Fandom: Primeval/Being Human
Characters: Connor/George
Story: Instinct
Rating: NC-17/MA
Warnings/Spoilers: Set in early Primeval s3, spoilers for the end of s2. No spoilers for BH beyond the obvious.
Author's Note: I had to. :)
Summary: Connor follows up on some reports of a strange creature sighting near Bristol
Instinct
Muttering curses under his breath, Connor once again picked up a tiny screw that had rolled off onto the floor. “Bloody things. Stay still!” Assembling the anomaly locking mechanism’s components was slow going, and screws going on walkabout wasn’t making things easier.
His vantage point, however, did have its benefits, putting him on eye level with Abby’s tight little rump as she strolled past him on the way to the other work station. He stayed bent over a little longer than absolutely necessary.
“Connor?” Sarah crept up behind him and poked his arm.
“Yo!” He straightened up quickly and turned, flashing a grin and waving his screwdriver in the air in greeting.
She smiled back and leaned over his work table, a stack of printouts in her arms. “I’m hoping you can help me.”
Happy for a break, he set down his tools and turned to face her properly. “For you, anything!”
“Thanks! So, I’ve been combing through reports of creature sightings, and I’ve seen a sudden uptick in sightings near Bristol. I asked Cutter about it and he said it didn’t quite make sense with the data he’s been collecting for his matrix.” She dropped the stack of papers. “Can I get your opinion on it?
He picked up the first item in the stack—a copy of a newspaper article with a blurry, dark photo of something stalking around in some trees. “Wolves?” He muttered. “If that’s what this is supposed to be, it’s far too big for anything native.”
Sarah nodded. “That’s what the local animal control office said, too. They went looking for it—whatever it was—but didn’t find anything. Suppose it could be one of ours?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. Could be an anomaly nearby that opens up to a place with early mammal predators. A hyenadon of some sort, maybe.” He frowned. “But that doesn’t quite make sense. You say these sightings are all recent?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Just in the last several months.”
“Strange. If it’s an anomaly, it would’ve registered on the detector.” Glancing up, he called over to Abby. “Hey, can you take a look at this stuff for us?”
“Sure.” She trotted over, parking herself between them and sifting through the stack of reports. “This definitely isn’t anything modern. Too big for a canine of any sort. And built wrong for a bear.” she said, shaking her head. “And I don’t know of any private zoos or anything near there where something might’ve escaped from anyway.”
“Right. So our territory, then.” Connor nodded. “But without an anomaly?”
Abby shrugged. “Remember Valerie? Could be something that someone found as a pup and kept as a pet.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Valerie?”
Abby smiled. “Before your time. You really ought to have a look at the past mission reports!”
Sarah rolled her eyes.“If Cutter ever let me breathe for ten seconds, I might!” Connor and Abby giggled knowingly.
“Anyway, I do think it’s something we ought to check out.” Abby said decisively. “I’m going to go grab Becker and let Cutter and Lester know that we’re going on a little road trip.”
***
“Connor, we’re going in circles!” Becker complained loudly—not for the first time.
“I know! Just… give me a moment, hey?” Connor grumbled, fiddling with his sat nav, trying to nail down the coordinates for the creature sightings. The evening’s trek through the woods hadn’t gone nearly as well as he’d planned, and he was already irritated by how much of a fool he’d made himself in front of Becker and the other two soldiers who had come along. That it was coming up on dawn and they’d found little to go on but a few muddy tracks and one shredded stoat wasn’t encouraging. He again felt the pang of loss. “If Stephen were here,” he muttered under his breath, “he’d have found the thing already.”
“Can we at least have some bigger torches?” One of the other soldiers called up to them. Their night-vision gear hadn’t helped them at all. The forest was teeming with life that made sorting out a larger heat signature difficult.
Abby shook her head. “No. The extra light might scare the creature away, and without an anomaly to direct it to, that would only be getting us in more trouble.” She looked up at the sky. “Besides. It’s a beautiful full moon. We can see quite well with that.”
“Wait!” Connor stopped up short. “Do you hear that?” A faint, low keening echoed from the trees a few dozen metres to their left.
“I do!” Abby perked up. “It’s definitely a wolf’s call of some sort. It’s… it’s not a hunting call, though. It sounds more like it’s calling to its mate or something.”
“Its mate? Are you telling me there’s more than one of these things? Should I be calling in more backup?” Becker frowned.
“I don’t think so. I’m not hearing a response to the call. It’s just the one creature.” Abby crept slowly toward the sound.
Connor nearly tripped. “What the--?” He looked down. At his feet were a shoe and what used to be a T-shirt.
Becker turned and looked down. Grim faced, he set his jaw. “Great. Whatever this thing is, we’re about to interrupt its lunch.”
