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There's moonlight streaming through slits of missing wood in the roof, milky and bright and, as John Watson stares at it until his eyes cross, maddening. His breath rattles in his chest and his palms are damp with sweat. He’s been dreading this day, a crisp October night, 1878, on which the moon shines full, for weeks now. Taking shallow, disjointed breaths the young doctor fastens the last iron cuff around his wrists, each movement eliciting the scrape of heavy chains against the earthen floor.
With dry eyes Watson looks up at the shorter man in the shed’s shadowy corner, slumped unnaturally, visage fixed in a vacant expression. The silver-haired youth holds a notepad and elaborate pen in his hands, scribbling words as Watson turns. His expression doesn’t change but his head drops slightly to the side, a vaguely curious motion. Just looking at him sends pangs of guilt and longing through the doctor’s chest. What would Friday think of him now, huddling in a shed in fear of the moon? They had been so proud, once. Proud of their profession, their beliefs. He had thrown all of that away with simple carelessness.
Something shifts in the lake of moonlight rippling across the boarded walls and Watson’s heart skips two beats. He licks dry lips and takes a shaky breath that turns into several. Every muscle in his body quivers and sweat has plastered his hair to his forehead as he wrings his hands nervously. His eyes flicker from the moon to Friday, sitting cross-legged in the corner.
It’s time, he realizes and he wishes it wasn’t, God he wishes it wasn’t.
"Friday," Watson begins, breathless, his eyes full of fear, sadness, desperation:
"Don't write this down."
A sickening crack echoes through the shed and Watson yelps, his spine arching against its nature and his shirt stretching, threads separating along his back to reveal bony vertebrae pushing against taut skin. He stumbles, strains against the iron cuffs and thick chains fastened to his wrists and ankles and neck, tries to catch himself on the side of a workbench and fails, tumbling onto his hands and knees on the packed dirt beneath him. Another snap, another yell, this time louder, pained and cracking and almost animal-like. His legs have burst from his pants, calves contorting and stretching and bending into the digitigrade, his skin pulling tight against the twisting bone and muscle, tearing like paper.
Watson's feet scrabble against the dirt, toes bursting through loafers and growing, stretching into paws. He's on his knees, elbows buried in mud made from blood and tears with hands clutching his head. He feels like he's burning from the inside-out and he wants to claw his skin off, his teeth digging into the sides of his mouth and lengthening, sharpening and crowding his jaw until he can no longer keep it clenched. He screams, the sound distorting into a growl as he writhes.
In a jolt he tears his hands from his head, staring in horror as serrated claws burst from underneath his nails, pushing the nail beds back and sending rivulets of blood spiraling down his wrists. He can barely see through the tears in his eyes and the disorientation from the pounding ache in his temple. With another sickening crunch his jaw contorts and he screeches, half-howl and half-yelp. His cheeks tear as his jaw juts forward, inch by inch by inch until his face has become akin to a muzzle.
His clothes have torn by now, hanging in strips from his growing frame. Fur is bursting from the gashes in his skin as if from underneath it, coating his shoulder blades and his cheeks and his arms. Though his body has distorted into something wolfish and beastly, his eyes are still human, wide and full of terror as he writhes on the ground, the inferno under his skin becoming unbearable -
And then it stops; at least, as far as he knows. He remembers nothing after that, and when he wakes he is delirious. It takes him a few moments to realize that he is no longer in the shed. He wakes in a forest clearing, the trees extending far above his head and the rising sun glinting off of dewdrops on the grass. Lying on his back, he blinks once, twice, his eyes sore and crusted. Slowly he sits up, realizes that he's naked save for a thin blanket draped over his lower half. He spends another moment groggily staring into space before jolting, remembering flashes of the night before and running his hands across his torso, feeling for the gashes and tears he remembers. He's covered in mud and old blood, but save for the grime he's unharmed. His hands come to rest on the bite mark scarred into his abdomen, the only thing left marring his form, the cursed thing that started it all. He lets out a deep sigh, the smidgen of relief doing little to quell his confusion.
He turns his head to observe the tree line and notices that he's not alone in the clearing. Slumped against a tree and utterly indecent is Burnaby, his head tipped back against the bark and his mouth agape, chest rising and falling as he snores. Watson furrows his brow. Why is he here? Though the grim realization is dawning on him, he pushes it away, loathe to believe it. Instead he stands, ties the blanket around his waist and pads over to the larger man, bare feet making nary a sound on the damp grass.
"Burnaby?"
His voice comes out a dry crack, his throat raw. There's no reply, only a soft spike in his snoring. Watson clears his throat.
"Burnaby."
He accompanies his words with a nudge this time, and another when the man still does not stir. Finally, Frederick Burnaby opens his eyes to slits, squinting against the growing sunlight.
"Glad to see you’re still kicking, good doctor."
His words have a knowing, almost mocking tone to them and he stretches, yawns, scratches his chest. Watson frowns.
"Just what do you mean by that? Have you any idea what we're doing in the middle of the woods? And for God's sake, man, where are your clothes?"
Burnaby laughs.
"I could ask you the same thing."
His face flushes slightly and he scoffs, subconsciously tugging the blanket closer. Burnaby’s expression levels into something more serious.
