Jean, a werewolf and middle school science teacher, catches Davy Jones, vampire and personal least favorite parent of one of his students, out on the street. And by street we mean woods, and by catches him, we mean makes a solid attempt on his life.
Teenish. Nothing to worry about.
Rick/Jean Forever
Jean Garcia is a lot of things. At the moment, the two most important things about him are that he is 1. a werewolf, and 2. a middle school teacher.
He has been having an awful night. More specifically, he’s having a night that is going to become an awful day, because he has not slept and he has classes to teach tomorrow. He’s so exhausted (and bloodthirsty) that he’s contemplating subjecting the kids to a surprise dissection day, which is like a study hall, but it ends with the pleasant perfume of intestines in the air.
He has been a wolf all night long, and wolves, despite what some peddlers of poor-quality medieval fantasies might think, need a lot of rest. Wolves are predators, albeit persistence predators, and any kind of predator puts a lot of energy into the hunt. Ideally, he should have curled up to rest hours ago, but it is not that easy.
He has been a teacher all night long too, without pay, because along with Rick, his students are here. The kids. In the woods. Awake. Outside. In trouble.
Because of his current lupine state, Jean does not know the fine details of the situation. In broad strokes, it’s spirits as usual, and has been all night. He can practically see Lucifer hovering behind Rick, he’s so strained and exhausted. Ed Burger has taken to clinging to Jean’s back leg, not physically, but padding close like a cub. Max Puckett is staying nearby too, though he tries to look more aloof about it. Isabel Guerra is up ahead, being the sort of kid he hates to watch, and the others…
He just hopes Mina is still with them.
The kids have been fighting all night. Fighting. They should be resting. When he initially ran into Rick in the forest—literally ran into him, he had caught his scent in the air and came running, nipped his shoulder and licked his face, ready to play, before hearing Rick’s frantic pleas about the kids—he had nearly snapped his arm off he was so angry. What the hell are the kids doing out at this time of night?? he had snarled mentally at his oft-regrettable partner. Why haven’t you sent them home?? But Rick explained that they had been caught unawares and had been trying to get home around the path-twisting wrath of a vengeful spirit all night.
All of Mayview is out in force, it seems. The valley path is longer than it could possibly be and all wandering feet are drawn inevitably to it, from every lost child to every sharp-toothed night-walker, thirsty for blood. The moon is high, and Jean can understand the impulse, but the kids are here, as often as not trying to walk under his legs.
Jean is still, and most importantly, both a werewolf and a teacher when they find Cody Jones in the woods. Another lost kid. This one is mortified to be found outside in the lean hours by ‘Mr. Spender,’ and as for the wolf—
Cody has the oddest reaction to Jean. But Jean does not have long to ponder it, because his father suddenly appears, and, in a very brief amount of time, Mr. Jones made a consequential mistake.
Jean has never liked Mr. Jones.
There are a lot of parents of his kids that he doesn’t like. Mr. Jones might have topped the list, were it not for how much more immediate Oop was. Jean is already considering moving Mr. Jones to the top spot as he crouches uncertainly in the foliage, trying to figure out what the hell he’s doing with his son in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night. They argue, only a few sharp lines. Jean’s fur rises on his back.
Jones grabs him. He hooks the kid’s shirt and yanks him to his toes.
Jean’s jaw falls open and all his teeth glimmer, forty-two knifepoints. Cody winces, and Jean is about to live, in one glorious moment, the dearest dream of all wolves and all teachers at once.
Davy Jones, dead man, lifts his hand into the air, and Jean leaps howling out of the trees, intent on his neck, every significant donation and every PTA meeting and every masterful moment of political maneuvering out of Administration shredded with the wind between his claws. He is going to take this man’s head off his fucking neck for raising a hand against one of his kids, and then he is going to toss him around in the air like a fucking rabbit.
Jones tries to put the kid in front of him. Jean has spent too much time as both a wolf and a teacher to fall for that. His jaws snap down on Davy Jones’s neck like a spring-trap, and the bones of his neck and chest all crack one after another like a bursting firework.
He can taste that something is not right immediately, but for one moment, it doesn’t matter. For one moment, all is well in his world; his mouth is full of bitter blood, and this man will never hurt any of his kids ever again.
