FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It had actually been weeks earlier that Cal had set eyes on the inside of the Akavita penthouse suite for the first time. It was definitely the most posh part of the hotel, with a broad central bedroom room done up in ornate style and surrounded by little alcove-like rooms--a bar, a kitchenette, a study, and a parlor area with a giant cushioned bay window. And although it was only on the third floor, the Akavita itself was on a small ridge of sorts and the room looked out on impressive views of both downtown and the north harbor. Cal couldn't really imagine the type of person who'd stay here, nor did he recall any other guest he'd talked to saying that they were--probably it was reserved for well-connected VIPs who didn't like mixing with the plebeians. Well-connected, rich VIPs.

"So you know, I really do appreciate you helping set this wifi stuff up," cousin Laara said. She was slowly pacing the walls of the giant room, peering at the gauges on her phone. The bright afternoon sunlight flooded through the broad windows; it limned her long black braid with red and made her squint at the screen as she passed in front of them. "It would've taken forever to figure it all out on my own, and you're not the only guest who's been asking after it."

Cal glanced over at her from his perch on the edge of the suite's giant bed, but she had the phone six inches from her face and didn't look up. So he just shrugged and went back to fiddling with network router settings on his laptop. "Eh," he said, "It's no big deal. I still owe you for hooking me up with those Mia Mamma tickets--even if my date did end up bailing on me."

Laara chuckled at his sour tone. "Well, you know how it is--online dating is a jungle. Sometimes you catch your prey, sometimes you don't. Besides, Arric said he had a good time."

Cal snorted. "Arric was being nice--he's hardly an ADDA fan. I don't know why he took the extra ticket."

"Just wanted a night out, probably. He's been having bad luck with somebody online recently too, though he won't tell me details."

"Weird. He doesn't seem like the type who'd strike out much." Or at all. The guy looks like a university's star quarterback and has a personality as sunny as the Sahara. "But hey, maybe we could form a club! 'The Society for Cyber-Disappointed Bachelors.' We can meet up once a month to trade stories about gun-toting husbands showing up on the webcam and being broken up with entirely in emoji."

Laara turned her head to stare at Cal, brow furrowed. "Wait--does that stuff actually happen?"

Cal shrugged. "The husband thing I've only heard about. The emoji one happened to me though." He frowned at the memory, then shook his head clear. "So, uh--where is Arric, anyway? Isn't he usually the one that gets roped into handyman chores like this?"

Cal's question, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that on their mission to run network wires all across the Akavita he'd ended up moving heavy boxes and furniture himself--rather than getting to watch as a strong college senior did it for him, muscles pressing against his shirt as he lifted--

"Arric?" Laara hesitated for a moment. "He's on a... trip. Some soccer club thing, I think. He'll be back tomorrow though."

"Oh. Okay. I guess... I'll see him later... then."

Cal tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He knew Arric had a life outside the hotel, of course--it wasn't reasonable to think he'd be around all the time. And Cal shouldn't always be looking forward to seeing him so much anyway. He didn't even know why Arric was being so friendly these last couple months--inviting him to meals, or joining him on a run in the morning, or just wandering around the city together on a bored weekend. But he did know that it would be setting himself up for disappointment to think it was anything more than Arric's naturally being nice, or maybe just some extra "hospitality" engineered by one of the aunts. He shouldn't expect anything else. And he definitely shouldn't develop a crush on the guy--even if Arric did actually want to be friends, the odds of it being more than that were awful.

Not that any of this thinking actually helped him control his emotions. Or even to conceal them, to judge from the amused half-smile Laara was sending his way.

"Er." Cal felt his face getting hot, and he stared determinedly down at his laptop screen. "So, um, how's the signal look?"

"Just terrible! We're getting missed signals all over the place."

"...what?"

"Oh!" she said, voice bright. "Wait, did you mean the wifi? That's looking fine."

"That's--um, that's good." What the hell was that? "I guess we're pretty much done then. Just need to configure this last couple things."

Over the edge of the laptop screen, Cal saw a pair of dust-smudged jeans stalking toward him. Then Laara turned around and plunked down beside him on the bed.

Right beside him, legs and shoulders brushing against his. He swallowed and suppressed an urge to fidget; a decided preference for guys regrettably didn't grant him immunity to the computer geek's traditional weakness to cute girls. And though Laara was a bit too compact and round-faced to be pretty by Hollywood standards, she possessed a sort of casually alluring manner and a sultry smile that could leave Cal dazed and drooling.

