InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Have mercy!"

When his father had agreed to marry him to a bear, Jason had been pretty sure that he was fucking with him at first. But, nope, here he was. Married to a goddamn bear and waiting nervously in his bed for his new husband to come join him.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with a bear in his bed? How was the bear even going to fit? In the bed, not in... you know what, that was a pretty valid question too, how was this whole thing supposed to work? These were all questions that Jason probably should have asked before the wedding but here they were. Married men, and Jason with no one to ask about exactly what was expected of him on his wedding night.

He was wearing nothing more than a thin linen shirt and breeches, the covers pulled up to his chin as he stared at the ceiling. He'd already doused the light.

All of the men (and women) who had been promised to take the white bear's hand had taken one look at him and either run for the literal hills or wised up to the stories beforehand and flatly refused their parents absurd demands. The promise of untold wealth went a long way, but never far enough.

(Granted, the ones who had fled or been turned away usually found themselves in the possession of a small pouch of gold, enough to start their own life well outside of the madness of his own. Quentin had no doubt this had also made it into the mythos of his tale; why would anyone choose otherwise?)

From the very first glance he had of the man currently in his bed, he knew Jason was different. Anger sharpened every angle of him: a thick red mask over the fear and anxiety at the core of him. Quentin-the-human would have never picked up on it, but his bear senses told him otherwise. He was loath to even approach their marriage bed, but the rules were clear.

Quentin took in a quiet breath and stole into his bedroom, wearing nothing but his very human skin, and then into his bed and under the sheets before he could talk himself out of it. His sight was still bear-sharp at this point, so he could see the stark profile of his husband's face as he stared at the ceiling. He wanted desperately to say something, anything to ease the tension written in every line of Jason's body. But he couldn't.

He could, however, lay a hand as gently as possible on one of those strong shoulders, so that's exactly what Q did.

When a human hand touched his shoulder, Jason jumped and then slowly turned his head. The shape next to him was fairly indistinct in the darkness, but it was definitely a man, not a bear. He gaped for a second, then said, "What the fuck?"

Look, if he asked all the questions he had then they would never get through all of them before morning. That summed it up pretty succinctly, he thought.

Was this really his husband? Or some strange man and part of some scheme that Jason couldn't quite figure out? Maybe he was paranoid, but bears didn't just turn into men every day, right? Or maybe they did, he didn't know, it wasn't like he'd ever met a bear that wanted to marry a human before either.

Of course the question was expected, but the delivery made an almost noiseless laugh slip out of Quentin’s mouth. He wished he could say. He wished he could explain it all. He wished he wasn't a goddamn bear during most of his waking life, but that part was beyond him. For now.

In an attempt to sooth his new husband's understandable anxiety, Q drew his hand down Jason's chest, to where his heart was galloping, and pressed it there softly. Using what little magic he had left in this form, he sent a small pulse of calm through his fingertips. He couldn't help the fear or the anxiety, not exactly, but he could lessen how acutely they might be rampaging through Jason's mind.

Sleep, he thought—pleaded, really—and nudged his nose to Jason's shoulder in a silent apology.

Their first night. One night closer to ending this nightmare.

For both of them.

Jason's breath rasped in his chest at that touch, at the nuzzle. No one had ever touched him like that before, and here was this... this strange human man when he'd been expecting a bear to somehow try to fit in the bed with him. He felt... a little calmer, a little more lethargic. A little closer to sleep.

"So I'm guessing we're not consummating the marriage tonight?" He couldn't help but sound a little relieved. Maybe Jason liked being touched, but it didn't mean he was ready for that. Not with a stranger.

Carefully, he shifted onto his side, facing away from his husband... but he scooted back, just a little, to press their bodies together instead. It was sort of ridiculous, a man Jason's size being the little spoon, but there wasn't much about this that wasn't ridiculous. "Night, bear-husband."

After another not-quite laugh—first sardonic, because how could he ever expect a man like Jason to want to consummate anything, let alone to someone cursed to be an animal much of his waking hours, then oddly charmed—Quentin placed the smallest of barely there kisses to the space between his husband's shoulders before nestling in behind him, a hand resting on his waist. This could work. It had to work.

He was gone by the morning.

---

Afterward, Jason wished that he had someone to blame. Some meddling parent or nosy sibling. He wished that someone else had fucked it up because the truth was he could only hold himself at fault for what happened.

What happened was this.

