#bear^2

*rapidly approaching chanting* HELMUT/BOB FUSION HELMUT/BOB FUSION HELMUT/BOB FUSION HEL

Hi!!! Thank you for the ask my dear! FUCK OFF has already been answered here. Moving on......

Ring Bear: Ivo and Junod get married. They have a ring bear. (That's it that's the joke that's what's in the google docs summary. and i still haven't even written that part)

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Arnaghad’s hands fall heavy on Ivo’s shoulders like they always do, attempting to rest there and achieving something similar to the effect of a ship’s anchor on a raft. Dragging him into the cool stone floor.  Of course the oversized asshole never learned to control his strength. Five centuries walking the Continent, and not one day of them was spent learning that he was fucking heavy. Eight feet tall, broad as an Aediern shithouse, and too fucking heavy to be pressing down on people like this. Not even Erland had beat it into him, somehow.

“Don’t have to be such a little bitch just ‘cause you’ve got nerves about this.”

“Fuck off.”

Even though he can barely see them, Ivo can feel Arnaghad rolling his eyes from all the way down here. The massive bear’s head, perched from its place in Arnaghad’s shoulder cloak, rolls its stone eyes too. He turns his face away from it. His borrowed clothes fit too tightly, stretching over his body in unfamiliar overlapping stripes. A seam nearly rips in his armpit. He takes quiet solace in the fact that he still has his armor, uncomfortable and familiar. Even though someone overpolished the silver studs on his pauldrons, and the shine distracts him to madness. It tracks his eyes to Gerd, smiling and standing against the wall. Jovial bastard. Which reminds him.

“This is your fucking fault.”

“Technically speaking, it was Torgeir’s idea.”

“You encouraged him! And told him about it in the first place!”

Sometimes it’s hard to tell when the other Bears smile, given most (except Bruno, the green bastard) of their facial grooming ranges from “minimal” to “what grooming?” Not so with Gerd. Not so this second, when Ivo wants to take the grin on his face and mimic it just a bit lower, with an ax —make the wound just as wide and just as deep and just as infuriating. The bastard has the nerve to shrug and smile wider.

“Maybe. He does get so excited about feasts. I’ve never met a man who liked throwing parties more than he liked attending them. And he likes that very much indeed. Wine is so very steal-able when you have a cloak like his.”

“This is no damned party!” Ivo growls, ignoring the squeeze of Arnaghad’s paws. “It’s a wedding! One I didn’t fucking well ask for from your little jarl.”

“Oh, he’s not little.”

“Shut the fuck up. Both of you.”

Such a dispute-solver, their Grandmaster. One of the First Witchers, the Great Bear, and the best he can come up with is shut the fuck up.

“Gerd, no one wants to hear about your little jarl. And Ivo, you can stop bitching. Not like it’ll change anything, and you’re not going to lose our most lucrative contractor over a pompous handfasting, no matter how stupid the idea is.”

“He’s not our most lucrative-”

“He is, and by a wider margin than I’d like when he has all of Ain Skellig in his palm. And in bedding the bastard, Gerd’s managed to be useful for us all. Sometimes.”

From his wall, Gerd preens a bit. He hadn’t done it for them, certainly not when they were just barely a school again. From what he’d told them on one of those freezing nights in their restored hall, when there was nothing to do but drink and talk shit, the jarl had simply been handsome and willing and there. A fierce warrior. A strong drinker. A good fuck. Not that his intentions mattered much to the rest of them, when the contracts started coming in greater volume than any of them had seen since Hearn Caduch’s fall. Ivo could appreciate the coin, at least. Not that it would stop him from making his opinion known about the current situation.

“And? Why the fuck do I have to be involved? Neither Junod nor I wanted this.”

They really hadn’t, and more fool them for thinking things wouldn’t spiral out of hand the second Torgeir had gotten that terrible shine in his eye.

“Besides, if it’s a wedding he wants, why doesn’t he just marry Gerd? They’re attached at the dick anyways.”

Gerd smirks, running his tongue over his top lip.

“He’s already married. Myrna’s happy with our arrangement as it is, and she’s a better jarlia than I could ever be. I’m sure I’d look stunning in one of her slit dresses though —it’s almost a shame I’m not the bride today, you’re not half as handsome.”

“You fucker-”

They’re the last words that leave his mouth before Arnaghad hauls him back from strangling Gerd with his own intestines and draping his corpse over the wall. Usually, this is Junod’s job. To pull him back, preferably onto his lap, and away from testing the strength of the Bear School’s new peace treaty with his rage, mistrust, and sheer frustration with the other members. But just this second, he’s getting ready elsewhere, far out of Ivo’s sight in the Skelligers keep, probably in some equally high-ceilinged, decorated room, with too-soft cushions and too-large windows. For tradition, apparently. Like they ever gave two fucks about that. 

Ivo has looked at Junod’s broad, scarred face every day they’ve spent together, and neither of them have any virtue left to protect from anyone, let alone each other. Keeping them apart for a day doesn’t change the fact that they fucked their brains out three nights before. Blood sears him inside out, pumping hotter through his veins until it makes his skull ache. From behind him, Oso pipes up, crossing his arm under the space where his other used to be. Hunfrith is absent beside him, but somehow Oso still molds himself around the shape where his partner would be if he were there.

“Calm down, Ivo. What’s one party to celebrate the pair of you bastards —it’s more than Hunfrith and I’ll ever have. Just get the ceremony done with and enjoy the mead once it's over.”

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