LIGHTNOVELONLINE 7. Numbers
=::= Callie's PoV =::=
For someone who didn't actually have much in the way of dating experience, Serenity sure had a lot of thoughts and ideas about dating multiple partners. Not that I was complaining or anything though, neither was Bailey. Honestly pretty much everything my best friend said rang true. It all sounded like really good advice, and her ideas and suggestions made a lot of sense.
When I asked her how she knew so much about poly relationships she explained that she was still active in those trans discords where she originally found Kid Chaos, and that polycules and polyamory were a fairly common thing among some of the trans folks she was online friends with. So even though she didn't have much in the way of first-hand experience, she'd learned a lot from reading about how it worked out for other people.
And by the end of that whole conversation all three of us had a good idea of what we all wanted and what we were all looking for. Romance and sex were both high on everyone's list, but we didn't all immediately jump into bed for some three-way sexy fun. Although the temptation was definitely there.
On the other hand I did share a long and passionate kiss with my best friend for the very first time. That turned out to be equal parts nice and fun and maybe a little arousing, while also being just a little bit weird due to our history together. Then I watched as Serenity and Bailey exchanged an equally passionate kiss, and that was just plain hot.
By that point all three of us were pretty excited to go out on our first group date together, but at the same time none of us wanted to miss when our premier dropped. So we settled for a light meal and finished off the last of the leftovers Mrs. Hoffman gave us after Thanksgiving dinner.
When our video went public at nine o'clock sharp all three of us were sitting together on the living-room sofa with the show streaming on our big TV. I was in the middle with Bailey on my right and Serenity on my left, and all three of us had our devices with us. I was holding my phone, Sere's tablet was in her hand, and Bailey had her laptop. And all three of us were glued to social media and the comments section of the video, so we could catch everyone's reactions in real time.
It wasn't our first premier, so we'd all been through the excitement and nerves and anticipation before. But it was still a pretty wild ride. Things were kind of slow at first, and the view counter wasn't moving up as fast as I wanted either.
By ten o'clock though it almost felt like a dam had burst and the comments and notifications were piling up faster than we could read them. It was wild and amazing and exciting, especially because almost all of it was positive. Or at least, comments were positive towards us for breaking the story.
There was a lot of outrage too, but that was directed at the Council rather than my friends and I. Folks into paranormal and supernatural research were understandably angry to find out there was some secret self-appointed cabal working against us to keep all that stuff buried.
Thanks to all that excitement it was almost four o'clock Sunday morning before we called it a night. And even at that I had to turn my phone off to stop the notifications from keeping me up. That in turn meant I was a bit of a grumpy kitty when Bailey and I woke up at about half past noon.
"Oh my Goddess there's like a thousand notifications here," I groaned after turning my phone back on.
My girlfriend rolled over and gave me a hug and kiss before pointing out, "If there weren't any you'd be even more grumpy. Now c'mon, let's get up. I'll make us all something nice for breakfast."
I kissed her back then as she got out of bed I asked hopefully, "Pancakes? Pancakes would be nice."
"I'll check with Serenity," Bailey said as she pulled on an old t-shirt and some track pants. Then she slipped on her glasses and added, "If that works for her then yes, we'll have pancakes."
That put a smile on my face, and I scrambled out of bed as well. I grabbed a night-shirt and pulled it over my head on my way out the door after her. It turned out my best friend wasn't in her bedroom, so the pair of us headed downstairs. We found the ravenette catgirl waiting for us at the kitchen table, in one of her sexy dark red nightgowns. Best of all she already had the coffee machine ready and waiting for us.
Bailey and I both greeted Serenity, then I started fixing the two of us some coffee while my girlfriend... Our girlfriend got to work on the pancakes, along with a side of bacon. The whole polycule thing was still very new, but thinking about that put another smile on my face. Coffee, pancakes, bacon, and two girlfriends? I had to be one of the luckiest kitties around.
"Have you two looked at the numbers yet this morning?" our tall sexy girlfriend asked. Her ears and tail were all standing up tall, which along with the smile on her face told me there was even more good news ahead.
I set a coffee mug down on the counter next to Bailey, then after a gulp of my own hot morning drink I shook my head while my ears drooped a bit. "Not yet. I got as far as seeing I had more than a thousand notifications waiting on my phone. That's when I realized I needed coffee and breakfast first."
"Well I won't spoil it for either of you," Serenity stated, "But I think you'll both be pleased."
Bailey asked, "Which numbers are we talking about? View count? Subscribers? Supporters?"
The other catgirl just smirked, "No spoilers. You'll find out soon enough."
"You just want me to have to deal with those thousand notifications," I pouted. "But joke's on you, I'm not doing anything until after we've eaten."
As the kitchen began to fill with the mouth-watering smell of bacon and pancakes Bailey asked, "So from the sound of it we're going to be busy again today, but I was wondering when you two want to try doing something like a date?"
Serenity had a sip of her coffee before responding, "I'm up for doing something tonight, if that works for both of you? Or if we're too busy or too tired, then tomorrow night would be good too. Either way places probably won't be as busy as they would on Friday or Saturday nights."
"Yeah both of those work for me," I shrugged. "Where do we want to go? Or what do you two want to do?"
That ended up being the topic of conversation through breakfast, as we all bounced several ideas off each other. Ideas like dinner and a movie or dinner then a nightclub were shot down pretty quickly. Or at least, that sort of thing wasn't really our style.
