Where the Brave Dare Not Go by telesilla (NC-17)

[danceswithgary]

Show: SGA
Rec Category: Sheppard/McKay
Characters:: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Het/Slash/Gen: Slash
Warnings: None
Author on LJ: telesilla
Author's Website: Chez Rozilla
Link: Where the Brave Dare Not Go

Why This Must Be Read:

This is more than a John as were-animal AU. The background, both implied and explicit, is rich and layered with the political and social ramifications of being Were. In addition, there is the slightly rocky relationship between John, the reluctant hero/Alpha, and Rodney, a doctor searching for a cure for something not everyone sees as a disease.


Excerpt:

John stopped by CoffeeWerks on his way up to the ranch the next day. By now the smell of the coffee roasting in the back was almost overwhelming, but this early on a Saturday morning, there would still be plain bagels available. Anything else would taste weird and wrong right now, and John hated changing on an empty stomach.

He said a quiet "hi" to David, who looked incredibly hungover, and admired the new ink--"Do I dare to eat a peach?"--on the inside of Laurel's left arm.

"I should get 'Shall I part my hair behind?'" John said. David looked confused but Laurel just laughed.

"Can you actually part your hair?" she asked, and John shook his head.

"Only if I let it get pretty long, and then it's kind of floppy."

He'd finished the bagel and almost all of a bottle of water by the time he drove his battered truck down the long dirt road to the old farm house that everyone in the county still called "the old Jaeger place."

"Hi, John," Vicky said, glancing up from her book as John came into the reception area. "How are you doing?"

"Itchy," John said and she gave him a look.

"Cutting it a little close, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I guess," John said, taking the key she held out. "How're you?"

"Not bad. Cassie finished the quarter with all As and Dan's taking the kids to Disney World next week."

"Cool," John said. "They're just about the right age for Space Mountain." He turned the key over in his hands. "Who else is up here this weekend?"

"It's slow. Only Dr. Z and Anne Teldy." She looked over the big calendar on the desk. "Oh and Chuck will be by on Monday."

"Thanks, Vicky." John gave her a smile and headed for the stairs. Zelenka wouldn't be a problem; he was energetic but not very aggressive and tended to spend most of his time running around barking and occasionally chasing his own tail just because he could. John didn't know Teldy very well, but she was an ursine of some kind and during the summer, she spent a fair amount of time down in the creek fishing.

Chuck was a local from one of the big farms up the road who came to the ranch to keep from scaring his own stock. Anywhere else, the two of them in the same space might have been a problem, but he had a pretty good notion of territory and tended to stay out of John's way.

The big old master bedroom was familiar; it didn't matter how many times John told the staff that they didn't have to reserve it for him, they did anyway. And in a way, he found it oddly comforting, not quite a home away from home, but only because he really didn't think of his apartment as home. He had a copy of the picture of his great-aunt and great-uncle sitting with their arms around a small, dirty kid with impossible hair and one of Great-Aunt Matilda in her other form, curled up in front of the fireplace downstairs, but he didn't hang them on the walls of his apartment.

John was a firm believer in compartmentalization.

He had cut it close; less than an hour after he arrived, the itching suddenly got almost unbearable. John pulled his clothes off, tossing them onto the easy chair in the corner of the room. He paced until his muscles started to ripple and twist under his skin. Sitting down on the floor, he gritted his teeth against the pain, but soon he was groaning helplessly. The next five minutes were an agonizing blur of screams and pain, but then, with a final shudder, it was done.

John remains lying down for a moment, relaxing in the sudden absence of pain and then he uncurls and gets up on all fours. Stretching until he feels loose and comfortable, he opens his mouth and tests the air.

Someone's been in the room since he was last here, and he hisses a little before moving around the place, rubbing his cheek on things--the bed, the doorway to the bathroom, the dresser and easy chair--to scent mark them. Maybe he dosen't have to be quite as thorough as he is, but dammit, this is his room. After he's taken care of that, he drinks a fair amount of the water set out in a big bowl on the bathroom floor and then nudges the window open until he can get through it.

The roof of the front porch is right under the window; John jumps out onto it and from there down to the ground. He pauses to mark the porch and then rubs up against the bumper of his truck. By the time he's finished, he feels a little more grounded and settled into his body.

Stretching one more time, he lets his mind go blank and takes off, sprinting toward the lightly wooded end of the property. It feels good to let go and just run for the hell of it, and he keeps it up until he runs out of steam. He's close to the fence that marks the boundary of the property and he takes a few minutes to sniff along it, snarling a little at the scent of some other big cat, one he doesn't know. Probably an animal, he thinks.

This calls for something a little more serious than scent glands, and John pauses. He really needs to make it clear that this is his territory or there could be problems, but still.... With a mental sigh, he lets his instincts come to the surface and then scrapes up a pile of dirt near the corner of the fence. Once the pile's high enough, he pisses on it.

There's still that disconnect; in the back of his head he knows it's a ridiculous instinct, but then, as he moves away, he smells something different, something that grabs all of his attention.

Rabbit!

The rabbit is incredibly easy to kill and it smells a little like Human as well, but John only realizes that someone's released it for him after he's settled down to eat it. He doesn't mind; that's part of the deal, and while he enjoys killing while he's doing it, he's just not as into the whole "thrill of the kill" thing as some Were are.

The next three days go quickly. John actually messes around with Radek just a little, chasing things and one another, but it's something he can only do when he's full--it's not that he's going to attack Zelenka and eat him, just that a little part of him wants to--and John usually prefers to nap right after he eats.

