FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The three-hundred square-foot apartment Lawrence and I shared had the perfect layout and location. Residing in a small town outside of Philly, we were only a few hours west of Manhattan City (as a proud New Jerseyan, I wasn't too fond of 'em), an hour or so from D.C. and just a couple hours away from the beautiful beaches surrounding my hometown of Peninsula City. Not to mention the excellent stores plus some grocery stores next to our complex.

"Fucking hell, the weather..." I muttered while locking the door behind me, then called out to the apartment, "Honey, I'm home!"

"In here, Dwight!" Lawrence called from the closed bathroom to my left. "How did your run go? It's really coming down out there!"

"Oh, I know, Laurie, I know..." I huffed, placing my dripping umbrella on the hook and placing the grocery bags down as I peeled away my soaked cloak. "Frankly, I'm half-surprised I wasn't flown away like Mary Poppins! Fuck, I'm soaked..."

"Soon, as I'm done in here," he suggested through the door, "you take a hot shower while I put the groceries away. Then I'll tell you what you missed, okay?"

Sniffling like a whimpering cub, I shivered in my dripping clothes, despite all the brown fur that covered my large body. Bears could survive the cold, but that didn't mean we enjoyed it, especially when the wind chill made you wonder if it was even fucking summer at all.

The bathroom door opened ajar, revealing a lithe Siberian Husky in blue pajama bottoms and a black t-shirt--presenting the logo for some anime he loved since childhood. When I called it the wrong name, he made sure I wouldn't forget it. Each time I forgot or misnamed it mean the possibility of no sex that night (the horror!), but I knew he could never resist this hunky big bear.

A quick shower later, I walked out in a soft brown bathrobe to two sexy sights in the kitchen: Lawrence leaning down to from the lower cupboard, his curly black-and-white-speckled tail barely censoring that nice ass, and the smell of crispy supreme pizza cooking in the oven.

"Hey, Dwight," he leaned up to kiss my cheek, caressing my side. "How do you feel?"

"I ain't getting a cold just yet, sweetie," I licked his nose, making the husky giggle as I held him in my arms.

"Good, because I've got a conundrum," "I've been a little distracted with the next level on Foxenstein, and it kind of got me a little distracted from Operation Pride...heh."

Lawrence had always been a self-described 'video game connoisseur', rather than an addict. According to him, the phrase 'video game addiction' implied that his playthroughs eventually led to adverse consequences in his daily life. Plus, I had seen the badass advertisements for Foxenstein: The New Order--that new shoot 'em up game from the old franchise in the Eighties--and I could never blame him for wanting to play it. Hell, I even felt the urge to play once he finished.

Plus, it was not like neither of us were in a rush to get our side missions of #OpPrideMonth done as quickly as possible. It was only a week into June. Even so, I understood my husky's needs. All of them.

"Tell you what, Laurie," I proposed, smirking down at the smaller canine, "I'll get the rest of it done while you keep playing? If I need your advice, I'll ask."

Lawrence grinned up at me. "That's what I was gonna say."

Our chosen mission for #OpPrideMonth involved me and the husky using our skills to troll Jacob Caulfield, a vehemently anti-gay conservative judge from Alabama who was speaking out against the defense in that ongoing Supreme Court case. The same one that would define the meaning of marriage within the United States, essentially either legalizing or limiting gay marriage across the country. Those against expanding the rights of furs like us were being spiteful as usual, but Caulfield's bombastic claims and policies in office caught the attention of re: Sonance long before this landmark case.

Now, we planned to give the hateful wolf what I liked to call "cyber karma."

After pulling out the pizza and taking a few bites with Lawrence, we comfortably relaxed shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, himself focused on playing the rest of Foxenstein while I eagerly got to work on my laptop.

"So then," I muttered giddily, fingers readily typing on the keyboard at a fast pace, "let's help you out with your dating life, shall we, Mr. Caulfield?"

While the rest of re: Sonance were doing their own missions, Lawrence and I had been focused on Caulfield the past two days. To say his cyber security was laughable was a DEFINITE understatement; Lawrence managed to get his email passwords and credit card numbers in less than two hours. Two hours, dammit!