“Do you really have no clue? For a monster hunter, you’re quite the oblivious one, aren’t you?”
As a well-learned man, Watson is familiar with the folktales of lycanthropes. As a hunter of the beasts, he’s familiar with the reality of them. It had never, however, been part of his plan to cross the threshold and become one. it had also never crossed his mind that the very bodyguard assigned to him by the British Empire would have been one, as well.
“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered the signs. Still, that doesn’t explain why we’re out in God-knows-where with the rest of the expedition nowhere to be found.”
Burnaby sighs, fixing Watson with a stare. He speaks slowly, articulates each word as if Watson wouldn’t understand otherwise.
“Well, John, I am a werewolf.”
“I’ve realized that, you buffoon.”
“And now, so are you. Welcome to the pack, schoolboy.”
Watson is quiet, works his jaw silently and lowers his gaze to the grass. He didn’t want this. This couldn’t be his reality, could it? Burnaby continues.
“I found you in a shed just uphill from camp, foaming at the mouth and making a right mess. The first change is always a grimy affair, but you could’ve choked yourself to death on that whole chain get-up, you know. Had to wrench your sorry hide out of it.”
Burnaby pauses, though when he realizes Watson isn’t going to comment he goes on with his tale.
“What every angry newborn pup needs is some fresh air and wide-open spaces. I got you out of that shed and we went on a proper rampage together through the forest. It calmed you down and tired you right out. This is where we ended up when the night was through. That enough of an explanation for you?”
If he were being honest, it wasn’t. Despite all his knowledge of the world, he still could not wrap his head around the horrors that had happened the night prior. His chest tightens and he realizes he’s living his worst nightmare.
“Where’s Friday?” he asks suddenly, panic creeping into his temple. Burnaby waves a massive hand.
“Zombie Boy’s fine. He was huddled in the corner of the shed, presumably where you left him. He’d actually stopped writing for once. I made sure he was safe before I broke you out, don’t worry your pretty little head.”
The relief that Friday is safe does little to dampen Watson’s panic. He runs his hands through his hair, paces, chest rising and failing with tight, rapid breaths. He feels his pulse rising and his consciousness wavering. As he mutters, the youth's words become faster, louder, more urgent.
“This can’t be happening. It's madness, right madness. Good God, I'm some sort of monster.”
Burnaby all but rolls his eyes (it's hardly the first time he's heard this, one could assume). He grasps Watson by the shoulders, forcing his attention. The smaller man stills, eyes still wide with fear.
“Look, Watson. You can feel sorry for yourself, call yourself a monster, become a social pariah and all that if you fancy it. Or, you can face your reality and make the damned best of it.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I’ve become one of the very monsters I've dedicated my life to destroying. I've become the one thing I fear and despise the most. I'm my own worst enemy, for Christ's sake!”
“You can calm down, for starters. Hyperventilating and passing out never helped anyone, did it?”
Burnaby releases him and reaches into a satchel hidden behind the tree he’d been slumped against. He straightens up again and tosses Watson a bottle of green-tinged liquor.
“Absinthe. Got it in France a few years back. It kicks like a horse. It’ll help.”
He slouches back against the tree and motions for Watson to join him. The younger man does so tentatively, taking a hesitant swig and wincing hard at the flavor, prompting a hearty laugh out of Burnaby.
“It’s an acquired taste.”
“No kidding.”
They drink together, and as time passes Watson lets the familiar fuzziness of drunkenness relax him. Burnaby looks at him, just the corner of his lips upturned in a fond smile.
“I can teach you how to do the "full moon shuffle", you know. It’s not that bad once you get used to it.”
Watson is quiet, too muddled to reply articulately, but he looks up at Burnaby with a kind of sadness in his eyes.
“You don’t have to embrace it. It’s harder for some people. But you have to live. That’s what your friend would want, isn’t it?”
“Friday? Y-yeah... yes. He would, wouldn’t he...?”
Watson trails off, letting his head loll back against the tree trunk. The sun has risen fully now, dawn turning into early morning. The birds sing in the trees, multi-colored leaves shuffling in the breeze. Friday would want him to live, no matter the circumstances. That much he knew.
“Oi, hey, don’t cry now!”
It takes Watson a few moments to realize that tears have started falling down his cheeks. He sniffles and wipes them away with a thumb, chuckling to himself.
“Where’s my clothes?” he asks, taking a bit too long to turn his head to Burnaby. The burlier man laughs, looking down at his chest as if just remembering that he, too, was naked in the grass.
“I brought you some of mine, since you tore yours to bits when you changed. Hope you don’t mind the fit.”
“‘s’better than nothing.”
They dress themselves, Watson clumsily and Burnaby a bit less so, though his dexterity is still noticeably impaired. The older man guides Watson back through the woods and as they pass through the wilderness the doctor takes it in as much as his drunken senses will allow, searching for evidence of his moonlit rampage, something to anchor him to the reality of it all.
Despite it all, Friday would want him to live. He has nothing else to cling to but this, even if living means sharing the skin of a wolf.
John Watson wants nothing less than to be a werewolf. But, for the sake of the one he loved, John Watson will be the best beast he could possibly be.