They pressed forward. The creature, however, was on the move, its occasional mating calls becoming faint as it weaved through the dark forest far more surely than the clumsy humans who were tracking it.
Finally, it seemed they were getting closer, but as they did, the calls suddenly stopped, and they had no way to turn. The light, however, was improving, as the sun slowly crept into the sky.
Abby gasped and grabbed Connor’s arm. “Look!” She pointed down at the newly visible ground. There was a clear trail of very large paws. “But… OK, now I’m confused.”
“How so?” He looked where she was pointing. Something seemed off, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
“Connor, there are only two paws, here. This creature is bipedal.”
Connor blinked. He mentally tore through his creature database, trying to come up with something that would fit the bill. He came up short. “If this creature really is a biped,” he grinned at her, “we could be looking at a whole new species—something that isn’t in the fossil record at all.”
“Oi!” One of the soldiers, scouting ahead, called back to them. “I see something through the trees there. It looks human, though. Someone laying on the ground?”
Becker winced. “Probably the poor bastard the creature took.”
“If that’s true, then where’s the blood trail?” Abby waved her hand exasperatedly. “There’s no sign of a creature attack here at all. Just these prints!’
A sudden shriek—a very human one—interrupted their debate.
“That’s because it’s attacking now!” Becker cried. “Come on!”
Connor ran to catch up with them as they sprinted ahead, but caught his toe on a root and went sprawling. He picked himself up as quickly as he could, but not after noticing something odd on the ground. The paw prints suddenly disappeared, and in their place, a set of human ones. Glancing up, he saw a mottled, pinkish streak through the forest to his right. The streak stopped moving for just a moment—just long enough for him to see: A perfectly healthy and attractive--if quite filthy--young man. Who also happened to be entirely naked.
The man’s eyes, a startled flash of blue in the low light, fixed on Connor. For a second, he hesitated, as if seeing something in Connor he wanted to get closer to.
Then the soldiers came crashing back, and like a shot, the young man was gone.
***
For the next few weeks after their failed creature hunt, it was all he could think about.
Abby was no help. One whiff of his theory, and her eyes rolled so much he thought they’d be permanently aimed at the back of her head. Sarah was a little more open to the idea, rambling off reams of data culled from myth and literature. But even she couldn’t explain how such a thing would be scientifically possible. “It’s got to be just a prehistoric wolf, right? Or maybe it’s just some bloke who likes to dress up as a wolf or something, like one of those animal fan people you keep telling me about—even when I don’t want to know.”
“Furries?”
“Yes. Those.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.” But he’d never heard of a furry who’d remotely consider abandoning his costume and running around entirely in the buff. And they hadn’t found any costume anyway. Just a few tufts of rough, gray hair which Abby had been analyzing. She blew off the human DNA she found in it as a fluke.
It didn’t help that, along with the curiosity about the creature, he’d also begun to fixate on the young man himself. Though it was only a moment’s glimpse, the sight of the fit, naked body had etched on his mind, and Connor kept wondering what he might look like if he were cleaned up, and, well, not running for his life through the forest. The thought kept him awake at night in more ways than one. Powerful enough to crowd out his brain’s usual constant slideshow of Abby, he frequently found himself tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, stroking furiously as he imagined what such an animalistic drive could do to his inexperienced body.
Finally, as the moon was waxing again, Connor could wait no longer. Begging off for a cousin’s wedding (“Really, me mum would have me skinned alive if I missed it”) he headed back to Bristol.
***
The forest was a cold and inhospitable place. Though spring was coming soon, dew still chilled into frost and the stiff buds of tree and shrub had not yet begun to unfurl. He had a lot of time alone, as he stalked through the brush, tranquilizer gun at the ready, to think about exactly how crazy he really was.
“Cutter. Abby. Lester. Jenny. Becker. Sarah.” He recited the list of people who would surely slap him senseless if they knew what he was up to all alone. His solo scouting attempts hadn’t gone very well before; their certain disapproval at least had base. But he was sure of it this time—as sure as he had been the day he showed up in Cutter’s office waving a tabloid sighting of a monster. “And look how that turned out,” he whispered proudly.
The light was slowly fading from the sky when he found the place—the same area they’d been the last time when they’d seen the tracks. Settling down by a tree, he folded his arms against the cold and waited for moonrise.
He had nearly dozed off when a noise of cracking brush behind him caught his attention. He started awake, turning toward the sound, which was shortly followed by a gurgled noise of alarm. A human one.
“Hello?” He called out to the figure, which was still in the shadows. The sun was nearly gone, now, but the moon hadn’t yet risen, making it virtually impossible to see who was there.
“H-hello?” The figure called back at him.
Connor grabbed his torch and switched it on, aiming in the direction of the voice. “Where are you? Who are you?”
