Page 10 of Bear With Me

“Just…” Dennis sighed. “Just move over and go back to sleep.”

“Mmm.” It sounded like he could do that with no problem, and Dennis let out a relieved breath and turned over onto his side.

Just as he was drifting off again, he felt Bjorn reach out and touch his hand lightly, but he was too sleepy to worry too much about that.

***

It was daylight when he opened his eyes again, and at first he wasn’t sure what had woken him up. Then he tried to draw in a breath and realized two things: first, there was something tickling at his nose and mouth, and second, there was a heavy weight right over his diaphragm, holding him down. He peeled his eyes open to try to figure out what was going on. All he could see was brown…was that fur?

It all came back to him in a rush. Bjorn, the fish, mates, one bed, double-booked cabin…sharing the bed. Bjorn had apparently gone furry yet again in his sleep, judging by the fur tickling him.

He managed to wedge his upper body up in bed, dislodging what turned out to be a heavy paw from his face and neck. Belatedly, he remembered that bear claws didn’t retract and he was lucky he hadn’t been scratched in the process, but it was a bit late for that realization now. He looked down his body to figure out what was holding him down and discovered that Bjorn was asleep almost crossways on his body, his big head resting on Dennis’s wall-side hip and the rest of him draped over Dennis’s abdomen. No wonder he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“Bjorn,” he said loudly, giving the bear’s shoulder - was that a shoulder? - a shake. The fur was surprisingly soft to the touch, though still coarse in texture. The bear grunted and nuzzled deeper into Dennis. “Bjorn!” For fuck’s sake, this guy could sleep through anything. He lifted a hand and flicked the top of Bjorn’s rounded ear. “Get up!”

The bear growled grumpily, but lifted his head, releasing some of the pressure on Dennis. He regarded Dennis quizzically, and Dennis could practically hear him thinking Why’d you wake me up?

“You’re fucking heavy,” he complained, shoving Bjorn again.

The bear grunted again and stuck his nose into the crook of Dennis’s neck. Dennis practically levitated off the bed in his haste to get away. “Ohhhh no. Nope. Nope, nope. Get that mouth away from me.” He knew what happened if his mate bit him on the neck. Not that he believed in mates, still, but, well, everyone knew about claiming bites. Whether mates were real or not, claiming bites definitely were.

Managing to look hurt - how could a bear’s face do that? - Bjorn pulled back and huffed, then rolled across the bed and onto the floor. He shook out his thick pelt, lifted a paw to scratch his ear, and plodded across the cabin toward the kitchen, where he started nosing around the cabinets.

Dennis watched him in stunned silence for a few seconds before he realized that Bjorn was trying to get at some food and he didn’t have opposable thumbs in this form to help himself. Dennis sighed and climbed out of bed, pausing to pull on his jeans. “I’ll get it,” he announced. “Don’t bite the cabinet handles.”

Huffing again, Bjorn sat down on the kitchen floor to wait for him. As he considered the enormous bear who presumably wanted a Pop-Tart, Dennis took just a moment to consider how the fuck this was his life.

4

Bjorn

He’d woken up warm and comfortable, stretched over his mate, only to be kicked out of bed. Now Bjorn was grumpy, and he wanted breakfast. Maybe food would make him feel better. He watched as Dennis crossed to where he was sitting in the kitchen and began opening cabinets, then the fridge.

“Don’t suppose you can change back?” Dennis asked him conversationally.

Bjorn focused on his inner self, trying to pull the strings of power that usually let him shift back and forth, but found them tangled and unyielding. It was an uncomfortable feeling he could happily have done without, and he snorted and shook his large head at Dennis.

Dennis sighed. “Yeah, I guess that would be too easy. Cereal, Pop-Tarts, or eggs?”

And just how was a bear supposed to answer an open-ended question like that? With a huff, Bjorn nosed at the fridge, hoping that communicated eggs adequately. It must have gotten the message across, because Dennis pulled the fridge open and extracted a carton of eggs. “I want to ask whether you’re ok with scrambled,” he said as he set them on the counter, “but I guess with you like this, you can’t express a preference, so you get what you get.”

Scrambled was fine with Bjorn, anyway, so he just sat back down on the kitchen floor and watched as Dennis cracked the eggs into a bowl and then went hunting for a skillet.

The next thing Bjorn knew, he was laying, naked, on the floor. It was a lot less comfortable as a human, and he winced and pushed up on his knees. “Ow!” It came out low and booming, as if he’d forgotten how to talk like a human during his shift.

Dennis, his back to him as he looked through the cabinets, jumped and knocked his head on a cabinet door at the sound of Bjorn’s voice. “Ow, fuck!” he exclaimed, rubbing the sore spot. “A little warning would have been nice.”

“Sorry,” Bjorn said, softening his voice. “I didn’t realize I was gonna change. And, uh…” He rubbed the back of his head self-consciously. “Scrambled eggs are fine.” He paused, the silence feeling a bit awkward. “So uh, how did you sleep?” he tried.

Dennis snorted. “It’s hard to sleep with a giant-ass bear knocking me out of bed.”

“I knocked you out of bed?” Bjorn yelped. That was mortifying, especially after he’d lobbied so hard to get Dennis in bed with him to begin with. “I’m so sorry.”

The other man shrugged. “I wedged myself between you and the wall after the first time, so you couldn’t push me out again. You did squish me pretty good, though. You’re heavy.”

Great. He got his mate into bed with him and promptly made a mess of things. Now Dennis would never want to sleep with him again! “Sorry,” he apologized again, lamely. “I swear I’m normally able to control my shifts. It’s just this…you know…the mate thing.”

Dennis made an abortive noise and focused his attention on the skillet he’d put on the stove, hovering a hand over it to judge how warm it was. “We’re not talking about that.”