A Fluffy Tale 2: Warm & Fuzzy (8 page)

In the light from the street lamp, Daniel’s
expression slid rapidly from surprise to relief. “Oh. I’d like that, if you
wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course not. I hate these damn things
and at least I won’t have to worry about some boring junior manager sharing
with me.” Daniel smiled a little. “You know...you can ask for help. It’s not a
sign of weakness.”

“I didn’t have anyone to ask before. I got
used to...you know...not asking.”

“Now you have me. And my parents.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, and Kani can play in
IT anytime. Don’t keep him locked away all day. Kems hate that.”

“I know. I’ll send him down. I know he’ll
love it.”

“So will we. Sleep well, and no more
stressing about Tony fucking Noble.”

Daniel gave him the first truly happy smile
of the night. “No more stressing, I promise. ‘Night, Spen.”

Spen watched him walk up the path, and
waited until the porch light went out. It probably wasn’t a good idea to
encourage the warm glow of happiness that encounters with Daniel so often gave
him. If there was one thing that kid didn’t need, it was another ‘admirer’. But
there was nothing wrong with feeling glad he could help, or the righteous
pleasure at stuffing Tony Noble’s greasy tactics, so Spen would enjoy those
without guilt. With any luck, he’d have the satisfaction of watching Daniel
grow in confidence, and move on from working for Noble into a job more suited
to his talents and intelligence.

Spen sighed and started the engine. Myko
popped out to chirp quietly in concern. Spen patted his head. “I’m okay,
fuzzball. We don’t always get what we want, right?”

Myko squeaked and rubbed against Spen’s
hand. Nice to have someone who understood, and who would
always keep his secrets.

Two weeks earlier, Daniel had had no
prospect of enjoying his enforced attendance at the company’s national
conference. Even this afternoon, as he said goodbye to Dee and Alex after he
and Spen left them at the Reardons’ house, he couldn’t muster any more than
resignation as he contemplated a week in a dull chain hotel, stuck making
presentations and handouts for Tony, and sleeping in what would probably be a
hard and uncomfortable bed. He’d stayed in a couple of similar hotels on family
holidays, and the novelty had long since worn off.

But now, sitting across from Spen on the
train heading north, he felt something close to cheerful. Dee and Alex were in
safe, kind hands—and in the care of people who would make sure their
schoolwork wouldn’t suffer. Spen’s offer to share a room had given Daniel a
perfect answer to Tony’s assumption that he and Daniel would be sharing. And
now he had the company of a man he liked a lot, maybe more than he should, and
a break of sorts from the grind of the office, and the disapproval of the other
PAs.

“The only part about this I’m looking forward
to is the food,” Spen said, pulling a face at the train’s approximation of
coffee. Daniel hadn’t even bothered, sticking to fruit juice. “The expense
budget is pretty generous. Just watch out for the boozers. Some of the managers
drink like camels.”

“I can’t imagine what could induce me to
want to drink with anyone except you.” Spen grinned at Daniel’s declaration.
“Oh you know what I mean.”

“I do. They’re not all bad. The IT guys
from Northern are fun, so long as I don’t spend too long around them. I’m too
old for that kind of thing now.” Daniel lifted an eyebrow at that statement.
“No, it’s true. I like a quiet pint or two. That was one of the things that did
for me and my ex. He was a party animal. Me, not so
much.”

“You were together a while, though?”

“Four years. I still care a lot about him.
He’s a good guy, smart. But he didn’t want to settle down, and I got tired of
acting like a kid.”

“Not every kid drinks until they puke.”

“What, never?”

Daniel’s face grew warm. “Maybe once,” he
mumbled. “But I don’t like being drunk. I really hate hangovers. Such a waste
of study time.”

Spen’s grin slipped a little. “Are you
planning to go back to the degree when things settle down?”

Daniel shrugged, but tried not to let the
pain in his chest show in his expression. “Maybe. Might take a while. I can’t
go back to where I was enrolled, not while Alex is still young. They need me at
home. The degree’s not important, set against everything else. If the
prosecution is ever finished, the lawsuit is over, we win a payout, Dee gets
through her exams, and Alex finishes school.... My study’s pretty low down the
list.”