The trembling young man stepped into the light. Connor smiled with the recognition. Though clothed this time, it was clearly the person he’d seen before. “I-I’m George,” the man stammered. “But really, that’s not important. What’s important is that you need to leave, very soon.” His voice had an edge of panic.
Connor stood up. “It’s OK, mate.” He held up his hands.
“OK? Trust me, this is not OK. In about an hour, you’re really, really not going to want to be here.” Now that he was getting closer, Connor could see more of George’s face. It was kind and gentle, and in between his nervous protestations, there was a subtle but friendly grin on his lips.
“Why?” Connor knew the answer instinctively, but thought he’d give the man a chance to explain.
“Why?” George’s eyes darted around. “Why. Yes. Well, um. Because there are all sorts of animals in these woods. And they, um, hunt at night. I think.”
“If that’s so, then why are you here? Aren’t you worried about being attacked?” Connor crept closer to George.
“No! I mean, yes. I am. Worried. But not really. I know how to take care of myself here.” George’s voice was turning a little husky.
“Who’s to say I don’t know?” Connor reached behind him for the tranq gun he’d stuck in his belt.
On seeing the gun, George jumped, making an awful noise of panic. “Don’t! Don’t shoot me, please!”
“Easy!” Connor lay the gun on the ground. “I’m not going to shoot you. As long as you’re not intending to attack me or anything.”
“N-no. Of course not!” George started heaving deep breaths. “But those… those animals might.”
“What animals?” Connor said gently. “You mean the creature sightings?”
George stopped for a moment. “Yes. Um. Yes, the creatures.”
“Well, I was out here with my team just a few weeks ago, and we didn’t see any creatures. I think it’s safe.” Connor moved closer, laying a hand on George’s quivering arm. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
George looked down at the hand on his arm, then up, staring into Connor’s eyes. He started to say something, then stopped, and frowned in confusion. “Wait. What team?”
Now it was Connor’s turn to equivocate. “We’re just… creature specialists. We track strange sightings.”
“Not hunters, then?”
“Not as such, no. I’m not here to shoot anything unless I have to.” Connor indicated the gun on the ground. “I won’t have to, will I?” He looked significantly at George.
George went silent as he scanned Connor’s face and saw understanding there. Finally, he sighed tiredly. “Not right now, no,” he said, “but you need to leave, soon.”
“I will.” Connor patted George’s arm. “Don’t worry about that.”
George looked around, taking in Connor’s gear, with its ARC logos. “Your team are who I saw last month, aren’t you? The people I woke up to. I think…” he hummed quietly. “Yes, I remember seeing you now.”
“I remember you, too. Though it’s kind of hard to miss a naked bloke running through the forest.” Connor smiled sympathetically.
George flushed. “Yes, well. Comes with the territory. But I guess you’d know that. How much do you know?”
“Not much. Enough to know that I need to leave before the moon comes up.”
“But I thought your team…?”
Connor bit his lip. “Well, we’re not… we don’t really specialize in… your kind of creature. Let me just put it that way.”
“You’re not going to tell me more, are you?”
“I can’t.” Connor shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
George ran a hand over the top of his head, smoothing back his close-cropped hair. “I suppose it’s just as well. There are too many big mysteries I already know the answer to—and wish I didn’t.”
Connor laughed in understanding. “Me, too. The world’s a much stranger place than I’d ever imagined. Oh! I don’t think I told you my name. I’m Connor.” He stuck out his hand for a proper shake.
George took his hand and smiled. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Conn—Ahh!“ Suddenly, George shuddered violently, and growled low in his throat.
Connor jumped back a little, startled. “Mate? You OK? Is it starting?”
George rubbed his face and breathed deeply. “Not quite yet. It’s just… early warning signs. I start getting little … flashes when it’s coming soon. It’s the animal sort of waking up, letting me know it’s there.” He shivered again, sucking in gulps of air and letting out a small, howling whine.
“I’d probably better go.” Connor moved to pick up his things.
“No. Wait.” George reached for Connor’s wrist, stopping him. The look on his face had changed. He was no longer nervous and shy like he had been. Instead, a glow of confidence crossed his features, and he licked his lips hungrily. “You can stay a little longer, if you want.” He smiled significantly.
Connor’s breath hitched. There was no mistaking the way George was looking at him. Of all the insane things he’d done so far this night, this would certainly trump everything else. Yet he couldn’t deny the desire. George on his own was attractive enough as it was, and now that his… animal… nature was coming to the surface, something about the way he moved, spoke, smelled was powerfully magnetic. A surge ran through Connor’s body, speeding his heartbeat, weakening his knees and swelling his cock.
Lost for words, instinct took over, and he nodded.
Bridging what little distance was left between them, George pushed Connor against the nearest tree and pressed a fierce kiss onto him. Connor gasped in surprise. He had so little experience to begin with that being handled so roughly was a shock. But one he found he quite liked. Within seconds of George’s hot tongue stabbing past his lips to probe his mouth, his jeans began to feel uncomfortably tight and restrictive. Fortunately, George soon remedied the problem by tugging down the zip and stuffing a hand inside.
