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kathierif_ficTitle: What Do You See If You Turn Off The Light
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: John Sheppard/Ronon Dex
Word Count: 16,231 words
Rating: FRAO
Warnings: slash, vampires, werewolves, AU
Summary: Getting bitten by a werewolf is bad enough, but it gets worse when living on a planet with five moons.
Author’s notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
werewolfbigbang. This is a sequel to Get By With A Little Help, my vampirebigbang fic. All you need to know from that one is that John Sheppard is a vampire.
Title is a line from The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends”.
Millions of thanks to the usual help to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ginny305.
Mix byimpertinence
can be found here. Please giveimpertinence feedback for the mix!
The Stargate closed behind them with a whoosh and left the team in silence and darkness. For a moment, nobody moved, and then John took a step forward.
“I thought there was a village,” he murmured and looked around, but even his vampire sight wasn’t strong enough to pierce the utter and complete darkness.
“The village is several miles away from the Stargate,” Teyla said by way of explanation and turned on her flashlight. “There is a path.”
John’s eyes followed the strong beam of her light before switching on his own lamp and pointing it down, and true to Teyla’s words, after just a few steps, he was standing on a sandy path.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said and waited until Rodney had fallen in step with him before nudging him slightly. “You okay, McKay? You’ve been awfully quiet today.”
“Yeah,” Rodney replied softly. “I just have a weird feeling about all this. Call me ridiculous, go ahead.”
John just reached out and patted Rodney’s shoulder awkwardly. “You know we could have waited until the morning to head out,” he said hesitantly, although he’d been the first to agree with Woolsey’s opinion of moving out in the evening rather than waiting for daylight.
He heard the soft rustle of fabric as Rodney shook his head.
“I’m not afraid of the dark; besides, this way, you won’t need your shield and are safe anyway.” He referred to the personal shield he’d modified when John had been turned into a vampire, and that now protected him from the sunlight. While sunlight didn’t kill him, it left him with nasty burns that itched horribly when they healed, and John was very thankful for the shield. He carried it in the inside pocket of his jacket, close to his chest and safe from accidental loss, and now, he reached up and pressed his hand against the hard bump under his clothes.
“It’s just,” Rodney continued, “I expected at least a moon or something.”
It was as if Rodney’s words had been a sign, John thought as he gripped his weapon tighter, because he’d barely finished his sentence when the full moon appeared from behind a thick blanket of clouds. It was huge in the sky, its silvery light bright enough to illuminate the path for them, and the four of them walked in silence until they reached the sprawling outskirts of the village.
“Something’s wrong.” It was the first thing Ronon said since they had left Atlantis, and he voiced what all of them were feeling. Something about the village was giving off a strange vibe that not only Ronon’s instincts as a Runner, but also John’s still developing vampire instincts had picked up.
“Wraith?” he asked softly.
“I sense no Wraith,” Teyla whispered back. “However, I see no lights.”
Now that she had said it, John realized that it was the complete lack of lights and sounds that gave him the weird feeling at the pit of his stomach.
Even sleeping people made sounds, he knew, and a village like this was never this silent, unless it had been abandoned. Since Atlantis had been in contact with the natives just a few days ago, he was relatively sure that the inhabitants hadn’t left their village voluntarily.
An icy feeling closed around his heart, and his thoughts flashed to Michael and Kolya. He exchanged a quick look with Teyla and then followed her deeper into the village.
She led him to the central square, where they found a small inn.
“Let’s see if we can find out what happened to these people,” John murmured.
Not a word was spoken as his team followed him into the inn. After more than five years together, they were working like a well-oiled machine, and everybody knew what they had to do. However, now wasn’t the time to marvel at their efficiency.
They kept their weapons ready, muscles tense and expecting chaos and destruction wherever the beams of their flashlights fell, but the main room with its many tables and wooden benches was clean, the floors were swept and the mugs were stashed on shelves along the wall behind the bar.
It looked so normal, John thought, as if the owners had just closed for the night and then had decided to leave the planet instead of going to bed.
Rodney exhaled loudly. “Creepy,” he muttered, and John found himself nodding.
“We should return to Atlantis,” Teyla said. “Return by daylight, try to find out what happened here.”
“Yeah,” Ronon agreed. “Can’t do much right now.”
“All right,” John decided. “Let’s do that.” If whatever had happened to the villages had stuck around, he didn’t want to be here when it decided to return.
They left the inn in silence and started to walk back to the Stargate, the moon still bright enough to let them see their surroundings clearly, when suddenly, Ronon froze.
Immediately, the others followed his example and stopped. Weapons were gripped tighter, and John tried to listen into the darkness, to figure out what Ronon had heard, but all he picked up was the sound of the wind rustling in the trees and his own blood pulsing in his ears.
All of a sudden, the darkness returned as another cloud hid the moon, and then, John was able to smell it – the wind had turned, he realized, and there was something stalking them – an animal, but a huge one, if his senses didn’t betray him. It smelled like wet fur and anger, he thought uncomfortably while turning his flashlight searchingly in the direction the smell came from.
Next to him, Ronon pulled his weapon from its holster and aimed in the direction John was looking at, but before he could shoot, something sleek and heavy and huge impacted with his body, seemingly out of nowhere, and pushed him to the ground.
Even with his vampire sight, John only caught vague shadows of what was happening. He couldn’t shoot the animal without the risk of hitting Ronon and killing him, and he didn’t even dare moving, out of instinctive fear that he would pull the beast’s attention to himself.
A pain-filled howl ripped through the darkness - Ronon - and then, the sound of Ronon’s weapon discharging followed.
After that, there was only silence and the sound of harsh breathing in the night.
The moon appeared from behind the cloud again.
“Ronon?” John took a step closer and immediately stopped again as the smell of blood, sweet wet liquid blood, assaulted his senses.
Ronon’s blood.
“Ronon?” he asked again, his voice tight with worry.
“I’m fine,” Ronon replied roughly and struggled to sit up while pushing the cadaver of the animal away from himself with a disgusted snort.
“You’re bleeding,” John pointed out. His body reacted in the usual way to the smell, and his stomach started to growl.
“Beast bit me,” Ronon spat out as he moved away from the body, which now smelled like burned fur and cauterized flesh.
“Oh God,” Rodney said as he pointed his flashlight at Ronon. Ronon’s entire front was covered in blood, but John knew that it looked worse than it was.
Ronon growled and lifted his hand, to shield his eyes from the beam of Rodney’s lamp, and that was when John saw it – there was a huge, gaping wound in Ronon’s side.
“Oh God,” Rodney said again, his voice shaky. He had seen the wound, too. “We need to get you back to Atlantis, now.”
“First, we need to stop the bleeding,” Teyla pointed out. She was a lot calmer than Rodney, but John knew that she was affected from what had just happened as well. There was a slight tremor, almost unnoticeable, in her voice that gave her away.
“Teyla,” John murmured. It was all he needed to do. She was already pulling her first-aid kit from her vest pocket. Rodney only shot a brief, worried glance in John’s direction, swallowed thickly and set out to help her.
John exhaled sharply. He was feeding regularly from Ronon, and the smell of his blood had its effects on his body; effects he’d been struggling to hide for weeks now, with less and less success. Worse than the physical reaction, which he could ignore, was the sense of helplessness – there wasn’t anything he could do right now to help Ronon, and it made his skin itch with frustration. His instincts screamed at him to do something, to protect those he considered his, but there was nothing he could protect Ronon from anymore. The beast was already dead.
John bit his tongue sharply and focused his attention back to the problem at hand. He’d learned to be careful with his vampire teeth and their razor-like sharpness, but right now, he greeted the pain of them slicing through the slick muscle of his tongue. It helped him concentrate.
He turned away from his teammates and turned his attention on the dead body of the beast.
It was a wolf, that much he could see, its paws huge and its teeth in the dark muzzle long and sharp. Its dark fur was coarse and matted down. The entire animal was thin and mangled, its ribs clearly visible under its fur.
It was a huge animal, John thought with a small shudder and nudged the cadaver’s paw with the toe of his boot. In a standing position, its shoulder easily was at a height with John’s hip, but even while John was thinking about the size of the animal, the body started to change.
“Guys,” he called out hesitantly, his eyes glued to the scenario in front of him.
The wolf’s entire shape shifted and changed. The mane and fur disappeared, leaving only small patches of hair the same color behind. Paws lengthened, claws retracted, leaving dark fingers with short, dirty nails behind.
John bit back a curse and flashed his light over the body, which was still dead, but not canine anymore.
It was a thin, dirty, naked man.
“Do you even have an immunization against tetanus? Did Jennifer or Carson ever give you a shot?” Rodney was just asking Ronon, who grunted an unintelligible answer.
“Guys,” John said again. This time, Teyla and Rodney both looked up, and Rodney finally stood from where he had been kneeling next to Ronon and came to stand next to John.
Together they stared at the body for a long moment.
“I think we should return to Atlantis,” Rodney finally said. “Ronon…he needs stitches and antibiotics…and a tetanus shot…” He trailed off.
John nodded. Returning to Atlantis seemed like a good idea.
The moon disappeared behind yet another cloud, and a loud howl ripped through the inky dark night.
Returning to Atlantis suddenly seemed like a really good idea.
~*+*~
“I don’t even know if they had immunization on Sateda,” Rodney whispered dejectedly. John didn’t know why Rodney was suddenly so much concerned and fixated on the risk of a tetanus infection, when they both knew that Ronon had survived worse than a wolf bite, but instead of commenting he just rolled his eyes and pulled another chair close.
Jennifer patted Rodney’s shoulder soothingly. “He’s resting for now,” she said in her soft infirmary voice. “We cleaned and stitched up the wound, and yes, Rodney, we gave him a tetanus shot, too.”
Rodney’s shoulders slumped, and the corners of his mouth turned down, as well. “This is probably the smallest problem we’ll have to deal with, here, anyway,” he pointed out dully.
John slowly and very deliberately sprawled in his chair. His shoulders ached with sudden tension, despite the quick hot shower he’d taken after his own post-mission check-up.
“I mean…” Rodney continued with a shrug. “We all know what we saw, back there. And what that probably means.”
John remained silent. Here, in the relative safety of Atlantis with its soothing warm lights, the entire mission to the planet and everything that had happened there seemed somewhat unreal. A second team – Lorne’s, most likely – would return to the planet in a few hours and try to find out what had happened to the villagers, and John and his team would remain in the infirmary, waiting for Ronon to wake up, at least unless Jennifer kicked them out or an emergency brought them away.