The married middle-aged timber wolf with three grandchildren seemed to enjoy his homelife, at least, in the scripted interviews and speeches he gave to news outlets. Part of me wondered though if Caulfield had secret yearnings to date again. So, we thought it would be hilarious to use his info to make several dating profiles on various websites and apps.

Probably the tamest one made was on a Christian dating app (Laurie thought it'd be hilarious--and it was--to have the profile end with him saying he's secretly bisexual) that showed his full name, as well as a screenshot of him from a recent interview. However, most of the detailed profiles were on gay dating website specifically for those of...exotic tastes. A few other profiles for Caulfield could also be found on websites and apps such as BonerWay.com, Growlr, HotBoisNearUWU.com, BoysNearU.com and countless others.

For tonight, I was still working on his profile for NaughtySinners.com. I even bought him the golden package (heh), giving online furs permission to view his 'private photos'--nothing more than random images from random pornos--as well as the ability to email Caulfield solicitous messages.

"Hm, 'I enjoy sodomizing other gay guys and fucking the poor like any politician'," I typed aloud, regarding the new profile, "'My favorite past times include taking a dildo up my tail, and letting my lobbyists piss all over me.'"

Immature without restraint, Lawrence giggled beside me like a gleeful mad scientist, wagging his tail against my side while playing the game. A brief glance at the TV showed his player fighting dozens of Nazis at once, momentarily distracting me until I resumed work.

"Hey, sweetie," I asked, "what should I put down as three of his favorite kinks in the Likes/Dislikes section?"

The gunfire on the opposite TV screen didn't cease. Neither did my husky's frantic button-smashing and coordinated finger movements on the controller. I decided to get his attention by placing my larger paw on his thigh, then letting it creep up his leg and tickle his crotch beneath those cute PJs.

Lawrence giggled, panting slightly as I felt him harden a bit.

"Laurie," I asked again, "please tell me you're not becoming the same 'distracted consumer drone' you like talking shit about on the forum."

The husky's ears twitched slightly before he huffed at my teasing.

"BDSM, watersports and whatever else you can think of that'll definitely get under his skin," he casually spoke up not a second later. "Can you edit in the dislikes, or is it a pre-programmed multiple-choice category?"

"Multiple-choice category," I replied, returning to my laptop.

"Is cuckholding on there?" he pondered.

I laughed in slight disbelief. "It is!"

"Well, go for it then! Bet the conversations with his wife'll be hilarious."

We continued our noble work, of him killing off Nazis in an alternate 1960 and me making Judge Caulfield's life more complicated for him. Already, I had a tab open that showed the conservative wolf's Twitter page and the angry rants he'd been posting, denouncing the 'deviant hackers', insisting that the rumors of him being a closer homosexual were unfounded. And he would not let up his anger.

"Oh my God," I shook my brown-furred muzzle, struggling not to bubble with laughter immediately, "now read this: His next post reads, 'I've been hacked! Do not believe the fake news! Whoever is doing this will face consequences! I'm calling the cyber police!'"

"Oh fuck, that's hilarious!" Lawrence hugged his stomach, having paused the game. "Seriously, he thinks there's a 'cyber police' out there?"

A new notification from his Twitter account read, "I'm not a homosexual! You hackers will BURN IN HELL!!!!"

Surprisingly, none of our neighbors complained about how loudly we were laughing at that one. Then again, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and a good portion of the furs living in this apartment complex worked until the late evening. Most worked in retail, as janitors, and even as a few office drones for the big American corporation that didn't give a damn about their workers.

Us? Technically, my husky hadn't worked a day since his college years, using his stock market knowledge and computer engineering degree to earn money for rent. Meanwhile, when me and Lawrence weren't under the pseudonym of Themis--leader of our new hacktivist group re: Sonance--I enjoyed working as a white hat hacker-for-hire. Not only did it give me new challenges and some hard-earned money from organizations who wanted to fix their security, but it also gave me a scope of their information. It allowed me access to figure out if the company was hiding something that need to be brought to light.

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, me and the boyfriend did not often like to play by the law. But that didn't mean we weren't law-abiding citizens either.

"Think he's had enough?" I asked.

My calmed husky pondered it over, swishing my tail against my hip.