“So you keep working for Tony Noble or
someone like him, when you could be working on power stations and water
treatment plants and...what
is it you guys build?”

“Just about everything,” Daniel admitted,
the pain growing sharper. “Yes, if I have to. At least until
Dee and Alex are independent. I’m their parent now. Their needs come
first.”

“Yes, I know.” Spen smiled at him, a
thousand watts of kindness that shone on the hidden stone in Daniel’s chest and
warmed it a little. “You’re quietly amazing.”

“You’d do the same for your brothers.”

“Maybe. But I’m the youngest, so it
wouldn’t come up. It’s not just that you’re doing it, it’s that you’re doing it
so well. Dee and Alex are so well-adjusted.”

Thinking back to a month ago and Alex’s
miserable birthday, Daniel couldn’t agree. “Mum and Dad did all that. I’ve had
it easy.”

“And you could still have fucked it up.
Give yourself credit, kid.”

“If you insist.”

Spen smiled again and shook his head. It
was nice to have someone who thought so well of him, but Daniel didn’t like
praise for what he couldn’t claim proper credit for. Still, it wasn’t worth
arguing about. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Then countdown until we can escape. Why
can’t they have this damn thing somewhere warm, and by a beach?”

“Because we’d all skive off and not do any
work?”

“See? Told you that you were smart.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. Yes, if he had to
be here against his will, he could be worse off than in Spen’s company. It
might even be fun. He wasn’t sure if he remembered what fun was like, but he
hoped he’d know it if he had the chance.

~~~~~~~~

He was right about the bed, and the room
was as bland and uninspiring as he’d expected. But there was more space than he
expected, plenty of room for their bags, and fast internet
access, which was all he needed. Tony wouldn’t arrive until late that evening,
so tonight was a little like a holiday—at least Spen decided to make it
one. He encouraged Daniel to explore the hotel’s dinner menu and not worry
about the cost—“You won’t be able to come up to half of what some of the
managers will spend, so enjoy”—and enjoyed a pint of decent beer with
him.

Later, after they’d showered and Daniel had
called Dee as he’d promised to do every night, Spen chose a science fiction
movie from the subscription channel. They watched it lying on their beds in
their underwear, while the two kems curled up on Daniel’s stomach, disdaining
any entertainment than each other. The two humans spent the next two hours
cheerfully picking apart the bad science and logical idiocies, while Daniel
gained a new appreciation of just how big a nerd Spen was.

“It’s ridiculous,” Daniel said as the movie
ended. “You can’t reverse engineer an alien operating system or write a virus
when you don’t even share an alphabet or numbering system.”

“No, wait, you’re forgetting the secret
government research.” Daniel looked at Spen with maximum scepticism. “Remember
that throwaway line about whathisface spending years looking through the
archives when he had clearance. So if you assume the government had its best and brightest working on translating the alien data
and decoding the systems—”

“A big ‘if’, Spen.”

“Oh come on. What else would they be doing
with it?”

“Scratching their heads and wondering where
to start? Where’s your Rosetta Stone? How
do
you start?”

“What if the aliens were studying us and
had begun to translate one Earth language into their own?”

“So...in your theory, even if there was a
usable dictionary, and by some miracle our hero had a comprehensive
understanding of the operating system, he still has to get past the security
system of a culture capable of building force fields and organic spaceship, and
somehow discover
and
exploit a weakness
in an as yet unknown routine, one which has to be critical for the power
generation of this hitherto invulnerable vehicle.” Daniel folded his arms and
dared Spen to rebut his argument. “It’s utterly implausible.”

“I never said it was easy.” Daniel hooted
in derision. Spen pretended to be offended. “Hey, I wrote a paper on it at
University.”

“You wrote a paper on this movie.”

“Well, yeah. The lecturer told us to
analyse the use of IT in popular culture and discuss the plausibility of
techniques and solutions. I got an A.”

“You win. No one is nerdier that you.”

Spen punched the air. “Yay, I win. Wouldn’t
that be the coolest job in the world? Decoding alien programming?”

“No, building alien spaceships would be the
coolest.”

“You build the spaceship, I’ll write the
code.”

“Deal,” Daniel agreed. The pang was still
there, but, relaxed and comfortable with two kems steadily sending out gentle
pulses of affection, he didn’t feel the hurt as much as he normally would.
Maybe one day it wouldn’t hurt at all.

Spen yawned. “Okay, that’s my limit. I’m
going to order breakfast to be delivered and I suggest you do too. You don’t
want to be ambushed by corporate types before you’ve had your coffee.”

“Good idea.”

“You fill out the card while I use the loo,
then I’ll stick it outside. Myko?”

His kem gave a delicate yawn of his own,
but declined to move. “Lazy brat,” Spen said, grinning as he reached down and
scratched behind his kem’s ears. “He likes you.”

“It’s mutual. Kani likes him even better
than Veen or Lili. Weird.”

“Yeah. Kems are a mystery.” Spen tossed the
breakfast card over to him. “There. Go wild.”

“So much excitement for one day. Can I bear
it?”

“You’ll survive.”

Daniel suppressed a sigh of admiration at
the sight of the long, smooth-skinned back as Spen disappeared into the
bathroom. It was a little like sharing a room back at Uni with Asif, something
Daniel missed along with so many other things. But though Asif was handsome and
attractive in a totally straight way, Daniel had been too caught up in his
studies to be distracted by unrequited lust. Even now, his many worries tended
to keep his libido well below nuisance levels. Didn’t stop him wishing, in full
knowledge of how hopeless it was, that Spen would see
him differently, or that they had started a friendship outside work.

When he returned from cleaning his teeth,
Myko and Kani had decamped to Spen’s bed. “Fickle,” he muttered. Kani chirped
and flicked his tail, but stayed right where he was on Spen’s chest. “Fine, you
made your bed, now you lie on him.”

Spen grinned at him around the ball of fur.
“Do you get the feeling we’re being played?”

“I think we could be. Good night, Spen.”

“Sleep well, Daniel.”

He might even do that.