“What did you see?” Jennifer asked and curiously looked from one of them to the other. “I mean, besides Ronon getting bitten by a gigantic wolf.”
“It was not an ordinary wolf,” Teyla said slowly. “We saw…a wolfman.”
And Rodney added, by way of explanation, “A werewolf.”
~*+*~
“So…you’re telling me Ronon was bitten by a werewolf.” Richard Woolsey frowned doubtfully and ran his palms down his jacket.
“Yeah, pretty much,” John replied and forced himself not to shift too much in his chair. He knew exactly why Rodney and Teyla had voted for him to talk to Woolsey about what was happening, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
However, if Woolsey tried to argue that werewolves were just a myth and didn’t really exist, all John had to do was smile at him, and making sure Woolsey caught a glimpse of his teeth.
He had vetoed Rodney’s suggestion of wearing the cape his team had given him for his birthday – the day he’d been born the first time, not the day he’d been turned into a vampire, which Rodney had dubbed biteday and had decided to celebrate as well, and John hadn’t found a suitable threat yet to make him drop those plans.
“Well,” Woolsey murmured, interrupting John’s meandering thoughts, “Life certainly never gets dull in Pegasus galaxy…werewolves, vampires…what’s next? Tentacled slime monsters? No offense, Colonel.”
John smiled without showing his teeth. “None taken. Although, actually, there are tentacled…beings on MS7-T39, and they are kind of slimy, too.”
Woolsey gave him an annoyed look, and John held back his smirk.
“About Ronon,” Woolsey said abruptly.
“Keller is keeping him in the infirmary for now,” John said. “Since we don’t know how many of the myths are true, if any. For all we know at this point, the worst that might happen is that Ronon gets a nice scar to add to his collection.”
Woolsey nodded slowly. “I want you to proceed with the utmost carefulness,” he instructed. “Our first priority is to keep Atlantis safe, Colonel.”
John nodded. He understood and agreed with Woolsey’s assessment of the situation.
He waited to be dismissed and returned to the infirmary. Teyla was sitting next to Ronon’s bed, a small smile on her lips.
“Did he wake up?” John asked, his voice pitched low, and Teyla inclined her head slightly.
“Briefly,” she murmured. “Jennifer said she will keep him here, to make sure the wound heals properly, but she is certain he will make a full recovery.”
“Good.” John exhaled and nodded. “You should go and spend some time with…with Kanaan and Torren,” he then added. “I’ll sit with him for now.”
Teyla gave him a grateful nod and stood. “Thank you, John.”
He waved her off awkwardly, and Teyla gave him another indulging smile before leaving the infirmary.
John waited until she was gone before falling into the chair she had been sitting in and putting his boots up on the edge of Ronon’s bed, careful to stay away from the bandaged wound. He was ready to wait for Ronon to wake up.
~*+*~
It was late the next day when Ronon finally opened his eyes slowly and turned toward John.
“Hey, buddy,” John said. “How do you feel?”
Ronon grunted. “Hurts a little,” he finally admitted. “What happened?”
John sat up a little. “You don’t remember?” he asked carefully.
Ronon frowned as he tried to recall what had happened. “Everything’s kind of fuzzy,” he admitted. “What happened after I shot that wolf?”
“You got bitten by it,” John told him earnestly. “It was a werewolf. A….” he hesitated. “A wolfman, Teyla called them.”
Ronon closed his eyes again. His throat worked, but he kept his lips pressed tightly shut, not saying a single word.
John apparently got the hint that he didn’t want to talk about it right now, because he squeezed Ronon’s wrist and got up to leave.
Ronon didn’t do anything to try and stop him.
~*+*~
Bitten by a wolfman.
On Sateda, there had been myths about a fearless warrior named Jarn who had been bitten by a wolfman. When Ronon had been a small child, young enough to sit by his grandfather’s feet and listen to the tales told to him by the old man, he had been impressed by the story of Jarn, who, even in his second body, hadn’t stopped fighting the Wraith. He’d killed many of them on his search for the wolfman who had turned him, since it was said that killing the wolfman who had turned him would reverse the process and return him to the life of a normal human warrior.
Ronon shook his head slightly. His side ached and hurt with every breath he took, even if he was sure that Jennifer had given him as much from the painkillers as she had dared. She might have chosen McKay over him, but she still had a weak spot for him, as well.
With that thought, he drifted off again.
When he woke up again, Rodney was by his bedside, laptop balanced on his knees, and he was engaged in a whispered argument, most likely with Radek.
His side hurt as fiercely as it had before, but Ronon still tried to sit up, and Rodney gave him a dark glare.
“What are you doing?” he asked, followed by an exasperated, “Not you. I’m talking to Chewie here!”
Ronon managed to give him a grin that didn’t look like a pain-filled grimace, but Rodney was clearly not impressed by it.
“A rabid wolf tried to rip you to pieces,” he said, “Lie back down, will you?”
“Not a rabid wolf,” Ronon managed to say as he eased himself back into the pillows. “Wolfman.” He frowned. “I killed it, right? It wasn’t you or Sheppard or Teyla?”
“Yeah, you did.” Rodney frowned unhappily. “You shot him.”
Ronon exhaled through his nose. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Rodney spluttered, his worried expression replaced by confusion and disbelief.
“Yeah,” Ronon said and lifted his hand with a small smile. “Killing the wolfman who bit you reverses the transformation. Says so in the myth.” He hesitated. “Why don’t you go and yell at Radek in person,” he then added. “I’m fine here.”
“Are you sure?” Rodney sounded hesitant again, and Ronon’s lips twitched slightly. He was glad that his team had all taken turns sitting with him, and he knew that they all had contributed in getting him home. They were his team, his family, but each and every one of them had other duties when in Atlantis; duties that were important – more important than sitting around and watch him sleep.
“Go, before he makes the city sink,” he murmured. He would apologize to Radek later, he decided when Rodney shot out of his chair as if bitten by an Iratus-bug.
The thought of something biting Rodney quickly brought his mind back to his current situation, and what had brought him to the infirmary.
In the legends of Jarn the Wolfwarrior, he’d been searching for the wolfman who’d bitten him, believing that killing him would heal Jarn. Ronon vaguely remembered that Jarn had been killed in a Wraith attack before he could complete his mission, but if the myths surrounding him were true, then Ronon had nothing to worry about – he’d already killed his wolfman.
And if the legends were just that, tales told to children to keep them quiet and attentive, and there was no cure for this, there wasn’t anything he could do about his current situation either. Worrying about it wouldn’t help.
And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about it, his mind circling around that one thought obsessively.
An hour later, he started regretting that he’d sent Rodney away. A distraction would be most welcome at that point.
~*+*~
“Well, the good news is that your side is healing well,” Jennifer told him with a soft smile and covered the wound again with sterile gauze. Ronon had caught a glance at the jagged edges of the wound, his flesh red and tender around the black stitches, and he had immediately understood why he had been in so much pain.
He gave her a grin. “Does that mean I can go?”
Jennifer gave him a startled look. “Not yet,” she said firmly, no trace of her usual sweetness in her voice. “I want you to give that wound more time to heal properly.”
Ronon frowned unhappily, but before he could voice his displeasure, she continued, “Do you want to know the rest?”
Silently, he nodded, and she pulled her tablet computer close.
“This,” she said and showed him a picture of what he recognized as a collection of blood cells, “is the result of Colonel Sheppard’s last check-up. You see how the level of the white blood cells is still through the roof, at least for a normal human being?” She pointed at the picture, and Ronon nodded.
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” he pointed out, and Jennifer pulled up another picture and showed it to him.
It looked almost identical to the first one.
“This is from your results,” she explained softly. “Now, the elevated count of white blood cells could be a result of the infection at the site of the wound, but like in Colonel Sheppard, it is much higher than anything I’ve seen before.”
Ronon stared at the screen. “He was drinking from me regularly,” he said slowly.
“I know,” she replied. “However, he’s also been drinking regularly from Doctor Zelenka, from Teyla, from a few other volunteers, as well, and they’re all having normal results.” She shrugged and hugged her computer close to her chest. “It might be nothing at all,” she admitted. “But I’d rather be careful, anyway.”
Ronon admitted that she was right and that her words made sense, but it didn’t change the fact that he was bored out of his mind and wanted to go to his own room.
“Listen,” Jennifer said, interpreting his silence correctly, “it’s only for a few more days, and if nothing’s changed for the worse, I’ll let you go, okay?”
Ronon nodded, but before she could leave, he asked, “Can he still drink it?”
She frowned, but quickly realized what he was talking about.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “On first glance, I’d say probably, yeah. But we should do some tests before we let you two try it.”
Ronon nodded, satisfied with the answer, and she turned to leave.
A few more days, he would survive a few more days stuck in bed without dying of boredom, he thought and closed his eyes determinedly.
~*+*~
“You know that Rodney went back to the planet?” John asked. “Apparently, the villagers were back in the morning, as if nothing had happened, but their fresh water pump thing was broken and they asked us to help them fix it…so Rodney went. Grumbling about Zelenka and something about sinking the city?” He raised an eyebrow.
Ronon nodded and then squinted his eyes. “And you?” he asked.
John sighed. “On my way to the Zubbi,” he said, referring to the alien race of vampires that had been responsible for the fact that he now was a vampire, “trying to find out what they know about werewolves…wolfmen.”
Ronon’s lips quirked into a brief smile. “Does McKay know you’re meeting with Riena?”
John grimaced at the mention of the woman who’d accidentally turned him. “He doesn’t,” he admitted. “And he doesn’t need to know, okay?”
Ronon laughed softly, despite the pain it brought to his side. “If you say so.”
“There are only so many jokes about Oedipus I can take without wanting to have him take a long walk off the East pier,” John said with a sigh and glanced at his watch. “I should go.”
He grimaced again. “I have an appointment with my mother.”
Ronon lifted his hand and closed it around John’s wrist. “Be careful,” he grumbled.
“She can’t bite me again,” John pointed out, but he turned his hand and wrapped his own fingers around Ronon’s wrist, as well, and squeezed reassuringly.
“Ask her if you can drink from a wolfman,” Ronon added. “Just in case.”
John nodded, and Ronon let go of his wrist and watched him go while he was still stuck in a hospital bed.
