#cod shapeshifter au

Kyle is your greatest playmate. He’s the one who started the tradition of letting you ride on his shoulders in ferret form during downtime on base—little white scarf draped around his neck, your paws gripping his collar while you chirp nonsense in his ear. When he’s at his desk doing reports, you curl around his neck like a living stole, nibbling his ear until he laughs and gives in to a quick cuddle break.

“You’re worse than a cat, you know that, princess?” he says, but he’s already scratching a finger under your chin, melting when you nuzzle into his palm.

Johnny is chaos incarnate with you. He’s the one who taught you how to steal Simon’s gloves and bolt, who races you down hallways in ferret form (he pretends to lose on purpose). In the field, he keeps treats in his pockets just for you—little bits of jerky you snag with tiny paws before scampering back to safety. When he’s wounded (which happens more than anyone likes), you shift human, curl up on his cot, and stay there until he’s grinning again.

“My lucky wee lass,” he murmurs, booping your nose gently. “Dinnae ever leave us, aye?”

Simon is… complicated. At first he pretended not to care—just grunted when you curled on his boot during briefings or rode in his hood like a fluffy parachute. However, everyone noticed how he started leaving his gloves where you could reach them, how he’d silently offer a finger for you to wrap your whole body around when he thought no one was watching.

Now, when nightmares hit, you slip into his bunk in ferret form, worm your way under his heavy arm stubbornly, and stay pressed to his chest until his breathing evens out. Simon never says thank you, just tightens his hold a fraction and lets you stay all night.

Team Traditions:

Before every deployment you do a “lucky lap”: ferret-you sprints a full circle around the team while they stand in formation. No one moves until you’ve tagged every boot with your nose.

Your harness is custom—black tactical webbing with a tiny 141 patch. Kyle sewed it himself. Johnny sketched the design.

On base downtime, you have a little hammock strung in the common room. Whoever’s couch you choose to nap on that day gets bragging rights. (Simon pretends he doesn’t care, but the hammock mysteriously ends up near his chair most often.)

When the team comes back battered, you greet them at the hangar in human form—hugs all around—then shift ferret and ride home on someone’s shoulder, chirping softly the whole way.

You’re small, white, ridiculously cute, and—most importantly—you’re theirs. And they’d burn the world down before letting anything happen to you.

Meanwhile, you’ve never felt safer or more welcomed than when you’re tucked against one of their hearts, listening to it beat steady and strong.

Your ears swivel. A warning growl rumbles low in your chest as a new scent drifts up—male, unfamiliar, but not threatening. Not yet.

A head appears at the top of the ladder: short mohawk, bright blue eyes, a cautious smile. Human. Mostly. You catch the faint hint of cat underneath—Scottish forest cat, maybe.

John MacTavish freezes when he sees you.

He’s home on leave, crashing in his parents’ farmhouse for the first time in years. He came out to the barn for some quiet, maybe shift and stretch his legs in cat form away from prying eyes.

He didn’t expect to find a wary queen and four nursing kittens.

“Easy, lass,” he says softly, voice low and gentle, hands open and visible. “Not gonna hurt ye.”

You don’t relax, but you don’t bolt either. The kittens are too small to move quickly, and you’re too tired to fight if it comes to it. You just watch him, ears flat, tail lashing once.

Johnny stays on the top rung for a long minute, letting you scent him, letting you decide. Then he very slowly pulls a small tin from his pocket—tuna. He cracks it open; the smell hits the air and your stomach clenches painfully. You haven’t eaten properly in days.

He sets the tin on the floor of the loft, well within your reach but far enough that he’s not crowding you, and backs down a few rungs.

“I’ll leave ye to it,” he murmurs. “Barn’s warm enough. Door’s cracked if ye need out. No one’ll bother ye here.”

He disappears.

You wait another minute, then creep forward and devour the tuna in desperate gulps.

He comes back the next morning with more food—proper wet kitten food for you, since you’re nursing—and a soft blanket. Leaves them the same way: at a respectful distance, then retreats.

By the third day, you let him sit on the loft floor while you eat.

By the fifth, you shift to human form for the first time in weeks—curled naked in the blankets, kittens tucked against your chest—so you can speak.

“Thank you,” you say, voice hoarse from disuse. “For not… making me leave.”

Johnny’s sitting cross-legged a few feet away, careful not to stare even though you’re covered. His ears—human now, but you can tell where the feline ones would be—are tinted pink.

“Least I could do,” he says quietly. “Ye’ve got wee ones to feed. Place is mine as much as anyone’s.”

You study him. He’s big—broad shoulders, thick arms—but there’s something careful in the way he holds himself around you and the kittens. Like a gentle giant.

“You don’t have to keep feeding us,” you say matter-of-factly.

“Aye, I do,” he replies, simple as that. “Not leavin’ a queen and her bairns to fend for themselves. Not my way.”

The kittens are four weeks old when the smallest one—a little black-and-white tom—opens his eyes for the first time and stares straight at Johnny with tiny, unfocused curiosity. Johnny’s face goes soft in a way you’ve never seen a man before.

“Can I…?” he asks in quiet awe, nodding toward the nest.

You hesitate, then nod slowly.

He crawls closer, slow and deliberate, and lets the kitten sniff his finger. When the little one butts his head against it, Johnny’s grin is wide and helpless.

“Och, you’re a brave one, eh?”

You watch him let all four of them climb clumsily over his hands, listening to him murmur nonsense in a soft Scots burr—calling them “wee terrors” and “perfect little monsters”—and something tight in your chest unclenches for the first time since you realised you were alone.

Weeks slide by.

Johnny’s leave stretches. He tells his parents some half-truths and spends most days in the barn with you. He brings proper food, soft blankets, a little space heater when the nights turn cold. He sits with you in human form and talks—about his team, his work, his life. You tell him about the alley cat who left, about how scared you were but kept pushing on for your babies.

He never pushes. Never asks for anything.

But when you shift to cat form to nurse the kittens and he shifts too—big, powerful tabby with the same bright blue eyes—you feel the low, steady rumble of his purr vibrate through the straw as he curls carefully around the edge of your nest, not touching, just there.

One evening, the kittens finally asleep in a warm pile, you shift back to human and find him watching you with something careful and aching in his expression.

“You could stay,” he says quietly. “After my leave ends. Mam and Da wouldn’t mind. There’s room in the house. Proper heat. A garden the wee ones can play in when they’re bigger.”

You swallow. “Why?”

He shrugs, jug ears red. “Because ye shouldn’t have to do it alone. And because—” He rubs the back of his flushed neck. “Because I want ye here. All of ye.”

You look at the kittens. At the soft blanket he brought today. At the gentle way he’s already learned which one likes to sleep on his chest when he’s in cat form, which one tends to start crawling away to explore when none of you is looking.

You scoot closer until your shoulder brushes his.

“Okay,” you whisper eventually, allowing the softest smile to tug at the corner of your lips.

His smile, in return, is small and stunned and radiant.

Later, when the barn is dark and the kittens are fed and sleeping, you curl against his side in human form—warm skin to warm skin for the first time—and let him wrap an arm around you.

He presses a careful kiss to your temple.

“Got ye now, lass,” he murmurs into your hair. “Not goin’ anywhere.”

And for the first time since those two pink lines appeared on the stick you scavenged from a bin, you believe it.

You’re not alone anymore. You have a home.

You and your babies have Johnny—and he is staying.