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‘Hey, buddy.’
The voice slid gently through the muzziness of being half awake. Ross wiped his eyes of sleep, noting the soft rug beneath his cheek and the gentle light of predawn. So he had fallen asleep then, eventually. Not for long, but he took what he could get these days. Not in a bed, but it was better than nothing.
Butch ran a warm hand softly (always softly, and since when did he deserve soft? He was a wild animal, a liability, something rabid, not something to be loved gently, cared for, and the age-old bitterness was rising acid through his chest up to his mouth until it was soothed back down with another stroke-) through his hair.
‘You fell asleep on the floor again.’
‘What an acute observation.’ Ross muttered, mouth fumbling with a tongue it hadn’t been sure would be present. He’d started to wake up not knowing where the human parts ended and the bear parts began again. ‘Sorry, I’m being a dick.’ He yawned, top lip pulled back to display sharper than human teeth. ‘Yeah, I fell asleep on the floor. What about it?’
‘We have a bed you’re very welcome in, you know?’ The tone was teasing, but care laid its foundations.
Ross grimaced, sitting up and pulling the multicoloured knitted blanket he’d taken from their sofa around his shoulders. Wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, goosebumps raised along his arms and legs. If he got too cold, he could shift. ‘I wouldn’t want to put you through that,’ he said, laughing thinly. ‘Would probably break the bed, anyway.’
He’d found that out the hard way, bounding cub-happy up to someone still in bed and putting two large paws down. The ensuing crack and burning shame still stung.
An arm curled over his shoulders, tugging him into sharing body heat. ‘You could just stay human, right?’
And Butch was usually irritatingly perceptive, had understood Ross’s original concerns about sharing a bed as soon as they came to mind-
(‘What if, you know, you want to, like, fuck? I don’t really want to be a third wheel for that.’
He’d run a sweaty hand through his hair, afraid that question would be the tipping point where he’d be out of the gentle warmth of their lives and back to the familiar cold of wildness. Damn his impulsive questioning, he should’ve just said no, because beds weren’t places for animals like him, were they?
Butch shrugged. Ross had deemed him more approachable on the subject than Amado, but it still wasn’t a fun talk. ‘We don’t really-‘
Ross eagerly cut him off. ‘Cool, great, fine, yeah, forget I said anything. I’ll be in the bathroom for a bit.’
He let water scald him until he felt human enough for it.)
-but this was something he hadn’t clocked yet.
‘No.’ was the flat answer, no compromise.
Amado came through the door then, sitting to the other side of Butch. Ross was glad. He didn’t want to feel trapped for this conversation. ‘But you were human just now.’ Butch said, fairly reasonably.
‘He doesn’t know about Bear, hermano.’ Amado said to Ross, seeing the building irritation.
When Butch tilted his head, all confused puppy just learning the world, Ross shut his eyes and sighed. ‘Bear is essentially a manifestation of my instincts I developed when I was spending pretty much all of my time as a bear. He was an older brother up until I got past about sixteen and got older than him. He’s usually happy to just sit and relax, but he gets louder either when I’m a bear a lot or there’s some instinct thing he wants me to do.’
That didn’t explain the fact that he was almost always terrified, and sometimes took over completely. But those were private details, up until Bear inevitably wanted to hibernate or get out claws and teeth because something reminded him of the project.
The arm around him squeezed lightly, and Ross let it. ‘Okay,’ Butch said, slow and measured. ‘Why won’t he let you sleep in the bed?’
His tongue ran across his teeth. ‘Because he doesn’t like sleeping with other people if he’s human.’ Ross muttered. ‘Except for very specific people he decided about seven years ago and refuses to change.’
‘Okay,’ Amado replied. ‘So, what do you want to do?’
Ross stood up, cracking his back. He then tipped forward until his newly appeared paws met the floor and curled up tightly. Difficult conversations had never been his forte, and hiding sometimes made them go away. Devastatingly, this one didn’t go away.
A hand tangled in his fur. Amado, he recognised, as the tug of plaiting short fur reached him. ‘You haven’t decided?’
Well, time to lay his cards out on the table. Telepathically to both of them, he growled ‘I’m terrified I’ll wake up from a nightmare and maul you both.’
Twin replies met his ears.
From Butch, ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’
From Amado, ‘Okay.’
One had seen him at an assumed worst, and Amado had seen him half feral. There were some experiences you didn’t forget.
‘I might like a dog bed, a big one. Me and-,’ he breathed for a moment. ‘I used to have one. My sleeping is weird because bears are crepuscular but humans and albatrosses and walruses are diurnal and I wouldn’t want you to have to deal with that.’
Neither pressed him on the pause. ‘We can get you one, hermano.’
‘We care about you, we want you to feel comfortable.’
Ross chuffed a breath gently into someone’s leg. The aching fatigue in his bones gave him a moment of respite as he breathed in their easy care, felt it in his fur and in the hands running down his spine. Maybe he could make a life here, ignore the gasp of his heart every time he was painfully reminded of what (and who, a cold voice bit) he’d left behind.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d be alright.