Yes, you read that title right! This is a new “City of Bears” story. However, it is not a continuation of the previous arcs I was writing–I’m going to be trying something new with this instead. If you’d like to know more about the process and thought behind it, you can find out more in the metawriting post from yesterday.
No one ever believes they’re going to change again. They settle into something, into someone, into themselves, and everything just feels exactly how it should be. In the happiest times they can remember experiencing, they ask themselves, “How could I ever turn my back on this? How could I ever possibly want things to be different?” Memories deepen and grow, their entire life forming and calcifying, even as everything else fades away into distant impossibility. Everything before this was just a wan faximile of happiness; no, this is the real thing, this is true. But truth is slippery, and no matter what anyone in the city tells themselves, love is just a stranger in waiting. Life can feel stone certain for the longest time, until a moment when it cracks, and then you don’t seem to know anything at all anymore. You don’t know yourself, you don’t know the person you swear you’ve loved for years. The world is suddenly new, and as terrifying as it is, it’s a rush–and a rush everyone craves, whether they deny it or not.
Wyatt had tried to deny it for as long as he could, when it first happened, but he knew–everyone knows–that denial couldn’t stop it. Changing wasn’t something you could stop. There’s that sudden, self-shattering moment, and after that, all one can do is watch the entire facade crumble away as something else rises to replace it. He got into a fight with his cub, Carter, one evening, a few days after it happened, when he misremembered how long they had been together. Carter insisted that their ten year anniversary was coming up–he wanted to plan an extra special night with his daddy at a deluxe hotel downtown–but Wyatt told him it had only been six, and to him, it felt like six–it was six. They fell out of sync rapidly after that, and Wyatt had to confess what had happened. He had met someone, and he was changing–and soon, he would have to leave.
The look on his cub’s face, when he’d told him that, was gut wrenching. He wanted to protect the boy, he’d sworn he’d always be there for him, that he’d always be his daddy. Wyatt had believed it, too–he’d always told himself, when the time came, that surely it would be Carter who would change, not him. His cub was flighty and fickle, he could never seem to settle on anything for very long, before growing tired of it and moving onto something else. He had different facial hair every week, and different colored hair every other day, it seemed, but no matter what changed on the surface, Wyatt had always been able to know it was him…but looking at him then, he realized he didn’t know him anymore–not like he had. But he wasn’t supposed to be the one to change! His boy would find someone, and he would have this grand epiphany, and Wyatt would help him change, with a tear in his eye of course, but happy to have had his cub for as long as he did–but neither of them had imagined it like this, fighting over memories, Wyatt leaving Carter in tears, abandoning him and running across town to Levi’s apartment so he can feel safe, so he can feel like everything is going to just be alright in the arms of his daddy.
His daddy–what a fucking surprise that had been. Wyatt–white haired, three hundred pounds, claiming to be sixty-six (even though everyone knew that age was all a matter of state of mind) he had found himself a daddy. Levi was middle aged, salt and pepper, mostly muscle, smelled like the worksite he spent his days at, and when he and Wyatt had started chatting in that bar that night, the last thing Wyatt had imagined might happen was Levi leading him into the backroom, reducing him to some slender, twenty something muscle cub before fucking his brains out onto the floor, into a massive puddle of cum larger than any he’d ever seen before in his life. He’d sworn it would be a one time thing when he’d gone home, back to his usual self after the night’s fun, but the change was already stirring in him. He knew it, and there was nothing to be done about it.
Levi had done the right thing–he’d told Wyatt to turn right back around and go sort things out with his cub, properly. Wyatt, unsure of himself for the first time in what felt like ages, asked Levi to come along, to help him out, to justify it all somehow, but Levi refused. “This is between the two of you,” he said, “Sort your things out together, find whatever closure you can, and the next time you come here, you’d best be ready to move in and move on, got it?”
Wyatt agreed, and returned home, where he found Carter at the kitchen table, crying. When Carter looked at him, as he came into the room, the confusion in his eyes was unexpected, but Wyatt discovered, a bit later, what had been so odd to his cub. After all, Wyatt doubted Carter had ever seen his daddy with color in his hair, but when he looked in the mirror, about half of the color had returned to him, his hairline pushing an inch forward. He looked to be in his fifties now, and the change was accelerating, and it hurt to see it right there in front of him. He did love Carter still, but his heart was aching for Levi all the same, a constant, total desire with no roots, but more force than Wyatt could ever hope to resist. They had, at most, a couple of days, but more than likely, by tomorrow, he’d be someone new–a stranger to them both.
Bracken's Corner 