~*+*~
John returned early the next morning, pale and quiet and exhausted. He stopped by the infirmary, and Ronon wasn’t surprised about the paleness – John was, after all, a vampire, and they didn’t really spend a lot of time in the sunlight – but the quietness made him restless.
“They don’t have a cure, and they don’t know of one,” he reported when he stopped by Ronon’s bed. “They gave me all the information and ‘lore about wolfmen they have. The anthropologists are already working on it, if you’re interested.”
Ronon nodded. “If the legends are true,” he said again, “nothing will happen. I killed him. I freed myself from the second nature.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that, buddy,” John sighed and patted his shoulder once, but Ronon could see that John didn’t believe the legends were telling the truth.
It reminded Ronon of something.
“Did you ask her?” he wanted to know. “About wolfmen and…you?”
John exhaled. “Yeah,” he replied. “She said it’s probably okay.”
Ronon nodded, and John left, go get some sleep and maybe something to eat as well – something that was not Ronon’s blood.
Several hours later, he heard that Rodney had returned to Atlantis, but the other man didn’t turn up at the infirmary.
Ronon didn’t worry. Rodney would come see him sooner or later.
~*+*~
That night a moon rose pale and full over the horizon, bathing Atlantis and the waves gently lapping against its sides in its silvery light.
~*+*~
“Keller to Sheppard. Colonel, could you please come to the infirmary?”
Jennifer Keller’s voice sounded shaky, and John almost forgot to grab his gun from his desk in his haste to get to the infirmary. He left his shield on his desk; since it was dark out, he didn’t realize he’d forgotten to put it back into his pocket until he was almost at the infirmary, and by then, he hoped that he just wouldn’t need it. It was too late to turn around and get it now.
Rodney and Teyla were already there. Teyla was sitting next to Jennifer on one of the beds and held her hand, and Rodney was furiously typing on his laptop, the frown on his forehead deeper than John had seen it in a long while. His blood ran cold as he realized what had happened, what had to have happened.
“Ronon?”
“Gone.” Jennifer’s voice was almost toneless. “He knocked out the guards and disappeared.” She shuddered. “Thankfully, nobody got killed…or bitten.”
Teyla looked up, her gaze meeting John’s. They both were thinking the same.
“Oh.”
The soft sound coming from Rodney had John by his side in a heartbeat. “Rodney?”
Rodney pressed another key on his keyboard and turned the laptop around, to show John and the others the picture from the security feed.
John was the first who found his voice.
“Looks like killing the wolfman who’d bitten you is not the cure,” he muttered without taking his eyes off the image of the huge, dark brown wolf with the black markings. Its teeth were bared in a growl and its ears were pressed tight to its massive head.
John whirled around, toward the bed Ronon had occupied. “Where is he now?” he asked while taking in the ripped gown and blankets on the floor, the discarded medical equipment and the overturned chairs.
“I don’t know,” Rodney replied and continued to type. “What are you going to do?”
“Find him,” John replied shortly and grabbed Ronon’s energy weapon from the drawer of the little table that was tucked away next to the top of the bed.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Rodney asked doubtfully, but the speed of his typing did not slow down. He wanted to find Ronon as much as John did, and as much as John he wanted Ronon safe.
John set the weapon to stun and shrugged. “The Zubbi were certain that wolfmen never bite vampires, and if they do, it doesn’t affect them…us…more than any other bite. I’m the only one who can do this without the risk of getting turned, Rodney,” he explained as patiently as he could. “And I need you to tell me where he is.”
“Unless he kills you,” Rodney muttered, but he knew that John was right and that he wouldn’t be able to stop him.”Just be careful. I’ll give you directions.”
John nodded and left.
He had a wolfman to find.
~*+*~
The slight static of Rodney’s voice over the radio and his own breathing were the loudest sounds around John as he sneaked on silent feet through the dimly lit hallways of Atlantis, Ronon’s gun in his hands and his vampire senses sharpened to the point where he could hear the rush of his own blood in his veins. The ancient technology hummed soothingly in his mind, quietly enough not to distract him from his task, and he carefully listened into the room ahead of him, in order to pick up even the slightest trace of the wolf.
Ronon.
“Now left,” Rodney’s voice in his ear told him, and obediently, John ducked through an open door, into a darker hallway. He waited for a few heartbeats before continuing his search of Atlantis. He vaguely remembered this particular part of the city from several runs with Ronon, and he knew that around the corner, broken furniture was stacked up and waiting for them to have some time to clean up the uninhabited areas.
He knew instinctively that something was off.
Something was different.
He slowed down even more.
“Careful now, you’re almost there,” Rodney murmured nervously in his ear, at the same time as John heard a clicking noise.
He’d never heard this particular sound in Atlantis before, he thought. It sounded like toenails on Atlantis’ floor.
He froze.
“He’s coming straight for your position!” Rodney managed to inform him, and John yanked his arm up, powering up Ronon’s weapon and aiming into the darkness without hesitating.
He was too slow, despite his vampire speed. Before he could fire Ronon’s gun, a heavy weight crashed into his chest and drove the air out of his lungs. The gun flew out of his grip and clattered somewhere behind him in the darkness as he crashed hard into the floor. He could feel his ribs protest under the attack, and although it hurt badly enough that he only saw black spots dance in front of his eyes for an agonizingly long moment, he was sure that he hadn’t broken any ribs.
Huge paws were resting on his chest, making it impossible to take a deep breath. A cold, wet nose came close, brushed over his collarbone and his cheek and sniffed him before John managed to turn his head away. He caught sight of a massive, furry chest and a hint of a bushy tail before a deep growl from above pulled his attention back to what he was sure was the werewolf’s head.
Its ears twitched, but they weren’t pressed flat to the skull like the other wolf’s had been. Its lips were pulled back, exposing long, sharp teeth that looked like shiny white knives in the semi-darkness. However, for some reason, John didn’t have the impression that the wolf was trying to seriously harm him, even if he didn’t know how exactly he had reached that conclusion.
“Sheppard!” Rodney’s voice bellowed into his ear. “Sheppard, are you there? What’s happening? Sheppard, come in!”
With some difficulty and with very slow movements, John lifted his hand to his ear.
“I found him,” he said, his voice breathless and hoarse. “Don’t…”
He trailed off as the wolf moved and had to remind himself forcefully that wolfsmen were not supposed to bite vampires, unless, a traitorous part of his brain reminded him, they were hunted and wanted to kill the hunter.
He barely dared to breathe, but the wolf only sat down next to him. Its paw, however, remained on John’s chest, a not-so-subtle reminder that he was trapped and, even if he managed to escape, he was certain he couldn’t outrun a wolf.
“Don’t what?” Rodney asked, and John grimaced. “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice pitched low and calming. “I found him. We’re fine. Seal the area until I tell you otherwise – he’s calm now, but I don’t want to know what will happen if more people with guns storm at him.”
“What about you?” Rodney demanded, and John managed a grim smile.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”
Really. Besides the fact that he was pinned to the floor by an overgrown wolf and unarmed, he was fine.
“If you say so,” Rodney replied. He sounded helpless, frustrated and a little bit scared, but there was nothing John could do about that right now. Rodney, he told himself, was with Jennifer and with Teyla. They both were better at keeping the scientist calm than he was, anyway.
Rodney would be fine.
He peered up, past the muzzle and the teeth and into the wolf’s brownish yellow eyes.
Intelligent eyes.
John deliberately forced himself to relax.
“Hey, big guy,” he drawled. “You gonna let me up?”
The wolf seemed to smirk down on him.
“I guess not.” John sighed. “Any idea when you’re going to change back?”
The wolf didn’t reply, and John settled in to wait with a small sigh. It was going to be a long night.
~*+*~
John slowly blinked his eyes open. He’d dozed off some time after the wolf had curled up along his side and had rested its massive head on John’s chest, and John had wrapped his hand in the thick, coarse hair of its mane and had entertained thoughts of tossing a tennis ball or a leg of a broken chair for Ronon to retrieve just before he’d fallen asleep.
And now, he’d woken up because the weight of that head had suddenly disappeared.
Slightly disoriented, he lifted his head from the hard floor and looked around.
Through the windows at the end of the hallway, weak grey light filtered in, telling John that it was dawn. The wolf – Ronon – was nowhere to be seen, but John could still hear him, a loud panting and the sound of bones breaking. It sent shivers and a mild wave of nausea through him, and he hastily scrambled to his feet and went to retrieve Ronon’s weapon before advancing toward the sound of crunching and whimpering noises.
Everything was silent once again before he reached the corner, and John carefully peaked around it, half expecting the wolf to wait for him and knock him to the ground again.
There was no sign of a wolf whatsoever, but the body lying twisted on the ground, face hidden by a wild mass of dreadlocks, body naked and smooth, was familiar.
“Ronon!”
With two quick steps, John was by Ronon’s side and knelt down. One hand reached for Ronon’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy, can you hear me?”
Ronon growled, a sound that was animalistic and dangerous sounding, and rolled around. The weapon flew out of John’s hand for a second time as his wrists were pinned to the ground, but this time, John didn’t freeze like he had in the night. He kicked out, and his boot connected with soft flesh and hard muscle.
Ronon jerked back with a growl, and John scrambled backwards, away from him, as quickly as his muscles, which were stiff from the night he’d spent on the ground, allowed him.
He didn’t get far until Ronon attacked him again, but this time, he was able to anticipate the attack and brace himself. When Ronon’s body connected with his own, he used their momentum and rolled them, until he was on top of Ronon and straddling his hips.
“Knock it off!” he hissed, and Ronon, to his great surprise, seemed to understand him and even listen to him. His muscles went lax, and he stretched an arm over his eyes while he panted, his bare chest lifting and falling rhythmically under John’s hands.
It was only now that John fully registered that Ronon was completely naked under him, and the little part in him that he’d fought since the first time Ronon had pulled him in his lap and had bared his throat to him, letting John drink from him, stirred.
Instinct made him lean forward, his hands braced on Ronon’s chest, and seek out that one spot under Ronon’s jaw he’d bitten whenever he had drunk from the Satedan. He could almost taste the tang of Ronon’s blood on the tip of his tongue, but before he could give in to the urges and bite down, his self-control returned, and he froze mid-movement.
