THE SHORT SERIES 'US' STARTS SEVEN YEARS AGO WHEN CONNOR AND GLEN WERE IN HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR.
Lying on his bed in his bedroom, Connor was listening to music, his Bluetooth headphones pushed over his ears. The pop track by a girls' band had been on repeat for half an hour already and he was far from tired of it.
His foot moved in time with the beat as his hand moved the butterfly knife given on his eighteenth birthday was swirling around his hand smoothly. It took a lot of practice to get to this level. Lots of cuts too.
The high school student didn't count the number of bandages, nor the number of weeks he had spent dissecting, again and again, several sequences and movements so that the muscles of his fingers and hands memorized them completely. Today, taking out his knife was both a gesture he made to relax but also to force his brain to consider the object as an extension of his fingers.
Connor was fascinated by edged weapons. Sword, dagger, dagger, whatever the length, the shape, the weight he loved the discipline brought by the mastery of a blade, but also the artistic beauty of the movements of the blade when it was manipulated.
Even though guns had their ease and strengths, he couldn't find the same appeal in their use. Once he becomes an agent, he will make bladed weapons his specialty. This was why he spent his time training.
As the girlish track began to play again for the umpteenth time, Connor's head started to move, a sign that he was totally immersed in his little bubble. This is the reason why he didn't realize that Maria, his mother, had just entered his room to ask him for a favor. When a hand grabbed his headphones to take them off, the young man, perfectly trained in martial arts since he was seven years old, closed his knife with a sharp gesture before snatching the headphones back from his mother's hands.
Connor met his mother's disapproving gaze and whined.
"Why? We were getting to the best part!"
The woman rolled her eyes at her son's pout and told him the purpose of her visit.
"Glen forgot his gym bag. You'd have to bring it to him because his appointment at the lab ends less than an hour before his training. He won't have time to go home and his teacher will scold him if he shows up again without his belongings."
"But Anny will soon be home from his piano lesson! If I leave now, I won't be able to see him until tomorrow night because you allowed him to go to his stupid sleepover."
"Don't be such a brocon. Let your little brother alone and go have fun with your big brother."
The teenager stuck his butterfly knife in his pocket and stood up, grumbling.
"Fun, fun… I can see that you have never attended a close combat course with Brad! He spends his time beating us and yelling at us when he doesn't… Ouch."
"It's Sir Stevenson, you brat!" Maria had just flicked him in the middle of the forehead and Connor looked at her, his eyes watering from the pain but mostly from his sulky mood.
"I may not have taken his classes because after all, we are almost the same age, but Bradley was my senior at the WIA academy. That's why I introduced him to you to become your mentor.
Because your father is a scientist and your mother is a bureaucrat who chose the freshness of a ventilated office and even ended up quitting everything to become a school principal while Brad chose to be a field agent. If you want to become a competent agent you better follow his example and… I can see you, young man!"
Connor, who had turned his back on his mother, took the opportunity to grimace while mouthing the words she repeated to him each time he complained about his mentor and which he, therefore, knew by heart.
He froze and turned back to his mother with a fake innocent smile on his lips.
Maria watched him try to coax her, and as she was getting ready to reprimand him, he grabbed the gym bag in her hand and planted a kiss on her cheek before storming out of his room.
"Bye Mom. Love you."
"Ugh… This brat!" The brown-haired mother of the family groaned. "I wonder where he got his character from…Well, I guess it's from me." She added after a pause while facepalming herself.
She chuckled hearing the front door slam behind him. Even if he grumbled, he always ended up finding Glen and she had no doubt that he would have a wide smile when he came home tonight, despite the fatigue of his training.
In the cafe where he had settled down to wait while Glen's appointment was over, Connor was playing with his phone with one hand and practicing with the other. He couldn't get his knife out as he was in a public place so he used the stirrer of his coffee to work on his knuckles stretch.
He was so focused on his movements that he didn't realize two people were standing next to him. Destabilized by the low weight of the piece of plastic, he missed a passage and the stirrer fell on the table.
"Too bad, you had the right rhythm though."
Connor looked up, his lips still pursed in a sulky pout, and met ultramarine eyes. Their beauty took his breath away. He stared, completely charmed, at the man who was standing in front of him who had had the same expression as him when he uncovered his face.
"Hot!"
