Shifting    The Due South Fiction Archive Entry     Home

 Quicksearch
 Search Engine
 Random Story

 Upload Story

      	  Shifting 
 by Luzula  

 Author's Notes: Thanks to akamine_chan for a very helpful beta!

 

 My earliest memories are of fur.

 Softness surrounding me everywhere, and a wet nose in my ear. There are
no more details, only a vast sense of safety and of my mother's presence.
She was my whole universe. I wasn't able to change then myself, of course,
but she hunted for me, licked me clean, sang me to sleep and stroked my
hair with gentle hands. Whichever shape she took, she was there for me.

 I don't remember seeing other people, except for my father, on those rare
occastions when he was home. My father was big and red and would have
seemed an intruder to me if not for my mother's welcoming arms. He came,
stayed a few days and left again.

 When she was shot, it was beyond my ability to understand.

 She had been so strong that she'd once frightened off a wolverine with a
growl that was deep and threatening as the river rising in flood. How
could she die? Dying was what animals did, the ones that she killed for us
to eat.

 It was only later that I understood that some considered her to be no
more than an animal. Her murderer claimed that she was trying to take his
hens and had threatened his life. He went free'"no one could prove that
he'd known she hadn't been simply a wolf.

 And so she died'"for three hens and a man's prejudice.

 ***

 The city is another wilderness.

 There are trails in it that humans do not see. The alleys where they
throw their trash and trade pleasure for money are layered over with
smells that tug at my nose as clearly as neon signs.

 This is my territory.

 I'm in heat, come and mate with me.

 I hunted and killed here.

 Most are from dogs; very rarely do I sense the tracks of someone like me,
though we mostly shun the cities. Diefenbaker runs beside me. The full
moon stands high above the city, making his fur shine silver.

 He whines, trying to convince me to stay, but I must go back now. The
reason is blurred to me, a reason that belongs to the human world, but it
tugs at me with the call of duty nevertheless. I think it's something to
do with papers, probably'"useless things, not even good to eat.

 It's a human thing, I tell him, and he whuffles in disdain.

 I head towards home, running silently and swiftly through the streets and
the dark shadows of the parks. Few humans are awake yet, and if they see
me, they will think I am only a large dog running loose.

 I jump easily through the open window, then stretch myself upwards for a
dizzying moment, until I stand naked and human on the floor of my office.
It's easy to slip between shapes at the full moon'"or hard not to do it,
is perhaps the better way to put it. I couldn't have stayed human tonight,
even had I wanted to.

 Suddenly tired, I sit down on my cot and pull on my long johns. In a few
hours I must rise again and button up my uniform for another day of
paperwork. My wolf self, slinking back into the deep corners of my mind,
wants to growl in boredom and contempt. Well, if I am lucky, perhaps I can
do some liaising with Ray.

 I lie down gratefully on the cot, sinking into deep, dreamless sleep.

 ***

 Puberty is never particularly easy for anyone, I suppose, but for me it
was doubly hard. Until then, no one knew whether or not I would inherit
the lycanthropy'"it's governed by a complex combination of recessive
genes, and the probability was anything between 20-60%, depending on my
father's genome.

 The first sign of it came at about the time my voice began to deepen.
There would be an itch in my bones on the nights around full moon, a
restlessness that kept me sleepless in my bed, sheets uncomfortable no
matter which way I turned. Of course, it could just as well have been
psychosomatically induced, but as it turned out, it wasn't'"one night,
something gave way in my head, as of a door unexpectedly opening, to
tumble me dizzy and confused into a new world.

 It terrified me. The dark room was thrown suddenly into sharp focus and I
moved, but my body didn't move the way I expected it to. I began to whine,
a high, keening sound.

 The door opened, and my grandmother was there in her long nightgown.

 "Oh, Benton," she said, with a tenderness I rarely saw from her. She came
up to me and put her hand out for me to smell. There was no fear in her
eyes. "Easy, now. You'll be all right."

 I snuffled in her familiar scent, soap and dry books and tea, so strong
to me now. She put her hand on my flank to stroke it, and I began to calm
down.

 ***

 "Hey, Frase, you look dead tired. What's the matter?"

 I'm exhausted enough to be direct'"I know Ray won't let it go. "I didn't
get much sleep last night. But I'm all right."

 "Huh. You having a hard time sleeping?" Ray frowns, a wrinkle forming
between his eyebrows. "So are you sure you want to do the stakeout with
me?"

 "I can handle it."

 "Yeah, I know you can, I'm just worried about you."

 He does look honestly worried, and I feel ashamed of my lies by omission.
I look down, avoiding his eyes. "Thank you, but I'm all right'"I promise."

