#schedule email outlook

[behaemoth]

Outlook is my sworn nemesis but even among a sea of enemies schedule send is my single beacon of light

[wttcsms]

if you feel like falling (catch me on the way down) | TWO

ᝰ.ᐟ after getting your heart broken by professional soccer player, rin itoshi, all because he loved the game more than you, you officially swear off all men — especially athletes. your publicist doesn’t get that memo, though, and you find yourself roped into a fake relationship with yoichi isagi, who isn’t just a pro soccer player, but also your ex’s rival. things could get messy. ( fem!reader )

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pairing yoichi isagi x reader (endgame), past! rin itoshi x reader word count 5.9k chapter synopsis the busier your schedule, the less time you can spend thinking about rin. the only problem is, you see something you can't unsee. nothing a bottle of tequila can't fix, right? (spoiler: tequila isn't fixing a broken heart) chapter contains partying and drinking to cope, diet culture author’s notes i have nothing to insightful to add rn, but send me any asks discussing this fic and i will have a lot to say LOL

From: fumiko.gima@apextalentgroup.com To: [USER EMAIL HIDDEN] Cc: wfitch@everlanefitch.com, mai.sasaki@apextalentgroup.com, hideakitakeda@titansecuritysolutions.com, benji1968@gmail.com + 3 others Subject: 6/19 — [NAME] [SURNAME] AGENDA Attachments: 📎 [6.19 AGENDA.pdf]

All — 

Attached is the PDF copy of [Name]’s itinerary for today. Reminder that these times are STRICT. Stay on schedule. 

Fumiko Gima

Get Outlook for IOS 

Your first alarm goes off at 4:50 AM to what you assume is the noise they play on repeat in hell (By the Seaside, an Apple classic). After waking up, you roll over in your king size bed (the problem with always choosing to go big instead of just going home is the fact that when you’re all alone, the luxury of extra space just becomes empty space) to promptly hit the snooze button. You’ll allow yourself five more minutes of sleep (as a treat). When the second alarm you set up goes off at 4:53 AM (By the Seaside, once again), you scream into your pillow, and shut it off for real this time. You knew you weren’t going to give yourself the full five minutes, but it felt really good to trick yourself into believing that you would. You always start the day with this tiny disappointment; that way, no one has the privilege of being the first person to piss you off. 

At 4:54 AM, you slide your feet into your Ugg slippers, readjust the loose straps of your silk camisole, and shuffle into your marble-floored bathroom. You rub the sleep from your eyes, brush your teeth with your pink electric toothbrush, and wash your face. By the time you’re done with your morning skincare, it’s 5:06 AM. You honestly can’t remember the last time you did your own makeup, but you bring your makeup bag with you anyway. If there’s downtime between shoots, you’ll post a faux-GRWM TikTok where you apply three miniscule dots of concealer on your seemingly already flawless skin and add a fresh layer of the brand new, limited edition Rhode peptide lip treatment that Hailey Bieber’s team gifted you. They also gave you twenty grand to do so, with a personal “hey girlie, would love to catch up with you one of these days!! life has been so hectic, sorry for not keeping in touch x btw, i just came out with a new shade of my…” text from Hailey herself. (You replied back with a “yessss, we need to meet up soon!! Also, LOVE LOVE LOVE the new shade omg 😍” — neither of you have any intention for planning a meet-up, and you don’t “LOVE LOVE LOVE” the new shade as much as you “LOVE LOVE LOVE” to deposit a fat check.) 

You’re sliding into the backseat of the glossy black SUV parked in front of your driveway at 5:14 AM. Your chauffeur, Benji, holds open the door for you. 

“Good morning, Ms. [Surname],” Benji never drops the formalities with you, except for when he’s lecturing you. Thank God he doesn’t own a smartphone; if he saw half the things Daily Mail wrote about you, his voice would be gone from scolding you so much. Even if he’s technically on your parents’ payroll and is paid to make sure you get to and from places safely, it still feels nice to have someone who cares about you enough to call you out on your shit. 

The first stop is an exclusive, members-only pilates studio. If you’re home, you have to work out in the morning, no matter what. You like your routine. Out of all the things online magazines put out about you, it’s kind of embarrassing how the most accurate one is revealing how you stay “fit ‘n flawless even after going out every night.” Most people didn’t believe it. Rin got it, though. Rin would actually work out with you, when the two of your schedules aligned, and— Time to start your workout early! Nothing takes your mind off of matters more than focusing on the burn of your core and arms. 

By the time you finish your private session, you’re walking out the studio with your puffy tote bag slung over your shoulders. Your body is still a bit damp from taking a quick shower but not drying off properly, and Benji drops you off at your first business stop of the day — ELLE Japan.

You smile brightly as the team of makeup artists surrounding you shower you with compliments. One of the girls brushing on your foundation tells you that you have really nice skin. When she goes in for a second layer, you almost consider rescinding the thanks you gave her.

The set is hectic, as expected. No matter how long these people have been in the industry, no matter how big the host is, something always seems to be going wrong. Apparently, there’s been a mishap over in wardrobe, and ELLE’s people are not very happy with how this is going to delay everything. With your hair and makeup done, there’s nothing for you to do besides sit down, be quiet, and look pretty. 

Downtime is the last thing you want. You’re used to a busy schedule, but you convinced Fumiko to accept as many projects as possible. If you have to rank at the top of the list for celebrities who emit the most CO2, then so be it. You’ll pollute the whole damn planet if it means you won’t have a single second to be alone with your thoughts. 

At 9:00 AM sharp, you go on your phone to inform your manager that the agenda is fucked. ELLE Japan is definitely going to push back this session with you for at least a good hour, which means Fumiko is going to have to explain to Your Style (the YouTube channel name for a famous fashion commentator who’s amassed nearly twenty million subscribers) why you’re going to be late for the Zoom debrief on what you two are going to talk about in an upcoming video. At 9:02 AM, you receive a text.

juli ᡣ𐭩: u know i love u 

It’s two in the morning in Paris. When Juliette said she was going to visit her father, she said it was going to be a much-needed vacation — just something chill and lowkey, like going to all the designer stores and eating croissants on a balcony. Those were her exact words. 

juli ᡣ𐭩: [photo attachment] 

Somehow, from the neon strobe lights, bodies pressed against one another’s, and the way the image is blurry because she couldn’t get her phone to focus, it feels like Juliette’s “something chill and lowkey” morphed into club-hopping all over France. You roll your eyes with affection. You should’ve known her vacation was going to turn into this; as if Juliette would eat bread for pleasure — she’s been quoted for claiming that carbs are a necessary evil. She probably hasn’t even touched a croissant for the past week she’s been there.

juli ᡣ𐭩: showing u before TMZ posts it juli ᡣ𐭩: [video attachment] juli ᡣ𐭩: do not freak out. not worth it. juli ᡣ𐭩: ugh i knew this club sucked ass for a reason 

You wait for the video to load. It’s almost as blurry and unfocused as the original image she sent, but you can tell she had to zoom in pretty hard to capture what she wanted. It’s two figures with a minimal amount of space between them. One of them is definitely a girl; she has the build of the usual French models. A thin, leggy brunette who has mastered the intricate art of Just Had Sex hair. Perfectly messy, but could never be considered sloppy. She’s wearing a sparkly, tight minidress. The fabric shimmers when the strobe lights pass by her body. The person she’s practically pressed up against is a man. Tall, lean. He’s leaning down, presumably so he can hear her better. When the video clip ends abruptly (someone bumped into Juliette, and the video ends with shaky footage and a loud “putain!”), you replay it. And replay it. And then you play it again, just for good measure.

Each time you watch the stupid video, you find something new to notice. Her red lips brushing against his ear. The way his hand hovers near her hip. The way you’re certain she’s smiling when she speaks, like the smirk of a victor. The exact same self-satisfied, smug grin you sport whenever you get a guy right where you want him. Upon every rewatch, though, one thing remains the same: you’re constantly fixated on him.

Right now, it’s two in the morning in Paris. You know that when you weren’t in this fucked up headspace you’re in right now, you’d be in bed, snuggled underneath your blankets, by 11:30 PM. You know that when you felt your best, you could be in bed, whispering in the dark to the person you felt safest with, at 10:00 PM (at the latest, because you both would have a busy day ahead and needed the rest). He likes sleeping early because he likes being well-rested. 

So why the hell is Rin Itoshi at a club right now?

At 9:39 AM, ELLE Japan gets right back on track. Before your editorial shoot for a special anniversary edition of the magazine, they get you to sit down to do a video interview that they plan on posting all over their social media. 

“This is a very special edition that will be coming out, and you are not only having the biggest spread dedicated to you, but you’re also going to be on the cover. Knowing this, how are you feeling right now, [Name]? This might be the most high-profile photoshoot you’ve done so far in your career, and that’s saying something. You have quite the impressive resume.” 

The ring lights are shining directly in your eye. The stool they have you sitting on for this interview is uncomfortable, and you have to focus on remaining balanced. Your back is perfectly straight, and your hands are folded in your lap. You blink, and you see the video playing in your mind. You have God knows how much makeup caked on right now, and you still have a long day ahead of you. Rin is at a club right now. Rin is at a club right now, with a girl. Rin is at a club right now, with a girl, and they’re basically grinding against each other, and he might just have forgotten all about you.

You smile brightly. At 9:40 AM in Japan, you let everyone know, 

“I honestly think I’m the happiest I’ve ever been before in my life! This is a great way to establish a sort of, I guess, new era of my life and my career.” 

You turn to face the camera directly, giving them a dazzling view of your pearly whites. “Not trying to rush the process or anything, but I am definitely looking forward to seeing how this will all play out in the future.” 

You’re operating on autopilot for the rest of the day. The ELLE shoot wraps up close to noon. You forgo lunch, but knowing you and your tendency to skip meals, Benji refuses to start the car until you eat the lunch his wife packed for you. It’s light and refreshing — they want you to eat well, but they’re not cruel. Even if they want to bring you a feast of a nice, hot, home cooked meal, you’ll eat it out of obligation and then suffer the consequences on set when everyone asks why you’re so bloated. You don’t even taste what you’re consuming. 

At 12:30 PM, you hop on the Zoom call and pretend to care about discussing matters such as the lack of personal style affecting the younger generations. Every topic is a trivial topic to you. The only thing worth dissecting is that damn video. You should’ve asked those twenty million subscribers to help you analyze that, instead of nodding along when the YouTuber starts going on a rant about how Shein and other fast fashion brands are ruining everything. 

Late in the afternoon, you get another text. 

kenyu: So the team wants to host a belated birthday party for me lmao. Team’s planning on having it at 10 tonight kenyu: Sending you the address right now

A party is exactly what you need right now. Endless drinks, no need for rational thinking, and you’ll be (mostly) surrounded by people who think models are all vain and vapid. No one there is going to expect a decent conversation from you, and with the state you’re in, it’s a wonder how all your sentences are even making sense. 