The word escaped Connor's lips before he knew it. When his brain that had shut off at the sight of the stranger rekindled, he blinked at the nonsense he had spouted to a complete stranger and his stupidity hit him.
"My coffee. I was talking about my coffee. I…" He sputtered totally, flustered. The man raised an eyebrow, the corners of his lips slightly curved, and the teenager wanted to bury himself alive.
"Your cup is empty though."
Connor turned his head to the right and found Glen who had been there all along. His presence had been obliterated by the mere existence at his side of Greg Douglas, Laurent Everett's assistant with whom he had sympathized. Far from being offended, he was glad to have been forgotten. It had allowed him to see a very interesting expression on Connor's face.
A smirk appeared on the werewolf's face as his best friend rose to leave with a crimson face. He let himself grab his arm and drag towards the exit under the half-amused, half-intrigued gaze of Greg.
Seeing Glen wave at him, the scientist mimicked his gesture before turning to the coffee counter, chuckling.
"Cute!" The image of Connor staring at him, lips apart for a moment before, blurting out the word 'Hot' flashed through his mind and the man paused, hand over his mouth as he felt his mouth go dry.
"Yes, he was really cute."
It had now been three months since Connor had met the man named Greg Douglas, a research assistant who worked under his father at the WIA's main laboratory.
Since that fateful meeting which had left him troubled and agitated, the teenager found and took any pretext to join Glen at the cafe right next to the laboratory after each of his appointments to check on his progress in mastering his pheromones.
Today was no exception. Connor'd shamelessly intruded on the assistant's coffee break with Glen. The teenager had thus been able to feast all his heart content on the mature charm of the man who made his heart race or stop, it all depended on the situation.
Once the brief encounter was over, he had gone to his close-combat training or rather torture training given the state his body was currently in. However, unlike his usual schedule, he did not return home directly after his training. Connor had passed by the house of a friend to whom he had sent a package.
The high school student had never been attracted to girls. This is why he had very quickly admitted the idea of his strongly plausible homosexuality and tonight he had decided to test his hypothesis.
For once, Connor was alone at home. Glen had pretended to have a night out at a friend's house to spend the night at his girlfriend's house where the alpha was most likely going to lose his V-card. Anthony was once again sleeping over at a friend's house and his parents had informed him that they would be home after midnight as they were treating themselves to a romantic date after several months of juggling their impossible-to-match schedule.
Usually, he would have grumbled that everyone ditch him to live their life, but this time, he was just looking forward to his alone time. It was his luck!
He came out of the bathroom, washed thoroughly. He had read on the internet that it was important. Even though tonight he didn't have a partner and was just going to do some experimentation with what he bought, it wasn't bad to catch some good habits, right?
Connor unzipped his gym bag and pulled out the package his friend had given him. He put in a corner of his head the eloquent looks of the latter who asked him what he could have bought. How nosy!
He unpacked his package and swallowed seeing inside the beautifully presented package, a bottle of lubricant, a box of condoms and a vibrator whose dark purple color failed to make him forget the rough edges supposed to increase stimulation.
He might have been a bit greedy on that one.
The teenager gulped again taking the colored thing in his hand then he put it down, wary. He was a virgin down there. His fingers would do the job for the first time.
He grabbed the bottle of lube then he turned off the light and turned on the bedside lamp before climbing on his bed and undoing the belt of his bathrobe. Connor let the cloth slide over his shoulders before spreading his legs.
His hand moved down to his penis, which he grabbed before moving his other hand towards the bottle of lube. While his right hand was busy stroking his member which was already reacting thanks to his youth, he squeezed a large amount of the liquid directly onto his tip. He gasped because of the coldness and his lips parted, letting the tip of his tongue dart.
Connor moved his hand up to coat all his cock's skin with the lube and the movement got him harder and harder. He tightened his fingers to increase the pressure and soon he could hear the slippery noises of his movements. The feeling was strange. He had never used lube to masturbate before. It was as if the slippery liquid made his movements more intense.
He trailed his hand up his shaft playing up each time he came up to the area just below his tip and slight shivers ran through his cock. His mouth opened and closed as the waves of pleasure swept through his body and made the area around his groin feel hotter and hotter.
He took advantage of the rising pleasure to catch the lubricant which he poured again, but this time, aiming for his hole.
