Page 10 of Bear’s House

The pillow flew across the room.

"I'm up!" JJ announced, sitting bolt upright with his hair going in four different directions. "I'm completely up, I was already up, I've been up for ages."

Daddy looked at him.

"I might have been briefly asleep," JJ admitted. Daddy laughed. I was already at the bathroom door.

I was grateful for my own bathroom. I took a quick shower, made sure my beard was trimmed short and my face clean — the way Daddy liked it — and got dressed for the day.

I thought, while I was getting ready, about the strange chain of events that had landed me here. After high school I enlisted and served for four years. I loved the physical side of it, but by the end of my contract, I knew that environment wasn't for me. I decided to major in physical education, and now I taught it at the same school where JJ taught math. JJ, who was impressively intelligent — a completely different person at work than the chaos monster currently running around the house in dinosaur underwear.

It had been JJ, two years ago, who'd invited me to The Hearth. But before that, the single most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to a human being happened to us: we matched on a dating app for people into age play. Me as a switch, him as a sub. Of course we matched. We talked for a while before figuring out who the other person actually was — which wasn't that hard, because our town in Colorado has about eighty thousand people in it and isn't exactly sprawling. And then, to make it worse, we figured out we worked at the same school.

When he said "Mr. Thomas" — which was what my students called me — I wanted to pass out, die, and relocate to another state, in that order. But I couldn't just quit my job, so I had to show up the next day and see him in the cafeteria and pretend everything was normal. Neither of us said a word about it at first.

I should have recognized right then that this kid had no sense whatsoever — because we kept talking on the app anyway. I mean, he kept talking to me and forcing me to talk back; otherwise, he’d follow me around at school asking me why I was ghosting him. The truth was I'd genuinely liked him, despite everything. Once the shock wore off, we kept going, and eventually he invited me to check out The Hearth. The rest is history.

I was thinking about all of that while I listened to him running through the house, shouting that he wasn't going to wear the clothes Daddy had picked out, that he was going to choose his own, and that he also wasn't eating any breakfast that wasn't cereal. I was seriously reconsidering several of my life choices in that moment. He was in nothing but green dinosaur boxer briefs — because most of JJ's things were green — running laps through the house like that was going to solve anything.

"JJ, I'm going to count to three," Daddy said, in that calm that was so much worse than any raised voice.

JJ laughed and kept running. Meanwhile, Mikey was quietly and obediently putting on the clothes Daddy had set out for him, looking perfectly content about the whole thing.

I went downstairs to the kitchen. Just another normal morning. I made toast with eggs and bacon — enough for everyone — set the table, and Mikey appeared a few minutes later, already dressed and ready.

"Want help?" he asked.

I nodded, and he smiled. Mikey was genuinely sweet. The two of us put the plates out — the little ones for Mikey and JJ, regular plates for Daddy and me — and brought everything to the table with a pitcher of orange juice.

From the living room, we could hear Daddy and JJ. Based on the sounds, Daddy had finally caught him. I heard the smacks, one after another, and JJ yelling — more performance than anything else. Then quiet. Then about five minutes of calm.

JJ appeared in the dining room with puffy eyes, rubbing his backside with one hand. He was now fully dressed: jeans and a button-down shirt that Daddy had picked out for him. He looked good, actually. Put-together, like he wasn't being a complete disaster.

"Finally, everyone's here," Daddy said, sitting down at the head of the table. "Did you make coffee, Sawyer?"

"I did," I said.

"Thank you. Good boy — Daddy's proud of you."

I lived for those words. Genuinely, that was one of my favorite things in the world. I felt like a happy dog being praised by its owner — if I had a tail, it would have been going.

We started eating. JJ demolished everything in front of him with that energy of his.

"Dude, this is so good," he told me.

I was pleased, even if I didn't show it much. He was a terrible brat, but he was also genuinely sweet underneath all of it.

We finished eating. Mikey headed to his car — he had different hours at the bank — already in that adult posture, stepping out of the version of himself that existed inside this house, where we got to just be ourselves.

"See you guys later," he said.

"Have a good day, sweetheart," Daddy said, kissing his cheek.

Daddy was the only one of us who worked from home — his investments and his tech company had bought him that freedom. Lucky him. He came from money.

JJ and I drove in together. Everyone at school knew we were partners, and nobody said anything — homophobia wasn't something that flew there. We were extremely professional at work, and our colleagues didn't know anything about our preferences. And definitely not that we were polyamorous — I figured that was still a few steps too far for the entire school staff to process at once.

It was JJ's turn to drive, but he looked at me with those wide, innocent eyes of his that got him out of absolutely everything.