“Oh my god.” Connor mumbled into the kiss and thrust up against George’s hand as it curled around his cock. Wanting to return the favor, he tried to wriggle a hand between them, but couldn’t quite, so he settled for getting a palmful of George’s tight arse instead.
George seemed to like this, as a rough growl escaped his throat, and he began biting at Connor’s lips. With his free hand, he pushed up Connor’s shirt, and scratched lightly down his chest, fingernails skimming over his nipples. Connor groaned, hips rolling of their own accord at the attention.
As they groped and pawed at each other, George stripped off the rest of Connor’s clothes and his own, and soon they were skin-to-skin, two naked men in the dappled darkness, their greedy noises softened by the thick foliage that surrounded them.
George nipped and suckled his way down Connor’s neck and collarbone and pushed his hot hardness against Connor’s leg. “Want you,” he growled, his breath warm and damp against Connor’s chest. “Want to take you.”
Connor’s stomach did a little flip. Now that it had come to it, was he ready? Did he really want this? Now, this way, with a stranger who at any moment might become a monster? A sharp pinch on his nipple and a swirl of a thumb under his foreskin answered the question for him.
“Do it.” He gasped, shocked at the sound of his own voice saying the words.
Taking him by the wrist, George led him over to a nearby fallen log. A gentle shove gave Connor the message, and he sunk to his knees on the soft forest floor. George put a hand to the back of his head and brought his cock to Connor’s mouth. “Nice and wet, now” George purred, “unless you want me to take you dry.”
Though his own experimentation had made him familiar with some of this, Connor knew very well that that wasn’t an option. Diving down on George’s cock, marveling at the novelty of the exposed head, he did his best to slick it up. George curled his fingers in Connor’s hair, thrusting against him, enjoying the eager way Connor sucked and licked at him. In a moment, however, he could wait no longer.
“Turn around,” George huffed, pulling his cock back out of Connor’s mouth with a wet pop.
Heart thumping madly, Connor did so, bracing himself against the log and arching his back. It felt slightly ridiculous and a little embarrassing to be so exposed like this, but the thought of what was to come crowded out any reticence. George settled in behind him and Connor took a deep breath.
The first push was a little painful, but in a moment, Connor relaxed, and soon, George was buried, balls-deep, inside him. Wasting little time, he sunk his fingers into Connor’s hips, and quickly began a rough, sharp rhythm. Connor could barely keep up, adjusting to each new sensation only a split second before the next arrived. Fumbling around, he tried to start stroking himself, but George batted his hand away with a grunt, and took over the task himself. All that was left for Connor to do was hold on for dear life, gripping the rough bark, body going slack as George used it.
All too soon, the wave crept up on him, blindsiding him with a powerful shock as his cock began spasming and spurting out over George’s hand onto the moss and leaves below. He bucked and trembled, calling nonsense syllables as his body danced.
Then George, too, was there. Shouting wildly with the need and pleasure, he pulled out suddenly, stroking himself over the crest, splashing hot, thick and wet over Connor’s arse and back.
Gasping for air, Connor sagged, his vision still blurry, swimming with the raw shock and pleasure of it all. Every nerve, it seemed, was alive and humming, still spinning and fading very slowly as he came down.
A sharp bark behind him broke his reverie.
“George?” He turned, looking at the figure behind him. George was clutching his belly, eyes screwed shut in a mask of pain. Worried, Connor moved toward him. “Are you OK? What’s wrong?”
“Go.” George snarled, then keened again as another shock wracked him.
“Is it happening?” Connor reached out to touch his shoulder.
George howled in rage, batting Connor’s hand away. “I said go! NOW!” He looked up, and Connor’s blood ran cold. In place of the kind, gentle blue, his eyes were an angry yellow, and the grimace on his face exposed a pair of growing, sharp fangs.
Terrified, Connor scrambled up and grabbed his gear. Not even bothering to dress, he instead dashed away as quickly as he could, ignoring the twigs and rocks that dug into his bare feet. When he finally felt safe, he paused, throwing on his clothes haphazardly. As he laced up his boots, he heard it: the chilling, primal yowl that signaled that George was no more—the creature was now on the loose.
***
“So, how was the wedding?” Sarah toyed with the random bits of electronic debris on his work table.
“Wedding?” Connor looked up in confusion, a screw dangling from his fingertips.
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Um, the big wedding last weekend? The one you said you couldn’t miss?”
“Ah!” Connor flushed. “That. Yes. Just a bore, really. Family. You know how it is.”
Sarah smirked. “Oh, I do. Really, they can be positively beastly sometimes.”
He dropped the screw.