He couldn’t bite Ronon with the other man like this, unable to consent to what was happening. It didn’t matter that Ronon regularly offered John both his blood and his body. Right now, Ronon’s mind was, apparently, still caught up in the mind frame of a wolf, and John wouldn’t do anything without Ronon fully back to his senses and agreeing to it.
Very slowly, he pulled back.
Ronon’s face was twisted into a grimace, his eyes pressed tightly shut. John opened his mouth, to apologize for what he’d almost done, when Ronon blinked, and suddenly, John was staring into the eyes of the wolf.
“Why’d you stop?” Ronon growled, his voice rough and almost toneless. “Don’t stop.”
His hand came up and closed around the back of John’s neck, gripping tight, almost too tight, and then John was yanked forward. He barely managed to brace himself again with his palms flat on Ronon’s chest when their lips were already pressed fully together.
John’s instincts screamed at him, and then, Ronon’s tongue was pushing past his lips, slick and hot and agile and tracing along John’s own tongue.
Ronon made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat when John didn’t react immediately, still caught up in the fight between his libido and his conscience. He pressed his tongue up with a little more intent. It came in contact with John’s teeth, the sharp and elongated canines that identified him as a vampire, but instead of doing the smart thing, the instinctive thing, and pulling away, Ronon deliberately sliced his tongue on John’s tooth.
When John tried to pull away, Ronon’s hand clamped down on the back of his neck again and held him in place.
Sweet blood dripped directly into John’s mouth, and he curled his tongue over Ronon’s greedily and sucked on the small cut without being able to stop himself. He only managed to pull away when the wound had closed and panting, he rested his forehead on Ronon’s shoulder.
Ronon’s hand slipped down his spine and came to rest on the curve of his ass, warm, heavy and comfortable, and then, his thumb stroked upwards, under his shirt and over the skin of John’s back.
He shivered.
“Why are you fighting this so much?” Ronon murmured close to his ear. “Just let go.”
John pressed his forehead into Ronon’s collarbone and shook his head mutely.
He couldn’t.
“Why is this so hard for you?” Ronon whispered softly. “I gave you consent. What more do you need? I won’t tell and I’ll make sure nobody asks.” He hesitated. “Lorne said it’s okay then.”
John yanked back, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You talked to Lorne about this?” he asked sharply.
Ronon shrugged. “You know you can trust him,” he said calmly. “Besides, it was in that lecture you made me go to.”
John sighed and lifted a hand to massage to bridge of his nose. His stomach growled quietly, and he clenched his jaw tightly at the sound and the feeling of it.
“Look,” Ronon murmured and gently pulled John back. His fingers brushed over his sides, where just a few hours ago, before his transformation, a gaping wound had been. All that was left now was a deep red scar.
“One thing everyone knows about wolfmen,” he said earnestly. “They’re resilient. They’re strong. They can kill Wraith with their bare hands.”
John’s lips twitched. “You can do that without having to turn into a wolfman,” he pointed out quietly.
Ronon shrugged. “Now, I can do it even better,” he simply said. “And if I can kill a Wraith with my bare hands…I can stop you whenever I want.”
The growl returned to his voice, and he tugged impatiently at John’s black shirt.
“How do you know I’m even into this?” John spluttered helplessly. By this point, his shirt was already tangled under his armpits.
Ronon gave him a wolfish grin. “Your smell. Get naked.” His hands reached for John’s belt and tangled in it while he leaned over John and kissed him forcefully.
The faint metallic hint of blood rendered John helpless to the attack, and he reached up with one hand and clung to Ronon’s shoulder with an almost desperate strength.
He turned his head to the side again. “Nobody can know,” he gasped. “Not even Rodney and Teyla.”
“Okay,” Ronon simply replied. “Now take off your shirt.”
He reached for the hem of John’s shirt again and lifted it over John’s head before tossing it behind himself, not caring where it landed, and neither did John, who found himself reaching out with trembling fingers and pressing them flat into Ronon’s chest, allowing himself for the first time to feel Ronon; to feel his strength and gracefulness and the smoothness of his skin.
He traced along Ronon’s collarbone and down the middle of his chest and stomach, feeling rock-hard muscles and the warmth of his body and enjoying every sensation the touch brought him. Ronon waited for a few moments, and then he continued his efforts to open John’s belt and the buttons on the fly of his pants.
“Wait,” John gasped. “Boots!”
Ronon growled, but he stopped for long enough to yank off John’s boots before dragging his pants and underwear down and off.
They both were completely naked now, and Ronon stretched out on top of John and kissed him hungrily. The instincts of the wolf were still close to the surface, and they screamed at him to take John or to roll on his back and offer his soft belly to the vampire. His cock was red and hard between his thighs, slightly wet at the tip, and when he crawled over John, the soft head dragged enticingly along John’s thigh and over his stomach, leaving a moist trail behind.
Ronon’s lips closed over John’s, his tongue pushed into John’s mouth again and tried to seek out his teeth, but John turned his head away at the last second.
“Bite me,” Ronon growled, and for a second, his eyes glowed yellowish again.
John almost protested, out of habit, but Ronon muffled his half-hearted words with an almost gentle kiss.
“Come on,” he whispered against John’s lips. “You know you want to.”
He did. Weeks and months of holding back and not allowing himself to even think about this made him almost whimper or sob when he ducked down, instinctively finding that spot under Ronon’s chin again, and pressed his lips down in an open-mouthed kiss.
Ronon’s hands slipped around, under John’s back, and he hauled him up without any indication of effort before following him into a kneeling position.
This time, it was John who growled, low and deep in his throat, and still not as impressively as Ronon, but it was enough to make the taller man still and tilt his head back, revealing the long line of his throat.
John’s fingers clamped down, keeping Ronon in the position he wanted him in as he slowly took control of their encounter. Ronon’s arms wound themselves around John’s waist, pressing them together and bringing friction to their erections as they were caught between their stomachs. John trailed one of his hands down to Ronon’s shoulder, and yet, Ronon didn’t change the position of his head, even if he now could.
He remained exactly as John had wanted him, and finally, John allowed himself to sink his teeth into Ronon’s warm skin and drink.
Ronon made a pleased sound at the back of his throat and let his fingers slip down, to brush over John’s ass. The reaction was immediate: John jerked and then pressed himself back, into the contact, without removing his lips from Ronon’s throat.
Ronon pressed himself tightly against John and still managed to somehow bring his free hand between them, to take both his and John’s erections in his hand and stroke them roughly.
John made another wet whimpering sound and pushed against Ronon’s chest, and when Ronon gave in to the unspoken demand and lied back, John followed him down, his knees spread widely around Ronon’s hips.
Ronon could smell his own blood and both their arousal, sharper than he’d ever been able to, and he curled his hand tighter around their dicks and brushed a single fingertip over the opening to John’s body, teasing the many nerve endings he knew to be there, just to see John’s hips snap forward, into his palm, and back, against his fingers again.
John pulled his lips away from Ronon’s throat and panted. His breath was hot and moist against Ronon’s collarbone. It only made Ronon feel the level of arousal and lust in him even more intensely.
With a growl, he rolled them around, to be on top, but John had anticipated the move and used their momentum to carry on until he was on top again and bit down on Ronon’s chest. The pain raced through Ronon like a hit from a Wraith stunner, too much for his nerve endings to be considered pleasurable. He rolled them again, and John yelped and hissed and tried to move them again.
However, this time, Ronon had him pinned, and he remained looming above John, balanced on one forearm, his hips pushing harshly against John’s, until they both came, sticky fluid dripping on John’s stomach and smearing through his body hair and, from there, against Ronon’s body.
John hissed again and clawed at Ronon’s shoulder. “Move,” he ordered tersely, his voice shaky but still firm and unbending, like steel. Ronon stretched his back – the sun was shining through the window, warming his skin and hitting the parts of John that weren’t shaded by Ronon’s body.
His exhausted, sated body jerked as that thought filtered slowly through his mind.
They had long known that John wouldn’t fall to dust when getting in direct contact with sunlight, but his skin would burn almost immediately, turning red and blistered. Right now, Ronon could practically watch how it happened.
He cursed, wrapped his arm around John, and hastily rolled them out of the sunlight and back into the shadow.
“Thanks, buddy,” John rasped, but he pushed against Ronon’s shoulder again, urging him to get up and off of him. The urge to do what John wanted was surprisingly strong in Ronon, but his body was slow to follow. He was tired and wanted nothing more than curling up somewhere for a nap, with John pressed against his side.
He shook his head, to clear it, and watched for a moment as John dressed, a vaguely disgusted expression on his face. Ronon hoped that his facial expression was due to the fact that John didn’t even try to clean up the mess on his stomach. It brought his awareness back to his own naked body.
He shrugged and bent down, to retrieve his gun, while John yanked his boots on and pushed his radio back in his ear. “Rodney?”
This, Ronon thought dejectedly, was it. John would draw back from him again and would become uncomfortable and awkward, and next time, Ronon had to trick him into drinking from him again, and all the progress he’d made in loosening the vampire up were for nothing, unless he could say the exact right thing now to stop John from doing something Ronon considered to be very stupid.
“Sheppard.”
John looked up, and Ronon lifted his gun. “If you go all weird on me now, I’ll kick your ass.”
It probably wasn’t the exact right thing to say, but it was close enough to bring a small twitch of lips to John’s face and made him nod slightly.
“I mean it,” Ronon added for good measure, but he didn’t say anything else. He had another problem to deal with – he needed to get from their current position to his quarters without anyone seeing that he was completely naked.
On the other hand, he thought while running his fingertips over the barrel of his gun, he didn’t think there were a lot of people, even in Atlantis, who would dare laughing about a naked man when he was armed.
He glanced at John again. His arms were red, his hair disheveled, and Ronon felt a wave of arousal surge through him at the sight and the wave of smell wafting over to him.
He frowned slightly. His sense of smell was still extremely heightened, even now that he wasn’t in his second form anymore. The bright light of the morning stabbed him in the eyes, and he realized that instead of curling up in a dark place with John, he would have to go back to the infirmary and let Jennifer poke and prod at him.
“Come on,” John said and nudged Ronon’s side before lifting his hand to his ear, to ask Rodney to disengage the locks on the doors.
~*+*~
It turned out he didn’t have to walk naked through Atlantis. Rodney and Jennifer were already waiting on the other side of the door, with scrubs for him and the modified shield for John, and a group of nervous-looking Marines who averted their eyes from Ronon an shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, and Jennifer hustled them back to the infirmary to make sure they both were okay.