An effect she knew about--and took flagrant advantage of. That was how Cal had ended up doing the grunt-work all morning while Laara got to demonstrate her skill with the power tools. And it was also why he'd agreed to spend his Saturday wiring up the Akavita's internet for free in the first place--though she'd cheated even more outrageously there by bringing Arric along to ask him too.

Cal supposed he really should be used to it by this point: most of his life since middle school was a study in how attractive people were dangerous to his time and wallet and pride. Not that he'd really seemed to have learned anything from it, judging from his most recent "boyfriend." At least Laara was nice even when he wasn't doing something for her--though her constant flipping between sororal and seductive made his head spin.

Laara leaned in to peer at his laptop screen. Cal's nose was tickled by a spicy scent like lavender and cloves, overlaid with the dust they'd been wading through in the hotel's warren of back passages and storerooms.

"So, show me what you're doing?" Laara asked. "I'm going to get stuck fixing it when you're not here, y'know."

"Oh, right--" Cal yanked his mind and eyes off the soft, warm person sitting almost in his lap. "So. Now that we, um. Know which frequencies are good, we have to set up a separate profile for the top floor access point so it uses the different ones by default."

"Hm. So why's it different up here?"

"Oh. Because of the microwave." Cal waved a hand toward the kitchenette. "It causes lots of interference. You want to avoid the internet dropping whenever someone turns it on, so that means we have to set it to use..."

Cal relaxed as he launched into the explanation, attention back on the configuration screens and the fiddly details of computer networking. He ended up giving a full tour of how it was all set up, Laara nodding along and asking what-is-that-for and what-if-this-goes-wrong questions. She seemed to know all the basics of it already, which made it easy; it seemed like only a few minutes until he finished up even though the sun outside had moved a significant distance toward the horizon.

"...but really--if you have iguanas nesting in your walls like that, then you probably have bigger problems than the wireless network."

Laara nodded. "True. So that's all of it, then?"

"Yeah, I think so. If you hit anything you don't know how to deal with, I'm sure you have my number."

"Yeah, I've definitely got your number." She turned her head to give him amused wink.

Cal chuckled nervously and stared down at the laptop again. Laara stood up to stretch and yawn, then started wandering slowly across the room.

"So, I guess this is stuff you do all the time at work?"

Cal shrugged. "Nah. I just read up on some guides I found online."

Laara paused at the large western window, idly looking out. "Hmm. I was searching online too, you know. But everything I found was either too simple or just full of odd numbers and arcane words I'm sure aren't actually English."

"Oh?" Cal grinned. "But that's really all computers are, you know--just a lot of numbers strung together with magic words."

"Pff. If that were the case I'd have had this all done in five minutes. I'm actually good at magic."

"Hmmm. I'll email you next time I find a cursed laptop then."

Cal glanced up expecting to see Laara's usual teasing smile, but she was just staring blankly out the window.

"Something interesting out there?"

"Hmm?" Laara seemed distracted. "Oh... nah."

Cal shrugged and went back to back to his laptop, closing out the wifi windows and checking up on his Chirper feed. This wasn't the first time Laara had just suddenly zoned out today--that one had been five minutes of her staring blankly at a hole she'd just drilled before re-drilling it six inches to the left and insisting they use the new one. There had been a couple other times too, so there was clearly something on her mind.

Cal sighed. Chirper was full of angry ranting about the governor of Tennebama's new hairstyle rather than the silly cat pictures he'd been hoping for. He shut the laptop.

Laara was still staring out the big bay window. He got up and went to stand next to her, leaning against the frame--but while it was a pretty nice view out over the bay, he had no idea what she found so entrancing. The scattered flashing of autumn afternoon sun on the waves? The handful of sailboats with pennants flapping? The giant barge loaded up with garbage, pulling slowly toward the ocean?

Though the entire scene was kind of like life, really--hapless sailors at the mercy of the whims of the wind, doing their best to avoid the careening jet-skis of misfortune, never noticing the coelacanths of opportunity lurking under the glittering surface of superficiality. Hoping the sparks of pain thrown from the world's burning garbage of despair don't catch in their sails of courage before they can flee the harbor of mortality, calling in the fireboats of friendship to spray the saltwater of kindness at the inferno of, uh...