Jason had spent his days with the bear, and his nights with the mysterious man in his bed, the one that was also somehow the bear. And, god help him, he'd started liking it. Him. The bear, he liked the bear, and he was way less mad about being married off to him than he had been when his father had first told him about it.

The only problem was that Jason couldn't leave well enough alone. Which meant that he wanted, needed, to know what his husband looked like as a man.

He waited until the bear was deeply asleep, breathing even against the back of Jason's neck, before he went searching for a candle. He lit it carefully, shielding the flame with his hand as he moved back toward the bed. Moment of truth.

The bear was handsome, as a man. Jason wanted to push the hair out of his face, but he held himself back. That would wake him for sure.

If it hadn't been for two drops of wax that dripped off the candle and landed on the bear's shoulder, he might have gotten away with it.

Quentin woke up abruptly to the small, but searing pain. It faded quickly. His shock and abrupt understanding of what had happened, what was happening right now did not.

He stared up at his husband hovering over him—his sometimes grumpy, sometimes broody, always brilliant and sharp and cutthroat-witty and effortlessly beautiful husband.

His heart shattered.

"Why couldn't you have waited?" Q asked through his tears, as much to the universe as to Jason. "One year. That's all it would have taken. And then… and then…"

All that hoping, for nothing.

"I'm sorry," Jason babbled, even though he didn't know what he was apologizing for exactly. Breaking the rules? He always broke the rules. This was--this was different, though. This was something worse than that.

Then, because Jason also couldn't leave well enough alone, he insisted, "We can fix it. There's gotta be a way to fix... whatever it is, okay, there has to be."

Which, if Jason understood more about what was going on he could probably be a little more certain about that, but he was Jason fucking Todd and he didn't accept 'impossible' as an answer no matter what.

Long disused sconces in the wall flared with blue fire that faded quickly to crackling orange and yellow. Q shrank back against the side of the bed on instinct.

His worst fears were realized a half-second later as another flash of light brought his tormentor into the room. She strode toward him and curled her long, black nailed fingers around his cheeks. Quentin could barely breathe. He knew the deal, and now he knew his fate. "Sweet little bear prince, did you really think he would be the one?"

He looked past the witch's shoulder. Tears poured over the nails denting his skin. At one point, he'd thought he couldn't have hated her more, but he found new depths in this moment. "I'm sorry, Jason. I'm so sorry." To the witch, he pleaded, "You'll leave him alone, right? His part in this is done."

She seemed to consider it, but her cruel smile didn't hold even a hint of sympathy. "That's actually up to him." Q wanted to call out a warning, but he suddenly found himself frozen and the witch was approaching Jason with a slinking grace. "Come to him, if you want to. If you can. You'll find him, if you dare: east of the sun, west of the moon."

Burning agony ripped a cry from Quentin's throat as both he and the witch vanished in an instant.

Jason lunged toward them a second too late to grab for his husband; he was left staring at the place where he'd been with a scowl.

East of the sun, west of the moon. It was pretty fucking vague, but this was... Jason had done this. This was his fault. And he wasn't just going to leave a man that he was starting to care about at the mercy of a witch.

"Guess we're going on a quest," he announced to the empty room.

---

For the first night, Jason had traded the golden apple he'd received from the first little old lady he'd met on his trip to find a place east of the sun, west of the moon, but the bear prince had been asleep the entire night; he hadn't been able to rouse him no matter what he'd done.

For the second night, Jason had traded the golden carding comb he'd gotten from the second old woman he'd met. The prince had slept all night that night too, and Jason's temper had snapped. He'd yelled, he'd kicked at the furniture, he'd raised a real ruckus over his anger at somehow being denied access to his own damn husband.

This was the third night, and the last thing that Jason had to trade in exchange for it: the golden spinning wheel. If this didn't work... fuck if he knew what he was going to do next. Giving up wasn't an option.

The door to the prince's bedchamber creaked open softly and Jason slipped inside. He paused by the door, leaning his head against it as he braced himself for what he knew he'd see next... the prince, fast asleep in bed.

Something in the last three days had changed.

Inky blackness filled Quentin's nights. Muddled animal thoughts filled his days. Through it all: a thread of loss. It pulsed in time with his heart.

Perhaps that was why he'd had nothing to eat or drink all day. Call it a sixth sense, a certain knowledge that his sleep was unnatural. Another one of the witch and her daughter's manipulations. He still went obediently to his room, yawning just like the last two nights. This time, however, his slumber was surface level, more shades of gray than the depthless darkness.