~~~~~~~~

Daniel had reason to be glad of that lazy evening come Monday morning. Tony called while they were
still eating breakfast, and gave Daniel half an hour to finish his meal,
shower, dress, and come to his room on the floor above. From
then until six that evening, he didn’t have a moment to call his own.
Even lunch was spent listening to Tony network with his fellow managers, so he
could help Tony fine tune his handouts for the big presentation about
Cross-Channel on Wednesday afternoon. The rest of the time he had to help Tony
rehearse his talk and slide timing, prepare additional graphs and graphics, run
back and forth to the printers two blocks from the hotel to order and collect
materials for the audience, and somehow also handle the usual office emails,
calls and enquiries because Tony was adamant that his door was never closed.
Telling the clients he was “away” was unacceptable.

Daniel had his own presentation to give
jointly with Spen on the day after Tony’s, on some of the practical issues of
the national rollout of Cross-Channel. He wasn’t nervous—it wasn’t any
more challenging than delivering a paper to his class, and Spen would handle
the hard stuff—but there were materials to print for that as well. Tony
had insisted on leaving it all to the very last minute so it could be as
up-to-date and relevant as possible. Spen, unsurprisingly, had not been
complimentary about that plan. Daniel personally tried not to dwell on whether
Tony was effective at his job or not, because he was afraid that if he went
down that line of thinking, his discontent with his job would grow to the point
where it was impossible to continue. He chose to concentrate on his own tasks
and performing them to the limit of his ability. Spen had the luxury of
criticism. Daniel didn’t.

Finally Tony set him free so he could wine
and dine with the national office people—Daniel was far too lowly to
attend, much to his relief. Spen found him in the foyer and announced, “Room
service”, in a tone that brooked no argument. Not that Daniel had one to offer,
or wanted one. Spen had, through his regional colleagues, obtained copies of
two hard to find films Daniel had mentioned wishing he had seen—Spen
waved the thumb drive in triumph as they rode the elevator up to their floor.
They ate their room service supper while sitting cross-legged on Spen’s bed,
watching the first film on his laptop. The kems delivered their verdict on the
entertainment by refusing to sit still, romping around the room, returning to
one or other of the humans’ laps for cuddles and scritches, before heading off
to explore the bathroom or the closet again.