~*+*~
TBC
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: John Sheppard/Ronon Dex
Word Count: 16,231 words
Rating: FRAO
Warnings: slash, vampires, werewolves, AU
Summary: Getting bitten by a werewolf is bad enough, but it gets worse when living on a planet with five moons.
Author’s notes: Written for
werewolfbigbang. This is a sequel to Get By With A Little Help, my vampirebigbang fic. All you need to know from that one is that John Sheppard is a vampire.Title is a line from The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends”.
Millions of thanks to the usual help to
ginny305.Mix by
impertinence can be found here. Please give
impertinence feedback for the mix!The Stargate closed behind them with a whoosh and left the team in silence and darkness. For a moment, nobody moved, and then John took a step forward.
“I thought there was a village,” he murmured and looked around, but even his vampire sight wasn’t strong enough to pierce the utter and complete darkness.
“The village is several miles away from the Stargate,” Teyla said by way of explanation and turned on her flashlight. “There is a path.”
John’s eyes followed the strong beam of her light before switching on his own lamp and pointing it down, and true to Teyla’s words, after just a few steps, he was standing on a sandy path.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said and waited until Rodney had fallen in step with him before nudging him slightly. “You okay, McKay? You’ve been awfully quiet today.”
“Yeah,” Rodney replied softly. “I just have a weird feeling about all this. Call me ridiculous, go ahead.”
John just reached out and patted Rodney’s shoulder awkwardly. “You know we could have waited until the morning to head out,” he said hesitantly, although he’d been the first to agree with Woolsey’s opinion of moving out in the evening rather than waiting for daylight.
He heard the soft rustle of fabric as Rodney shook his head.
“I’m not afraid of the dark; besides, this way, you won’t need your shield and are safe anyway.” He referred to the personal shield he’d modified when John had been turned into a vampire, and that now protected him from the sunlight. While sunlight didn’t kill him, it left him with nasty burns that itched horribly when they healed, and John was very thankful for the shield. He carried it in the inside pocket of his jacket, close to his chest and safe from accidental loss, and now, he reached up and pressed his hand against the hard bump under his clothes.
“It’s just,” Rodney continued, “I expected at least a moon or something.”
It was as if Rodney’s words had been a sign, John thought as he gripped his weapon tighter, because he’d barely finished his sentence when the full moon appeared from behind a thick blanket of clouds. It was huge in the sky, its silvery light bright enough to illuminate the path for them, and the four of them walked in silence until they reached the sprawling outskirts of the village.
“Something’s wrong.” It was the first thing Ronon said since they had left Atlantis, and he voiced what all of them were feeling. Something about the village was giving off a strange vibe that not only Ronon’s instincts as a Runner, but also John’s still developing vampire instincts had picked up.
“Wraith?” he asked softly.
“I sense no Wraith,” Teyla whispered back. “However, I see no lights.”
Now that she had said it, John realized that it was the complete lack of lights and sounds that gave him the weird feeling at the pit of his stomach.
Even sleeping people made sounds, he knew, and a village like this was never this silent, unless it had been abandoned. Since Atlantis had been in contact with the natives just a few days ago, he was relatively sure that the inhabitants hadn’t left their village voluntarily.
An icy feeling closed around his heart, and his thoughts flashed to Michael and Kolya. He exchanged a quick look with Teyla and then followed her deeper into the village.
She led him to the central square, where they found a small inn.
“Let’s see if we can find out what happened to these people,” John murmured.
Not a word was spoken as his team followed him into the inn. After more than five years together, they were working like a well-oiled machine, and everybody knew what they had to do. However, now wasn’t the time to marvel at their efficiency.
They kept their weapons ready, muscles tense and expecting chaos and destruction wherever the beams of their flashlights fell, but the main room with its many tables and wooden benches was clean, the floors were swept and the mugs were stashed on shelves along the wall behind the bar.
It looked so normal, John thought, as if the owners had just closed for the night and then had decided to leave the planet instead of going to bed.
Rodney exhaled loudly. “Creepy,” he muttered, and John found himself nodding.
“We should return to Atlantis,” Teyla said. “Return by daylight, try to find out what happened here.”
“Yeah,” Ronon agreed. “Can’t do much right now.”
“All right,” John decided. “Let’s do that.” If whatever had happened to the villages had stuck around, he didn’t want to be here when it decided to return.
They left the inn in silence and started to walk back to the Stargate, the moon still bright enough to let them see their surroundings clearly, when suddenly, Ronon froze.
Immediately, the others followed his example and stopped. Weapons were gripped tighter, and John tried to listen into the darkness, to figure out what Ronon had heard, but all he picked up was the sound of the wind rustling in the trees and his own blood pulsing in his ears.
All of a sudden, the darkness returned as another cloud hid the moon, and then, John was able to smell it – the wind had turned, he realized, and there was something stalking them – an animal, but a huge one, if his senses didn’t betray him. It smelled like wet fur and anger, he thought uncomfortably while turning his flashlight searchingly in the direction the smell came from.
Next to him, Ronon pulled his weapon from its holster and aimed in the direction John was looking at, but before he could shoot, something sleek and heavy and huge impacted with his body, seemingly out of nowhere, and pushed him to the ground.
Even with his vampire sight, John only caught vague shadows of what was happening. He couldn’t shoot the animal without the risk of hitting Ronon and killing him, and he didn’t even dare moving, out of instinctive fear that he would pull the beast’s attention to himself.
A pain-filled howl ripped through the darkness - Ronon - and then, the sound of Ronon’s weapon discharging followed.
After that, there was only silence and the sound of harsh breathing in the night.
The moon appeared from behind the cloud again.
“Ronon?” John took a step closer and immediately stopped again as the smell of blood, sweet wet liquid blood, assaulted his senses.
Ronon’s blood.
“Ronon?” he asked again, his voice tight with worry.
“I’m fine,” Ronon replied roughly and struggled to sit up while pushing the cadaver of the animal away from himself with a disgusted snort.
“You’re bleeding,” John pointed out. His body reacted in the usual way to the smell, and his stomach started to growl.
“Beast bit me,” Ronon spat out as he moved away from the body, which now smelled like burned fur and cauterized flesh.
“Oh God,” Rodney said as he pointed his flashlight at Ronon. Ronon’s entire front was covered in blood, but John knew that it looked worse than it was.
Ronon growled and lifted his hand, to shield his eyes from the beam of Rodney’s lamp, and that was when John saw it – there was a huge, gaping wound in Ronon’s side.
“Oh God,” Rodney said again, his voice shaky. He had seen the wound, too. “We need to get you back to Atlantis, now.”
“First, we need to stop the bleeding,” Teyla pointed out. She was a lot calmer than Rodney, but John knew that she was affected from what had just happened as well. There was a slight tremor, almost unnoticeable, in her voice that gave her away.
“Teyla,” John murmured. It was all he needed to do. She was already pulling her first-aid kit from her vest pocket. Rodney only shot a brief, worried glance in John’s direction, swallowed thickly and set out to help her.
John exhaled sharply. He was feeding regularly from Ronon, and the smell of his blood had its effects on his body; effects he’d been struggling to hide for weeks now, with less and less success. Worse than the physical reaction, which he could ignore, was the sense of helplessness – there wasn’t anything he could do right now to help Ronon, and it made his skin itch with frustration. His instincts screamed at him to do something, to protect those he considered his, but there was nothing he could protect Ronon from anymore. The beast was already dead.
John bit his tongue sharply and focused his attention back to the problem at hand. He’d learned to be careful with his vampire teeth and their razor-like sharpness, but right now, he greeted the pain of them slicing through the slick muscle of his tongue. It helped him concentrate.
He turned away from his teammates and turned his attention on the dead body of the beast.
It was a wolf, that much he could see, its paws huge and its teeth in the dark muzzle long and sharp. Its dark fur was coarse and matted down. The entire animal was thin and mangled, its ribs clearly visible under its fur.
It was a huge animal, John thought with a small shudder and nudged the cadaver’s paw with the toe of his boot. In a standing position, its shoulder easily was at a height with John’s hip, but even while John was thinking about the size of the animal, the body started to change.
“Guys,” he called out hesitantly, his eyes glued to the scenario in front of him.
The wolf’s entire shape shifted and changed. The mane and fur disappeared, leaving only small patches of hair the same color behind. Paws lengthened, claws retracted, leaving dark fingers with short, dirty nails behind.
John bit back a curse and flashed his light over the body, which was still dead, but not canine anymore.
It was a thin, dirty, naked man.
“Do you even have an immunization against tetanus? Did Jennifer or Carson ever give you a shot?” Rodney was just asking Ronon, who grunted an unintelligible answer.
“Guys,” John said again. This time, Teyla and Rodney both looked up, and Rodney finally stood from where he had been kneeling next to Ronon and came to stand next to John.
Together they stared at the body for a long moment.
“I think we should return to Atlantis,” Rodney finally said. “Ronon…he needs stitches and antibiotics…and a tetanus shot…” He trailed off.
John nodded. Returning to Atlantis seemed like a good idea.
The moon disappeared behind yet another cloud, and a loud howl ripped through the inky dark night.
Returning to Atlantis suddenly seemed like a really good idea.
~*+*~
“I don’t even know if they had immunization on Sateda,” Rodney whispered dejectedly. John didn’t know why Rodney was suddenly so much concerned and fixated on the risk of a tetanus infection, when they both knew that Ronon had survived worse than a wolf bite, but instead of commenting he just rolled his eyes and pulled another chair close.
Jennifer patted Rodney’s shoulder soothingly. “He’s resting for now,” she said in her soft infirmary voice. “We cleaned and stitched up the wound, and yes, Rodney, we gave him a tetanus shot, too.”
Rodney’s shoulders slumped, and the corners of his mouth turned down, as well. “This is probably the smallest problem we’ll have to deal with, here, anyway,” he pointed out dully.
John slowly and very deliberately sprawled in his chair. His shoulders ached with sudden tension, despite the quick hot shower he’d taken after his own post-mission check-up.
“I mean…” Rodney continued with a shrug. “We all know what we saw, back there. And what that probably means.”
John remained silent. Here, in the relative safety of Atlantis with its soothing warm lights, the entire mission to the planet and everything that had happened there seemed somewhat unreal. A second team – Lorne’s, most likely – would return to the planet in a few hours and try to find out what had happened to the villagers, and John and his team would remain in the infirmary, waiting for Ronon to wake up, at least unless Jennifer kicked them out or an emergency brought them away.
