I…I know I have to go, but I…I can’t stand the thought of not missing you.”
Carter stood there, holding Wyatt, awkward and uncertain. He was usually the one crumbling emotionally, stressing about a bear who turned him down, horrified by some strange kink he’d done, nervous about himself and who he was–he turned to Wyatt for everything. Holding him now, a smaller him, a younger him–it wasn’t how it was supposed to work, but who else did he have, at the moment? Who else could understand it? He let him cry, trying to find words that might fix it, but there was nothing to say. Eventually, Wyatt either exhausted himself, or managed to bottle most of it back up, and he pulled away from Carter and wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry. I…it just caught me off guard is all.”
Carter nodded.
“And I’m sorry about what I said, I don’t want this to be hard. I don’t…you don’t owe me anything, you know that, but I want you to know, while I’m still here, how much you meant to me, how happy you made me, even if I didn’t know how to say it sometimes. Just having you here made me feel so alive! And Levi, I…I barely know him, and it’s so terrifying. I want to be with him so badly, but I’m so scared of who I might become. I can’t…control myself around him, I can’t stop him. I don’t want to stop him.”
“You…don’t have to forget me, you know.”
Wyatt leaned into Carter’s chest. “No–that’s how it always is for me, I throw myself into it. I never look back. Hell, you remember who I was better than I do! This time next week…I might not even recognize you if we passed by on the street. Everything feels so real, and then it doesn’t. I hate this, I should just leave, I can’t do this to you, this is cruel.”
He tried to pull away, but Carter tugged him back in. “This isn’t cruel. I want you for one night. One night, and you can go tomorrow. But we’re going out tonight, and we’re going to have some fun, alright? I want to see what you’re like, as a cub. I have to admit I’m curious–that’s a side of you I honestly didn’t expect.”
“What if you don’t like me? What if I don’t like me?”
Carter laughed. “Let’s not worry too much about that, alright? Now come on–I can tell neither of us slept well last night. Now come on, let’s take a disco nap, get ready, and go out.”
He could tell Wyatt was still hesitant, but when he tugged on his hand, he followed him towards the bedroom–which thankfully still held their king sized mattress. Wyatt climbed in, but it didn’t…feel right, somehow. Like he was sleeping in a stranger’s bed, and he realized it was because the indent he’d worn in over the years was gone–there was just one divot in the center. Before he could feel terrible about it, Carter pulled him close to spoon, but found himself in the position of little spoon for the first time he could recall–still, there was a comfort in it, and Wyatt drifted off almost immediately, with Carter following soon after.
Bracken's Corner 