Disclaimer: No recognizable characters are mine, in any fandom.
Notes: over on LJ, someone said "a fic with werewolves, please." Someone said, "and what about a little Harry Potter fandom?" "CHALLEGE ACCEPTED!" said I.
(Okay, so some of that conversation was just with myself.)
Please be warned that some crackiness is coming you way. Also, some mentions of slash relationships, but nothing explicit.
Enjoy!
Murdock, having been in various hospitals and clinics throughout the world, had some odd friends.
"Hey guys!" he called from the mudroom of the place they'd been renting. "Come here!"
"I ain't going in there!" B.A. shouted back.
"Not so loud!" Murdock chastised. "You're scaring her! Come on, guys, please?"
Hannibal looked to Face, who nodded and shrugged in a resigned way. B.A. still scowled, but at Face's insistence, he pushed himself out of his chair too.
Murdock was still on the floor beside a cardboard box. He cooed into it.
"Be quiet," he whispered dramatically. "She's shaken up as it is."
"You don't know that fool bird's a girl!" B.A. retorted. He kept his voice lowered.
"Don't call her a fool! Her name is Ford and she got a little bit off course with the wind storm we had today!"
B.A. didn't look convinced. "You named her? And what kind of owl flies into a window anyway, during the day? Maybe she has rabies or something."
Murdock fixed the bigger man with a hard stare. "You're rude, Bosco, and it wouldn't surprise me if she regurgitates a pellet right in your bed."
"You ain't keeping an owl, Crazy! Why you think we made you stay out here with her instead of letting you bring her in once she hit the damn window?"
Hannibal stepped in. "Okay, okay, that's enough. We're not discussing whether or not a bird—an owl, sorry, Murdock—should be nursed back to health in the kitchen. Captain, you called us in here; what did you want?"
Murdock reached into the box and—much to B.A.'s disgust—stroked the bird's head.
"You guys remember my friend Remus?"
No one smirked at the name. So many of Murdock's friends had nicknames: Messy Joe, Bug, Ape . . . plus what could men who went by Hannibal and Face tease about? Although originally Hannibal had asked if Remus had a twin. Murdock wrinkled his nose at that and told him no, the only twins he knew were Fred and George . . .
It took the three of them a few seconds to put a face to the name, and then Face snapped his fingers and said,
"Remus! Right! He was the guy who thought he was a wizard!"
Murdock rolled his eyes—he was always more accepting of people's idiosyncrasies than they were—but nodded. "Yes. The wizard."
"What about him?"
"He's dead."
"Oh! Oh, baby, I'm sorry."
Face's tune changed immediately and he sank to the floor beside his lover to slip an arm around Murdock's waist.
Murdock nodded, not looking at the other three. "It was pretty bad, apparently. A whole war—he and his wife were killed and a bunch of other people—"
Everyone made sounds of sympathy; B.A. was able to go along with it until he had to ask,
"He and his wife? Crazy, didn't you date him?"
Murdock fixed him with another hard look. "Facey dated women too, remember? Kinsey's ol' bell curve says that some people are 100% straight, some people are 100% gay, and everyone else falls in-between the two extremes—"
"Yeah, yeah, I know—" B.A. interrupted, trying to stop the rambling.
"Even you don't fall in 100% straight category, Bosco," the pilot went on, oblivious or not to the discomfort he was invoking. "Remember that one night when you were drunk—the one before Facey and I started dating? You an' me, we had a good time that night—"
"All right, all right—you made your point!"
If his skin wasn't so dark, he'd blush bright as the sun.
"Anyway," Face said forcefully, to get things back on track, "I'm sorry to hear about Remus. How did you find out?"
"Ford delivered a note."
"Ah," Face said, and looked up at Hannibal. He could handle just about everything Murdock threw at them, but sometimes he needed backup.
"What happened to the note, Murdock?" Hannibal asked, if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Told you it was windy today. It blew away."
B.A. let out an exasperated sigh. Once again Murdock ignored him.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear about your friend," Hannibal sympathized, and made to leave. B.A. was at his heels.
"Wait! There's more!"