He also hangs out with Teldy, and that's easier; they spend time dozing in the sun and once, while he's lounging on a rock near the creek, she deftly slings a fish in his direction. He can't remember ever having had fish in his Were form, but it's tasty, even if it is a little colder than the food he's used to.

There's a brief thunderstorm one night, but he chooses to hang out in the barn instead of going in the house. He isn't all that wild about being wet, but he doesn't like being in the house, either. Even though the furniture is all sturdy and old, he takes up a lot of room and he worries about breaking things. The barn's a good compromise, and he likes the support beam with the heavy rope wrapped around it; it feels good under his claws, better than a tree trunk.

The time passes and then he starts to feel weird and itchy. He makes one last round of the property and then heads into the house. Vicky's husband Hank is on desk duty; he says "Hey, John" before turning back to his sudoku book.

John yowls his way through the change, forcing himself to remember that lashing out with his claws won't make it any better or easier. It's tough because it hurts like a sonofabitch and the pain clouds his reason, leaving only instinct.

When it was over and he was left panting on the floor, he felt drained and exhausted, and only the fact that sleeping down here would leave him stiff and sore kept him from dropping off right where he was.

He managed to brush his teeth and splash water on his face before he crawled into bed. It was late afternoon--two-thirty by the beside clock--but he fell into a dreamless sleep almost instantly.

He slept until six the next morning, when hunger and the fact that he smelled pretty bad drove him out of the bed. The shower felt great; he stood under the water after he'd washed up and just let it run over him. He'd have stayed even longer, but his sense of smell was still acute enough that he could smell coffee and bacon. It was enough to get him out of the shower and dressed.

Vicky was in the kitchen, and she smiled at him before setting a cup of coffee down at the table. "Pancakes or French toast? And how many eggs?"

"Pancakes," John said. "And three eggs please."

She caught him up on what her family was up to then moved on to the three ball games he'd missed over the weekend. "I just don't approve of inter-league play," she said. "It's gimmicky. So really, I don't think you missed much."

John grinned; near as he could tell, Vicky had picked up her feelings about baseball at his great-uncle's knee, but since John's mother had as well and then passed her opinions on to John, he tended to agree with her. John's father had been the football fan; it was one of the very few things they'd had in common even before his dad had disowned him.

Zelenka came in while John was working his way through another stack of pancakes. "Victoria," he said with a smile, "you make the best some of the best coffee I've had here in America."

"Hey," John said with a frown. "You like our coffee, don't you?"

"That is why I said 'some' of the best," Zelenka said. "And do not glare at me; you are much less intimidating now than you were yesterday."

Radek was a freelance writer, mostly for popular science and engineering magazines, and John had always wondered how he'd managed to get through college. Of course they were a lot more accommodating toward Were in Eastern Europe, even before the end of Communism, than they had been at Stanford, but still, it couldn't have been easy.

They talked about the latest space shuttle mission while making their way through breakfast, then John got up. "I need a walk after all that," he said, and Zelenka nodded and picked up the newspaper. Sitting there in the kitchen, glasses perched on his nose, he didn't look the least bit fox-like, and John found it hard to believe that Zelenka had smelled like food yesterday.

He walked the property for a while; it always took longer to settle back into his Human body and he'd found that walking helped. The air was fresh and crisp, and everything looked and smelled and felt different than it had yesterday morning.

As he walked near the creek, he came across Teldy scratching her back on a tree. He would have backed off--not everyone liked to be seen in their Were form, even by fellow Were--but she stopped and waved him over. She gestured again and turned around with her back facing him and even then it took John a moment to figure out what she wanted.

When he finally got it, he laughed a little and dug his fingers into her thick cinnamon-colored fur, trying to find the right spot. She made a noise when he found it and then another noise, a little like a happy grunting sigh, when he scratched hard with both hands. After, she gave him a wave, dropped down onto all fours and ambled off.

By the time John reached the house again, it was warming up. He decided to take off before the lack of air conditioning in the track became too big a factor. Grabbing his backpack, he looked around the room once, pausing to look at the picture of his great-aunt, curled up with the fire glinting off her fur. No one knew much about how Were genetics worked, but it was somewhat rare for two Were in the same family to have the same form.

Someday he really should, he thought, get someone to take a picture of him; he'd like to see just how much he looked like her, see if their markings were the same.

"Oh John," Vicky said as he came downstairs. "I almost forgot to show this to you."

It was a letter and with it, a much better copy of the same information he'd seen pinned to the bulletin board at CoffeeWerks. John read the words "clinical trials" and "double blind" and "Were cycles" and "compensation will be provided" and frowned. The cover letter asked if the staff at the Jaeger Ranch Retreat would check and see if any of their clients were interested in participating.

"I called them," Vicky said. "They're working under the auspices of the FDA as well as the University; they're legit."

Far more relaxed than he had been a few days ago, John handed everything back to Vicky and shrugged. "If you want to mention it to people, feel free," he said.

"Okay," she said, putting it down and coming around the desk. She hugged him and patted his arm. "You know that you have a place here," she said. "Right?" It was the same thing she said every time and John just smiled at her.

"Yeah. Thanks, Vicky."

...

Comments

[anie-chan.livejournal.com]

I love this one! Thanks for reminding me, I think I'll reread it now.

[danceswithgary]

Cool! :-D

[rinkafic.livejournal.com]

Good rec, DwG, thanks for pointing this one out.

[danceswithgary]

I'm glad I could! :-D