"Mmmmm...for now," Lawrence shrugged, returning to his game. "Check how the rest of the gang are doing on their assignments."

I went to the unofficial re: Sonance forum, an unassuming website with little design or advertisements to help it stand out. Little did most know it had excellent encryption and a firewall, not to mention the fact it housed a collective of the brightest minds who hoped to change the world one hacktivist protest at a time.

With little thought, I clicked on the live chat for accepted members. Several of them were already bragging about their assignments for #OpPrideMonth.

A sense of pride (no pun intended) welled inside my chest. Re: Sonance had only been an active for at least a year and a half, and our membership prospects did not start off so great. One of our original members was a blackhat hacker from Russia that somehow hid his fascination with snuff films from Lawrence's snooping, at least, for the first few weeks. Another hacker in Iowa lost our respect after he started bragging about using ransomware on Pentagon servers in order to prove 'the UFO tech they're hoarding exists, man!'

Their memberships didn't last long.

After sending anonymous tips to the police for both former members, Lawrence and I had to abandon our original forum, committing more exclusively in the search for better prospects. Ones who followed our ideals. Luckily, our numbers already had already grown extensively since then. Not a single one of them either got arrest, or--worst case scenario--needed to be arrested themselves.

"How are things doing with them?"

"Very good, actually," I replied, then proceeded to list off their accomplishments.

Atlas_Watch already sent several coordinated DDoS attacks to various websites belonging to churches speaking out against the defendants in the upcoming SCOTUS case (one church even went so far as to poorly photoshop a defendant cheating on his boyfriend).

Afterward, Atlas even put icing on the cake by leaking some sensitive emails of a pastor who'd been hating on gays since the eighties. It seemed like he'd had a few flings of his own in his youth.

Nexica_Lad had some fun spray painting some conversion therapy billboards along the highways outside of his suburban home near Las Estrellas. How the marten managed to do this without being seen is a mystery.

Miss_Sunshine managed to shut down a few MuzzleScroll accounts that were spreading fake news, both in general and regarding the LGBTQA+ community. She even doxed the original members and left the Internet watch dogs to do the trolling for her.

As for Lok1bot--one of our newest members, a semi-pro/ex-con from Nicolet Bay, WI--he already messaged us about some help in his assignment: defacing the website of a vehemently homophobic spokesperson in Nebraska, a thirty-something tiger named Johnson. Unfortunately, the guy had some really decent computer and cyber security for being a Bible-thumper. He didn't even fall for the obvious malware Trojan that Loki sent several days ago, or the one after that.

"Loki needs help," I told Lawrence. "Johnson's smarter than he looks..."

"Did he try using a Trojan-hidden keylogger?"

"Yep," I nodded.

"Phishing?"

"Yep."

"Can he do social engineering and get close to the guy? Making him believe he's born-again before going in for the hack?"

I typed the question over to him, only to get a straight-forward answer.

"Loki lives too far from the guy," I read the message over, chuckling slightly, "and he says there's no way he could fool Johnson. Says he's not a good enough actor for the job."

"What about a waterhole attack technique?" Lawrence asked after another minute of Nazi-killing gameplay, followed by a short cutscene. "Can he try that?"

I typed the question to Loki.

"He says he'll give it a shot."

"Give a shot, don't give a shot, it should work..." Lawrence muttered. "Tell him if all else fails, he should cut his losses and let Themis see how cyber-tough this Johnson cat is."

"Really?" I groaned. "Did you just coin the phrase 'cyber-tough'?"

"Hah, go and copyright that shit!" the husky giggled, then shouted, "Die! Die! Die!" against a robotic Nazi machine onscreen.

Rolling my eyes at the energetic canine, I decided to let that one slide. For now. Lawrence had this tendency to oversimplify the complexities of hacking, something he knew often triggered me when it came to how Hollywood portrayed our kind. Hell, even suggesting that all hackers were blackhats often pulled me in a foul mood.

I eventually decided to take a break and watched Lawrence finish the rest of Foxenstein, leaning my head against his shoulder as my husky frantically fought tooth and claw to defeat the final boss; this big-ass robot piloted by this deranged Nazi mad scientist as old as the Himalayas.

"Aaaaaaaaaaand voila!" he laughed, watching with me as the end credits finally played out. "Finished! That's a new record."