B.A.'s shoulders tightened at the thought he'd have to spend more time out here listening to a crazy man talk about another crazy man, but Hannibal didn't seem to have any intention of moving away from the door. He was stuck.
Once he had everyone's attention again, Murdock dropped his voice to a level that B.A. thought of as his "masterpiece theater overly dramatic voice". He'd never mentioned his label out loud, but it helped him get through some of Crazy's, well, craziness.
"Remus had a secret," Murdock intoned. "A dark secret, a secret that made him an outcast."
"Like being a mental patient?" B.A. said half under his breath.
"A secret that he only confided to his most trusted friends, the people he could trust with his life. Oh, and then the secret got out, because Sev is a big git."
Murdock paused for effect, to give his audience a chance to be shocked or dismayed or at least ask who the hell Sev was. No one, not even Face, reacted. He plowed on.
"Remus was . . . a werewolf!"
Still no one reacted. Murdock looked around at his team, waiting expectantly.
"Huh," Hannibal said, finally. "With a name like Remus, I guess that's not totally unexpected."
Face smothered a chuckle.
"Did his parents name him Remus because they knew he was a werewolf, or was it just an incredible coincidence that it was his name and he became a werewolf?"
Sometimes it was hard to tell if Hannibal was joking or not.
"Fine!" Murdock sulked. "You guys obviously don't care!"
Face hurriedly pacified him with a squeeze and a kiss. Murdock wiggled out of his embrace while B.A. slapped Hannibal on the back with a laugh and the two men started for the door again.
"Whatever," he mumbled. "You guys don't care so I won't even bother you with the even worse news."
B.A. grit his teeth as Hannibal stopped again.
"Go on, Captain."
As typical, Murdock disregarded the long-suffering tone.
"Well," he said, warming up again, "Remus was a werewolf, right? And here's the thing about werewolves. Their condition? It's not a curse, per se, but kind of like a virus. And, well, you all know I had a relationship with him, way back when, and . . . so . . ."
Like before, it took the other three several seconds to process what he was saying. When the silence stretched, Murdock rolled his eyes and elaborated.
"So, because I had a physical relationship with him, and viruses are opportunistic buggers always looking for a new place to take up residence . . ."
"You're trying to tell us you think you're a werewolf?"
On the scale of all things Murdock, this was maybe a three out of ten.
"Uh-huh," he agreed. "The virus can be dormant a long time before it replicates enough to bring about its shifting manifestation. I don't know if being bitten by a werewolf causes a quicker change than just being fucked by a werewolf—"
"Okay, that's it!" B.A. exclaimed. "I'm outta here. I don't need to be hearing about all your crazy sex exploits with other crazy ass mental patients—"
"But Bosco, you don't understand what I'm trying to tell you!" Murdock interrupted. "Yes, I'm a werewolf. I've been able to keep myself away from all of you during the full moon—luckily it's only one night a month, and damn, Face, you're the world's heaviest sleeper. You never wake up when I sneak away. And since I do all the cooking, no one ever noticed I wasn't burning my steaks until they were charcoal any more—"
Actually, Face had noticed that, but thought his lover had gone on an unprocessed, raw food kick.
"—so my point of all this is: I wanted to warn you that you're probably going to end up being werewolves as well!"
Face was watching him with wide blue eyes. "Are you telling me werewolfism is a sexually transmitted disease?" he choked.
Murdock nodded guiltily. "Yeah. I think so."
Face looked horrified. He'd worked so hard to keep himself clean—
"Oh hell no," B.A. muttered. He was as stunned as Face. "Hell. No."
"Sorry, Bosco," Murdock whispered.
Hannibal resisted the urge to chuckle at the situation. If it were true—he had no reason not to believe his Captain; Murdock was a lot of things but a liar wasn't one of them—than this would be a very interesting turn of events. Because if these three thought there would be a change in the alpha dog status . . .
Well.
He'd cross that bridge when he came to it. He'd always done what needed to be done, even when it was batshit insane. If he needed to take a bite—or a lay, he'd been fantasizing about B.A. for years—to still be the best commander for his team, he'd do it.
Murdock stayed in the mudroom until the owl that facilitated this revelation was less stunned and flew off.
As always, the future would be interesting.
fin.