Again the cold sensation made him shiver and a moan escaped his mouth. Once fully covered he tossed the bottle on the bed and his fingers let go of his now twitching rod to head for his hole. He pressed gently the pad of his middle finger and the muscles contracted to push his finger away.
He frowned and decided to massage the contour to coax the area of his body and convince it to let his fingers through.
He continued like this for a few minutes and let out a frustrated groan before pulling his hand away and dropping onto his bed. He couldn't do it. The fear of being hurt made his movements clumsy and his erection was already deflating.
He pressed his face against the mattress and groaned before letting his thoughts drift away. He thought of the ultramarine eyes that had been haunting his dreams for several months already.
"I'm sure his fingers wouldn't hurt me." He muttered.
He didn't need more to feel his erection stiffen again. Without thinking any longer, his hand went down to stroke the swollen member who demanded that he take care of him. In his head, the young man was reviewing Greg's expressions that he had memorized.
His hands slid along his cock. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. He clenched his fingers and his hips moved at the same time as his hand fumbled to grab the pillow behind him which he used to muffle the scream that escaped his mouth.
"Ahh, Greg!"
His body tensed up and Connor shot his load, breathing hard. His head was still fuzzy but he was sure of one thing now.
"At least I guess I really have a crush."
________
"What would you say if I told you that I'm gay?"
Connor and Glen were both lying on the floor in the gym they had requested to use after their practice. Their breathing had finally returned to a normal rhythm and Glen turned his head in the direction of Connor who was watching him. Their eyes locked for a moment and the alpha who seemed to be intensely thinking blurted out.
"Congratulations?"
"Answer properly, you dumbass!" He wriggled to remove one of his snickers and raised his arm to send it to Glen who closed his eyes awaiting his sentence. He was too exhausted to fight back so much, he will get angry when he has rested a little.
But the shoe never crashed on him. Glen opened his eyes and made Connor's arm limp on the other side, out of energy. The teen let out a growl and Glen snorted, glad to have escaped the onslaught.
"What do you want me to tell you? You like who you like. That's it. I don't have much of an opinion about it. Moreover, that's a normal thing among werewolves. It's only some civilians who like to make a fuss for nothing. Or maybe… You're asking me that to tell me about your crush on Greg?"
Connor's head snapped to Glen, who was grinning from ear to ear.
"You know?!"
"It's not hard to not notice when your eyes are dripping with a mix of adoration and of 'undress me right now and do me on top of the table' every time you see him."
Connor's mouth dropped open but no sound came out. The shock was far too great to take. Glen savored his expression, wishing he could reach his phone. It was something he would have liked to capture and save as revenge for all the times Connor had annoyed him. He finally had something that gave him the upper hand, he fully intended to enjoy it to the end.
The brown-haired teenager had a new shock that made him regain the use of speech.
"Wait, don't tell me that he knows? You didn't tell him, did you?"
"Why should I bother?" Connor looked reassured upon hearing Glen's response, but the young werewolf continued, "The man has eyes, he doesn't need me to notice a matter-of-fact thing." Connor shot a death glare at Glen and wriggled on the ground to close in on the werewolf and attack him.
It was on this scene that nine-year-old Anthony Everett walked into the gymnasium. Came to look for his brothers at his mother's request, the little boy had crossed the floor, socks on. Anthony stopped two feet away from the two teenagers lazily bickering on the floor.
"What are you doing guys? Mom is waiting in the parking lot!"
Connor let go of Glen and crawled over to his little brother with a sad pout on his face.
"Annyyy! Glen is bullying me!" He reached out to grab the ankle of the boy who avoided the gesture perfectly.
"I'm pretty sure you started it…"
With a gasp, Connor looked up at Anthony with a face that was the embodiment of the pain itself. He curled into a ball to sulk and the little boy sighed before going around and getting into position to lie in the same direction as his brothers. He then raised his hands and called out to them both.
"Now, both of you give one of your hands"
Glen and Connor complied, not quite sure what the boy had in mind. Anthony took the two teenagers' hands in his, brought them all over his belly, and remained silent.
"What are you doing, Anny?" Glen asked, puzzled.
"Peacemaker."
Glen and Connor exchanged a look and the next moment they each rolled over to hug the boy.
"Anny you're too cute," said Glen with emotion in his voice.