--End--
Characters: Connor/George
Story: Instinct
Rating: NC-17/MA
Warnings/Spoilers: Set in early Primeval s3, spoilers for the end of s2. No spoilers for BH beyond the obvious.
Author's Note: I had to. :)
Summary: Connor follows up on some reports of a strange creature sighting near Bristol
Instinct
Muttering curses under his breath, Connor once again picked up a tiny screw that had rolled off onto the floor. “Bloody things. Stay still!” Assembling the anomaly locking mechanism’s components was slow going, and screws going on walkabout wasn’t making things easier.
His vantage point, however, did have its benefits, putting him on eye level with Abby’s tight little rump as she strolled past him on the way to the other work station. He stayed bent over a little longer than absolutely necessary.
“Connor?” Sarah crept up behind him and poked his arm.
“Yo!” He straightened up quickly and turned, flashing a grin and waving his screwdriver in the air in greeting.
She smiled back and leaned over his work table, a stack of printouts in her arms. “I’m hoping you can help me.”
Happy for a break, he set down his tools and turned to face her properly. “For you, anything!”
“Thanks! So, I’ve been combing through reports of creature sightings, and I’ve seen a sudden uptick in sightings near Bristol. I asked Cutter about it and he said it didn’t quite make sense with the data he’s been collecting for his matrix.” She dropped the stack of papers. “Can I get your opinion on it?
He picked up the first item in the stack—a copy of a newspaper article with a blurry, dark photo of something stalking around in some trees. “Wolves?” He muttered. “If that’s what this is supposed to be, it’s far too big for anything native.”
Sarah nodded. “That’s what the local animal control office said, too. They went looking for it—whatever it was—but didn’t find anything. Suppose it could be one of ours?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. Could be an anomaly nearby that opens up to a place with early mammal predators. A hyenadon of some sort, maybe.” He frowned. “But that doesn’t quite make sense. You say these sightings are all recent?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Just in the last several months.”
“Strange. If it’s an anomaly, it would’ve registered on the detector.” Glancing up, he called over to Abby. “Hey, can you take a look at this stuff for us?”
“Sure.” She trotted over, parking herself between them and sifting through the stack of reports. “This definitely isn’t anything modern. Too big for a canine of any sort. And built wrong for a bear.” she said, shaking her head. “And I don’t know of any private zoos or anything near there where something might’ve escaped from anyway.”
“Right. So our territory, then.” Connor nodded. “But without an anomaly?”
Abby shrugged. “Remember Valerie? Could be something that someone found as a pup and kept as a pet.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Valerie?”
Abby smiled. “Before your time. You really ought to have a look at the past mission reports!”
Sarah rolled her eyes.“If Cutter ever let me breathe for ten seconds, I might!” Connor and Abby giggled knowingly.
“Anyway, I do think it’s something we ought to check out.” Abby said decisively. “I’m going to go grab Becker and let Cutter and Lester know that we’re going on a little road trip.”
***
“Connor, we’re going in circles!” Becker complained loudly—not for the first time.
“I know! Just… give me a moment, hey?” Connor grumbled, fiddling with his sat nav, trying to nail down the coordinates for the creature sightings. The evening’s trek through the woods hadn’t gone nearly as well as he’d planned, and he was already irritated by how much of a fool he’d made himself in front of Becker and the other two soldiers who had come along. That it was coming up on dawn and they’d found little to go on but a few muddy tracks and one shredded stoat wasn’t encouraging. He again felt the pang of loss. “If Stephen were here,” he muttered under his breath, “he’d have found the thing already.”
“Can we at least have some bigger torches?” One of the other soldiers called up to them. Their night-vision gear hadn’t helped them at all. The forest was teeming with life that made sorting out a larger heat signature difficult.
Abby shook her head. “No. The extra light might scare the creature away, and without an anomaly to direct it to, that would only be getting us in more trouble.” She looked up at the sky. “Besides. It’s a beautiful full moon. We can see quite well with that.”
“Wait!” Connor stopped up short. “Do you hear that?” A faint, low keening echoed from the trees a few dozen metres to their left.
“I do!” Abby perked up. “It’s definitely a wolf’s call of some sort. It’s… it’s not a hunting call, though. It sounds more like it’s calling to its mate or something.”
“Its mate? Are you telling me there’s more than one of these things? Should I be calling in more backup?” Becker frowned.
“I don’t think so. I’m not hearing a response to the call. It’s just the one creature.” Abby crept slowly toward the sound.
Connor nearly tripped. “What the--?” He looked down. At his feet were a shoe and what used to be a T-shirt.
Becker turned and looked down. Grim faced, he set his jaw. “Great. Whatever this thing is, we’re about to interrupt its lunch.”
They pressed forward. The creature, however, was on the move, its occasional mating calls becoming faint as it weaved through the dark forest far more surely than the clumsy humans who were tracking it.
