Between a Bear and a Hard Place(17)

“But where? Why? And even if you’re right, what can be done about it?”

“I don’t know,” King growled. “But until I hear something, I’m not going to calm down.”

He hissed the last two words, as though they burned his tongue to speak.

A sound outside turned Jill’s head, but the two bears were too caught up in their duel of grim looks to notice. “Uh, guys?” she prodded Rogue, because King was so tense she figured she’d sprain her finger if she tried.

“We have to find them,” King said.

“We can’t,” Rogue answered.

“Guys?”

“What?” they both said, turning to face her at the same time. Just as they did, two other faces appeared, flanking Jill.

“Where the hell have you been?” King almost roared. He rushed forward, grabbing both – very large – cubs with fistfuls of jacket in either of his hands. “Where the hell were you?”

In the next breath, he held them close, crushing the two of them against his body.

“Out?” Slate answered in a question. “It got later than we thought.”

“And now it’s earlier, uh, than we thought.” Arrow – Grant, whichever – spoke next.

Rogue took in the two disheveled, confused-looking, bleary-eyed cubs, and immediately broke into a smile, then a booming laugh that came straight from his belly. “Oh have I ever been there a time or two.”





-6-


“Good thing I watched all that Survivorman I guess.”


-Claire


“How long do we have to stay out here?” Claire asked, picking a burr out of her sock, and then deciding maybe it was time to wash the socks again, instead of just picking off the stickers. “I think I’m starting to wilt.”

“No flower as beautiful as you could wilt,” the very serious, very somber, and apparently, very studied in pick-up lines, bear named Stone said.

“You keep laying those on her,” the other one, with an easier way about him, said. He called himself Fury, but that wasn’t his original name, which he didn’t use, because he didn’t much like it. “She’s gonna turn you in for harassment.”

Stone was serious, grim, and more than a little hard to take because every single word he said had such intense gravity that it was slightly uncomfortable. Fury, on the other hand, seemed to never be serious, not even when the situation called for it. On their way out of GlasCorp, he’d been chattering away, rattling off one-liners that would have impressed Arnold Schwarzenegger. They’d arrived in the forest without much drama, following the mess with Eckert. The only other guard they’d come across was easily knocked out – at Claire’s insistence that no one else be killed after Eckert was maimed and that other guard hit the wall so hard he must’ve broken about thirty bones.

But, she knew that underneath his easy exterior, Fury was hiding something darker. He’d been the one that ended Eckert, and moved with such easy grace that she could tell it wasn’t the first time he’d killed.

“Officer,” Claire said, picking up her phone and pantomiming a call. “Yeah, I’d like to report sexual harassment. Yes, that’s right. Uh-huh, well actually it was a bear. Yeah, he’s about seven feet tall and—”

She recoiled and looked at the phone. “That asshole hung up on me. Guess it’s not quite a believable story, huh?”

A noise in the distance made Stone sit up straight and tall. He stared into the sky. “I’m still not used to these ears,” he said. “We’d been locked up so long that I forgot what it was to feel human. I forgot how the emotions run and the passions...”

He let his eyes fall on Claire, who flushed hot under his gaze. “The passions,” he continued, “they make me feel things that I’m not entirely familiar with.”

Fury stood up from his place by the small fire, and patted Stone on the shoulder. “You’re scaring her. I guess no one’s gonna blame a guy for being in a cage for twenty years and getting excited, though, huh?”

Claire was chuckling at the two of them. Their bickering had become easy, or at least, easier, than it had been three days before. When they slept, it was in a pile, which Stone insisted was for safety, and it probably was, but Claire felt nothing but pleasure at being smooshed between the pair of them during the long, cold nights.

Something about these two made her feel safe and secure, even when she really, really shouldn’t. Not for the first time since they’d run, her thoughts turned back to her ex-boss.

“Can I ask something?”

“You’ve asked a lot of somethings,” Fury said with one of his easy, disarming, crooked smiles. “What’s stopping you now?”