“What did you see?” Jennifer asked and curiously looked from one of them to the other. “I mean, besides Ronon getting bitten by a gigantic wolf.”
“It was not an ordinary wolf,” Teyla said slowly. “We saw…a wolfman.”
And Rodney added, by way of explanation, “A werewolf.”
~*+*~
“So…you’re telling me Ronon was bitten by a werewolf.” Richard Woolsey frowned doubtfully and ran his palms down his jacket.
“Yeah, pretty much,” John replied and forced himself not to shift too much in his chair. He knew exactly why Rodney and Teyla had voted for him to talk to Woolsey about what was happening, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
However, if Woolsey tried to argue that werewolves were just a myth and didn’t really exist, all John had to do was smile at him, and making sure Woolsey caught a glimpse of his teeth.
He had vetoed Rodney’s suggestion of wearing the cape his team had given him for his birthday – the day he’d been born the first time, not the day he’d been turned into a vampire, which Rodney had dubbed biteday and had decided to celebrate as well, and John hadn’t found a suitable threat yet to make him drop those plans.
“Well,” Woolsey murmured, interrupting John’s meandering thoughts, “Life certainly never gets dull in Pegasus galaxy…werewolves, vampires…what’s next? Tentacled slime monsters? No offense, Colonel.”
John smiled without showing his teeth. “None taken. Although, actually, there are tentacled…beings on MS7-T39, and they are kind of slimy, too.”
Woolsey gave him an annoyed look, and John held back his smirk.
“About Ronon,” Woolsey said abruptly.
“Keller is keeping him in the infirmary for now,” John said. “Since we don’t know how many of the myths are true, if any. For all we know at this point, the worst that might happen is that Ronon gets a nice scar to add to his collection.”
Woolsey nodded slowly. “I want you to proceed with the utmost carefulness,” he instructed. “Our first priority is to keep Atlantis safe, Colonel.”
John nodded. He understood and agreed with Woolsey’s assessment of the situation.
He waited to be dismissed and returned to the infirmary. Teyla was sitting next to Ronon’s bed, a small smile on her lips.
“Did he wake up?” John asked, his voice pitched low, and Teyla inclined her head slightly.
“Briefly,” she murmured. “Jennifer said she will keep him here, to make sure the wound heals properly, but she is certain he will make a full recovery.”
“Good.” John exhaled and nodded. “You should go and spend some time with…with Kanaan and Torren,” he then added. “I’ll sit with him for now.”
Teyla gave him a grateful nod and stood. “Thank you, John.”
He waved her off awkwardly, and Teyla gave him another indulging smile before leaving the infirmary.
John waited until she was gone before falling into the chair she had been sitting in and putting his boots up on the edge of Ronon’s bed, careful to stay away from the bandaged wound. He was ready to wait for Ronon to wake up.
~*+*~
It was late the next day when Ronon finally opened his eyes slowly and turned toward John.
“Hey, buddy,” John said. “How do you feel?”
Ronon grunted. “Hurts a little,” he finally admitted. “What happened?”
John sat up a little. “You don’t remember?” he asked carefully.
Ronon frowned as he tried to recall what had happened. “Everything’s kind of fuzzy,” he admitted. “What happened after I shot that wolf?”
“You got bitten by it,” John told him earnestly. “It was a werewolf. A….” he hesitated. “A wolfman, Teyla called them.”
Ronon closed his eyes again. His throat worked, but he kept his lips pressed tightly shut, not saying a single word.
John apparently got the hint that he didn’t want to talk about it right now, because he squeezed Ronon’s wrist and got up to leave.
Ronon didn’t do anything to try and stop him.
~*+*~
Bitten by a wolfman.
On Sateda, there had been myths about a fearless warrior named Jarn who had been bitten by a wolfman. When Ronon had been a small child, young enough to sit by his grandfather’s feet and listen to the tales told to him by the old man, he had been impressed by the story of Jarn, who, even in his second body, hadn’t stopped fighting the Wraith. He’d killed many of them on his search for the wolfman who had turned him, since it was said that killing the wolfman who had turned him would reverse the process and return him to the life of a normal human warrior.
Ronon shook his head slightly. His side ached and hurt with every breath he took, even if he was sure that Jennifer had given him as much from the painkillers as she had dared. She might have chosen McKay over him, but she still had a weak spot for him, as well.
With that thought, he drifted off again.
When he woke up again, Rodney was by his bedside, laptop balanced on his knees, and he was engaged in a whispered argument, most likely with Radek.
His side hurt as fiercely as it had before, but Ronon still tried to sit up, and Rodney gave him a dark glare.
“What are you doing?” he asked, followed by an exasperated, “Not you. I’m talking to Chewie here!”
Ronon managed to give him a grin that didn’t look like a pain-filled grimace, but Rodney was clearly not impressed by it.
“A rabid wolf tried to rip you to pieces,” he said, “Lie back down, will you?”
“Not a rabid wolf,” Ronon managed to say as he eased himself back into the pillows. “Wolfman.” He frowned. “I killed it, right? It wasn’t you or Sheppard or Teyla?”
“Yeah, you did.” Rodney frowned unhappily. “You shot him.”
Ronon exhaled through his nose. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Rodney spluttered, his worried expression replaced by confusion and disbelief.
“Yeah,” Ronon said and lifted his hand with a small smile. “Killing the wolfman who bit you reverses the transformation. Says so in the myth.” He hesitated. “Why don’t you go and yell at Radek in person,” he then added. “I’m fine here.”
“Are you sure?” Rodney sounded hesitant again, and Ronon’s lips twitched slightly. He was glad that his team had all taken turns sitting with him, and he knew that they all had contributed in getting him home. They were his team, his family, but each and every one of them had other duties when in Atlantis; duties that were important – more important than sitting around and watch him sleep.
“Go, before he makes the city sink,” he murmured. He would apologize to Radek later, he decided when Rodney shot out of his chair as if bitten by an Iratus-bug.
The thought of something biting Rodney quickly brought his mind back to his current situation, and what had brought him to the infirmary.
In the legends of Jarn the Wolfwarrior, he’d been searching for the wolfman who’d bitten him, believing that killing him would heal Jarn. Ronon vaguely remembered that Jarn had been killed in a Wraith attack before he could complete his mission, but if the myths surrounding him were true, then Ronon had nothing to worry about – he’d already killed his wolfman.
And if the legends were just that, tales told to children to keep them quiet and attentive, and there was no cure for this, there wasn’t anything he could do about his current situation either. Worrying about it wouldn’t help.
And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about it, his mind circling around that one thought obsessively.
An hour later, he started regretting that he’d sent Rodney away. A distraction would be most welcome at that point.
~*+*~
“Well, the good news is that your side is healing well,” Jennifer told him with a soft smile and covered the wound again with sterile gauze. Ronon had caught a glance at the jagged edges of the wound, his flesh red and tender around the black stitches, and he had immediately understood why he had been in so much pain.
He gave her a grin. “Does that mean I can go?”
Jennifer gave him a startled look. “Not yet,” she said firmly, no trace of her usual sweetness in her voice. “I want you to give that wound more time to heal properly.”
Ronon frowned unhappily, but before he could voice his displeasure, she continued, “Do you want to know the rest?”
Silently, he nodded, and she pulled her tablet computer close.
“This,” she said and showed him a picture of what he recognized as a collection of blood cells, “is the result of Colonel Sheppard’s last check-up. You see how the level of the white blood cells is still through the roof, at least for a normal human being?” She pointed at the picture, and Ronon nodded.
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” he pointed out, and Jennifer pulled up another picture and showed it to him.
It looked almost identical to the first one.
“This is from your results,” she explained softly. “Now, the elevated count of white blood cells could be a result of the infection at the site of the wound, but like in Colonel Sheppard, it is much higher than anything I’ve seen before.”
Ronon stared at the screen. “He was drinking from me regularly,” he said slowly.
“I know,” she replied. “However, he’s also been drinking regularly from Doctor Zelenka, from Teyla, from a few other volunteers, as well, and they’re all having normal results.” She shrugged and hugged her computer close to her chest. “It might be nothing at all,” she admitted. “But I’d rather be careful, anyway.”
Ronon admitted that she was right and that her words made sense, but it didn’t change the fact that he was bored out of his mind and wanted to go to his own room.
“Listen,” Jennifer said, interpreting his silence correctly, “it’s only for a few more days, and if nothing’s changed for the worse, I’ll let you go, okay?”
Ronon nodded, but before she could leave, he asked, “Can he still drink it?”
She frowned, but quickly realized what he was talking about.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “On first glance, I’d say probably, yeah. But we should do some tests before we let you two try it.”
Ronon nodded, satisfied with the answer, and she turned to leave.
A few more days, he would survive a few more days stuck in bed without dying of boredom, he thought and closed his eyes determinedly.
~*+*~
“You know that Rodney went back to the planet?” John asked. “Apparently, the villagers were back in the morning, as if nothing had happened, but their fresh water pump thing was broken and they asked us to help them fix it…so Rodney went. Grumbling about Zelenka and something about sinking the city?” He raised an eyebrow.
Ronon nodded and then squinted his eyes. “And you?” he asked.
John sighed. “On my way to the Zubbi,” he said, referring to the alien race of vampires that had been responsible for the fact that he now was a vampire, “trying to find out what they know about werewolves…wolfmen.”
Ronon’s lips quirked into a brief smile. “Does McKay know you’re meeting with Riena?”
John grimaced at the mention of the woman who’d accidentally turned him. “He doesn’t,” he admitted. “And he doesn’t need to know, okay?”
Ronon laughed softly, despite the pain it brought to his side. “If you say so.”
“There are only so many jokes about Oedipus I can take without wanting to have him take a long walk off the East pier,” John said with a sigh and glanced at his watch. “I should go.”
He grimaced again. “I have an appointment with my mother.”
Ronon lifted his hand and closed it around John’s wrist. “Be careful,” he grumbled.
“She can’t bite me again,” John pointed out, but he turned his hand and wrapped his own fingers around Ronon’s wrist, as well, and squeezed reassuringly.
“Ask her if you can drink from a wolfman,” Ronon added. “Just in case.”
John nodded, and Ronon let go of his wrist and watched him go while he was still stuck in a hospital bed.