That is a terrible metaphor, Cal thought as he watched the fireboats trying to put out the barge. They didn't seem to be having much success yet--a plume of black smoke like a thumbprint on the sky roiled continuously over house-sized flames streaked here and there with odd greenish colors. Hopefully they'd get it under control soon.

A loud sigh startled him as Laara suddenly flopped down onto the window seat.

"Sorry about that."

Cal shrugged. Not like he could complain about getting zoned out on. At least not without imploding from hypocrisy.

"It's all right. It probably took a lot of concentration to set that barge on fire with your mind."

Laara jerked her head up and shot him a narrow-eyed stare, but relaxed when she saw Cal's smirk escape onto his face.

"Hmph. Don't tease me or I'll set you on fire with my mind."

Cal clasped his hands against his chest in mock terror. Laara rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, " Laara continued, "Arric will be back tomorrow afternoon, so we're going to take you to dinner at this really nice place in Grovewood you've probably never heard of. As thanks for helping us out, of course. It's Sunday, so I'm going to guess you don't have plans already?"

Cal's brain ground to a halt as a melee broke out inside his head, conflicting impulses going at it like superheroes in a Times Square brawl. But despite a surprise team-up between The Pride and Spoony Sal, it was the relentless Captain Anxiety and his sidekick Shyness Boy who emerged the victors, tearing down all who stood against them as they shouted out every little embarrassing thing that might go wrong. As was the usual outcome, whenever the devious Doctor Alcohol wasn't involved.

Cal swallowed. "Oh. No, but that's okay, really. I'm already staying free this time and all--"

"Yeah, but that just saves your company money, right? I mean, you're not paying for it to begin with. And if we'd actually contracted somebody then they'd have charged more than that anyway."

"Maybe?" Cal gave a nervous smile before looking away and fixing his gaze out the window. "But I don't mind. It's fine. I probably shouldn't go out the evening before work anyway."

Laara sighed and frowned at the ceiling.

"So, what do you think of this room?" she asked finally.

Cal was puzzled by the sudden change of topic, he but turned around to glance over the suite anyway. "The room? It's okay, I guess?"

It was actually better than okay. With its finely carved wooden walls, giant bathroom, ornate tables, comfortable sofas, half a bar's worth of provisions, and impressive views of both the harbor and downtown, it was probably fancier than anywhere Cal had ever slept. Well, barring the time he'd dozed off in the lobby of the Ritz-Astoria while waiting for a client, only to be woken up five minutes later by an irritatingly polite bellhop bearing a cup of coffee and the address of the local homeless shelter. He'd shaved off his latest attempt at a beard that evening.

Cal shrugged. "I mean... it's a really nice room. I just don't think I'd personally ever stay here. Seems like a waste for one person."

"And you always come alone, don't you. Hmm." After a moment, Laara seemed to come to some decision. A devious smile broke out on her face and she stood up from the window seat to turn it on Cal.

"So, here's what we're going to do," she declared. "I'm going to get Grandmother to put you on The List. She won't object. She was the one who made us ask you to do the internet in the first place, since she rejected all the actual contractors we found. So that means if this room is open, you'll get it automatically. Same rate as a normal room, so your company won't care. And!" she held up a finger at Cal just as he opened his mouth to protest. "You will accept this offer with good grace. Trust me, you'll like staying here." Her smile softened, turning mysterious compelling. "And--we'll like having you. Really."

Cal just stood gaping, train of thought derailed at the depot. Laara apparently took his silence for surrender, because she just gazed at him a moment before nodding and heading toward the door.

"Oh, and just in case you think you can weasel out of any of this--" she turned around to give him a final stare, tapping an index finger on her temple. "Just remember which of us can set things on fire with her mind, eh? Six-thirty tomorrow! Meet downstairs. Dress nice if you want a certain somebody to be impressed." Then she disappeared into the hallway.

Alone again except for the lingering scent of lavender and cloves, Cal stared out at the vermilion sunset and tried to get his thoughts to settle into coherency. Eventually he shook his head and gave up.

---

AUTHOR NOTE

"Write what you know!" they say. So I did, and you ended up with bad jokes, a protagonist being wishy-washy, and some talk about computers.

But don't worry! I'll go back to pretending I know about tigers and furries next chapter, wherein I flirt with yiff. By which I mean, I wink at it from across the room before going back to bad jokes, indecisive protagonists, and talk about computers.

... -_-;