Shallow enough to hear the sound of his door and the sound of breathing he knew by heart. His hands twitched against his bed covers, and he struggled to open his eyes. The effects of the previous days' potions were clearly lingering. With a soft groan, he turned his face and fixed his groggy attention on the shape that had lived only in his dreams. A smile tugged his lips upwards. "Hi."

Jason cursed, the string of words almost poetry; he strode across the room, sinking one hip onto the bed so he could lean over and press his lips to his husband's. It was a hard kiss, a little rough, but he didn't think that the other man would mind too much. Honestly, the fact that Jason could kiss him was probably enough to make it memorable. It was a little hard to lock lips with a bear, after all, and they hadn't really done much in the dark of their bedroom.

When he pulled back, his eyes searched the other man's face. He laughed, disbelieving. "I don't even know your real name, you know. I just kept calling you 'the bear' in my head but..."

But that wasn't exactly appropriate anymore. He didn't think he could look at him and see a bear anymore even when the prince was a bear.

The kiss left Quentin nothing less than dazed. In the space between bear and sleep, he'd thought of his husband often enough that the swearing was almost familiar, like a snatch of song he hadn't heard in years and forgotten how much he loved it. No amount of imagining or dreaming could have prepared him for the full force of Jason's affection. God, all that wasted time because of this fucking curse and the manipulations of the goddamn witch and her equally odious daughter. And for what? His kingdom?

It all seemed so paltry and arbitrary, and none of it mattered when he had Jason kissing him with bruising intensity. Even with heavy limbs, Q still managed to lift his arms and fold them around his husband's neck.

As Jason leaned back, Q's hands caught on the back of his neck. He didn't want to stop touching him any time soon or looking at him while his eyes were still human. "Quentin," he murmured. "My name is Quentin. And I think I have a way for us to end this once and for all."

The plan was simple in design, but slightly complex in execution. It centered on a seemingly impossible task, one he knew the witch and her daughter could never complete, but Jason would figure out a way. Once they were defeated, the pair would have no choice but to let them go, since that would be the terms of the wager. Q would just have to figure out the curse once they were free. On the other side of his explanation, he couldn't help but tear up as he continued to drink in his husband's face. "I can't believe you're here, that you came from me. I'd hoped, but never dared believe it might come true."

"Of course I came," Jason said, as if it really should have been a foregone conclusion. There were multiple reasons for it, including the fact that it was completely his fault, but mostly he had wanted the chance to actually get to know the man he'd only had quick stolen moments with in the absolute darkness of their bedroom. He'd liked those stolen moments. He wanted to see if maybe he'd like more than that.

...and, you know. It really was completely his fault.

He brought his hands to cup Quentin's jaw, pressing their foreheads together. "I'd go anywhere for you. East of the sun and west of the moon was nothing."

It was a good plan. A solid plan. Jason thought it had a chance of working and they might have a chance of figuring this whole marriage thing out. All he had to do was the impossible, or at least what was impossible for the witch and her daughter. There were a lot of things that Jason could do that he doubted they could, but he wasn't about to get cocky now when he was so close. This was his only shot at rescuing Quentin.

---

The whole fortress trembled with the echoes of the enraged cries of the witch and her daughter. They lasted longer than the vanquished villains, who both vanished as soon as Jason emerged victorious. Unfortunately, Q's final transition from bear to human was still just as painful as well. When he had his mind back, it hit him. This was the first time he'd seen the sun since the curse began.

All around, the curses on the rest of the citizens were lifting as well, but Quentin only had enough attention for his husband. Relief flooded him even as he leapt toward Jason's arms. "You did it! You did it! East of the sun and west of the moon is nothing, indeed."

Jason caught him easily, laughing and spinning him in a circle; he was taller, more muscular, than Quentin. Lots of long days chopping wood and hauling whatever his father needed him to haul had built him sturdy and strong. Holding the more slender man aloft would have been easy enough even without the rush still coursing through him at having won. He'd beat the witch and her daughter, he'd saved the prince, and now?

"Let's get out of here," Jason suggested in a low murmur, meant for Quentin's ears alone. "I miss home."

He meant the home they shared, the bed they shared, not his father's shack. Sure, he'd probably go back and visit his father now, introduce him to his husband, but where Jason really wanted to be was with Quentin. No matter where. No matter what.

"Home," Quentin repeated, right against his husband's lips. It might have been the site of where he'd been cursed for decades, but it was also where he'd finally met the love of his life, the one person who made it all worth it. "Yes, let's go home."