You give Kenyu’s next message a like in response. You were expecting a club, but when you click on the address, Maps reveals that it’s residential. Rin is gallivanting around European nightclubs, and meanwhile, the best you can do are house parties. This is how the future is playing out? 

At least even at your worst, people still think you’re on top of the world. 

Maybe life without a man dragging you down and invading your space is for the best. After all, once you got done with all your professional obligations, it’s only eight at night. You’re used to going out with whatever makeup they did for you on set at your last shoot of the day, which is a shame. You have shelves full of makeup that’s been sent to you by different brands, and one of these nights, you plan on just messing around at your vanity. 

You like living alone, you decide. You can leave all the lights on if you want, and no one complains about it hurting their eyes. You have full control of the thermostat. You don’t have to fight for counter space in the bathroom. Plus, no one can see how you’re living. 

At 9:13 PM, you’re sprawled on the cool marble floor of your bathroom (squeaky clean thanks to the housekeeper you have come once a week), and instead of rewatching that dreadful video and subsequently crying, you had a quick retail therapy session. Your new Prada heels should be coming within the next two days. 

You don’t get Benji to drive you. Nobody bats an eye at a rich girl having a driver, but it does seem kind of weird to have him drop you off at a party as if you're a tween girl getting taken to the mall. If the house is owned by one of Yukimiya’s teammates, surely it won’t be too awkward if you had to leave it there because you got too drunk to drive yourself back home? 

Because — no offense to Yuki, you’re happy he’s getting another birthday celebration — the whole point of even going to this party is to get fucked up. You already know that Juliette had a point — if not TMZ, then at least Daily Mail will be all over Rin and that girl in the club. If that gets leaked, then you might as well have your own headline to combat his. Sure, lately you’ve been out partying, but that was with other models so it doesn’t raise too many eyebrows. Rin being caught at a club is basically him hard launching the breakup. You need to raise some speculation on your side of things, too. 

you: can you get someone to pick up my car from this address tomorrow morning? you: please :) 

When you see three dots appear, you smile for real. You can practically hear her sigh and see the shake of her head.

Fumiko Gima: Yes. Fumiko Gima: Be safe.

Aw, maybe your manager does have a heart. Right before you can send her a heart, she adds:

Fumiko Gima: Don’t stay out too late. You have your first shoot at 8 AM. 

This is the message you give a heart reaction to. Maybe everything really is just business with her. 

You suppose you can’t fault Fumiko for always seeming cold. She’s your manager, not your best friend. 

In this industry, her honesty is refreshing. You normally find this to be the case, but you really feel it now when you step into the mansion and hear a cacophony of laughter swarming you from all sides. At every turn, there’s a celebrity with a drink in hand. Everyone’s leaning towards each other, as if they’re so captivated with the other’s words. 

You see an actor leading a stumbling model up the spiral staircase. To your side, you see a baseball player chatting up the daughter of one of the baseball league’s board members. Upstairs, someone’s probably snorting a line off Yukimiya’s teammate’s bathroom counter. There are only three reasons why people in your social circle attend these parties: to get fucked, to get fucked up, or to make business deals. Considering the fact that you’ve been here for nearly five minutes and have yet to see a birthday cake — or the belated birthday boy himself — you’re pretty sure everyone here has lot the damn plot for the original celebration.

When you venture some more, you end up in the massive backyard. Some people are drunkenly making out in the pool, some people are watching them, and in a table in the corner, you spot a group of girls giggling and cheering as they all do shots. Perfect. This is exactly where you need to be. 

One’s a model; you’ve seen her on a couple pages you flipped through in Harper’s Bazaar. You go up to the table and give her a bright smile.

“Hey, girl! Or should I say Miss Bazaar?” You greet her like how you think people would tease a friend. She’s not your friend; you don’t even know her name. You know she knows your name — everyone here does. And it’s because of the fact that everyone knows you that she lights up when she realizes you’re speaking to her. 

A photo op with you guarantees that even if the headline coming out tomorrow is centered on you, she’ll still be in the frame. Daily Mail will add a caption naming everybody from left to right, and she’s planning on being the one captured right next to you. 

“[Name]!” She squeals, giving you a quick side hug. “How have you been?”

All your friends, the grand total of exactly two people, know how you’ve been. You grin, pointing to the bottle of tequila they have on their table. 

“After how this day has been, I honestly just need a shot.” You play it off like a joke, and as someone pours you one, you add, “Or maybe like five.” They all giggle before throwing back the tequila straight. They might think you’re joking, but this table full of strangers are the first people you’ve been honest with all day. 

At 12:15 AM, they aren’t strangers anymore. In fact, you think they might be your best friends in the whole world. You don’t know the lyrics to the rap song blaring through the bass boosted speakers, but you’re laughing as you take another shot. The Harper’s Bazaar girl is doing another shot with you, but she has her phone in her other hand. She makes sure that the both of you are in the frame together, and a second later, she’s tagging you in an Instagram story you don’t bother to view. You’re not even following her. 

“Okay, so out of all the guys here, who looks the most fuckable?” One of the girls leans on the table for support as she asks this question. You can’t help but notice how glittery her lipgloss is. Wow, even after all the shots she’s taken, there’s no transfer. Impressive. “I say Theo Sachs.” 

“Who the fuck is Theo Sachs?” Harper’s Bazaar asks, and the whole entire table giggles. Honestly, at parties like these, laughing comes easy. In fact, you’re giggling right with them, even though you also have no fucking clue who Theo is. There’s just something so freeing in tequila-induced joy. 

“Um, the host of this party?” Glittery Lipgloss says. “Oh my God, girl, he’s like, one of the players for Bastard.” 

“The fuck is Bastard?” Another girl asks, adjusting her blue minidress. 

“The soccer team!” Glittery Lipgloss is too drunk to be fed up, but you’re sure she would be rolling her eyes if she could. 

“I didn’t know we had soccer players here. I only saw baseball players.” Blue Minidress frowns, before adding, “I would totally fuck one of the baseball boys, though. No preference whatsoever. Matter of fact, I could take the whole team.” 

Harper’s Bazaar laughs. “What about you, [Name]? Who are you taking home tonight?” 

Before you can think of something to say, Glittery Lipgloss groans. “Oh my God, she has a boyfriend.” She looks at you for confirmation. You don’t give her any, but thankfully Blue Minidress has her own insight to add to this conversation. 

“So what the fuck does that have to do with her question? [Name], who are you taking home tonight?” 

Nobody. Out of every party you’ve gone to this past month, you went back home, completely and utterly alone each and every time. It’s not even because nobody offered — they have — but because no matter how lonely you may get or feel, you don’t like strangers in your space. It took you three months of dating Rin to let him into the penthouse you were originally staying in, and that was with you being in love with him. 

Once again, you’re saved from answering when someone behind you goes, “[Name]?” 

You turn around, only to come face to face with Yoichi Isagi. On second thought, maybe this isn’t the rescue you thought it was. Drunk You can’t hold back your frown when you see him. He’s wearing a dark blue polo shirt and chinos. He looks perfectly business casual and could pass off as an off-the-clock investment banker instead of the world class athlete you’ve heard he is. Then you let out a little snort of laughter, which only makes him look more confused. You don’t want to tell him that it’s kind of funny how normal he looks. 

Not in a bad way. You’re surrounded by models for practically the whole day. Looking unattainably hot or having ethereal beauty is the one non-negotiable job requirement. Even Rin, with his stupidly long lower lashes and impossibly high cheekbones and his pretty boy resting sulking face, is serving standards some male models can’t achieve. Isagi looks like the type of guy you would have a crush on if the two of you were completely normal and attended regular high school together. 

But that’s not the reality you’re living in. Right now, you’re getting drunk with girls you don’t know, and every night, you’re making headlines. He’s a professional athlete that everyone at this table would gladly fuck just for a chance to be declared social media’s favorite WAG of the Week. The both of you could have your pick of anyone at this party, but you refuse to let anyone in, and you think Isagi might be one of those intense athletes who only care about their sport.

If that’s the case, he’s doing every girl a favor by not pretending he can commit to anything but soccer. You know someone who could use a few pointers. 

“Hi,” you mumble, and then you want to slap yourself because why the fuck are you acting like you’re nervous? But for some reason, you feel like you're a kid caught with their grimy hand in the cookie jar, like you’re doing something wrong.

“I didn’t know you’d be here.” 

“Well, it’s Kenny’s birthday party. Of course, I’d be here.” You cross your arms against your chest, feeling like you have something to prove. Before Yukimiya became his teammate, Kenyu was your friend first. Like, real friend, not just someone you leave supportive comments on their Instagram post type of friend. 

Isagi actually smiles when he hears that. “Funny. I think everyone but Yukimiya actually wants to be here.” 

You sober up a bit when you hear that. “Yeah, I couldn’t find him anywhere.” Not that you looked very hard. The minute you found this table of girls, you didn’t bother exploring the rest of the mansion. 

“He was upstairs with some of the guys. You know that he, uh, doesn’t really like these types of parties.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. 

“You don’t seem like the type to like these parties either.” If he was anyone else, you’d be saying this to flirt. You’re honestly not sure what your intention behind this comment was, either. You’re too drunk to decide if you wanted it to be an insult (some way to defend Yukimiya’s behavior?) or just you trying to make conversation for once (you’re not normally one for small talk). 

“Caught me.” Isagi smiles easily. From now and thinking back to Yukimiya’s birthday lunch, Isagi is rarely not smiling. You wonder if he means it. Surrounded by people who only let you drink with them because being seen with you elevates their own status, you decide that the answer to that is a probably not. “I was about to head out before I thought I saw you, and I wanted to come by and…” For a second, he pauses to choose the right words to say. “Just wanted to see if it really was you.”

“Well, you saw me. Guess your business is done here.” Then you swiftly turn your back to him, as if to abruptly end the conversation. Instead, you’re drunker than you realize, and your heel ends up being wedged deeper into the grass than you expected, and you lose your balance. You think you might fall, which would be so embarrassing, but maybe not as embarrassing as what actually ends up happening.

What actually ends up happening is that Isagi is quick to wrap his arm around your abdomen, pulling you close to him as he attempts to keep you steady and upright. The girls looked shocked, but then they burst into another round of giggles, and since you’re not joining in the laughter, all you can think about is how annoying they are. You squirm around in his grasp, ignoring the whiff of fresh laundry you get from being all up in his personal space (not by choice!!!; he’s the one that pulled you in, after all!), and he releases you. 

“Are you feeling okay?” He asks you. It’s hard to glare at him when he looks so genuinely concerned. 

“Never better.” 

“Do you have a ride home?” 

What does it matter to you? Is what you want to say. 

“I’ll call an Uber.” You lie, hoping that this will end the conversation once and for all. Seriously, Isagi just killed the whole vibe of the party for you. You want to go back to drinking. 

“But I thought you didn’t do Ubers.” When Isagi calls you out on your bullshit, you soften momentarily. You almost forgot that he heard about your weird thing of having strangers know your home address. Then, you go back to giving him the cold shoulder. Sometimes, it’s a warm and gooey feeling to be known. Right now, you want to drown your sorrows in tequila and be showered with fake affection by girls who probably don’t even like you sober. You didn’t come to this party to be known. You came here for revenge. 