Finally, it seemed they were getting closer, but as they did, the calls suddenly stopped, and they had no way to turn. The light, however, was improving, as the sun slowly crept into the sky.
Abby gasped and grabbed Connor’s arm. “Look!” She pointed down at the newly visible ground. There was a clear trail of very large paws. “But… OK, now I’m confused.”
“How so?” He looked where she was pointing. Something seemed off, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
“Connor, there are only two paws, here. This creature is bipedal.”
Connor blinked. He mentally tore through his creature database, trying to come up with something that would fit the bill. He came up short. “If this creature really is a biped,” he grinned at her, “we could be looking at a whole new species—something that isn’t in the fossil record at all.”
“Oi!” One of the soldiers, scouting ahead, called back to them. “I see something through the trees there. It looks human, though. Someone laying on the ground?”
Becker winced. “Probably the poor bastard the creature took.”
“If that’s true, then where’s the blood trail?” Abby waved her hand exasperatedly. “There’s no sign of a creature attack here at all. Just these prints!’
A sudden shriek—a very human one—interrupted their debate.
“That’s because it’s attacking now!” Becker cried. “Come on!”
Connor ran to catch up with them as they sprinted ahead, but caught his toe on a root and went sprawling. He picked himself up as quickly as he could, but not after noticing something odd on the ground. The paw prints suddenly disappeared, and in their place, a set of human ones. Glancing up, he saw a mottled, pinkish streak through the forest to his right. The streak stopped moving for just a moment—just long enough for him to see: A perfectly healthy and attractive--if quite filthy--young man. Who also happened to be entirely naked.
The man’s eyes, a startled flash of blue in the low light, fixed on Connor. For a second, he hesitated, as if seeing something in Connor he wanted to get closer to.
Then the soldiers came crashing back, and like a shot, the young man was gone.
***
For the next few weeks after their failed creature hunt, it was all he could think about.
Abby was no help. One whiff of his theory, and her eyes rolled so much he thought they’d be permanently aimed at the back of her head. Sarah was a little more open to the idea, rambling off reams of data culled from myth and literature. But even she couldn’t explain how such a thing would be scientifically possible. “It’s got to be just a prehistoric wolf, right? Or maybe it’s just some bloke who likes to dress up as a wolf or something, like one of those animal fan people you keep telling me about—even when I don’t want to know.”
“Furries?”
“Yes. Those.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.” But he’d never heard of a furry who’d remotely consider abandoning his costume and running around entirely in the buff. And they hadn’t found any costume anyway. Just a few tufts of rough, gray hair which Abby had been analyzing. She blew off the human DNA she found in it as a fluke.
It didn’t help that, along with the curiosity about the creature, he’d also begun to fixate on the young man himself. Though it was only a moment’s glimpse, the sight of the fit, naked body had etched on his mind, and Connor kept wondering what he might look like if he were cleaned up, and, well, not running for his life through the forest. The thought kept him awake at night in more ways than one. Powerful enough to crowd out his brain’s usual constant slideshow of Abby, he frequently found himself tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, stroking furiously as he imagined what such an animalistic drive could do to his inexperienced body.
Finally, as the moon was waxing again, Connor could wait no longer. Begging off for a cousin’s wedding (“Really, me mum would have me skinned alive if I missed it”) he headed back to Bristol.
***
The forest was a cold and inhospitable place. Though spring was coming soon, dew still chilled into frost and the stiff buds of tree and shrub had not yet begun to unfurl. He had a lot of time alone, as he stalked through the brush, tranquilizer gun at the ready, to think about exactly how crazy he really was.
“Cutter. Abby. Lester. Jenny. Becker. Sarah.” He recited the list of people who would surely slap him senseless if they knew what he was up to all alone. His solo scouting attempts hadn’t gone very well before; their certain disapproval at least had base. But he was sure of it this time—as sure as he had been the day he showed up in Cutter’s office waving a tabloid sighting of a monster. “And look how that turned out,” he whispered proudly.
The light was slowly fading from the sky when he found the place—the same area they’d been the last time when they’d seen the tracks. Settling down by a tree, he folded his arms against the cold and waited for moonrise.
He had nearly dozed off when a noise of cracking brush behind him caught his attention. He started awake, turning toward the sound, which was shortly followed by a gurgled noise of alarm. A human one.
“Hello?” He called out to the figure, which was still in the shadows. The sun was nearly gone, now, but the moon hadn’t yet risen, making it virtually impossible to see who was there.
“H-hello?” The figure called back at him.
Connor grabbed his torch and switched it on, aiming in the direction of the voice. “Where are you? Who are you?”