 After approximately two hours of stakeout, I almost wish I'd changed my
mind and gone home. My sense of smell, which tends to become more acute at
this time of month, is drowning me in Ray's scent of clean perspiration,
soap and hair gel. I dislike the chemical smell of the latter, but the
male scent of his sweat is, I admit, inappropriately arousing.

 "So, this is probably a waste of time, right? Johnson's not going to show
up." Ray twirls his car keys on his index finger. I follow their hypnotic
motion with my eyes.

 "Well, you never know. Anything could happen," I say inanely.

 "Yeah, right." Ray raises his eyebrows. "I mean, he could burst out of
that window wearing a pink tutu and rabbit ears. Any moment now."

 Despite, or perhaps because of, my exhaustion, I find this inordinately
funny. Ray elbows me in the side. "You know, you're kind of cute when you
giggle."

 "I did not giggle."

 "Did too."

 Still laughing, I give it up as a lost cause.

 At times I'm fairly sure Ray is flirting with me, but I steel myself to
ignore it. The one time I told a potential lover the truth about me, the
results were disastrous. I don't want to think Ray would react like that,
but caution is too ingrained in me.

 Freak. Less than human.

 ***

 If I hadn't had Quinn, I don't know what would have happened to me. Some
shifters, especially those in urban environments, never learn to control
the change and spend their lives in mental institutions. Well, control is
perhaps not the right word'"one can't view it as a process where one's
human self is wholly in charge. But living among the Inuit as I was, I
found that there was a much higher level of acceptance for these things,
and a tradition for dealing with it.

 Quinn would go running with me, to teach me. I was almost overwhelmed at
first by the richness of the world'"the cool smell of dew on the sedge,
the criss-crossed scent trails of mice living their tiny lives, the
shifting hints of larger animals on the wind. In human form, I can't
articulate how it feels to live that way. It isn't simply a matter of
inhabiting another body'"I am, in part, something else.

 "You have to find a balance," he would say later, when we were human
again. "Fight it, and you will lose part of what you are. Let it take you
over completely, and you will cease to be human." It's always been an
uneasy truce for me'"I'm not like Quinn, who seems to seamlessly inhabit
both worlds.

 When I was at Depot, I never told anyone.

 I had learned too well the lesson of my mother's death, and luckily
lycanthropy does not show up in blood samples, at least in the standard
tests, so no one ever knew.

 It wasn't an easy time for me. Despite Quinn's warnings, I stubbornly
tried to suppress the change at first, shivering in my dorm bed at night.
The room was dark, but I could feel the full moon above the roof of the
building, tugging at me, coercing me until I slunk like a dog brought to
heel out of the room and through the bathroom window. The park was a poor
substitute for the vastness of the tundra, and dangerous if I were to be
discovered, but it kept me from losing my mind.

 ***

 It isn't until the Muldoon case that I finally find the courage. Even
then, it is Ray who forces the situation to a head'"he was always braver
than I.

 The night after the successful resolution of the case, we both lie
sleepless in our tent, pretending to be asleep. I don't know Ray's reason,
but there will be a full moon in a few days, and I am resisting the tide
in my blood as best I can. I can hear him breathing and fidgeting, small
movements that I could not have heard without my heightened sense of
hearing.

 "Hey," he whispers. "You asleep?"

 I consider continuing the pretense, but give it up. "No."

 "Been lying awake for some time," he admits. "I wanted to ask you
something."

 "Mmm?"

 "This is maybe kind of dumb, but you remember what we said in the
crevasse?" He goes on quickly before I can reply. "I want to do that. You
know, have an adventure up here. With you."

 "Oh." The idea takes root in my mind and unfolds, and I want it. I want
it too much.

 "Yeah, I guess it was kind of a dumb idea," Ray says, barely audible, and
I realize I've been silent too long.

 "No! No, it's not. I just..." There is no way that I could hide what I am
out on the trail.

 "Yeah?"

 "You don't...there are things you don't know about me."

 "Yeah, I've figured that. So tell me." Ray's eyes are intent on me, and
it's a challenge. There is no way that I can avoid telling him, I realize,
because if I don't trust him now, something in our partnership will be
irrevocably damaged.

 "All right," I say, before I can change my mind. "Close your eyes,
please."

 "What?" he says, surprised. But he closes them, and I wriggle out of my
long johns and the sleeping bag. Ray may not be able to see, but there is
nothing wrong with his hearing. "Fraser? What are you doing? Are you
taking off your clothes?"

 "Yes," I answer tersely, goosebumps rising on my skin in the chilly air.
"Count to ten and then you can look."

 I take a deep breath and give in, flowing into my other self. My senses
sharpen.

 Ray mouths "eight...nine...ten" silently, and opens his eyes. He lies
absolutely still at first, his breathing making clouds in the air. Of
course--the tent is quite dark and Ray's night vision isn't like mine.