(You’re not going to acknowledge how drinking your sadness away isn’t necessarily showing up Rin, but for nearly an hour straight, you hadn’t thought about him, and that’s good enough.) 

When you have no response to that (wit doesn’t come easy when you’re in the condition you’re in right now), Isagi looks at you imploringly. 

“Let me take you home.” 

You shake your head childishly, almost saying nuh-uh. “Just because you don’t like this party doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I’m staying right here.” 

He finally frowns. “Fine. I’ll wait for you to finish up here, then I’ll take you home.”

“I’m with my friends right now. Leave me alone.” 

He raises an eyebrow. “Really? Which friend is going to make sure you get home safely? Yukimiya already left early.” Despite the two of you not knowing what the other is thinking, you both give wry smiles about that statement for the same reason. The party is still going on strong, despite the guest of honor not wanting to show his face and leaving early. 

“These are my best friends.” You gesture to the trio of girls you know nothing about, besides the fact that they can keep up with your drinking habits. They all smile at Isagi, who waves back before turning his attention back to you.

“Really?” He asks. “What’re their names again?”

No one has anything to say to that, especially you. When the silence gets too awkward, Isagi clears his throat and also puts his foot down.

“I’m taking you home, [Name].” 

You look at the trio of strangers you just spent hours with. Harper’s Bazaar shrugs, and the other two look away. The sting of not knowing who they are, despite them obviously having enough notoriety to be invited, makes your “best friends” not your friends anymore. Whatever. 

“Fine.” You grumble, following Isagi to his car. 

“Did you have fun tonight?” Is what he asks you as he signals to make a turn. The clicking of the turn signal is the only thing that fills the silence in the car. 

No. 

Sometimes, it’s fun in the moment, but that’s only when you’re drunk enough to trick yourself into thinking you’re having a good time. You’re more like Yukimiya (and — gross — Isagi) than they know; the whole “It Girl dominates the party scene” vibe you’ve got going on… It’s just bullshit that your PR team mixes together to get people talking. The high of being adored by everyone in a room vanishes almost immediately the minute you go home and wash off your makeup. In the bright lights of your bathroom, you stare at the sad, lonely girl in the mirror. It’s too dark outside for you to see anything out the window, but you lean your head against the cool glass, and before you know it, you’re waking up…

To Isagi groping you?

You’re groggy and confused and trying to blink the sleepiness out of your eyes, but Yoichi Isagi is definitely all up on you. You’re shocked, honestly. He looks like such a sweet guy! No wonder he was so pushy in getting you home.

He’s holding you in some awkward side hug, and he’s patting down your waist, trying to slip his fingers through the fabric of your dress, and finally, because he must be a novice-level pervert who doesn’t know the first thing about female anatomy, you speak up. 

“Gross! You can’t even feel up a girl properly! No wonder you take advantage of drunk, vulnerable girls!” 

“Ah!” He jerks back, shocked that you’re awake. Serves the pervert right. He should be backing up. You took a month of kickboxing classes (your modeling agency thought it would be the next big thing, since all the Victoria Secret models kickbox — they were wrong). “I-I wasn’t feeling you up!” 

“Then why were your hands all over me?” 

“I was looking for your key! You were asleep, and you looked like you needed it, so I just carried you to your door, but it’s locked.”

Oh. Likely story. You’re not letting him off the hook just yet. 

“Obviously my front door would be locked, dumbass. Who doesn’t lock their house?” You point to the perfectly trimmed hedges by your door. “Key’s in the bushes.”

Since you’re making no moves to get down on your knees and rifle through the bushes, Isagi sighs and does it himself. When he holds up the key, you nod in thanks, take it, and then proceed to unlock the door using your fingerprint. 

He blinks. “What?” 

“What?” You repeat back, innocently. 

“You didn’t even need the key to unlock the door!”

“Yes, Isagi. Modern technology is something, isn’t it?” And because you feel kind of bad, you offer him the chance to wash up before driving back. 

“You’re really something, you know that?” Isagi says from the kitchen sink. You’re sitting on a stool by the counter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s nothing bad.” He clarifies. “It’s just… Rin’s a pretty private person. We always wondered what his girlfriend must be like. Sorry.” He shuts off the faucet, dries his hands. “Ex-girlfriend, I guess.”

“How do you know that?” You’ve been racking your brain, wondering if Yuki spilled your secret accidentally. Or — even worse — Rin himself confirmed it. Rin never even told anyone explicitly that the two of you were dating, so it’s not plausible that he would go blab about the breakup. 

“Well, I didn’t really know for sure until I drove you home that first time.” He admits. “I just thought you made a weird face when I mentioned Rin during lunch, and then you started acting funny afterwards. Just had a hunch, that’s all.” 

Great. So, Isagi, who’s basically a stranger to you, could read you to filth. Is there anyone else that you haven’t been fooling? How embarrassing. Being perceived sucks. 

You don’t say anything else. You can hear Isagi mumbling about something, and you make a half-hearted noise in reply, but you’re sleepy and drunk and coming to the realization that you can’t keep fooling everyone around for long. There’s no point in dancing around the topic of your breakup. It’s getting tiring, anyway. 

It is pretty exhausting to be pining after someone who’s not coming back. 

Because that’s why you’re trying so hard to keep the breakup a secret. Partly for pride, but mostly because… You’re hoping that after learning everything there is to know about you, Rin Itoshi wouldn’t go so far to cut you so deeply by leaving you. Right? He understood your level of loneliness like no one else, and he related to it. For the first time in both of your lives, the two of you suddenly found the right person to fill in all the empty spaces. 

And then he left, and the emptiness just continues to grow in infinite amounts.

You groan as you move around, only to find that you’re moving on top of your bed. You’re tucked into your sheets, and your hair is splayed across your pillow. You turn your head and see a shadowy figure exiting out your bedroom door.

“You’re leaving, too?” 

Your throat is dry, and the words come out small. You hate this feeling of hopelessness and vulnerability, and the figure pauses in his steps. 

He hushes you gently. “You should go to sleep. You’ve had a long night.” 

“Fine. Don’t stay. I don’t care.” You burrow yourself further into your blankets. 

“Do you really want me to stay?” 

At one in the morning, covered in the darkness of your bedroom, you turn every shadow into Rin Itoshi. You don’t know what you mumble in response, but you know that whatever you said, it’s directed towards him.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not having time to read my mutual's writing?

Met a mutual on here, bonded through fanfic, have been tight with them for a few years with pretty much no bumps in the relationship, just overall had a really good time hanging around them when I could. We both write a lot and share our writing, and occasionally we talk about that writing/workshop it in passing.

In the past few years I've gone through a ton of life changes. Most notably I went from a multi-person household to a single-person one, and I've been living alone in a prohibitively costly city for a while now working 40 hour weeks and barely scraping by. As soon as the transition started I spent the last of my free income on a shitty little laptop so I could still write, putting down words on my bus/train commutes in the morning and quite literally writing on my breaks at work because I feel insane when I can't create. I bring this up to really stress that I don't have the time for the hobby, I force myself to make the time and even then it never feels like enough.

The only thing I can really stand to do with my 3 hours of free time at night is hang out with my moots online. I'm an extrovert so being around people recharges me. If I don't have designated social time I get super depressed and can pretty much feel my soul withering away. I also feel like I should probably mention that I kinda have a slew of mental issues, personality disorders and PTSD and AuDHD and the works. Point being, shit is rough my dude, but I am a person who likes to work hard and face challenges head on and even though we strugglin, we doing it with a positive outlook.

But! I am an incredibly solution-oriented person and I have found what I personally believe to be a good balance. No one should have to live like this, but I do, and I have found a way to be happy. My writing and my social time is all load-bearing. It is not something I just choose to do on a whim, it's all planned and scheduled and I adhere to those routines very strictly because, I cannot stress this enough, I will go fucking bonkers if I don't.

I'm mutuals with a lot of writers obv, and I sadly don't have time to read their work anymore, unless I get some extra time on my days off or something gets cancelled or like, I end up taking a vacation. I carry a great amount of guilt for this, though, even though I logically know it's reasonable. I try to support them where I can, cheer them on when I see them writing and tell them how cool their ideas sound, hype them up even when I can't actually read & review.

One of the things I do is sometimes I leave a kudos on fic I haven't read. I'm not trying to be ingenuine, and if they asked me I'd tell them like 'Oh I didn't read it yet, just wanted to show support!' but to me it's kinda like ripping a paper tab off a poster so that other's feel inclined to do the same. Plus my pals get a little email and a hit of serotonin.

Except one of my acquaintances, the one I mentioned at the start here, saw that I left kudos on a couple pieces another mutual of mine wrote this year. They more or less blew up my DMs with a ton of accusatory (like, literally presented like a 'GOTCHA!') stuff about how I was selective in who's fic I read, more or less implying that I secretly held some sort of grudge or negative feeling toward them and was making the conscious decision not to read or interact with their writing because of. Something, I don't actually know what they were trying to say. They also told me they vented to their friends about this MULTIPLE times, but they never once approached me to let me know they were feeling paranoid or neglected, they literally just took the most bad faith reading of it possible and then presented that to me like it was something I intentionally did, while the whole time I was unaware.

I tried to explain to them the kudos thing, that I didn't do it to every story, just ones I caught/noticed in my busy schedule. And I laid all this out and asked, multiple times, what free time am I supposed to read with? They didn't answer, and doubled down, kept trying to show me 'proof' that I was shorting them and no one else. Once they started to realize how wrong they were they backed down, but they didn't really apologize, or admit they were wrong, and they tried to end our relationship and left every single server we were in together. Because of some other unrelated stuff going on in my life, I didn't really consider them to be a close friend, but they were someone I really held dear and would've walked through hell for if they'd asked.

I still feel like there is something I'm missing here, and that's why I wanted to ask if I'm TA. I'm a pretty good communicator but one of the things I told myself when talking down my disordered thoughts (guilt about this prior) was "no one in their right mind would use reading fanfic as a metric for friendship." Now that I've had that exact thing happen, I'm starting to think maybe those thoughts weren't so disordered. Maybe this IS a big deal, and I should think about it more, but I don't even know what the solution to that would be. I just. Don't have time to read something lovingly crafted and appreciate it for what it is. All the hours in my week are used up, I'd have to lose sleep for this and with my mental health the way it is that is not an option.

Feel free to be a brutal, my skin is thick. Thanks!

What are these acronyms?

[girlmostlikely]

I would rather die than send another email, receive a Slack notification, reply to Teams, be present in a Teams meeting in general, update my calendar, schedule anything at really. I hate being in charge of things I feel like I’m trapped in a prison and there is no good Outlook. Only the email one.