The trembling young man stepped into the light. Connor smiled with the recognition. Though clothed this time, it was clearly the person he’d seen before. “I-I’m George,” the man stammered. “But really, that’s not important. What’s important is that you need to leave, very soon.” His voice had an edge of panic.
Connor stood up. “It’s OK, mate.” He held up his hands.
“OK? Trust me, this is not OK. In about an hour, you’re really, really not going to want to be here.” Now that he was getting closer, Connor could see more of George’s face. It was kind and gentle, and in between his nervous protestations, there was a subtle but friendly grin on his lips.
“Why?” Connor knew the answer instinctively, but thought he’d give the man a chance to explain.
“Why?” George’s eyes darted around. “Why. Yes. Well, um. Because there are all sorts of animals in these woods. And they, um, hunt at night. I think.”
“If that’s so, then why are you here? Aren’t you worried about being attacked?” Connor crept closer to George.
“No! I mean, yes. I am. Worried. But not really. I know how to take care of myself here.” George’s voice was turning a little husky.
“Who’s to say I don’t know?” Connor reached behind him for the tranq gun he’d stuck in his belt.
On seeing the gun, George jumped, making an awful noise of panic. “Don’t! Don’t shoot me, please!”
“Easy!” Connor lay the gun on the ground. “I’m not going to shoot you. As long as you’re not intending to attack me or anything.”
“N-no. Of course not!” George started heaving deep breaths. “But those… those animals might.”
“What animals?” Connor said gently. “You mean the creature sightings?”
George stopped for a moment. “Yes. Um. Yes, the creatures.”
“Well, I was out here with my team just a few weeks ago, and we didn’t see any creatures. I think it’s safe.” Connor moved closer, laying a hand on George’s quivering arm. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
George looked down at the hand on his arm, then up, staring into Connor’s eyes. He started to say something, then stopped, and frowned in confusion. “Wait. What team?”
Now it was Connor’s turn to equivocate. “We’re just… creature specialists. We track strange sightings.”
“Not hunters, then?”
“Not as such, no. I’m not here to shoot anything unless I have to.” Connor indicated the gun on the ground. “I won’t have to, will I?” He looked significantly at George.
George went silent as he scanned Connor’s face and saw understanding there. Finally, he sighed tiredly. “Not right now, no,” he said, “but you need to leave, soon.”
“I will.” Connor patted George’s arm. “Don’t worry about that.”
George looked around, taking in Connor’s gear, with its ARC logos. “Your team are who I saw last month, aren’t you? The people I woke up to. I think…” he hummed quietly. “Yes, I remember seeing you now.”
“I remember you, too. Though it’s kind of hard to miss a naked bloke running through the forest.” Connor smiled sympathetically.
George flushed. “Yes, well. Comes with the territory. But I guess you’d know that. How much do you know?”
“Not much. Enough to know that I need to leave before the moon comes up.”
“But I thought your team…?”
Connor bit his lip. “Well, we’re not… we don’t really specialize in… your kind of creature. Let me just put it that way.”
“You’re not going to tell me more, are you?”
“I can’t.” Connor shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
George ran a hand over the top of his head, smoothing back his close-cropped hair. “I suppose it’s just as well. There are too many big mysteries I already know the answer to—and wish I didn’t.”
Connor laughed in understanding. “Me, too. The world’s a much stranger place than I’d ever imagined. Oh! I don’t think I told you my name. I’m Connor.” He stuck out his hand for a proper shake.
George took his hand and smiled. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Conn—Ahh!“ Suddenly, George shuddered violently, and growled low in his throat.
Connor jumped back a little, startled. “Mate? You OK? Is it starting?”
George rubbed his face and breathed deeply. “Not quite yet. It’s just… early warning signs. I start getting little … flashes when it’s coming soon. It’s the animal sort of waking up, letting me know it’s there.” He shivered again, sucking in gulps of air and letting out a small, howling whine.
“I’d probably better go.” Connor moved to pick up his things.
“No. Wait.” George reached for Connor’s wrist, stopping him. The look on his face had changed. He was no longer nervous and shy like he had been. Instead, a glow of confidence crossed his features, and he licked his lips hungrily. “You can stay a little longer, if you want.” He smiled significantly.
Connor’s breath hitched. There was no mistaking the way George was looking at him. Of all the insane things he’d done so far this night, this would certainly trump everything else. Yet he couldn’t deny the desire. George on his own was attractive enough as it was, and now that his… animal… nature was coming to the surface, something about the way he moved, spoke, smelled was powerfully magnetic. A surge ran through Connor’s body, speeding his heartbeat, weakening his knees and swelling his cock.
Lost for words, instinct took over, and he nodded.
Bridging what little distance was left between them, George pushed Connor against the nearest tree and pressed a fierce kiss onto him. Connor gasped in surprise. He had so little experience to begin with that being handled so roughly was a shock. But one he found he quite liked. Within seconds of George’s hot tongue stabbing past his lips to probe his mouth, his jeans began to feel uncomfortably tight and restrictive. Fortunately, George soon remedied the problem by tugging down the zip and stuffing a hand inside.