~*+*~
John returned early the next morning, pale and quiet and exhausted. He stopped by the infirmary, and Ronon wasn’t surprised about the paleness – John was, after all, a vampire, and they didn’t really spend a lot of time in the sunlight – but the quietness made him restless.
“They don’t have a cure, and they don’t know of one,” he reported when he stopped by Ronon’s bed. “They gave me all the information and ‘lore about wolfmen they have. The anthropologists are already working on it, if you’re interested.”
Ronon nodded. “If the legends are true,” he said again, “nothing will happen. I killed him. I freed myself from the second nature.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that, buddy,” John sighed and patted his shoulder once, but Ronon could see that John didn’t believe the legends were telling the truth.
It reminded Ronon of something.
“Did you ask her?” he wanted to know. “About wolfmen and…you?”
John exhaled. “Yeah,” he replied. “She said it’s probably okay.”
Ronon nodded, and John left, go get some sleep and maybe something to eat as well – something that was not Ronon’s blood.
Several hours later, he heard that Rodney had returned to Atlantis, but the other man didn’t turn up at the infirmary.
Ronon didn’t worry. Rodney would come see him sooner or later.
~*+*~
That night a moon rose pale and full over the horizon, bathing Atlantis and the waves gently lapping against its sides in its silvery light.
~*+*~
“Keller to Sheppard. Colonel, could you please come to the infirmary?”
Jennifer Keller’s voice sounded shaky, and John almost forgot to grab his gun from his desk in his haste to get to the infirmary. He left his shield on his desk; since it was dark out, he didn’t realize he’d forgotten to put it back into his pocket until he was almost at the infirmary, and by then, he hoped that he just wouldn’t need it. It was too late to turn around and get it now.
Rodney and Teyla were already there. Teyla was sitting next to Jennifer on one of the beds and held her hand, and Rodney was furiously typing on his laptop, the frown on his forehead deeper than John had seen it in a long while. His blood ran cold as he realized what had happened, what had to have happened.
“Ronon?”
“Gone.” Jennifer’s voice was almost toneless. “He knocked out the guards and disappeared.” She shuddered. “Thankfully, nobody got killed…or bitten.”
Teyla looked up, her gaze meeting John’s. They both were thinking the same.
“Oh.”
The soft sound coming from Rodney had John by his side in a heartbeat. “Rodney?”
Rodney pressed another key on his keyboard and turned the laptop around, to show John and the others the picture from the security feed.
John was the first who found his voice.
“Looks like killing the wolfman who’d bitten you is not the cure,” he muttered without taking his eyes off the image of the huge, dark brown wolf with the black markings. Its teeth were bared in a growl and its ears were pressed tight to its massive head.
John whirled around, toward the bed Ronon had occupied. “Where is he now?” he asked while taking in the ripped gown and blankets on the floor, the discarded medical equipment and the overturned chairs.
“I don’t know,” Rodney replied and continued to type. “What are you going to do?”
“Find him,” John replied shortly and grabbed Ronon’s energy weapon from the drawer of the little table that was tucked away next to the top of the bed.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Rodney asked doubtfully, but the speed of his typing did not slow down. He wanted to find Ronon as much as John did, and as much as John he wanted Ronon safe.
John set the weapon to stun and shrugged. “The Zubbi were certain that wolfmen never bite vampires, and if they do, it doesn’t affect them…us…more than any other bite. I’m the only one who can do this without the risk of getting turned, Rodney,” he explained as patiently as he could. “And I need you to tell me where he is.”
“Unless he kills you,” Rodney muttered, but he knew that John was right and that he wouldn’t be able to stop him.”Just be careful. I’ll give you directions.”
John nodded and left.
He had a wolfman to find.
~*+*~
The slight static of Rodney’s voice over the radio and his own breathing were the loudest sounds around John as he sneaked on silent feet through the dimly lit hallways of Atlantis, Ronon’s gun in his hands and his vampire senses sharpened to the point where he could hear the rush of his own blood in his veins. The ancient technology hummed soothingly in his mind, quietly enough not to distract him from his task, and he carefully listened into the room ahead of him, in order to pick up even the slightest trace of the wolf.
Ronon.
“Now left,” Rodney’s voice in his ear told him, and obediently, John ducked through an open door, into a darker hallway. He waited for a few heartbeats before continuing his search of Atlantis. He vaguely remembered this particular part of the city from several runs with Ronon, and he knew that around the corner, broken furniture was stacked up and waiting for them to have some time to clean up the uninhabited areas.
He knew instinctively that something was off.
Something was different.
He slowed down even more.
“Careful now, you’re almost there,” Rodney murmured nervously in his ear, at the same time as John heard a clicking noise.
He’d never heard this particular sound in Atlantis before, he thought. It sounded like toenails on Atlantis’ floor.
He froze.
“He’s coming straight for your position!” Rodney managed to inform him, and John yanked his arm up, powering up Ronon’s weapon and aiming into the darkness without hesitating.
He was too slow, despite his vampire speed. Before he could fire Ronon’s gun, a heavy weight crashed into his chest and drove the air out of his lungs. The gun flew out of his grip and clattered somewhere behind him in the darkness as he crashed hard into the floor. He could feel his ribs protest under the attack, and although it hurt badly enough that he only saw black spots dance in front of his eyes for an agonizingly long moment, he was sure that he hadn’t broken any ribs.
Huge paws were resting on his chest, making it impossible to take a deep breath. A cold, wet nose came close, brushed over his collarbone and his cheek and sniffed him before John managed to turn his head away. He caught sight of a massive, furry chest and a hint of a bushy tail before a deep growl from above pulled his attention back to what he was sure was the werewolf’s head.
Its ears twitched, but they weren’t pressed flat to the skull like the other wolf’s had been. Its lips were pulled back, exposing long, sharp teeth that looked like shiny white knives in the semi-darkness. However, for some reason, John didn’t have the impression that the wolf was trying to seriously harm him, even if he didn’t know how exactly he had reached that conclusion.
“Sheppard!” Rodney’s voice bellowed into his ear. “Sheppard, are you there? What’s happening? Sheppard, come in!”
With some difficulty and with very slow movements, John lifted his hand to his ear.
“I found him,” he said, his voice breathless and hoarse. “Don’t…”
He trailed off as the wolf moved and had to remind himself forcefully that wolfsmen were not supposed to bite vampires, unless, a traitorous part of his brain reminded him, they were hunted and wanted to kill the hunter.
He barely dared to breathe, but the wolf only sat down next to him. Its paw, however, remained on John’s chest, a not-so-subtle reminder that he was trapped and, even if he managed to escape, he was certain he couldn’t outrun a wolf.
“Don’t what?” Rodney asked, and John grimaced. “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice pitched low and calming. “I found him. We’re fine. Seal the area until I tell you otherwise – he’s calm now, but I don’t want to know what will happen if more people with guns storm at him.”
“What about you?” Rodney demanded, and John managed a grim smile.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”
Really. Besides the fact that he was pinned to the floor by an overgrown wolf and unarmed, he was fine.
“If you say so,” Rodney replied. He sounded helpless, frustrated and a little bit scared, but there was nothing John could do about that right now. Rodney, he told himself, was with Jennifer and with Teyla. They both were better at keeping the scientist calm than he was, anyway.
Rodney would be fine.
He peered up, past the muzzle and the teeth and into the wolf’s brownish yellow eyes.
Intelligent eyes.
John deliberately forced himself to relax.
“Hey, big guy,” he drawled. “You gonna let me up?”
The wolf seemed to smirk down on him.
“I guess not.” John sighed. “Any idea when you’re going to change back?”
The wolf didn’t reply, and John settled in to wait with a small sigh. It was going to be a long night.
~*+*~
John slowly blinked his eyes open. He’d dozed off some time after the wolf had curled up along his side and had rested its massive head on John’s chest, and John had wrapped his hand in the thick, coarse hair of its mane and had entertained thoughts of tossing a tennis ball or a leg of a broken chair for Ronon to retrieve just before he’d fallen asleep.
And now, he’d woken up because the weight of that head had suddenly disappeared.
Slightly disoriented, he lifted his head from the hard floor and looked around.
Through the windows at the end of the hallway, weak grey light filtered in, telling John that it was dawn. The wolf – Ronon – was nowhere to be seen, but John could still hear him, a loud panting and the sound of bones breaking. It sent shivers and a mild wave of nausea through him, and he hastily scrambled to his feet and went to retrieve Ronon’s weapon before advancing toward the sound of crunching and whimpering noises.
Everything was silent once again before he reached the corner, and John carefully peaked around it, half expecting the wolf to wait for him and knock him to the ground again.
There was no sign of a wolf whatsoever, but the body lying twisted on the ground, face hidden by a wild mass of dreadlocks, body naked and smooth, was familiar.
“Ronon!”
With two quick steps, John was by Ronon’s side and knelt down. One hand reached for Ronon’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy, can you hear me?”
Ronon growled, a sound that was animalistic and dangerous sounding, and rolled around. The weapon flew out of John’s hand for a second time as his wrists were pinned to the ground, but this time, John didn’t freeze like he had in the night. He kicked out, and his boot connected with soft flesh and hard muscle.
Ronon jerked back with a growl, and John scrambled backwards, away from him, as quickly as his muscles, which were stiff from the night he’d spent on the ground, allowed him.
He didn’t get far until Ronon attacked him again, but this time, he was able to anticipate the attack and brace himself. When Ronon’s body connected with his own, he used their momentum and rolled them, until he was on top of Ronon and straddling his hips.
“Knock it off!” he hissed, and Ronon, to his great surprise, seemed to understand him and even listen to him. His muscles went lax, and he stretched an arm over his eyes while he panted, his bare chest lifting and falling rhythmically under John’s hands.
It was only now that John fully registered that Ronon was completely naked under him, and the little part in him that he’d fought since the first time Ronon had pulled him in his lap and had bared his throat to him, letting John drink from him, stirred.
Instinct made him lean forward, his hands braced on Ronon’s chest, and seek out that one spot under Ronon’s jaw he’d bitten whenever he had drunk from the Satedan. He could almost taste the tang of Ronon’s blood on the tip of his tongue, but before he could give in to the urges and bite down, his self-control returned, and he froze mid-movement.
He couldn’t bite Ronon with the other man like this, unable to consent to what was happening. It didn’t matter that Ronon regularly offered John both his blood and his body. Right now, Ronon’s mind was, apparently, still caught up in the mind frame of a wolf, and John wouldn’t do anything without Ronon fully back to his senses and agreeing to it.