[ceausescue]

im scheduling meetups on grindr and i can feel the email pathways in my brain activating. please pick any time listed as available on my outlook calendar. if none of these work for you, @someōtherguy should be able to help, or we could schedule sometime next week

[crimmson]

I'm tired of Smart Emails and Smart Phones and various pieces of technology trying to adapt and learn. cool idea but fucking garbage execution

this is being spurred by having to figure out why someone at work isn't receiving submissions from the website contact form for the umpteenth time. because outlook has decided to start chucking shit into the spam folder and/or the quarantine again. and I know they aren't the worst with computers so I'm pretty confident they followed my instructions for adding the contact form address to the safe senders list the last time this happened. so why is it ignoring that?? is it because the subject line is different for this particular form? is it because it was sent to a different address which is then forwarded to them???? even though all of the addresses are our own domain??? why, outlook???

and I just have this sneaking suspicion that we've missed various submissions when I snoop through a different form and see people following up because they didn't get a response to their original submission

because outlook has decided to try and Learn! and it's fucking everything up! it's doing more harm than good! and it doesn't even catch all the stupid bad shit! my email wound up on like 10 new newsletters that I never signed up for in one day. so like just stop trying at that point. you're still giving me the shit emails AND you're eating the emails I actually need people to see. you are doing the worst of both worlds.

i would literally rather just get every single thing and decide, for myself, to block senders and unsubscribe to things.

and like, I could say maybe they aren't the best with computers so maybe this is a them issue. They aren't the worst, but they aren't the best either. now I'm not the best either, but out of everyone who works there I can confidently say I am the second best there. so when ***I*** have had to tell outlook NOT to block the same fucking sender multiple times before it finally seems to get its shit together, something is wrong. outlook is fucking garbage. I need them to just turn off all ~smart functionality~ and let it just be a fucking email client.

but also, my phone. why has my phone decided that it simply will not tell me I have notifications sometimes, until I look at my phone? then suddenly it's like oh, btw here's 15 new notifications since you're paying attention now. No! you're supposed to give them to me WHEN YOU GET THEM! that's the whole point! if I want to enforce some kind of quiet time I will set up some Do Not Disturb schedule or something! or I will tell it to only give me notifications every 30 minutes! DO NOT MAKE THAT DECISION FOR ME.

it's driving me insane. not to sound like I'm a million years old but I miss when "smart phone" meant "wow this phone also plays mp3s, has some games, and lets me check my email." not "my phone works on its own unknowable schedule because it tried to learn and did bad, and makes decisions without my consent"

[cancan-jpg]

Digital Art Commissions info post!!

[NOTE: Due to the demands of my studies, I am currently free through January, but may take a longer time to complete work during term-time. For detailed work, we can come to an agreement about my schedule!]

Interested?

🎃 Please contact me via email at CanRichards@outlook dot com! I can also work with DMs to start with, but notifications can be unreliable. Please have reference images ready! :D Please also send me your name, so I know what to call you, especially if it differs from your paypal or email!

🎃 I am based in South Africa, but all prices are in US Dollars.

🎃 All transactions will be done through PayPal invoice, so please let me know if you have a different paypal email address than the one you contact me from. I will send you an invoice once I get your OK on the initial sketch.

🎃 I'm very happy to draw OCs and fantasy creatures! I will do my best for animals and anthro - pricing for other species (as well as any other complexities like heavy backgrounds/settings and detailed designs) will be calculated on a case-by-case basis.

🎃 I love fan-work as well! A lot of people know my work from My Chemical Romance and Danger Days fanart, if that's a vibe you're looking for.

🎃 If you can't commission me right now, please feel free to reblog this post to spread the word! :D Thanks everyone! 💛

[chaoskirin]

Today, While I was in the middle of typing an email, Microsoft Outlook 365 popped up a window demanding feedback. And boy did I have shit to say.

I had to keep the swearing out, because apparently any report I make is duplicated and sent to the IT department. But the text I ended up sending follows:

---

God, I have so much to tell you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. First: Stop messing with everything. Outlook works fine, but you keep changing things that don't need changing. Moving buttons around. Turning on features that I have explicitly turned off for not working before. Just today, you turned on the auto-suggestions again, which would be great if it actually worked. Instead, when it suggests anything you don't accept, it just mashes words together. Do you know how it feels to be typing a professional email and you miss one of those failures and send your email anyway? I mean, to be fair, I caught ten, so I still got a 90% on the ol' Microsoft-sanctioned-typo-factory. But the person I emailed doesn't see it that way, do they? They see that I mashed three words together like there was a wasp on the space bar.

Plus, my signature keeps getting deleted. Not just switched to nothing, but completely deleted. Which means I have to re-make that every time your developers get bored and decide to re-haul a program that absolutely never needs re-hauling. I remember once a couple months ago the attachment button just disappeared, and there was no way for me to attach a final bill. I had to actually use my personal gmail address to send an email to a customer because for about 16 hours, it was impossible to attach anything.

But, you say, I should have sent error reports. And I did. But the question in my mind always comes back to "why are you messing with something that does not need changing?" The only thing that ever happens is that you change aesthetics. Colors. This time the boxes are gone. Do you think you're at risk of losing customers? Do you think you have to keep things new and fresh? No. People are shackled to you. You have a quasi-monopoly and a stranglehold on a whole lot of workflows. People cannot leave you. In the world of word processing and spreadsheets, you are Alcatraz. You don't have to change things to keep people here.

Instead, long-time bugs continue to plague everything I do within this hell-suite of software. Sometimes when I try to start typing in the body of the email, outlook decides that, no, I don't want to type an email! I want to send the other emails in my inbox to the archive, where, if I don't notice this, they will sit and fester forever. There's also the bug where I create an email and it duplicates it and puts it in my drafts. Or the bug where it just creates a blank email and puts it in my drafts. Do you want to know how many blank emails I've deleted from my drafts folder? There are not enough numbers in existence to count this.

If you REALLY want to know how to improve Outlook and this message isn't just going into the wilderness like all those notebooks from the hit-TV-show-where-nobody-liked-the-ending, LOST, then please. Listen. From the bottom of my heart and from the top of my lungs: Stop changing everything. Nothing needs changing. Just run a good service. Get your programmers onto fixing longstanding bugs instead of trying to make an email and scheduling program look like a fashion show in Paris.

And if I seem a little ticked off in this message, it's because your request for feedback popped up in the middle of me compiling an email, which was just about halfway done. Outlook, in all its wisdom, decided that I didn't actually need that email and went ahead and deleted all the text in it. All of it. So after I finish giving you an earful, I'm going to have to retype it.

Hope this helps. Have a wonderful day.

[billhader]

Homebodies

Another Anoush/Louie one-shot smutfest by meeeee and @cristobalsifuentes

Daniel and Amanda take the whole family on an extravagant Hawaiian getaway to celebrate Sam's high school graduation. Begrudgingly, "the whole family" includes Louie. And Anoush, for some reason. And Louie and Anoush have a big secret, which everyone already knows about.

Rating: Explicit (read tags below)

Word count: 12.8k

Relationships: Louie LaRusso Jr./Anoush Norouzi

Characters: Anoush Norouzi, Louie LaRusso Jr, Amanda LaRusso, Daniel LaRusso, Samantha LaRusso, Anthony LaRusso, Lucille LaRusso

Tags: Porn with Feelings, Porn With (a little) Plot, Post-Finale, Established Situationship, Summer Vacation, Sneaking Around, Family Drama, Family Bonding, Fluff and Smut, Dirty Talk, Semi-Public Sex, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Fingerfucking, Anal Sex, Mild Daddy Kink, Self-Indulgent Smut Extravaganza, Love Confessions, Getting Together

Click here to read on AO3, or continue below the break

Disclaimer: The depiction of the LaRussos travelling to Hawai'i ≠ the authors condoning tourists visiting Hawai'i. Rich people gonna rich people.

My love and I always have fun collaborating! Let us know if you enjoy!!

Anoush would be lying if he claimed to be surprised by Daniel and Amanda’s invitation to join the entire family on their trip to O'ahu. In fact, by the time Amanda broached the subject, he’d cleared his schedule for the two weeks in question and hired a housesitter to water his plants. 

The vacation was in the works for almost a year, at least on Amanda’s end. The second she could tear her husband and daughter away from dojo drama, she told Anoush over brunch, they’d all be getting the hell out of the Valley for a little while to “re-center”. It took longer than anyone anticipated for Daniel to loosen his grip on Miyagi-Do and reluctantly allow Johnny to take care of business in his absence, but he finally relented just in time to celebrate Sam’s high school graduation.

Anoush had nothing to do with the LaRussos’ karate affairs, of course. All he did was bring money in, let Amanda vent to him as much as she needed, and keep each dealership location from completely burning to the ground by sending emails. a ton of emails. Outlook hated to see Anoush log on.

Anoush couldn’t take all the credit. With Daniel gone so frequently, Louie had stepped up at work in a way Anoush didn’t know he was capable of.  He had the best figures of any salesman--even better than Anoush, as he bragged every single hour of every single day--and he put in ridiculous amounts of overtime across multiple locations when they were short-staffed. His pride in being part of the family business was finally coming through in his work, and he'd gone from being Anoush’s greatest headache to his most dependable coworker.

This was great, because Anoush and Louie were fucking. If Louie was still acting up at work, it might’ve put a damper on all the fucking. Nobody wanted that, least of all Louie. If Anoush had known years ago that all it took to get Louie to fall in line was to get him off, it would've made life a lot easier.

They were fucking, not dating. The distinction was important, at least to Anoush. Sure, they were at each other’s apartments more often than not, but man oh man that gosh darned LA traffic, the 134 is hellish this time of day/night/whatever. And yes, Anoush hadn’t responded to a single DM on any of his dating apps since the first time Louie came to his apartment with takeout for dinner and didn’t leave for a solid 36 hours--but all of the apps were still on his phone. The fact that he happened to have all their notifications turned off had nothing to do with Louie. He was…trying to reduce his screen time.

So it was all okay. Everything was fine. It wasn’t like they fucked constantly. It tended to happen when either Anoush or Louie was especially stressed out, and needed a form of catharsis that only the other understood.

Work had been extremely stressful the past few months.

Louie was invited to O'ahu despite Amanda’s reservations. There was no denying that he deserved a reward for all his contributions to the dealership. Not to mention that Lucille was coming too, and she could be relied upon to pitch a fit if Louie was excluded. He immediately went out and bought several garish Hawaiian shirts to add to the collection he already had, then insisted on putting on a fashion show when Anoush called him over to spend the night. Anoush held back the natural insults that sprang to mind, cheering Louie on after each reveal with whoops and catcalls..

The following week, Amanda appeared in Anoush’s office doorway and handed him a thick paper packet.

“I can get to it first thing Wednesday,” Anoush muttered, holding out his hand without glancing at the packet.

“You might want to look it over now,” Amanda said, stretching out each vowel with a bewildered upward inflection. “Maybe take it home.”

It was a beautifully detailed O'ahu itinerary. Anoush felt like a jackass as he read it, but he was a very happy jackass indeed.

“This is mandatory, by the way.” Amanda was beaming. “They're all going to run me ragged. If you're not there, I will probably fake my own death on day two.”