After munching on a forkful of pancake and syrup Bailey commented, "It's too bad we're so busy right now. Instead of trying to do a date night, it'd be cool if we could take a couple days to do something fun together? Like we go stay in a haunted hotel room, or spend the night in some woods looking for cryptids, or something like that."
"That does sound more fun than handing over a pile of money to spend a couple hours in a cramped seat in a theatre," I responded with a smile. "Why don't we take another look at our plans for the next few episodes? Maybe there's a road trip in there we could bump up and do this week."
Serenity was munching on a strip of bacon, but as soon as she was finished with that she spoke up. Her ears stood up tall and her tail slowly swished back and forth behind her as she commented, "I actually like Bailey's haunted hotel idea. I know it's short notice but maybe we could do that for our December live stream? Do we have time to work out the logistics, to run a live-stream on location instead of our basement studio?"
Our cute redheaded technician got a thoughtful look on her face. She had a long sip from her second cup of coffee as she considered the suggestion, then finally nodded. "It's do-able, with a few big caveats. Do you already have a location in mind? If so, where? I'll need to check what kind of coverage is available, because we'll be streaming over our phones' internet. We can't do something like that on a hotel's guest wifi."
"Ok hold up you two," I interjected. "Before you get too far into this idea, we already had plans for our December live-stream. Right Bailey? We were talking about you using your plushie."
"Unless you've changed your mind on that again?" I added, as my ears and tail all drooped.
Bailey grimaced slightly as her cheeks coloured, "I told you yesterday I'm still thinking about that Callie. I haven't made any decisions yet, the only thing I promised is if I decide to do it then you can video it when it happens."
My ears and tail continued to droop as I pouted at her, but despite my best sad kitty face she refused to budge on that decision. For now.
Instead she asked Serenity, "So where were you thinking we should go, what's the haunted hotel?"
"Yeah good question," I frowned as I looked to my best friend. "It can't be anywhere around here, right? Or we'd have already been there and done a show on it at some point in the last few years."
The ravenette catgirl shook her head, "It's not around here. It's a little independent place up in Michigan."
"Somewhere near Detroit?" Bailey asked as she helped herself to another pancake.
"Nope," Serenity replied. "The Soo. Basically take the I-75 north as far as it goes, then turn off just before you end up in Canada. I'll email them after breakfast and see if the room's available."
"I know it's short notice, but considering it's the off-season we might get lucky," she added.
I was still pouting as I asked, "So what if it's not available? Will we do something else for our first date? And what if Bailey decides to use her plushie while we're doing this haunted hotel thing? I was really hoping we could live-stream that."
My human girlfriend leaned closer and pulled me into a side-hug as she said, "I'm still not promising anything, but if it comes down to it I'm sure I could use the plushie in a haunted hotel room. Maybe that'd help? Who knows, the magic in the plushie might rouse some spirits or something."
"We should get an answer on the hotel room pretty quickly," my catgirl girlfriend pointed out. "If it's not available then we can brainstorm again later today and come up with some other ideas."
"And if you don't actually want to do this Callie then just say so ok?" Bailey added. "I thought it would be a fun thing for the three of us to do together, but if you're not into it then it's obviously not the right choice."
I slipped my arm around her waist and hugged her back as I replied, "Thanks Bails. And it's a good idea, it's definitely more RSS than dinner and a movie. I'm just worried that it might clash with the stuff we talked about yesterday and at your parents' place."
Serenity suggested, "Why don't we do it like this? Assuming the place is available, we take a day to drive up there and get our gear set up. Then we find a nice restaurant or something, the three of us have a nice romantic dinner together. Go back to the hotel and do the live show. Bailey may or may not use her plushie. Then after the show we continue doing the investigation stuff, gather footage and evidence like usual. And if there's anything worth reporting, we throw it together into another show for the ninth, like we originally planned in the first place. Do that from our studio here, and share whatever we found on location. And if Bailey didn't use her plushie at the hotel, it's a second chance for her to use it on stream if she wants."
By the time my friend was finished talking my ears had perked up again, so had my tail. I smiled, "Yeah ok. That sounds like a good plan Sere. So now it just depends on whether we can get into that haunted room or not."
"Like I said, I'll email them right after breakfast," she promised.
Sure enough as soon as we were done eating the tall sexy catgirl headed downstairs to her desk so she could see about booking us a haunted hotel room. Bailey followed her down to our studio office as well, so she could get started on the day's work. I stayed in the kitchen though, to tackle the dishes. Since Serenity made the coffee and Bails made breakfast, it was only fair that I took care of the clean-up.
I joined them both as soon as I was done, and only then did I finally see the overnight numbers. My eyes widened while my ears stood straight up and my tail twitched with excitement.
"Wow!" I exclaimed. "We got almost as many new subscribers from that episode as we did from the October live-stream! And did you two see the spike in membership?!"
Serenity smiled, "We sure did. We also got a huge jump in one-time donations last night."
"Our merch store sales spiked last night as well," Bailey added. "I'm so glad we contracted that out to a fulfillment place, there's no way I could handle this many orders myself!"
"Actually Callie you really need to hop on social media. There's a ton of messages you should see, and maybe respond to?" my tall feline friend suggested.
My ears drooped and my tail tucked down under my seat as I grimaced, "Right. It's going to be another busy day, here at RSS World Headquarters..."