 "Fraser?" he whispers. "Is that you?"

 He sounds shocked, but there is no smell of fear about him. I move my
head up, then down, the motion unnatural and awkward in this body.

 "Right. Okay, buddy." He hesitantly stretches out his hand, and I sniff
it delicately. When I smell him, that Ray-scent that I have so far only
smelled while I am human, something comes together inside me.

 Ray is pack.

 The sense of belonging settles deep in my bones, in the part of me that
is purely wolf. I lick Ray's hand, wanting to taste him, too.

 "Hey! Yeah, now I see where that thing you have for licking comes from,"
he mutters, then turns serious. "Fraser. Huh, strange to call you that
now. Anyway, I really see how you might not want just anyone to know this.
But, believe me, it'd take more than this to freak me out, okay?"

 He moves his hand closer. "Can I touch you?"

 In reply, I nudge my head against his palm. He curves his fingers around
my ear, gently scratching it, and I want to melt with pleasure and
affection. I whine slightly, and his other hand comes up, stroking the fur
around my neck.

 "Can you change back whenever you want?" Ray asks.

 In reply, I reluctantly withdraw from his hands. I concentrate, reaching
for my human self, and then I am lying naked on top of my sleeping bag.
I'm somewhat appalled at the way I just shamelessly encouraged Ray's
touch. Feeling shy, I quickly get inside the bag. I glance at Ray, and I
can't be sure, but I think he's blushing.

 "Thank you," I whisper. "For understanding."

 "I told you. It's all right."

 Giving in to the urge to shift has lessened it, and I am close to sleep
when Ray whispers: "So, what about the adventure thing? You want to do
it?"

 "Yes, very much so," I whisper back.

 ***

 Quinn was pack in some sense, I suppose'"my first pack, after my
mother'"but we always knew that it wouldn't last. He taught me, so that I
could move on, as young wolves do.

 I really couldn't put my finger on the empty feeling inside me until I
met Diefenbaker. It wasn't that I was unhappy'"more that something was
missing, though I didn't know what. But when I woke in that mine shaft
from a wet tongue on my face, and opened my eyes to see a wolf cub looking
down at me, something changed. Of course, at the time, I thought I was
just feeling my head injury.

 Then I realized that Dief recognized me for what I was. He lowered his
body, sticking his tail between his legs in the submissive body language
of a young wolf greeting the alpha of its pack.

 Pack. The word resonated in my mind. Of course'"no wonder I'd been
lonely. I couldn't shift then, but I acknowledged him the best I could,
leaning over to put my hand on his neck and let him lick my jaw.

 ***

 "Hey. You gonna let me drive some time?" Ray twists his neck and looks at
me impatiently from his place in the sled.

 I shout at the dogs and brake the sled to a stop. "Of course. It's
inefficient anyway for one of us to ride on the sled. It leaves less room
for provisions. We'll stop and pick up more food and fuel the day after
tomorrow."

 "So if I'm driving, what are you going to do instead of sitting in the
sled?" I stamp the snow anchor in'"probably unnecessary with Dief in the
lead, but better to be safe'"and unzip my parka.

 "Well, I'll be sharing the lead position with Dief." I strip out of my
layers quickly, bending down to unlace my boots.

 "You'"what?" Ray's eyes wander downwards, but he jerks his them up to my
face quickly.

 "As I said. Now, do you remember what I told you earlier? Brake the sled
when it's downhill, walk beside it on the uphill. Otherwise, just hold on.
We'll handle the rest." I grin widely and put my feet down in the numbing
snow.

 "Yeah, sure." He still looks stunned. "Wait, where's the extra harness?"

 But it's too late'"I'm already shifting, leaving my two legs and
opposable thumbs behind for the swiftness of four legs. I dig with my nose
in the side pocket for the harness, and stick my head in it, guiding Ray's
hands to help me.

 When he closes the snap to connect me to the gangline, I raise my head to
the clear blue sky and yip in anticipation. The rest of the team joins me
in a loud chorus. Dief strains in his harness beside me and I paw the snow
impatiently. Dimly, I remember that making noise like this is something I
try to discourage when I'm human, but fuck that, I just want to run.

 "Hey, take it easy!" I loll my tongue out in return, daring him to make
me. He shakes his head and goes to loosen the snow anchor. Ray's shouted
"Mush!" is entirely unnecessary, and I throw my weight against the harness
and pull.

 I don't think I've ever felt this whole, as if every part of me, human
and wolf, is coming together with one single purpose'"the snow sparkling
and firm under my feet, the cold air rushing in my lungs. And most
important: my pack, travelling together.

 ***

 I turn aside when I see a likely place to spend the night, barking
sharply at the other dogs to warn them to slow down. Ray gets off the
sled, remembering to anchor it first, and comes up to let me and Dief out
of harness.