If Louie’s persuasive powers contributed to Anoush's invitation, Amanda’s lips were sealed. Louie gave no hint either way. Anoush knew better than to question it. Nobody knew about his and Louie's situation. At least, no one was supposed to know. No one had a reason to know. They weren't dating, after all.

They land in Hawai’i on a Tuesday. The LaRussos rented out a gigantic house about fifteen minutes from the heart of Honolulu, situated atop a gentle hill all its own with unbeatable ocean and mountain views. It has a pool, an outdoor lounge area, a stunning kitchen, and enough bedrooms for everybody. Almost everybody.

Louie sleeps on the pull-out couch in their room the first night because he can physically see the knots in Anoush’s neck & shoulders. Traveling always stresses Anoush out and he barely got any sleep the night before their flight. After eating dinner as a family on the patio and animatedly rehashing their itineraries for an hour straight, Louie flops onto the sofa bed and passes out within minutes. His joints do not treat him kindly in the morning.

By the second night, Anoush has had enough of Louie grunting and making pathetic pinched-up faces all day long at the beach. He insists that Louie sleep in bed with him. Louie promises he’ll be on his best behavior, but Anoush wakes up with Louie’s chest glued to his back anyway before they separate and get ready for the day. Neither of them acknowledge how they woke up, but Louie knows he didn't imagine a half-sleeping Anoush snuggling in closer to his body just after sunrise.

Louie takes Anthony to the beach for boogie-boarding while Anoush joins Amanda and Lucille at a nearby spa for a deep tissue massage and a facial. The spa treatment is divine and helps melt away any and all tension Anoush had been holding in his body the past few days. When they return to the house, he lounges happily on the bed with a book until Louie and Anthony come back from the beach.

“What do you mean, skip dinner?” Anoush asks once Louie finally gets to the point of his rambling after eyeing Anoush up and down about twelve times.

“I mean we skip dinner. Hang out here. I can whip something up when we get hungry,” Louie shrugs. “I don’t think i can stand another minute in the fuckin’ sun today.” 

“Hm, sounds like you came on the wrong trip, then,” Anoush retorts and goes back to his book, not actually reading, but still wanting to give the impression of vague disinterest. Louie rolls his eyes at Anoush’s sass, then inhales as deeply as he can without it being obvious. Anoush smells warm and lovely and faintly of lavender and Louie knows he won’t be able to sit through dinner in public with this man.

“We have a ton of wine downstairs. C’mon, let’s make a night of it.” Louie flops on the bed and nudges Anoush’s knee with his elbow.

“I guess nothing on the menu really stood out to me,” Anoush muses, eyes wandering from the page again. Louie’s looking up at him like a dog waiting for a tennis ball to be thrown. “I'll think about it.”

“Well, think fast,” Louie says. “We’re s’posed to leave in half an hour. You know I’ll make you somethin’ good to eat. And we got pineapple upside down cake for dessert.” 

Anoush smiles despite his weak attempt to seem aloof. “We’re in paradise and you want to sit inside all night and eat.”

“C’mon, you really wanna sit through dinner tonight when we got the boat tour and the stupid luau tomorrow? I just wanna chill and see the sunset from up here.”

Louie’s making good points as if Anoush doesn’t know exactly what’s on his mind. He’s felt Louie’s eyes on him since he came back from the beach, smelling too much like the surf and not enough like sunscreen, and admittedly he wasn’t reading too closely while Louie stripped and showered and dressed. Anoush flips his book face-down on his lap. 

“I don't think you could be subtle if you had a gun to your head,” he quips.

Louie grins like a fool. “Dunno what you’re talkin’ about.” 

“I didn't come all the way to Hawai’i to shack up with you,” Anoush whispers fervently, as if  anyone else could hear. “I can do that at home.”

“Yeah, you can. Any time,” Louie says with a wink. “But we're here, and we can have the whole place to ourselves…” 

His hand on Anoush’s knee is the kicker.

“Okay, okay. Dinner better be good,” he warns.

Louie immediately rolls off the bed, pumping his fist. “Hell yeah.”

“Go tell Amanda we're staying,” Anoush says, “but act normal.” He can't help but laugh when Louie runs out. His face is hot, like Louie’s deep tan is somehow spreading to him, and Louie's simple touch gave him goosebumps.

Louie’s nearly out of breath when he makes it downstairs, and he huffs a sigh of relief when he sees that the double doors to Amanda & Daniel’s similarly-grandiose, ground-floor bedroom are wide open. He makes a beeline for the room and hears the shower on as he gets closer, then finds Amanda sitting at the vanity near the french doors to the patio and fixing her hair. She's fully dressed and ready to go, opting for a no-makeup night so as not to irritate her skin after the spa day.

“Hey, knock 2 off of the reservation for tonight,” Louie announces the second he enters her periphery.

“Okay,” she says plainly without batting an eye, “Why?” 

“Uhhhhh,” Louie starts. He suddenly thinks too hard about Anoush warning him to be normal and needs a few seconds to shift gears and string a decent sentence together. “We’re not really feelin’ up to goin’ out.” Louie tries a casual shrug. Amanda just turns toward him.

“‘We’ as in…?”

Louie rolls his eyes and drops his shoulders. “What's with the third degree? C’mon. Me and Anoush."

“The third degree,” Amanda scoffs. “You’ve seen me give the third degree. This is not the third degree.”

“Okay, the second degree, then,” Louie reasons. Amanda chuckles sardonically, icily, and goes back to fixing her hair in the mirror. “It’s just- I got too much sun and he’s all relaxed and whatever the fuck from the spa shit. And we have the boat and the luau tomorrow and I need to recover from today, y’know?” Amanda lets Louie’s words linger for far longer than Louie is comfortable with. “Hey, two less meals to pay for, right?”

“Yep, all good,” Amanda agrees with a smile and a nod. “We’ll ‘knock 2 off of the reservation.’” Louie looks around the room, waiting for some sort of snide remark.

“O…kay… That’s it?”

“What else would there be? Go rest up,” Amanda encourages. Louie eyes her carefully, then shrugs again and turns to leave. 

“Louie,” she stops him before he reaches the door. Louie turns around. “Keep it in your bedroom.”

“What do you think-“

“Keep it. In. Your bedroom,” she tells him softly, sternly. 

Louie opens his mouth to protest again, but shuts up at Amanda’s warning glare. He nods and exits the room, but backpedals back into the room after only a few steps. 

“What about the balcony?”

Amanda wrinkles her nose and side eyes him. “Use your best judgment, Louie.”

As Louie scrambles to the kitchen for wine, Daniel pokes his head out of the ensuite bathroom. “Did I hear Louie?”

 “Mhm. He and Anoush are ditching us for dinner,” Amanda reports, giving him a pointed look. “They’re staying in.”

 “Ohhhhh.” Daniel nods slowly, catching her drift. “Well, that’s good, right? Don’t have to worry about Louie behaving himself for one night.”

“If we’re very lucky,” Amanda grumbles.

“And it means your plan’s working,” Daniel points out. “Like you said, Anoush is already family, pretty much. They might as well make it official.”

Amanda cringes - he’s right, she did this to herself.

“The plan might work a little too well,” she says. 

Meanwhile, Louie takes a peek in the fridge to get a feel for what he’ll do for dinner. He texts Anoush, “Sushi bowls or pasta?”

 “You’re prepping dinner already??” Anoush responds.

Louie smirks and shakes his head, grabbing a bottle of white wine he knows Anoush picked himself at the store out of the wine cooler under the counter. Anoush thinks he’s a cool customer, but Louie saw the way Anoush eyed him over the top of his paperback. He saw it when he emerged from the shower, and he saw it when they were talking on the bed. 

“I can start now or come back upstairs” he texts. He's already grabbed two glasses and started walking back upstairs by the time Anoush replies, “Upstairs.”

Anoush knows how he sounds. He just doesn’t really care anymore. He's sitting in the same spot when Louie returns and sets down the bottle and glasses on the nightstand. “Not hungry yet, huh,” he says, more a statement than a question. Anoush shrugs and pats the mattress next to him - Louie’s back in bed in an instant. “That wasn’t the only food, I can make whatever-” 

Anoush is on him so fast his head spins. One second he’s curled up next to Louie, the next he’s straddling him and pushing him down against the pillows, kissing him like he’s angry at him. Louie enthusiastically obliges Anoush until his lungs start to burn with a need for air.

 “They’re still here, you sick fuck,” he teases once he’s managed to catch his breath. His hands find Anoush’s narrow hips, pushing his t-shirt up half an inch and threatening to do something about the waistband of his lounge shorts. Anoush leans back down to kiss him, and Louie’s grip on Anoush tightens instinctively.

“Don’t act like you’ve never put your hand in my pants in your office with Amanda and Daniel on the other side of the door,” Anoush goads, and Louie had forgotten how blunt and bratty Anoush can be whenever they’re able to make any type of noise. Louie chases a kiss and rides his tongue along Anoush’s bottom lip.

“Hey, that was one time,” he protests. He gets a lethal look from Anoush in return. 

“Hey, that was two times.” 

“Can you blame me, though? I mean, look at you.” Louie slides his hand up Anoush’s side, underneath his t-shirt, and he bites his lip at the way Anoush shivers at his touch, goosebumps sprouting once again beneath Louie’s fingertips. “It's hard enough to deal with you back home, but now you went and got all soft and smooth and oily and shit.”

Anoush throws his head back and chuckles, and Louie feels ravenous at the sight of Anoush’s Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “You’re ridiculous,” Anoush chides, but he fixates on Louie’s lips again, grabbing at Louie’s pecs through his t-shirt with one hand and rocking against him to let Louie feel his growing erection. “You said they’re leaving in a half hour?”

“More like 20 minutes now,” Louie nods. “Maybe less. Depends on how hangry Lucille gets in the next few minutes.”

“Okay,” Anoush sighs against his lips. “That can work.”

Louie pulls Anoush down hard against his lap, making sure Anoush knows they’re both in the same boat. He’s pleasantly light-headed from the rush of blood down south and the cloud of lavender and herbal smells that permeates Anoush’s skin, which is just as soft as Louie knew it’d be. Anoush whines into Louie’s mouth, and Louie squeezes his hip in warning. 

“Someone’ll hear,” he murmurs. “You know we’ll never live it down.”

Anoush goes still in his lap and stops kissing him for a moment, pressing his forehead to Louie’s and running a hand through Louie’s freshly washed, ungelled hair. “Sounds like more of a you problem than a we problem.”

Louie’s not strong enough to keep himself from caressing Anoush’s thighs when they’re right there for him to touch, especially whe he knows it makes Anoush kind of feral. His thumbs rub circles into Anoush’s inner thighs, gliding with the assistance of ghostly massage oil remnants. “Yeah, and what if I want it to be a we problem?” 

Anoush opens his eyes, backing up half an inch.

“Are we talking about it?” he asks, breathless voice foreshadowing his fading composure. “Right now?”

