The Bear’s Mail Order Menage

Fortunately, Andrew wasn’t in the least bit afraid of him, and he knew to to jump back to avoid the flailing, angry waking process. Now, thirty minutes after, he was still looking dazed and confused with messy black hair and red-rimmed eyes full of confusion. Not that he would have taken the idea any better had he been wide-awake. That seemed unlikely. Andrew was tempted to just smack him around a little bit until he folded under the pressure, but he sensed that might backfire. Delicacy might be the best policy. Or at least civility.

“You make it seem like I’m suggesting we order a cadaver. If that’s even a thing. Is it?”

“Andrew!”

“Sh*t, I’m only joking! Don’t have a stroke, ok? You know, for twenty-five, you sure do act like an old man. Do you ever plan on cutting loose a little?”

“Alright, but cadavers. Gross, man. Seriously.”

“Right, but you know that’s not what I meant. How about your thoughts on my actual idea?”

Josh finally got out of his big brass bed and padded over to his fridge, cursing as he tripped over the edge of a fireplace he walked by every single day. He threw open the door, pulled out a half full carton of milk and promptly drank down the entire thing. He tossed the carton aside, let out a massive belch, and headed straight back to his bed. Once he was safely under the covers again he turned his attention back to Andrew, looking only slightly less like a zombie than he had before the drink.

“Jesus, Josh. Could you be any more sexy? It’s a wonder you aren’t married to a supermodel already.”

“Ha. You’re fu*king hilarious. Now, do you want to tell me a little bit more about your plan? Or should I just kick you out right now so I can go back to sleep?”

Andrew climbed onto the edge of the bed, kicking at Josh’s feet and perching agilely on the bed’s footboard. At least he had Josh laughing now, so that was a step in the right direction. Baby steps, right? It was the best he could hope for, given the particulars of the plan.

“Sure, don’t mind if I do. You’ve watched TV before, yes? Maybe caught a rerun of Law and Order or one of those other fifty crime solving shows that play on a constant loop?”

“Yep, just like every other red blooded American with basic cable. What’s your point?”

“Well, all of those shows, at some point, has an episode or two with a mail-order bride, right?”

“Um, I guess, but is that an actual thing? You’ve got to be sh*tting me. That’s just for TV. Nobody does that kind of thing in real life. That can’t even be legal!”

Andrew laughed and stood, stretching languidly and beginning to pace the creaky wood floors of the apartment that was, without question, a thousand times nicer than his. He was getting energized now, starting to come into his element. There was absolutely no doubt that he could be charismatic when he wanted to. That went for women and men, strangers and friends.

 Josh knew him better than almost anyone, but he could still work his charm when he wanted to. It was something he just gave off, like a pheromone. Cali had always called it his super power, his source of strength. He hoped there was at least a little bit of truth to that because he was going to need his not insignificant powers of persuasion to get what he wanted this time.

“But it is, my friend, I assure you, it is. Would I ever ask you to do something that was actually illegal?”

“Really?” Josh said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, “You really want to go down that road? What about that time with the train? You remember that?”

“Ok, ok,” Andrew said with a devilish grin and hands held up in an act of contrition, “there was that time. But no other times, right?”

“None that I can remember, although that might not mean much.”

“Right. So we’ll go with no other times. So believe me when I say, it’s not illegal. It’s just not common.”

“So people actually do this. Like, people other than serial killers.”

“They do, and not just people out there in the wide world. People have done it here, Josh. They’ve done it in Charlotte.”

“Are you for real?”

“Yes, I’m for real. There are people in other countries who aren’t as close minded as people around here and so when people here want something new, something different, it’s a viable option. Those women are just looking for something better than what they have. Someone’s going to pick them off of a website one way or the other and they’ll wind up somewhere in the States. The thing is, they might not wind up with people who will treat them as well as we will.”

“Is that so?”

Andrew could hear the disbelief in Josh’s voice and he honestly couldn’t blame him. To bring a woman to live with them from halfway across the world was an unusual enough idea, never mind the fact that they would be sharing her. That was also not an unheard of idea. Polyamory was a real thing. He had even watched a documentary on it, albeit by accident. So there was a precedent, but it wasn’t the norm and the norm was something Josh seemed to be more and more interested in.

So much so that, lately, Andrew had started to wonder if he wanted to be a shifter at all. God forbid he become those shifters that completely denied his true nature. Andrew would go to great lengths to make sure that didn’t happen.

“I know you think I’m full of sh*t, but I’m actually not. I watched something about it. These girls are desperate to make it over here.  They’ll come even if it isn’t safe and sometimes some pretty sh*tty things can happen to them. If we brought a girl here, she would have a good life, right? We could keep her safe. We would take care of her and if and when things ran their course we would still take care of her, for as long as she wanted. It’s not such a bad deal, is it?”

“And we’d share her?”

“Why not? We’ve always shared everything else, haven’t we? It would be interesting. It would be something different. I get it if it’s too out of the box for you. It just seemed, I don’t know, the idea hit me and it seemed right somehow. Does that make sense?”

Andrew fully expected Josh to give him a resounding “hell no,” but to his surprise he was actually nodding his head. Slowly, but it was still a nod. This was going to work. It was really going to work, Andrew thought.

“But where would we tell people she came from?”

“Wherever she wanted us to say she came from. She wouldn’t be a prisoner or anything. She still has a mind of her own, right?”

“Right. Sure, I mean of course she does. I don’t know. Do you think this is something we could actually do?”

“Sure I do. Why else would I have suggested it if I didn’t?”

“Ok, then what do we do first?”

Andrew grinned, his eyes flashing and his muscles vibrating with excitement. He was hooked. He sounded like he was still on the fence, but Andrew knew Josh well enough to know that underneath it all, he was already on board with the plan.

“First, we make our way to the world wide web. That’s where we’ll find who we’re looking for. I guess we’ll have to choose a location.”

“A location?”

“A location. Where we’re interested in looking for a girl.”

“Russia” Josh replied so quickly you would have thought the whole thing had been his idea. That earned him another raised eyebrow and his face turned a bright, deep red. Oh, he was on board, alright. This was going to happen.

“Alright, brother, then Russia it is. Let’s get to looking, shall we?”

Josh nodded and the two of them made their way to the computer across the room. They were entrenched in this thing now, for better or worse. Andrew had no clue where it would lead them, but at least it would be different. And thank god for that.