—
This is an unfinished continuation of the ficlet above that takes place in a speculative future in which Shrike finally gets on-screen lines. The ifea is that we have a scene in which Cody tries to avenge his father by killing the wolf who attempted (or succeeded in?) murder, only for dawn to come and transform Jean and Shrike back to humans at the last moment. It begins and ends in media res, but enjoy.
—
Her snarling jaw clamped down, and shrunk. The fur fell off her in waves; the skin tightened around her long scars and bare simian muscles, and in another shivering minute a woman stood there, white hair drifting around her naked shoulders and biceps like a cloud, the red light of the dawn turning her into a rough-hewn, cyclopean statue of a muscle-bound hero or demigod. The pupil of her one eye dilated and watered; she coughed and spoke through a rasping throat.
“Boys. Behave,” she snarled.
At her feet was, again, a pre-pubescent boy trying to murder a grown man, who had himself been a hulking wolf only a minute before. (Fortunately, the tarp that Cody had used to trap him covered him up, or else this would have been really awkward.) Cody stared up at the woman, genuinely shocked beyond words.
“Mom,” he said.
“Stop trying to—fuck,” she rasped, because a coughing fit over took her again. “Yeech. Stop trying to kill my apprentice, Cody. Jean, act like an adult.”
Jean, who had bent the energies of the last five years of his life toward manifesting this exact reunion, immediately and stubbornly responded “He started it.”
Shrike very literally growled and rolled a sore shoulder. She was surprised by someone rushing up behind her, and more surprised by who it was. “Rick?” she asked. “Richard Spender?”
“Ah! Yes. Yes, uh,” he stammered, and shoved something at her. Clothes. “I’m honestly flattered that you recognize me, as it’s been a very long time, but I think this particular reunion would go better with everyone dressed, maybe? Not that you don’t look lovely.”
“Uh-huh,” Shrike responded him, giving him a very quick and decisive look over. “Yeah, no surprise,” she grumbled, and began to quickly, roughly dress herself.
She had been about 99% sure that Jean’s favorite blond bullying victim was going to grow up to be a complete faggot, and the only reason she hadn’t called it at the time was because she didn’t talk about kids that way. Jean, she had never had to wonder about. He had been informing people that he was bisexual, thanks when he was thirteen and the mere admission could have gotten him sent to juvie or a state-sanctioned torture camp. Her once-apprentice had been many things, but ‘complicated’ and ‘man of mystery’ were two things he was not. Putting two and two together, she would be surprised to find out that two and two weren’t together, as the Thing Two in question was currently already fetching more clothing and some water for Jean.
She could sort out Thing One and Thing Two later. While something in her shouted they were just kids… they weren’t. And there was someone here who was.
She walked over to Cody on stiff knees, who was still crouched paralyzed over the person who had just been a monster wolf he was trying to murder. Shrike leaned only slightly over him, reached down, and picked him right off of the ground. He went like a kitten, limp and dangling.
“Was that attempted revenge murder for me, baby?” she rasped. “I’m so proud of you.”
Tears appeared on both of Cody’s cheeks like that had just splattered on his cheeks from the sky above. “Mom,” he whispered.
“Good job, baby,” she smiled.
Cody fell forward onto her chest. “Mom. Mom.”
She wrapped her arms around his back.
“He tried to kill dad,” he explained through hitches in his throat, spasms that were trying to be sobs. The fact that he detested his father did not change the feeling of the moment. “He changed you.”
“One of those things was an accident,” Shrike told him warmly, subtly, slowly rocking him. “The other would have just been finishing my work, if he had managed it. Wouldn’t it?” she asked Jean slyly.
Jean, who had been numbly letting his boyfriend dress him like he was a much-abused Ken Doll, staggered to his feet.
“Well, if I had known he was your husband, ma’am,” Jean growled through an equally sore throat, a voice so similar to Shrike’s that it made Cody tense in her arms, “I would’ve tried to cap him for you years ago.”
“Atta boy,” Shrike responded.
Rolling his neck on his shoulders, which ran into visible catches as it went, Jean growled, “Didn’t have a clue he was a bloodsucker before tonight. He had just been my least favorite parent to see at parent-teacher night, which is enough of a reason to go for the throat, to be honest.”