“Whenever,” Louie says with a shrug. Neither of them speaks for a moment, and they can hear Amanda arguing with Anthony downstairs over acceptable attire for going out to dinner.

“Okay,” Anoush sighs, settling back on Louie’s legs. “I’ve just been thinking, if we’re really doing this-”

“We've been really doing this for a minute now,” Louie says with a wolfish grin. Anoush rolls his eyes.

“I mean, if we’re labeling it, or just acknowledging it in the first place…there are things we should talk about. I don't want to get wrapped up in something where we’re not on the same page about what we want, where it’s going, future stuff...all of it.”

Louie breathes a little quicker, heart racing ahead of his brain. Just Anoush saying all of that tells him everything he needs to know. He's known, or hoped, for a while now that he wasn’t just imagining the depth of their feelings, that it wasn’t one-sided.

“Yeah, we can talk about anything you need to talk about,” he assures, sitting up straighter so he can bring Anoush close again. “But whatever you say isn’t gonna change my mind about you. I'm not goin’ nowhere ‘til you kick me to the curb. Or throw me off a building - whatever comes first.”

Anoush laughs, trying to keep it quiet, but Louie kisses his neck and it tickles.

“I made up my mind day one,” he murmurs in Anoush’s ear.

“I know,” Anoush admits. “Me too. We should still talk…” 

Louie pulls off Anoush’s shirt and keeps kissing his neck, unable to stay away for very long. Anoush catches a gasp from escaping when Louie nips the column of his throat.

“Maybe later.”

“Later,” Louie echoes.

Anoush's gaze turns toward the open balcony doors. Maybe if he hadn't opened those, he-

"Ohh," he sighs as quietly as he can when teeth dig into the meat of his neck, Louie having taken advantage of Anoush's head being turned to the side. "I don't plan on wearing a turtleneck on the boat tomorrow, Lou," Anoush reprimands him and pushes away from Louie yet again.

Louie looks smug as he runs his hands up Anoush's torso and through his chest hair. "How are you more annoying when you're wearing less clothes?" he muses aloud. "I can barely stand you half the time when you're in those fuckin' three piece suits."

"You love my suits," Anoush protests, teasing the hem of Louie's shirt between thumb and forefinger.

"I don't love the fifteen minutes it takes to get them offa you," Louie shakes his head.

Anoush grins, something small and a little shy, something Louie's still getting used to seeing on Anoush's face. Anoush dips down and kisses Louie again, pinning Louie to the bed by his biceps so he can't even think about doing anything uncouth without Anoush's express permission. Louie could easily overtake Anoush, but he won't. It usually turns into wrestling and half-hearted insults and it would simply be too much commotion with Lucille's nosy bat ears still on the property. So Louie lets Anoush kiss him slowly, lets Anoush tease him by rolling his hips at an agitating pace, lets Anoush drive him fucking crazy on this beautiful island that Louie would give up every opportunity to explore if it means he gets to look at and feel Anoush like this instead.

"Can you be quiet?" Anoush asks against Louie's jaw. Louie's dick twitches when he feels Anoush's fingertips slide beneath the waistband of his shorts.

"I dunno, depends-"

"I'm just gonna check the bathroom for it one last time and then we can go!" They both hear Daniel shout. Louie's eyes roll so far back in his head that it kind of hurts. This is the third time today that he's overheard Daniel freaking out over his missing puka shell necklace. He's not sure he's encountered a more ferocious bonerkill than the sound of his cousin's voice, but then Anoush's hand is on the base of his cock and Louie can't really think about anything at all.

"Can you be quiet?" Anoush repeats against the shell of Louie's ear, "It's a yes or no question, Louie. Just for a few minutes."

“Yeah.” Louie nods quickly, exhaling as slowly as he can. “Can you?”

 Anoush kisses a line from below Louie’s ear, across his jaw to his chin. “I wouldn't worry about it.”

He helps Louie pull his t-shirt over his head and finds his mouth once more for a sloppy kiss. His fingers drag up the length of Louie’s shaft, not committing to anything besides teasing for the moment. They hear people stomping up, down, back up the stairs.

“Whaddaya mean they're not coming?” Lucille exclaims downstairs, and they both snicker.

“I locked our door,” Louie whispers, his voice cracking a little when Anoush kisses his chest.

Anoush has been thinking a lot about this, about him and Louie unraveling each other slowly and completely. It sustained him for days and days in the stressful whirlwind leading up to the trip. Pulling down Louie’s shorts and boxers at once, he feels more relaxed than he did at the spa. When he kisses low on Louie’s stomach, just above where the head of his cock is resting, he knows it's a risk, knows how sensitive Louie is there. Louie lets out a shuddering sigh, not loud, but his chest is almost heaving now as Anoush mouths over his thighs like he doesn't have anything better to do. At home, Louie would tell him to cut it out, maybe pull his hair, guide him none too gently to where his mouth really belongs, which Anoush was more than happy with…but having Louie totally helpless in this way is even better..

Anoush makes his way down to Louie’s tan line at mid-thigh, then even further to kiss the slight pinkness above Louie’s knee where he forgot to reapply sunscreen earlier.  Anoush looks up at Louie from his spot between his legs, and Louie swallows and tenses his jaw, clearly itching to make a smart comment but dedicated to his agreement with Anoush.

Anoush’s eyes drop to Louie’s cock, where he can see a healthy bead of precum threatening to dribble down Louie’s foreskin. he looks at Louie, whose eyes haven’t left Anoush’s face for who knows how long, and finds himself chasing the clean, salty taste of Louie’s skin as he mouths his way back up Louie’s thigh.

God, what are we?

Anoush takes one of Louie’s balls into his mouth before he can dwell too long on his own internal monologue. Louie’s fingers curl clumsily into the fresh, white comforter as he tries to find an outlet for his urge to grab hold of Anoush’s hair. He knows how that would end - Anoush would immediately moan, then Louie would say something politely filthy and pull his hair harder, and they’d get sent home from the trip early by their boss. Instead, Louie watches helplessly as Anoush licks up his shaft and envelops the tip of his cock in his mouth. The engine of the van kicks on outside, and Louie can’t hide his sigh of relief.

Anoush digs his fingers into the meat of Louie's thigh, silently warning him--not yet. Whether he really thinks someone can still hear them or he just wants to make Louie suffer, Louie plays along for as long as he can. Anoush is both lazy and relentless, teasing his tongue over the thick, swollen head of Louie's cock, backing off and blowing air over the sensitive tip, wetly kissing his way up the underside…and car doors slam, and the hum of the engine fades. At the same time, Anoush takes Louie halfway down his throat.

“Fuuuck,” Louie groans, head snapping back against the pillow - his hips buck slightly from the shock, but Anoush is ready for it, backing off him for a moment. He grasps the base of Louie's cock, steady but not too firm. His other hand holds onto Louie’s thigh, keeping him in place with his leg bent slightly outward as he takes his length in his mouth again. Louie regains his composure enough to look down at Anoush, only to meet his pretty dark eyes through his lashes and see a drop of his spit slide down his exposed shaft.

“You're fuckin’ unreal,” Louie manages to say, and Anoush’s only response is to bob his head lower, take him deeper. He’ll never really get used to the slight ache in his jaw when he sucks Louie’s cock, but he certainly doesn't mind it. Louie's hand lands heavily on the back of Anoush's head, but he doesn't pull his hair. He doesn't try to take any control or set the pace. He's just reaching desperately, trying not to lose himself in the warmth and the drag of his tongue and the relief of finally having Anoush all to himself.

Anoush can't think too hard about the way his entire body tingles with Louie’s hand on him, with Louie panting and gasping out swears and his legs faintly trembling.

Louie momentarily considers stopping Anoush, pushing him off of his cock and teasing his spit-slick lower lip with his thumb so this can last a little longer. But it’s been days since Louie’s last orgasm and he wants Anoush so badly that he figures he can go twice if that’s what Anoush wants, if just for this evening. Louie’s getting older; he finds himself waking up with random pain in his back or legs or neck more often than not. But Anoush and his tight body and stupid curls and the way he sounds when Louie touches him in ways that no one else gets to has Louie’s libido firing on all cylinders as if he’s 20 again.

“Fuck, baby,” Louie groans and gently scratches at Anoush’s scalp, “You better be careful.”

Anoush hums and narrows his eyes at Louie, and Louie throws his head back again when he realizes Anoush has no intention of heeding his warning. Louie cums with a long, loud groan, abs tensing as he curls himself minutely toward Anoush’s head. Anoush takes most of Louie’s release in his mouth, then pulls off of his dick and lets the rest land on Louie’s stomach as he strokes him through his orgasm.

“Jesus fuckin’- fuck!” Louie shudders, happy to take advantage of the now-empty house. Anoush merely grins and kisses all around Louie’s groin and thighs once more. Louie caresses Anoush’s jaw. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Anoush this relaxed, this serene. Especially given that Anoush is most certainly hard as a rock in his little shorts.

“C’mere.” Louie feels almost drunk as he grabs Anoush and pulls him back on top of him properly. He doesn’t hesitate to kiss Anoush, having gotten over his aversion to tasting himself rather quickly once they started fooling around. Louie grips Anoush’s ass in both hands as if it’s going anywhere and exhales through his nose when Anoush breaks their kiss with a moan against the corner of Louie’s mouth. 

“Come on, you can be louder than that, baby. I know you can.”

“What if they come back right now?” Anoush whispers, voice hoarse and in need of a drink of water (or, preferably, white wine). “What if they forgot something?”

Louie snickers and sighs, adrenaline still coursing through him. “We'd hear ‘em comin’ up the driveway,” Louie reasons. Anoush nods against Louie’s forehead in surrender. Louie’s right. “Or they’d hear you cumming from the driveway. One of the two.”

“I'm not the reason my neighbors complained,” Anoush reminds him, kissing him gently before biting his bottom lip, just shy of hard enough to bleed.

“Still your fault, though,” Louie challenges. He slips both hands under the waist of Anoush’s shorts, grabbing at his bare ass, smirking when Anoush shamelessly arches into his touch and gasps sharply. “After you fuckin’ teased me in that god-awful stadium traffic all the way back to your fuckin’ place…I coulda killed you.”

“You almost did,” Anoush says, laughing and shivering as Louie tugs his shorts down under his ass. “It's kinda tough getting out of bed after that.”

Louie kneads and squeezes, daring to tease a middle finger between his cheeks just to get him squirming a little more. “That’s the first time I knew for sure how fuckin’ dirty you are, baby.”

Anoush whines from the back of his throat, and Louie’s fed up with him and all his restraint and self-denial. He reluctantly pushes Anoush off to the side to yank his shorts completely down his legs; Anoush comes back to him like a boomerang and stuffs a couple of extra pillows behind Louie for him to sit back on. They end up like this a lot, although Anoush loves nothing more than being pinned down by Louie’s mass. This is just the best position for Louie to touch Anoush however he wants to. Anoush kisses his neck when he leans to the side to grab lube from the nightstand drawer.

“How'd that get over here?” he asks, like he doesn’t already know. Louie shrugs.