 "So you're too tired to run any more, huh?" He grins.

 Dief growls at the affront. I splay my front legs out playfully, judging
Ray's stance, and then we jump up as one, toppling Ray over into the snow.
"Hey! What do you think you're..."

 I take one ear and Dief the other, and Ray is most thoroughly licked.
"All right, I take it back. I take it back!"

 We back off to let him up, and he brushes the snow off his clothes.

 I reach up, changing to my human shape, then immediately start to shiver.
Perhaps it was premature to change before I had my clothes unpacked,
although I don't know how I could have taken them out without hands. I run
over to the sled and rummage around for them. Ray's laughter follows me.
"You freezing your ass off or what?"

 I don't reply, trying to salvage some of my dignity.

 "Mighty fine ass, too," Ray mutters under his breath as I pull my clothes
on.

 "I heard that, Ray."

 "Oh yeah?" He's grinning, and suddenly there is no reason in the world
why I shouldn't have what I want. I turn to him and kiss him until neither
of us can breathe any more. His face is cold, but his tongue is warm
against mine.

 I draw back, panting. "Perhaps we should..." I make a vague gesture
towards the sled, though what I'm really trying to say is: Perhaps we
should put up the tent and crawl naked into the sleeping bags together?

 He's nodding slowly, and his eyes are intent on me. "Yeah, perhaps we
should."

 But the dogs need food and care, and it's almost two hours of
snow-melting and paw-checking later before we finally get the tent up. I
feel like I've been hard for at least half that time. Ray catches me
trying to adjust myself through my suddenly uncomfortable thermal pants,
and chuckles. I can see the tip of his tongue, and it does not help.

 In the tent, I arrange the thermal pads and sleeping bags. Ray's voice
just outside the thin fabric says: "You finished?"

 "Yeah. You can come in." I'm afraid my patience is at an end, and when
Ray crawls in, I grab him by the front of his parka and push him down,
straddling his hips.

 "You in a rush or what?" I hear myself growling a little as I try to get
through his clothes. The process of undressing is far too complicated, and
we struggle with zippers, buttons and drawstrings until the tent is a mess
of our discarded clothing. Finally, we are inside the sleeping bags, skin
against skin. We're kissing breathlessly and I roll on top of Ray, holding
him down with my weight as I thrust against him. We both moan
simultaneously and Ray tries to spread his legs, cursing as they tangle in
the confined space.

 It's uncoordinated and awkward, and the most satisfying sex I've had in
my life. I bite down on Ray's shoulder, moving against him in uneven
rhythm. I'm probably marking him, but I don't care, in fact, the thought
makes me groan as I spill against his belly.

 I reach down in the mess between us and grab Ray's erection, thick and
hot in my hand. It only takes a few strokes before he's shaking and coming
underneath me.

 Orgasm knocks both of us out like lights, and I only wake when Ray pushes
at me, trying to get me to move.

 "Mmph," I protest, resenting the disturbance and the cold air that makes
its way in.

 "You're squashing me. My leg's asleep."

 I shake my head, trying to clear it. I seem to be lying half on top of
Ray. "Sorry."

 "God, we're a mess. And we stink." It's true, the smell of sex is
everywhere on our sticky bodies.

 "I like it," I say without thinking. The scent of my semen on Ray's body,
mingled with his own scent, makes my penis stir again.

 "You would. Weirdo." He kisses me, and I wince a little at the
stubble-burn I didn't notice until now.

 Ray rolls me over on my back. "You know, just because you're some kind of
alpha wolf sometimes doesn't mean you get to be on top all the time."

 I think as well as I can while Ray is rubbing against me. Yes, I suppose
I was a little assertive before. "Of course not. Wolves do have strict
dominance hierarchies, but I'm human too, not just a wolf."

 "Oh yeah?" he says. In reply, I slowly turn my head aside to expose my
neck. That, at least, should be body language he understands. I can hear
his rapid breathing as he leans down and gently puts his mouth on me. His
tongue follows my stretched tendon, then I feel his teeth closing on my
neck.

 I gasp, jerking my hips up. "Yes, I...please."

 "Yeah, I got you." Ray lies down behind me and licks his hand, then
strokes me slowly, his thumb rubbing the head, until I'm begging to come.
He finishes me off with a couple of hard strokes, and comes a few moments
later, thrusting between my thighs.

 I almost fall asleep again, but rouse myself enough to wipe us off'"the
sleeping bags are soiled enough as it is. But I don't really care.

 All I know is that on this quest, for the first time that I can remember,
the human and wolf in me are of one mind. Life is good.  
  

End Shifting by Luzula 

Author and story notes above.  

Please post a comment on this story. 
Read posted comments.