"Congrats, Laurie," I kissed his cheek and tousled his unkempt headfur, much to my husky's playful annoyance. "Now that that's over, you can help me out with updating some code..."

"Alright, alright," he sighed.

"Wait, actually," I glanced back to the kitchen, "we should clean up first."

"Okay, okay," he whimpered, relenting into standing up with me to clean the countertop and dishes. "You know you can be a neat freak, right?"

"Well, if it weren't for me, we'd be in a pigsty."

"Ha! Says the big bear who reclused himself in an apartment for years?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." I stuck my tongue out at the cocky canine. "If I remember correctly, you were the one who pulled me out of that dark place."

I tried my best not to think back to those years. Mom formed breast cancer the summer before I started university, and it shook everyone to the core. She died mere months later, leaving Dad to work himself to death because of our insurance company's unwillingness to cover his wife's medical bills. Fortunately, both of their life insurance policies left me a substantial fortune, more than enough to last me a few decades. I was financially secure, but I felt that I might as well have been dead beside my parents.

Depression hit me hard, and I quit college. For a few years, I shut myself away inside of an apartment (I couldn't be in the same one where they faded away). I mostly survived on the life insurance benefits provided to me, but at the same time I resented the money. The insurance companies didn't give a single shit about my mom or dad when they were alive, and they think they can make my problems go away by now giving me the money we needed before? Over time I fell further down the Internet's rabbit hole, until came the time I rarely left a computer screen unless I needed to answer the door for deliveries or go to the bathroom. Life went on for a while...until I met a fellow semi-advanced script kiddie named 'Gr33nEye5'.

His real name? Lawrence Klondike, a Siberian husky born and raised in Lakertown, and a born troublemaker like me.

"I sure did," he nodded with me, contemplating for a moment and smiling softly before pouting again, "but still...do you have to be anal about cleanliness from now on, Dwight?"

I turned the sink on. "If it means keeping us from turning into junkie hermits like I did, then yes. Now come on, it'll only take a few minutes."

Lawrence folded an ear, sighing to himself. "Fine, fine, fine..."

***

The storm passed, and nighttime eventually fell outside, leaving our TV screen and a lone lamp in the corner of the room as the only light sources. Lawrence and I typed vigorously at our computers, saying very little while affectionately caressing a leg or a shoulder between stretches of typing. coordinate with the other re: Sonance members. Laurie used the separate username of 'Poet_Paradox' to casually talk to the others on the forum as I began working on improving my cryptography.

He nodded off at some point, so I placed his laptop away and carried my husky to our bed in the corner of the apartment. Damn, those hours at the gym and boxing center were paying off.

Before joining my tired husky, I silently opened the bottom drawer of our nearby dresser, pulling out a small box and opening it. Nothing could prevent me from smiling like a dumbass at its contents. Not my willpower or anything, really. Resting comfortably inside were two silver and gold rings that, though too dark to see from this angle, had engravings etched on the inside.

The silver one, for Lawrence, read: 01101001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

The gold one, for me, read: 01001001 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111

In other words,

"I love you."

"I know."

I couldn't help but sigh. The end of our lease was coming up soon in a couple months, and Lawrence mentioned maybe extending it for another year. However, as much my husky didn't mind the close quarters and intimate proximity of everything, I wanted us to go to the next stage. And that meant settling down, maybe even getting a bigger place.

Granted, thanks to my knowledge of the stock market, and Lawrence's hacking skills, we could practically afford to live in any sized dwelling we wanted. Whether it be a studio or a house, we could afford it. Fuck, I could probably buy us an entire penthouse in Peninsula City if we suddenly decided on it. However, I still needed to ask him the BIG question first before we dwelled on that.

Marriage had been legal in Pennsylvania since last year, but the conversation never came up between us. We'd been together for almost five years now and had this apartment for two. I planned to pop the question soon, but hoped to push it back until later this summer, when the Supreme Court decision was finally made. I hoped to make this the second biggest surprise that day, and more.

My smile didn't fade as I carefully hid the box again. Nor as I crawled into the bed and wrapped my grizzly arms around Lawrence and promptly fell asleep, the husky's ears tickling my chin as I held him close to me.