Title: Bittersweet Silences
Fandom: We Bare Bears
Characters/Pairing: Ice Bear/Grizz (eventual), Panda
Length: 1349
Rating: PG
Content notes: no warnings apply, unless one thinks that Ice Bear/Grizz is incestuous (they aren't related by blood or genetics)
Author note: Alternate ending to the episode, "Losing Ice," aired April 28th, 2016.
Summary: Ice Bear is finally feeling like he's appreciated, and he's making a name for himself in the restaurant world, but he misses his brothers, and the silence is finally starting to get to him.

He's working at yet another high end restaurant, the name of which is misleading -- Sweet & Sour. They serve Italian food.

Ice Bear learns quickly. Always has. Is sous chef in just a few weeks, and promised his own kitchen to run in a few months' time. It's a franchise, expanding throughout the nation. Ice Bear might even move to New York, or Hawaii. The thought of tropical heat makes him a little nauseous. The thought of moving, homesick.

He's making a name for himself in chef circles, has his own apartment that he keeps at below zero temperatures. His own fancy toilet that he doesn't have to keep a secret from anyone anymore.

It's nice not having to sleep in a cramped freezer, or share the one that he has. He's no longer rudely interrupted from a well earned nap or one of his television programs by Grizz or Panda's roaming paws searching for a forgotten Popsicle or lone ice cream bar that they could have, but didn't, wait to retrieve.

And, even though he's not exactly happy, he knows that he's appreciated and valued now that his talents are no longer being squandered on his brothers who wouldn't know the difference between a filet mignon and a filet-o-fish.

He's starting to make friends. Still keeps in touch with Chloe, who is highly impressed with his talent, and happy that he's finally using it outside of the cave, and doing something that he loves.

"It hardly seems like work when you're doing something that you love, right?" she'd asked one afternoon, joining Ice Bear as he'd dusted the living room on his day off.

He's never quite sure what to do with himself when the workday's done, or on the days that he has off.

When he'd lived with his brothers, there had always been work to do, and plenty of activities with which to keep himself occupied. Grizz always had something planned.

Ice Bear watches one of his programs, reads a magazine, or, more often than anything else, cleans. It's what he likes to do, though cleaning for himself is far less fun than cleaning the cave had been. His apartment doesn't require much cleaning or picking up after, because it's just him, and he hates messes, so there are none to clean up.

"Ice Bear likes working," he'd said in response, uncertain about what it was that he was supposed to say, and if it was okay to leave the tentatively posed question unanswered for so long.

He's never been good at small talk. Has always been more comfortable letting others fill silences. His brothers are good at that. Grizz especially -- always knowing what to say, and when to fill silences with words to keep them from getting awkward, and dragging out until they're painful.

Silences and a too empty apartment aside, the demands for his considerable talent make Ice Bear feel slightly overwhelmed, even as they make him feel appreciated for the first time in his life.

"Ice Bear is happy," he tells himself, filling the silence that sits in his apartment like an unwanted guest, and wondering when it had gotten to be so oppressive. The words echo back to him.

He misses his brothers. The thought hits him when he least expects it to, and the feelings that accompany it are hard to pin down. Not exactly sweet and sour, but bittersweet, and there's a longing ache in his chest that he had not anticipated. When he'd left, he'd been angry and hurting, and now, he's just hurting.

Grizz and Panda might've been lazy and they might've taken advantage of him, but in the time that he's been gone, Ice Bear has come to realize that they do, in their own way, love him, and he loves them.

But he can't go back. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Being valued, and respected, is nice, and something that Ice Bear has wanted for a long, long time. Giving that up to feel a little less lonely is not something he's prepared to do just yet.

"Ice..." Grizz's voice is uncertain, and the bear's mouth is twisted with an emotion that Ice Bear cannot name. He's never been good with emotions. There's love and like, hate and anger, and all sorts of feelings in between that Ice Bear doesn't have a grasp on.

"Come home?" It's a question, no longer a demand, and when Ice Bear raises his eyes to his brother's, he's hit with another unnameable emotion that makes him feel uncomfortable and his insides squirm, and Ice Bear wants to walk over to Grizz and go home with him, but he doesn't.

He regards his brother with narrowed eyes, and holds his breath. He knows Panda's standing somewhere in the shadows. He can feel his presence.

Missing them is a knife to the gut, and seeing Grizz standing in front of him, eyes glittering in the soft light of the restaurant's dining room makes Ice Bear's insides and knees turn to jelly.

"We...I miss you," Grizz says, voice low and breaking.

Ice Bear blinks, his heart skips a beat, and his legs decide that there is too much space and silence and a gulf of loneliness between them that needs to be lessened. Before he understands, before he's able to catalog what it is that he's feeling, and thinking, he's standing in front of Grizz, and then they're kissing, and something inside of his chest is loosened like a chunk of an iceberg broken off and floating away in the ocean, and his insides are a hot-cold flash of want-need-must-have.

But he's still at work, and table fifteen is waiting on an eggplant Parmesan lasagna and a brown butter gnocchi. His sense of duty, as it always has, overrides his desires and the whirlwind of confusing emotions that he's feeling.

He breaks the kiss, turns on his heel and walks back to the kitchen pretending not to hear Grizz's choked moan and gasps for air. Pretending not to hear his own.

When his shift is over, he's surprised, pleased, terrified, to find Grizz and Panda sitting at a table, two plates of food that's barely been touched in front of them, waiting for him. Grizz stands, nearly sending the table and food clattering to the floor in his haste.

His eyes are full of questions, and Ice Bear isn't sure he has the answers to any of them, but then Grizz is leaning forward, and their lips are touching, and there's a spark of something between them. At the back of his mind Ice Bear has the bizarre thought that opposites attract, and wonders if that's all that this is, and if he and Grizz are just opposite poles of a pair of magnets.

"Ice Bear missed you, too," he says long after the kiss has ended.

He smiles at the dazed look on Grizz's face, the touch of pink that dusts Grizz's cheeks, barely visible if one doesn't know what to look for.

"Ice Bear wants to go home now."

Grizz reaches for him, tucks Ice Bear's paw close to his side as they leave the restaurant. Panda follows, talking about this and that, about how much he's missed Ice, and then there's an, "Aww," followed by the click of Panda's phone camera when Grizz leans up and kisses Ice Bear on the cheek.

"This is the best thing to happen to Ice Bear since the jean jacket," Ice Bear says.

"Yes it is," Panda says, "before it turned evil." And there's another click of the camera phone, followed by several others, and Ice Bear has no idea what Panda is taking pictures of, but he doesn't mind.

"Ice Bear is going to keep working," Ice Bear says.

"Okay," Grizz agrees, voice a little dazed sounding, paw wrapped possessively around Ice Bear's.

"And Ice Bear is keeping his apartment." There's steel in his tone, and Grizz blinks at him, mouth opening and closing on a response, before he simply nods, and smiles, and tightens his grip on Ice Bear's paw.