Bruno pressed a thick finger against the doorbell button alongside the large door of the townhouse he'd just arrived at. The bear yawned, trailing his other paw over his exposed belly, before a voice came from inside.
"Bruno? T-the door's unlocked, I'm just finishing something up in here."
At the permission granted, the big bear grasped the door's handle and entered the house, his ears just barely grazing the doorframe at the height of his stride. He closed the door behind him, and locked it. "Shouldn't leave your door unlocked, Terry..." He muttered, and turned towards the large mirror on the wall.
Bruno adjusted his jacket, which was cut specifically to cover his arms, back, and chest, but leave his ball-gut exposed. It was fairly standard fashion for bears. It allowed people to appraise their bellies, and the markings thereon.
A dozen simple abstractions of a bear's head laid scattered through the fur of his stomach, varying slightly in size. The ursine smiled fondly, taking a moment to rub over each of them with a low, pleasant rumble.
Turning from his own visiage, Bruno looked at the pictures on the wall. Most of them were of young bears, smiling adoringly. Each of these was a clamshell picture frame. Two of these frames were left open, however, showing a few smaller pictures of another bear cuddling with two humans, one in each collection.
"Huh. Could have sworn Terry had three." The bear headed towards the kitchen, as the air was filled with a smell that set his gut a-rumbling and he could hear an oven door open and close. As Bruno entered the kitchen, he was greeted by the sight of another bear, as tall and round as himself, holding an immense pan of pate choux with silicone mitts over his bear mitts.
Terry was wearing a big, cozy looking knit sweater, which only grew taut over his gut. On the belly were two patches, shaped the same as the markings on Bruno's belly. Above the two, in an arrangement that would have suggested a triangle, there was the faint darkening in the similar shape, as if another patch that had been there for quite some time had been recently removed and it hadn't had the chance to sun-bleach the way the surrounding material had.
The baking bear set down the tray on top of his range and removed the heat-proof mitts, before taking a skewer and starting to punch steam-holes into each of the pate choux. "I trust the way over here was pleasant, Bruno?"
"Which boy did you let go, Terry?" The other ursine spoke his mind with little overture.
Terry started, just managing to not tear open a pate choux instead of just perforate it. He stood up straight. "Not that it's any of your business, but Johnathan's fiancé came to me personally to ask for him back. It seems I'd made their engagement longer than anticipated by over a year, and the holidays are coming up..."
"And you didn't just eat him to unite them? And you call yourself a bear." Bruno teased casually, peeking back out into the hall, and recognizing that one of the closed clamshells had a bear he didn't recognize on the front. "He turned out handsome, though. Tell me that he went home and belly'd his beau, at least?"
"That's between them." Terry huffed, a bit of a blush on his cheeks. "I don't pry into my children's belly-boys unless they share it with me."
Bruno chuckled and turned back to his friend, stroking his belly slowly. "So, I see dessert, but you invited me to lunch?"
The sweater-clad bear perked. "That's right, I'm having that delivered. I wanted to focus on getting these just right."
As Terry spoke, his guest leaned over to look at the pastries, and realized each had been painstakingly made to look like one of the patches, or the markings on the bear's belly. Bruno took the opportunity of getting close to casually tug up his friend's sweater to get a peek at the other bear's belly.
Just like the patches, there were just two markings. However, the markings were far larger than the patches, far larger than any of Bruno's, even.
Terry flushed, "Oy, w-what's that about?"
"If you've got nothing to hide, you shouldn't mind. If I wore this sweater unaltered, I'd definitely be hiding." The jacketed bear chuckled.
Tugging down his sweater, Terry stuck his tongue out. "If you were hiding it, you w-wouldn't be a bear I'd want around my house."
"Granted." Bruno chuckled, affectionately taking the covered belly in both paws and wobbling it heavily. The motion elicited a deep empty rumble. "So, you ordered delivery. Is the deliveryman included?"
Scoffing, the baking bear pulled away and headed towards a pot full of pastry cream. He picked up a piping bag. "You know quite well I need to get to know a man before I'll let him grace my gut."