“It mighta snuck over with me last night.”

“After I said all we were going to do was sleep?” Anoush is smiling against his skin.

“Sometimes you change your mind,” Louie defends. “I didn't try nothin’, did I?” he pops open the lube, and the cap accidentally spurts a copious amount into his hand - too much, really, but that was fine.

“Mhm,” Anoush hums. “Right. So your dick up against my leg when I woke up was an accident.”

“It was at first,” Louie admits, and Anoush’s neck flushes a deeper and more noticeable pink. Reaching behind Anoush, he pulls at the swell of his ass cheek and slips his other hand between, coating his rim with the excess lube.

“Oh shit…” Anoush shudders, wrapping an arm around Louie’s neck, kissing him as he bears back on his probing fingers. Louie’s erection hasn't even fully gone down, and he can already feel it returning. Nothing gets him going like the way Anoush’s body reacts under his hands.

“I think I didn't see what you wore to bed?” Louie says, voice low, almost a growl. “Think I didn't notice when I got your shorts off and you didn't even bother to put on underwear? You're so fuckin’ easy for me.”

“Fuck you,” Anoush manages to gasp as Louie’s finger breaches his hole, working open both tight rings of muscle without much regard for comfort or pain because he knows Anoush likes it all. Between them, Anoush's neglected cock is straining and dripping, smearing on Louie’s stomach. He's breathing loud, moaning with each movement of Louie’s finger inside him, rocking his hips weakly. Louie can tell it won't take much to finish him off. Once he presses another finger inside Anoush and gets the “Oh fuck, Louie” he was waiting for, he whispers fiercely in Anoush’s ear.

“Be good and I'll take you out on the balcony.”

If he were of sounder (or, to Louie, whinier) mind, Anoush would protest. He’d tell Louie it’s too risky, that even though they’re a quarter mile from the main road and none of the neighboring villas have a direct view of their balcony, it’s indecent and dangerous. If he weren’t stuffed full of Louie’s long, sturdy fingers. If he weren’t panting and whimpering at the feeling of Louie’s lips and teeth on his jaw. If he didn’t feel so safe with Louie, so taken care of in a way that would send the version of him who barely knew Louie and trained him at the dealership into shock.

“I will be,” Anoush sighs, then his entire body tenses and he makes an almost pained sound when Louie curls his fingers just right, in the spot that he immediately became intimately familiar with the first time Anoush trusted him enough to do this. 

“I know you will, baby,” Louie coos, fueling Anoush’s further spiral into brainlessness. “Otherwise you won’t get my cock. You want my cock, don’t you, cuore?”

Anoush has heard Louie call him that a few times, but always forgets about it by the time they’re done and never looks it up. It might be endearing, it might be dirty, but either way, Anoush feels like he’s on fire. Anoush nods wordlessly. As much as he enjoys the occasions where he takes control and leaves Louie dumbstruck and near speechless on the mattress, he certainly doesn’t mind being used as Louie’s sunkissed, oiled-up fuck toy right about now. Louie’s the only one who can help him relieve that last, lingering itch, that last little semblance of tension in his body that a massage and facial simply couldn’t take care of. Louie suddenly uses his other hand to wrap his fingers around Anoush’s shiny, leaking cock and Anoush stops writhing.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum if you do that,” Anoush rushes out. He’s not telling Louie to stop, just warning him. He wants Louie to make the decision for him, wants to cum when Louie decides that it’s okay.

“I know,” Louie growls against Anoush’s throat, “You’re gonna pop for me, huh? Just like that?”

Anoush whines again and nods, beginning to thrust into Louie’s fist and back against his fingers, which now fuck in and out of Anoush with purpose.

“God, you’re so desperate for it. Such a good fuckin’ slut, Anoush.”

He knows what he’s doing. He knows that’s it for Anoush. Anoush’s hips snap forward so harshly that Louie’s fingers slip out and Anoush cums in spurts over Louie’s chest and stomach, head tipped back as he moans wildly, noises tapering off into something that sounds vaguely like Louie’s name. Louie watches Anoush in awe, panting like he just felt his orgasm too.

His heart’s pounding because he doesn't understand how it gets better and hotter and more overwhelming every time they hook up. At first he figured the excitement of fucking Anoush stemmed from it being on the down-low, the weird feeling that they were doing something wrong that they couldn't talk about, but gradually Louie’s realized nobody, not even his mildly toxic and invasive and lapsed-Catholic family, would give a shit if they knew he and Anoush were together (if they really were together…he wanted to circle back to that someday, whenever they can stop making each other cum when they're alone together for more than a few minutes). The guilt doesn't come from anywhere but inside him, a part of him that he understands all too well but does his best not to dwell on.

Everything is bliss when he smooths his hand in circles on Anoush's back, partially supporting his weight on his shoulder. Anoush is still trying to catch his breath when Louie’s free hand finds his spent cock again, rubbing the tip with his thumb.

“Fuck!” Anoush’s legs tremble and his hips stutter without rhythm, and he grabs Louie’s biceps to keep himself somewhat upright as he involuntarily curls inward. Louie likes how his moans start to turn into sobs when he’s overstimulated, and each time he’s done this and asked if he should stop, Anoush refuses, practically demands more.so Louie strokes and teases him until he's boneless against Louie, shaking and crying out “I can't, fuck, I can't…” Only then does Louie give him a break. He rolls them to the other side of the bed, Anoush flat on the mattress and panting. Louie wants him to rest, but has no plan to do the same. He works his way down to Anoush’s stomach, cleaning him up with his tongue until he hears Anoush whine his name again.

“How you doin’, honey?” he murmurs, kissing a quick and light trail back to his mouth. Anoush pulls him down to kiss him harder, hands raking through Louie’s hair. He's a little surprised that Anoush isn't catatonic after everything. they're both tapping into rare wells of stamina, bolstered by the sense that something about this time was different.

“Good,” Anoush breathes. “Need you…”

“Already?”

It isn't that Louie isn't ready to go, or that he thinks Anoush can't handle it. he just doesn't want to rush anything, doesn't really want it to be over. but Anoush kisses him so harshly that an edge re-emerges--the impatient, bratty energy that delights Louie to no end.

“Fuck me.”

Louie laughs, rough and ragged, against Anoush’s throat, which only makes Anoush squirm more. “Remember that one time,” Louie murmurs, “like, the second time I spent the night. You tried to tell me you were 50/50?” 

Anoush props himself up on one elbow and grabs Louie by the back of the neck with the other hand. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Anoush asks. 

Louie’s grin widens. “Giving and receiving,” he clarifies, gaze darting between Anoush’s lips and chest and eyes.

Anoush blushes furiously and reaches for the last vestiges of snark in his brain. “I definitely just gave you something that made you cum,” Anoush reasons, but Louie snorts and shakes his head. He bites his lip and leans in to nip at Anoush’s earlobe.

“You'd let me spread your legs any day of the week, baby, I know you,” he whispers. “Any time, any place.” Anoush starts to feel lightheaded, licks his lips and tilts his head when he feels Louie kiss his neck again. “As long as I look at you the right way, or say something dirty in your ear. Huh?”

“Y-yeah,” Anoush doesn’t mean to stutter, but it happens anyway, and he wraps his legs around Louie’s waist when he feels Louie’s hand slide beneath the small of his back.

“Yeah?” Louie asks against his cheek. 

“Yes, daddy,” Anoush says breathlessly, and Louie has both of them up and off the bed in what feels like the blink of an eye.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought,” Louie murmurs as Anoush clings to him for dear life. Louie inhales deeply, taking in the faint smell of Anoush’s sweat still primarily masked by the perfumed scents of the spa. “Did you open these doors earlier just to fuck with me?”

Anoush would laugh at that if he weren’t so overwhelmed by the feeling of his oversensitive cock sandwiched between his and Louie’s stomachs. “I thought the breeze would be nice,” he weakly responds.

“God, it’s fuckin’ beautiful out here,” Louie muses as he steps out onto the balcony. He sets Anoush down but keeps an arm around him for stability that he knows Anoush needs right now. As something of a pillow princess, Anoush isn’t too accustomed to getting fucked standing up, except for the one or two or four times in the shower. Louie’s eyes rake up and down Anoush’s body again. Anoush looks smaller out here somehow. Shyer. Pinker. He keeps one hand cupped over his crotch as if his soft dick is news to Louie. Louie bends his knees and draws Anoush onto his toes to kiss him slowly, wetly.

“Turn around for me, lemme see you.”

Anoush does as he’s told and braces himself with both hands on the balcony railing, leaving his dick fully exposed to the elements. He shivers when he feels Louie’s hand teasing his inner thighs, nudging to spread them a little wider.

The view of Anoush posed like this against the backdrop of their incredible surroundings is utterly surreal for Louie. The setting sun is still warm, catching on the sheen of sweat that’s coated the small of his back, and his curls catch the gentle breeze. Louie drops kisses along the length of Anoush’s spine, ending at the nape of his neck, and notices the wobble in his arms.

“So goddamn gorgeous for me, caro mio,” he says softly. “This how you want me?”

Anoush turns to kiss him. “Any time, any place…like you said.”

Louie grabs him by the hair to kiss him rougher, making him moan, but quickly lets go to get in position again. He doesn't like to keep Anoush waiting once he gets demanding and bossy, and he was very clear about wanting to be fucked.

Louie's covered a lot of ground when it comes to sex, but he finds himself glancing around and below them to be sure they're truly alone--this feels bold and risky, even to him. Unfortunately, rather than this deterring him from railing Anoush out in the open, it makes his dick throb. He's liberal and fast with the lube, dropping the bottle on the ground, and goes right back to being handsy, grabbing Anoush’s ass hard, his cock rutting between his cheeks. 

“Come on,” Anoush whimpers, and Louie instantly gives him what he wants, unable to hold back any longer. Anoush's knees threaten to buckle as Louie drives his cock inside him, letting him have enough of his length at once to overwhelm him completely, holding him in place by his hips because he can, because Anoush is his. He's soft, he's so warm, he's so fucking tight, and he's Louie's, at least for now.

The groan Anoush lets out is involuntary, wordless, fractured and wrecked. Each of Louie's short thrusts prolongs and renews his broken noises. 

“Fuck, Anoush,” he spits through gritted teeth--he's sunk inside Anoush completely already and he can barely remember his own name. Anoush finds his voice long enough to beg like he isn't already stuffed with Louie’s thick cock.

“Please, ohh fuck, move, Louie…fuck me, it's so much, fuck me…”

His babbling dissolves into strained gasps and sobs once more as Louie fucks into him with real force. Louie can barely think, but he reaches around to feel that Anoush’s dick is already starting to stiffen up again.

“Like this?” he taunts, grabbing Anoush’s shoulder to compel him to arch his back, to push back onto Louie's cock himself. He wishes he could kiss Anoush through this, face him when he cums again, but he can't ask for too much when the man bent over for him taking his cock like he was made for it is so beautiful.