“Oh my god.” Connor mumbled into the kiss and thrust up against George’s hand as it curled around his cock. Wanting to return the favor, he tried to wriggle a hand between them, but couldn’t quite, so he settled for getting a palmful of George’s tight arse instead.
George seemed to like this, as a rough growl escaped his throat, and he began biting at Connor’s lips. With his free hand, he pushed up Connor’s shirt, and scratched lightly down his chest, fingernails skimming over his nipples. Connor groaned, hips rolling of their own accord at the attention.
As they groped and pawed at each other, George stripped off the rest of Connor’s clothes and his own, and soon they were skin-to-skin, two naked men in the dappled darkness, their greedy noises softened by the thick foliage that surrounded them.
George nipped and suckled his way down Connor’s neck and collarbone and pushed his hot hardness against Connor’s leg. “Want you,” he growled, his breath warm and damp against Connor’s chest. “Want to take you.”
Connor’s stomach did a little flip. Now that it had come to it, was he ready? Did he really want this? Now, this way, with a stranger who at any moment might become a monster? A sharp pinch on his nipple and a swirl of a thumb under his foreskin answered the question for him.
“Do it.” He gasped, shocked at the sound of his own voice saying the words.
Taking him by the wrist, George led him over to a nearby fallen log. A gentle shove gave Connor the message, and he sunk to his knees on the soft forest floor. George put a hand to the back of his head and brought his cock to Connor’s mouth. “Nice and wet, now” George purred, “unless you want me to take you dry.”
Though his own experimentation had made him familiar with some of this, Connor knew very well that that wasn’t an option. Diving down on George’s cock, marveling at the novelty of the exposed head, he did his best to slick it up. George curled his fingers in Connor’s hair, thrusting against him, enjoying the eager way Connor sucked and licked at him. In a moment, however, he could wait no longer.
“Turn around,” George huffed, pulling his cock back out of Connor’s mouth with a wet pop.
Heart thumping madly, Connor did so, bracing himself against the log and arching his back. It felt slightly ridiculous and a little embarrassing to be so exposed like this, but the thought of what was to come crowded out any reticence. George settled in behind him and Connor took a deep breath.
The first push was a little painful, but in a moment, Connor relaxed, and soon, George was buried, balls-deep, inside him. Wasting little time, he sunk his fingers into Connor’s hips, and quickly began a rough, sharp rhythm. Connor could barely keep up, adjusting to each new sensation only a split second before the next arrived. Fumbling around, he tried to start stroking himself, but George batted his hand away with a grunt, and took over the task himself. All that was left for Connor to do was hold on for dear life, gripping the rough bark, body going slack as George used it.
All too soon, the wave crept up on him, blindsiding him with a powerful shock as his cock began spasming and spurting out over George’s hand onto the moss and leaves below. He bucked and trembled, calling nonsense syllables as his body danced.
Then George, too, was there. Shouting wildly with the need and pleasure, he pulled out suddenly, stroking himself over the crest, splashing hot, thick and wet over Connor’s arse and back.
Gasping for air, Connor sagged, his vision still blurry, swimming with the raw shock and pleasure of it all. Every nerve, it seemed, was alive and humming, still spinning and fading very slowly as he came down.
A sharp bark behind him broke his reverie.
“George?” He turned, looking at the figure behind him. George was clutching his belly, eyes screwed shut in a mask of pain. Worried, Connor moved toward him. “Are you OK? What’s wrong?”
“Go.” George snarled, then keened again as another shock wracked him.
“Is it happening?” Connor reached out to touch his shoulder.
George howled in rage, batting Connor’s hand away. “I said go! NOW!” He looked up, and Connor’s blood ran cold. In place of the kind, gentle blue, his eyes were an angry yellow, and the grimace on his face exposed a pair of growing, sharp fangs.
Terrified, Connor scrambled up and grabbed his gear. Not even bothering to dress, he instead dashed away as quickly as he could, ignoring the twigs and rocks that dug into his bare feet. When he finally felt safe, he paused, throwing on his clothes haphazardly. As he laced up his boots, he heard it: the chilling, primal yowl that signaled that George was no more—the creature was now on the loose.
***
“So, how was the wedding?” Sarah toyed with the random bits of electronic debris on his work table.
“Wedding?” Connor looked up in confusion, a screw dangling from his fingertips.
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Um, the big wedding last weekend? The one you said you couldn’t miss?”
“Ah!” Connor flushed. “That. Yes. Just a bore, really. Family. You know how it is.”
Sarah smirked. “Oh, I do. Really, they can be positively beastly sometimes.”
He dropped the screw.
--End--