"I was just saying, you know, since you've got room on your gut now. Best get to a new boy before those two on your waist take up the whole thing." The guest chuckled, wiggling his little nub of a tail as he idly traced along the edges of his markings.
"Y-you just don't value long term connections." Terry pointed with a spatula at the marking his friend was tracing at the moment. "Look, not one of those has been there a month." He huffily started filling the bag with the pastry cream using the spatula.
Bruno guffawed for a good few seconds, patting the counter with one of his big mitts. "You know... You know that humans think a -week- is long-term? They don't see time the way we do."
"Well, they don't have to wait, d-do they?" Finally done filling the piping bag, the baker started to fill the pate choux one at a time. "To them, no matter how long it is, it was a nice long night's sleep."
"And by all rights, it doesn't take longer than that for them to be ready to come out." The broad bear stroked over his belly. "I just really like taking humans for my own, and want to do so often, not one or two times a year. And the reality of the situation is that requires a faster turnover."
Still piping, Terry muttered. "A baker's dozen of one-night stands displayed for the world to see."
Bruno's ears perked up. "I'll have you know that just because I don't hoard them away from one winter to the next, doesn't mean I don't want every single one of my boys. If I didn't feel -anything- then I wouldn't want to eat them."
"Good. So we agree the delivery-boy is off-limits." Terry smirked, his huffiness gone.
His guest blanched, then blushed deeply. "You sneaky bear... if anyone but you had heard me say what I just said..."
"You put up a nice front, Bruno, but you care about your boys." The baker finished filling the pate choux. "As well you should." He came over and rubbed his friend's belly with his paws, trailing a little bit of flour and powdered sugar through the fur over the markings. "They're each precious. I'm glad you know that."
The blush turned from embarrassment to more of a bashful smile, as Bruno reached out and pulled Terry close. "My boys just think it's hot that I'm so blasé about it all. Hard to turn off."
Terry chuckled, squeezing on his friend. "Good to know you can."
The doorbell rang.
Extricating himself from the embrace, Terry straightened out his sweater and headed to answer the door. He unlocked it with a fond smile, and perked at what he saw through the peephole.
On the porch, Johnathan was stroking over his round bear belly, one marking just above the navel. He was talking to a blushing deliveryman, the human carrying an immense heating case with both arms.
The door opened, catching both of their attention. "Johnathan, I wasn't expecting you today!" Terry bounded forward and squeezed onto the younger bear.
"Hey Dad..." Johnathan nuzzled into the elder ursine, his tail-nub practically vibrating.
"And you must be bringing our lunch." The sweater-clad bear gently released his 'son' to address the human. "If I'd known you were coming I would have ordered more." He said in an aside glance to Johnathan.
The deliveryman nodded, blushing still. "Y-yeah. Receipt says you paid over the phone, right?"
Terry smiled. "Yes, yes I did. That package looks heavy, I'll just take that off you." He reached over and casually lifted the immense insolated bag with little effort.
"It must have been fate, me deciding to come visit, Dad." Johnathan grinned.
"Oh?" The older bear was carefully removing his order from the bag, before passing it back to the deliveryman.
"Yeah, Billy here's one of my best friends from school. Lost touch with him but here he is." Johnathan's stomach growled audibly as he looked over the human.
Terry gave a knowing smile as the deliveryman blushed deeper. "Oh. Well, I guess I'll leave you two to that. Come by tomorrow, though, Johnathan. I'll be ready for you and your sweet belly pair by then."
"Thanks, Dad!" The young bear tugged Billy against the curve of his belly just as Terry closed the door.
The deliveryman melted, a blissful smile dominating his face as the blush gradually faded.
Bruno was looking over the Pate choux. Terry wouldn't notice if he snuck one right now, would he? Hearing the door close he backed away from the pastries. "That the food?"
"Mmhmm. And you won't believe it. The deliveryman is taken." Setting down the food and adjusting his sweater, Terry started to sort out the many boxes so they could start to eat the mountainous feast.
"Wait, what?"
womblesfan commissioned me to write a little snippet set in a new setting he's been developing, explained here 