Very slowly, he pulled back.
Ronon’s face was twisted into a grimace, his eyes pressed tightly shut. John opened his mouth, to apologize for what he’d almost done, when Ronon blinked, and suddenly, John was staring into the eyes of the wolf.
“Why’d you stop?” Ronon growled, his voice rough and almost toneless. “Don’t stop.”
His hand came up and closed around the back of John’s neck, gripping tight, almost too tight, and then John was yanked forward. He barely managed to brace himself again with his palms flat on Ronon’s chest when their lips were already pressed fully together.
John’s instincts screamed at him, and then, Ronon’s tongue was pushing past his lips, slick and hot and agile and tracing along John’s own tongue.
Ronon made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat when John didn’t react immediately, still caught up in the fight between his libido and his conscience. He pressed his tongue up with a little more intent. It came in contact with John’s teeth, the sharp and elongated canines that identified him as a vampire, but instead of doing the smart thing, the instinctive thing, and pulling away, Ronon deliberately sliced his tongue on John’s tooth.
When John tried to pull away, Ronon’s hand clamped down on the back of his neck again and held him in place.
Sweet blood dripped directly into John’s mouth, and he curled his tongue over Ronon’s greedily and sucked on the small cut without being able to stop himself. He only managed to pull away when the wound had closed and panting, he rested his forehead on Ronon’s shoulder.
Ronon’s hand slipped down his spine and came to rest on the curve of his ass, warm, heavy and comfortable, and then, his thumb stroked upwards, under his shirt and over the skin of John’s back.
He shivered.
“Why are you fighting this so much?” Ronon murmured close to his ear. “Just let go.”
John pressed his forehead into Ronon’s collarbone and shook his head mutely.
He couldn’t.
“Why is this so hard for you?” Ronon whispered softly. “I gave you consent. What more do you need? I won’t tell and I’ll make sure nobody asks.” He hesitated. “Lorne said it’s okay then.”
John yanked back, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You talked to Lorne about this?” he asked sharply.
Ronon shrugged. “You know you can trust him,” he said calmly. “Besides, it was in that lecture you made me go to.”
John sighed and lifted a hand to massage to bridge of his nose. His stomach growled quietly, and he clenched his jaw tightly at the sound and the feeling of it.
“Look,” Ronon murmured and gently pulled John back. His fingers brushed over his sides, where just a few hours ago, before his transformation, a gaping wound had been. All that was left now was a deep red scar.
“One thing everyone knows about wolfmen,” he said earnestly. “They’re resilient. They’re strong. They can kill Wraith with their bare hands.”
John’s lips twitched. “You can do that without having to turn into a wolfman,” he pointed out quietly.
Ronon shrugged. “Now, I can do it even better,” he simply said. “And if I can kill a Wraith with my bare hands…I can stop you whenever I want.”
The growl returned to his voice, and he tugged impatiently at John’s black shirt.
“How do you know I’m even into this?” John spluttered helplessly. By this point, his shirt was already tangled under his armpits.
Ronon gave him a wolfish grin. “Your smell. Get naked.” His hands reached for John’s belt and tangled in it while he leaned over John and kissed him forcefully.
The faint metallic hint of blood rendered John helpless to the attack, and he reached up with one hand and clung to Ronon’s shoulder with an almost desperate strength.
He turned his head to the side again. “Nobody can know,” he gasped. “Not even Rodney and Teyla.”
“Okay,” Ronon simply replied. “Now take off your shirt.”
He reached for the hem of John’s shirt again and lifted it over John’s head before tossing it behind himself, not caring where it landed, and neither did John, who found himself reaching out with trembling fingers and pressing them flat into Ronon’s chest, allowing himself for the first time to feel Ronon; to feel his strength and gracefulness and the smoothness of his skin.
He traced along Ronon’s collarbone and down the middle of his chest and stomach, feeling rock-hard muscles and the warmth of his body and enjoying every sensation the touch brought him. Ronon waited for a few moments, and then he continued his efforts to open John’s belt and the buttons on the fly of his pants.
“Wait,” John gasped. “Boots!”
Ronon growled, but he stopped for long enough to yank off John’s boots before dragging his pants and underwear down and off.
They both were completely naked now, and Ronon stretched out on top of John and kissed him hungrily. The instincts of the wolf were still close to the surface, and they screamed at him to take John or to roll on his back and offer his soft belly to the vampire. His cock was red and hard between his thighs, slightly wet at the tip, and when he crawled over John, the soft head dragged enticingly along John’s thigh and over his stomach, leaving a moist trail behind.
Ronon’s lips closed over John’s, his tongue pushed into John’s mouth again and tried to seek out his teeth, but John turned his head away at the last second.
“Bite me,” Ronon growled, and for a second, his eyes glowed yellowish again.
John almost protested, out of habit, but Ronon muffled his half-hearted words with an almost gentle kiss.
“Come on,” he whispered against John’s lips. “You know you want to.”
He did. Weeks and months of holding back and not allowing himself to even think about this made him almost whimper or sob when he ducked down, instinctively finding that spot under Ronon’s chin again, and pressed his lips down in an open-mouthed kiss.
Ronon’s hands slipped around, under John’s back, and he hauled him up without any indication of effort before following him into a kneeling position.
This time, it was John who growled, low and deep in his throat, and still not as impressively as Ronon, but it was enough to make the taller man still and tilt his head back, revealing the long line of his throat.
John’s fingers clamped down, keeping Ronon in the position he wanted him in as he slowly took control of their encounter. Ronon’s arms wound themselves around John’s waist, pressing them together and bringing friction to their erections as they were caught between their stomachs. John trailed one of his hands down to Ronon’s shoulder, and yet, Ronon didn’t change the position of his head, even if he now could.
He remained exactly as John had wanted him, and finally, John allowed himself to sink his teeth into Ronon’s warm skin and drink.
Ronon made a pleased sound at the back of his throat and let his fingers slip down, to brush over John’s ass. The reaction was immediate: John jerked and then pressed himself back, into the contact, without removing his lips from Ronon’s throat.
Ronon pressed himself tightly against John and still managed to somehow bring his free hand between them, to take both his and John’s erections in his hand and stroke them roughly.
John made another wet whimpering sound and pushed against Ronon’s chest, and when Ronon gave in to the unspoken demand and lied back, John followed him down, his knees spread widely around Ronon’s hips.
Ronon could smell his own blood and both their arousal, sharper than he’d ever been able to, and he curled his hand tighter around their dicks and brushed a single fingertip over the opening to John’s body, teasing the many nerve endings he knew to be there, just to see John’s hips snap forward, into his palm, and back, against his fingers again.
John pulled his lips away from Ronon’s throat and panted. His breath was hot and moist against Ronon’s collarbone. It only made Ronon feel the level of arousal and lust in him even more intensely.
With a growl, he rolled them around, to be on top, but John had anticipated the move and used their momentum to carry on until he was on top again and bit down on Ronon’s chest. The pain raced through Ronon like a hit from a Wraith stunner, too much for his nerve endings to be considered pleasurable. He rolled them again, and John yelped and hissed and tried to move them again.
However, this time, Ronon had him pinned, and he remained looming above John, balanced on one forearm, his hips pushing harshly against John’s, until they both came, sticky fluid dripping on John’s stomach and smearing through his body hair and, from there, against Ronon’s body.
John hissed again and clawed at Ronon’s shoulder. “Move,” he ordered tersely, his voice shaky but still firm and unbending, like steel. Ronon stretched his back – the sun was shining through the window, warming his skin and hitting the parts of John that weren’t shaded by Ronon’s body.
His exhausted, sated body jerked as that thought filtered slowly through his mind.
They had long known that John wouldn’t fall to dust when getting in direct contact with sunlight, but his skin would burn almost immediately, turning red and blistered. Right now, Ronon could practically watch how it happened.
He cursed, wrapped his arm around John, and hastily rolled them out of the sunlight and back into the shadow.
“Thanks, buddy,” John rasped, but he pushed against Ronon’s shoulder again, urging him to get up and off of him. The urge to do what John wanted was surprisingly strong in Ronon, but his body was slow to follow. He was tired and wanted nothing more than curling up somewhere for a nap, with John pressed against his side.
He shook his head, to clear it, and watched for a moment as John dressed, a vaguely disgusted expression on his face. Ronon hoped that his facial expression was due to the fact that John didn’t even try to clean up the mess on his stomach. It brought his awareness back to his own naked body.
He shrugged and bent down, to retrieve his gun, while John yanked his boots on and pushed his radio back in his ear. “Rodney?”
This, Ronon thought dejectedly, was it. John would draw back from him again and would become uncomfortable and awkward, and next time, Ronon had to trick him into drinking from him again, and all the progress he’d made in loosening the vampire up were for nothing, unless he could say the exact right thing now to stop John from doing something Ronon considered to be very stupid.
“Sheppard.”
John looked up, and Ronon lifted his gun. “If you go all weird on me now, I’ll kick your ass.”
It probably wasn’t the exact right thing to say, but it was close enough to bring a small twitch of lips to John’s face and made him nod slightly.
“I mean it,” Ronon added for good measure, but he didn’t say anything else. He had another problem to deal with – he needed to get from their current position to his quarters without anyone seeing that he was completely naked.
On the other hand, he thought while running his fingertips over the barrel of his gun, he didn’t think there were a lot of people, even in Atlantis, who would dare laughing about a naked man when he was armed.
He glanced at John again. His arms were red, his hair disheveled, and Ronon felt a wave of arousal surge through him at the sight and the wave of smell wafting over to him.
He frowned slightly. His sense of smell was still extremely heightened, even now that he wasn’t in his second form anymore. The bright light of the morning stabbed him in the eyes, and he realized that instead of curling up in a dark place with John, he would have to go back to the infirmary and let Jennifer poke and prod at him.
“Come on,” John said and nudged Ronon’s side before lifting his hand to his ear, to ask Rodney to disengage the locks on the doors.
~*+*~
It turned out he didn’t have to walk naked through Atlantis. Rodney and Jennifer were already waiting on the other side of the door, with scrubs for him and the modified shield for John, and a group of nervous-looking Marines who averted their eyes from Ronon an shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, and Jennifer hustled them back to the infirmary to make sure they both were okay.
~*+*~
TBC