A Fluffy Tale 2: Warm & Fuzzy Read online

  The truth was, there were lots of things Daniel wanted to talk to Spen about, but his tongue tangled up every time Spen turned his kind eyes on him. His crush had only grown worse in the weeks since Daniel had met the man, and with this unexpected act of generosity towards Daniel and his siblings, it now threatened to turn into full-blown hero worship. Spen was everything Daniel could ever hope to be. He wished so much that circumstances had allowed them to meet as equals, instead of as a bumbling newcomer desperately trying to find his feet with the help of a calm, successful professional. Daniel’s boss was the only person at work he’d told about his home situation before, and that was only to explain why he hadn’t finished his degree. He hadn’t wanted people to see him as a charity case, but he hadn’t had much choice once Spen had cornered him. Now Spen would just view him as a nice but helpless kid in need of rescue, and not as a potentially attractive adult. Not that Daniel had had much hope of catching Spen’s eye in the first place.

  “Is your house the one your parents owned?” Spen asked as they helped clear the plates.

  “Yes. We all grew up there, and moving was more hassle than we could deal with. You’ve always lived at home?” Daniel flushed, wondering if that was too personal a question, but it was out now.

  “Oh no, only since I broke up with Robert a few months back. I was living in his apartment until then.”

  Alex’s head swivelled. “Are you gay, Spen?” Dee smacked his arm. “What?” he said, giving Dee a hurt look. “Mum said there was nothing wrong with being gay. Daniel is.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and prayed to disappear into the floor. Even Kani meeped and went inside in sheer self-defence.

  “Yes, I’m gay,” Spen said casually. “And of course there’s nothing wrong with it. Are you gay, Alex?”

  “I don’t think so,” Alex said thoughtfully. “How can you tell?”

  Mr and Mrs Reardon, smiling benevolently, kept quiet through all this, letting the young people handle things. Daniel relaxed a little. They didn’t have a problem, at least. “Maybe we can talk about that later,” Daniel suggested. “It’s nearly nine. Spen and I have to work tomorrow and you have school.”

  “Wish I didn’t,” Alex grumbled. “Can’t wait until the long hols.”

  “Only a few more weeks,” Daniel said. “Help us finish clearing, and then if Spen could give us a lift back?”

  “You go now, dear,” Mrs Reardon said. “We’ll sort this out. Now, we’ll finalise things over the next few days but I’m happy for Dee and Alex to stay here, or I can pop over in the evenings. In any event, they’ll have us as an emergency contact, or even if they’re just a bit lonely in the evenings and want some company.”

  Daniel took her hand. “You’re a lifesaver. Thank you so much.”

  “Not at all, child. It’s a pleasure. You’re all so lovely, and it’s such a shame what happened. I want to help. We all do.”

  Spen came up behind Daniel and put his hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, we do. I just wish I was going to be around. Looks like I’ll have to babysit you at the conference instead.”

  Daniel’s face felt hot enough to convert water into steam. “I don’t need a babysitter,” he muttered.

  “Then you can babysit me. Okay, kids, got your coats and kems? I won’t be long, Mum. Thanks.” Spen kissed her cheek, and she hugged him. The stone in Daniel’s chest got a little more painful and cold. Their relationship was so like Daniel’s had been with his parents. Would he ever be over losing the two of them?

  Spen shooed Dee and Alex down the hall, but as Daniel followed them, Spen put his hand back on his shoulder. “Must be hard,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t be able to bear losing mine.”

  Daniel turned and looked up at Spen’s face through tear-blurred vision. “Sometimes I don’t think I can either.”

  Spen squeezed his shoulder. “You’re strong. You’ll make it.”

  Daniel tried to smile. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Come on, let’s get you all home.”

  ~~~~~~~~

  Dee and Alex chattered happily to Spen as he drove, but even with answering their cheerful questions and concentrating on the road, Spen was conscious of Daniel’s silence as he sat slumped in the front passenger seat, staring blank-eyed out the window. Now Spen had seen how close to the surface his misery was, no matter how good Daniel was at hiding it, he was sorry he hadn’t found a chance to somehow bring up Daniel’s home situation before. But maybe Daniel wouldn’t have thanked him for exposing his sorrow. The wonder of it was how well they all coped. Dee and Alex were so normal, so ready to accept happiness, and even though Daniel obviously carried the greatest burden, he did so with grace Spen doubted he could have managed.

  But that grace wouldn’t be enough unless Spen—or someone with more power than he had—pulled that bastard Noble off Daniel’s back. Sure, it looked like this crisis could be managed, but if Noball was prepared to pull a dirty stunt like threaten Daniel’s job over attending a conference, then there was no limit to what he might try. Spen had also noticed that Daniel hadn’t mentioned Spen’s ‘accidental’ interruption of Noble’s late night activities, nor had shown any resentment over it. Maybe Daniel would never come right out and thank Spen for it, but it looked more and more as if Spen’s intervention hadn’t been unwelcome—at least by Daniel.

  He really needed to involve HR but without Daniel’s cooperation, there would be little point. Maybe Spen could work on him while at the conference.

  “Here we are,” he said, pulling into a space in front of Daniel’s house.

  Daniel roused. “Oh. Thank you, Spen. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  “It’s a pleasure, honest.”

  Dee and Alex thanked him too, then ran up the path to the house. Lights went on seconds later. Daniel went to open his door, but Spen said, “Hold on a sec.” Daniel looked at him, puzzled. “They’ll be asking who wants to share rooms at the conference. If you don’t want to share with Tony, I haven’t arranged anything yet.”

  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.

  Chapter 7

  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.