The other former members of the Pioneer College's Anime Club had retreated back to their hotel room, but Alan Smith refused to give in to cowardice. The party, up on the twenty-fifth floor of the Sheraton hotel, was expressly against both convention and hotel policy, and if they were found out, they'd all have their badges revoked. But there was no better way to start off the anime convention, Alan had been told.
It wasn't working out quite that well.
The party, a joint concoction of the Bar Destroyers (a Star Wars fan-group known for trivia contest supremacy and their favored mixed drink, a combination of grain alcohol, energy drinks, and an ice slurry) and the 1224 Society (a coordinated group of social media trolls dedicated to deploying only the edgiest of anime-related opinions with inexplicable connections to the security staff of nearly every convention center and con-hosting hotel), was one of their biggest yet. The entirety of the twenty-fifth floor of Tower Two of the Sheraton Boston had been rented out by the two groups and their sympathizers. A suite on the far end had been converted to a bar, several rooms had had their televisions commandeered to host fighting and rhythm game tournaments, and one particularly well-ventilated room had several hookahs lined up against the windows. And, with the overwhelming confidence of 1224, all these rooms had their doors propped open, J-Pop blaring from iPod dock speakers and echoing down the halls. Well, excepting a row of ominous doors equipped with Do Not Disturb signs, about half of which had been flipped around to indicate… temporary occupancy.
Alan was hanging out in the hallway just outside of the bar, sipping from a red Solo cup filled with light beer and trying to blend as much into the wall as possible. He didn't even like beer, but when he'd poked his head into the bar room, he'd been sucked into the crowd, and by the time he was spat out, he had it. Sure, he had asked for a drink, and he supposed this was one, but he didn't feel comfortable trying to argue over the crowd to get something that suited him more. The looping thoughts of the potential awkward moment that could have been was a large part of why he was out here, rather than in there.
A loud squeak startled him, and he looked up from his drink to find a neon green fursuiter staring at him, their head cocked to the side. “Um, hi?”
The fursuiter squeaked again, somehow pitching the squeak up at the end, forming it into a question. Alan had run into these types before – some fursuiters, rejecting the problem of trying to be audible while shouting through a meticulously-sculpted and rather fluffy wolf head, communicated instead through the use of a squeaker, like those in chew toys. He had to admit, it was a cute solution to a practical cosplay problem.
“Nah, I'm doing okay,” Alan replied. The furry gave a skeptical squeak, putting their paw on Alan's shoulder in what they probably thought was a supportive gesture, but it just made Alan feel even more awkward.
“Oi, c'mon, git!” A short, chubby guy with a hairline twenty years older than he was jogged down the hallway, shoo'ing the furry away. The furry shrugged, and scampered off, ducking into one of the open side rooms to a chorus of happy squeaks.
“Hey Rich,” Alan said. “You've got a furry room now?”
“Oh yeah, how could we not?” The man said. “Half of them are engineers, half of them are programmers, and most of them have money. Think what you want, but they know how to party.”
Rich was a friend of Alan's from college, who'd graduated a year before him, and Alan's liaison with 1224. Rich had never been an official member of the Anime Club, due to unspecified “scheduling conflicts”, but he'd poke his head in every now and then. Now, Rich worked for an equally unspecified “security firm”, which Alan had avoided asking him about. Somehow, Alan found that the more he knew about Rich, the less he liked him, and he wanted to keep things cordial.
“Loving the cosplay, by the way. Gendo Ikari is the right vibe for you, you know?” Rich said, clinking (as much as a plastic cup could be “clinked”) his cup to Alan's.
Alan was pretty proud of how well the costume had come together. He'd sourced almost every part from thrift stores, and modified it with hot glue and iron-on patches until it matched the character. That said, while Alan liked the character, he was objectively an asshole.
Alan frowned. “Why's that?”
“Brooding silently, avoiding eye contact behind those sunglasses, and – If you're just standing there being a miserable bastard, no one can tell if you're actually pissy or just in character.”
“Fair enough,” Alan said. His first instinct was to sulk about it, but that'd play right into Rich's needling.
“You're not having fun, are you?”
Alan shrugged. “Dunno. It's not your problem.”
Rich had only a half-second in the middle of Alan's sentence to frown, but by the end of it, he was grinning with sharklike teeth. “Oh, but it is!” he said, sidling up to Alan and wrapping an arm over Alan's shoulders, an improbable and impressive move considering the height difference between them.
“Uh, exactly why is that?” Alan said, glancing sideways towards Rich.
“Isn't it obvious?”
Alan frowned.
Rich took that as enough of a response. “It's my party, Alan. It's my responsibility to see that everyone's having a good time, you especially. Finish your drink.”
Alan didn't like being bossed around, but he also hated being a disappointment. He glugged down the rest of the shitty beer. “Me especially?” he said, stifling a burp.
Rich ran his thumb and forefinger through his eyebrows in a pinching motion, and winced. “Yes, you especially. You're terrible at having fun. Look at you. The rest of your friends went home for the night, and you stayed, but for what?”
“Uh, it's a party?”
Rich elbowed him in the ribs, gently. “You're not getting it. Why does anyone go to a party? What aren't you doing?”
Alan thought about this. He didn't like thinking about himself. “Socializing?”
“Exact-a-mundo, my guy.”
“But I'm bad at it,” Alan protested.
“No shit. So's everyone else.”
Alan looked, pointedly, at a guy and a girl laughing, looking meaningfully at each other, down the hall. “They look pretty good at it.”
“Look closer, dumbass.”
Alan didn't get what Rich was on about, but he did his best to look. They were handsy. Blushing. Having a good enough time, enough of a real connection, that it made Alan feel sick with jealousy, loneliness, and a bunch of other emotions that Alan didn't have the time to find words for. But they were also… Kind of uncoordinated. A bit sloppy.
“They're drunk,” he said.
“As fuck.” Rich finished. “You're a real stick in the mud, but we can fix that. Come on.” Rich walked off towards the bar, and Alan, for a moment, thought about turning around. It'd be easy to just give up, fall asleep in his bed, or more accurately, probably on the floor. Last person back to the room got the least desirable spot, after all. But he was so tired. He felt so lonely. And Alan couldn't quite explain why. He had friends. He had had girlfriends. But nothing ever seemed to make that feeling of loneliness go away. And maybe, just maybe, he could do something about it tonight. Nothing permanent, not fix it, but something… just to scratch the itch.
And Alan followed into the stage smoke-filled, laser-lit chaos of the Bar Destroyers suite.