Anoush bounces on Louie’s cock just like Louie nonverbally asked him to, and Louie leans back and watches Anoush at work. Louie thinks it might be a little evil making Anoush do this when he just had one of the strongest orgasms Louie’s ever pulled out of him, but then Anoush looks over his shoulder and bats his ridiculously long eyelashes at Louie, mouth slightly agape. Louie shakes his head, bites the inside of his cheek, and delivers a sharp smack to the side of Anoush’s ass.

“Oh, fuck, daddy,” Anoush moans and finds himself unable to look back at Louie any longer, hanging his head between his arms still braced on the railing.

“That’s it, baby, take it,” Louie purrs, “Take as much of daddy’s cock as you want, there you go.” Louie finds himself transfixed as Anoush starts putting on more of a show, canting forward until Louie’s cock threatens to slip out of him, then bearing back to take the entire length in one movement and repeating. “You can’t get enough, can you?”

Anoush just shakes his head in response. Louie starts snapping his hips forward minutely again to meet Anoush every time he bounces back on it. 

Louie knew Anoush was a minx ever since they went to that stupid fucking Dodgers game together, but the rougher stuff is rather new. It happened by accident, really, with Anoush so far gone that Louie’s hand around the back of his neck pulled an unexpected “Please, daddy” out of him. Anoush immediately wanted to die of embarrassment and felt like his dick might actually invert inside of his body, but then Louie came not ten seconds later.

Louie grabs hold of Anoush’s shoulders with both hands and thrusts rhythmically, grinning when Anoush’s pants and whines turn into a long, slack-jawed moan that spikes in octave every time Louie’s pelvis meets Anoush’s ass. Louie lets go of Anoush’s left shoulder and grabs and pulls his hair instead.

“You know how fuckin’ gorgeous you look right now?” Louie asks, as if Anoush is in any state to properly answer.

“Louie, Louie, fuck, Louie,” Anoush whimpers, louder now than he was when Louie first brought him outside. Anoush braces his full weight on the railing and lets Louie pick up the slack again. A faraway part of Anoush’s brain is still scandalized that he let Louie rope him into this, but then Louie adjusts his angle and pulls out enough to grind the head of his cock directly against Anoush’s prostate. “Ahhhh-ah-ah-”

“Can’t cum yet, baby,” Louie whispers against Anoush’s shoulder blade as he folds himself over so his chest is nearly flush with Anoush’s back. He hooks an arm around Anoush’s torso and splays his hand against his lower belly, the other hand still tugging on Anoush’s rich curls. 

“Please,” Anoush begs, “Please, Louie, Louie, god…I’m so close…” he trails off and Louie feels Anoush’s body tense as he focuses on staving off his orgasm. Anoush's legs are barely functional. He thinks the climax that's building with each punching stroke against his prostate might actually kill him, but there are way worse ways to go than via debilitating orgasm with a partial ocean view at sunset. Whenever Louie bends him over like this, he can't believe how full he feels. With his body pressed to Anoush’s, his cock drags deep inside him like he can't bury himself deep enough.

Anoush always knows when Louie’s about to cum because Louie’s instinct is to draw himself in closer to Anoush, to have as much skin against skin as possible. Anoush is obsessed with the smallest details of the way they have sex, the way Louie never seems to be completely finished with touching him. He's always satisfied, but he’ll always take more if Anoush offers. Anoush wants to give Louie everything he has until there's nothing left of him.

He turns his head to try and kiss Louie, but they're both too far gone to do anything but pant into each other's mouths. Louie is still stunned that Anoush even allowed this to happen. He can't believe what a lucky, unworthy bastard he is to have Anoush all to himself.

Anoush presses his ass against Louie and whimpers “Cum inside me, daddy,” and Louie loses it instantly. His hips snap uncontrollably as he comes for the second time, moaning “fuuuuuck” loud enough for half the island to hear. He grabs Anoush tight, his hand presses sharply against Anoush's lower belly--

And Anoush doesn't know what happens next. He can't comprehend it. It must be the combination of the sudden push on his abdomen with the continued pressure on his prostate, and just maybe the warm sensation of Louie's perfect cock filling him with his cum, but he can't hold off his own climax anymore. it doesn't seem to matter to his body that Louie’s hand isn't anywhere near his dick.

As he cums again, his overtaxed release dripping weakly on the concrete, he hears the hoarse and wrecked wail that must be coming from him, but he doesn't recognize the sound. He does recognize Louie’s voice, rasping “No fuckin’ way…there's no fuckin’ way.” Anoush’s grip on the railing slips, his knees give out, but Louie’s still holding onto him so he doesn't go anywhere.

Louie's reeling, utterly exhausted, but Anoush needs taking care of and he always manages to find the energy to do that. He groans as he eases his cock out of Anoush, then turns him to pick him back up and carry him the few steps back inside to the rumpled bed.

“No way you just did that, honey,” he murmurs, setting Anoush down on his back again with great care. Anoush still can't speak; his head lolls back on the mattress, chest heaving. Louie crawls over him and kisses his exposed throat, where marks he sort of tried to avoid leaving earlier are making themselves known. “I can't fuckin’ believe you're real sometimes.”

Louie settles for giving Anoush a modicum of space and lies on his side next to him. Anoush’s stomach tenses when Louie puts his hand on it again, but when Louie goes to retract his hand, Anoush places his own over it and keeps it there. Louie breathes a sigh of relief and grins at Anoush.

“Thought i lost you there for a second,” he jokes, nosing at and kissing Anoush’s shoulder. Anoush takes a few steadying breaths. He trembles slightly under Louie’s touch. “Are you cold?”

“No,” Anoush answers softly, “I mean, a little, but no. Just- you… yeah.”

The puffs of Louie’s gentle laughter on Anoush’s neck and shoulder tickle, but Anoush can’t be bothered to react. “Jeez, I really did break you,” Louie remarks.

“Easy,” Anoush responds in an attempt to curb Louie’s smugness. It's an impossible feat and he knows it.

“Only ‘cause you kinda wanted to be broken, I think,” Louie qualifies.

Anoush doesn’t respond, just closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing. Louie lies with him in silence, but doesn’t take his eyes off of Anoush, his eyelashes, his nose, his pouty lips that are still slightly swollen, his clean-shaven jaw, his throat and collarbone that bear the marks of Louie’s desire. When Anoush’s eyes finally flutter open, he catches Louie staring. Louie laughs it off, but Anoush doesn't. He wishes more than anything that he had the energy to roll onto his side or even on top of Louie to kiss him again.

“You’re cute,” Anoush says simply, eyeing Louie as if he’s regarding him for the very first time in his life.

Louie snorts. “Yeah, I didn't think you let me do all that just ‘cause I'm funny.”

“You’re not that funny,” Anoush deadpans.

Louie sighs and rubs up and down Anoush’s chest and belly with Anoush’s hand still resting limply on top of his own. “Can I go get you a towel to clean up a little?” 

“Mm, no,” Anoush shakes his head. Louie’s fine with that. “Can you draw me a bath, though?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Louie murmurs against Anoush’s arm, “You want your wine? It’s not as cold now, but-“

“Oh fuck, I forgot about the wine. Yes. Yes, please.”

Louie starts the slow procession of getting up, but leans in to steal a few kisses from a sleepy, glowing Anoush. “And I'll cook you dinner while you soak.”

Anoush hums, content, as his senses slowly return to normal. “And then we can talk?”

Louie gets off the bed, but makes no effort to clothe himself yet. Anoush wishes he didn’t look like that. a lot of things would be a lot easier if Louie didn’t look like that, all broad and shameless and soft but toned in all the right places.

“Yeah, then we can talk,” Louie affirms. He gives Anoush’s body an embarrassingly thorough once-over, bites his lip, then retreats to the bathroom. “Be right back.”

Once he's alone in the bathroom, Louie has to lean on the counter for a minute. He was already tired from boogie boarding before he knew he’d be getting another intense workout, but despite his soreness he feels weirdly alert and clear-headed. He splashes water on his face and absently cleans himself off with a cloth while Anoush’s bath is filling up, and he probably used a little too much bubble bath because the suds start to grow over the ledge, but he doubts Anoush will care in his current state.

If they had more time before the rest of the LaRussos inevitably returned from dinner and shopping and whatever else Daniel and Lucille decided to subject everyone to, Louie would get into the nice deep bath with Anoush, clean him thoroughly and kiss the freckles on his back some more. Next vacation they go on, they'll go alone, and Louie will probably bring along a long list of everything he wants to do with, and to, Anoush.

He returns to Anoush’s side, lifts him one more time to bring him to the warm bath, then doubles back for the wine. He pours a heavy glass, then sets the bottle and glass within Anoush’s reach on the ledge.

“Thanks,” Anoush mutters, eyes closed as he sinks deep under the bubbles.

“Don't fall asleep,” Louie warns, “I dunno CPR.” 

Anoush finds that funnier than he likely would if he were more lucid, more guarded like he normally is around everyone but Louie. “So comforting,” he laughs, “as usual.” 

“You ever decide what you wanna eat?” Louie asks, and Anoush looks at him incredulously.

“When exactly would I have had time to think about that?”

“I dunno, sometime between blowin’ me and cumming all over me,” Louie says with a terrible grin. Anoush looks scandalized, like Louie’s words are news to him and his capacity for vulgarity is still a surprise after all this time, and he splashes him over the ledge.

“Get out. Ugh. I don't care, surprise me.”

Louie laughs and shakes his head. “Want me to come get you when it's ready?”

“Mm-mm. I'll come down.”

Louie leaves Anoush alone with his wine, throws on new shorts and a comfy workout tank top, and makes his way down to the kitchen. he’s half-worried that his family returned without either of them hearing, that they’d all be waiting for him with traumatized stares intervention-style on the giant sectional, but downstairs is still empty and quiet.

Once he gets the kitchen cleaned up a little he settles on making baked ziti and garlic bread--Anoush will take a while in the bath, and whatever's left over the rest of the family can heat up at some point. He makes quick work of the prep and mixes himself a martini to ease his nerves, which only started being a problem the second Anoush said “and then we can talk.”

He knows they need to talk, wants to talk just as badly as Anoush does, but the more he considers what he's meant to say the more his stomach crumples in on itself like a piece of paper that's been folded too many times. the sauce he's making smells great as always, but for once in his life he’s not very hungry because now he’s thinking that somehow he's been wrong about everything for weeks and months and he’s a fucking idiot. He’s rational enough to know that's not the case, not this time, but that doesn't make the nausea go away.

It doesn't help that he knows exactly what he wants to say, if he’s being honest, but being honest hasn't always worked out well for him.

By the time Anoush pads downstairs in his softest, oldest shirt and a pair of sweatpants that haunts Louie’s dreams because of how they hug his ass, the ziti has just gone in the oven and Louie's wiping the counter.

“How the fuck does tomato stain granite?” he muses, not realizing how close Anoush is until he's at his side, inspecting the stain. 

“That was there when we got here,” he replies, setting down his wine glass and slipping his arm around Louie’s waist. “The varnish is stripped in that spot.”

Louie welcomes the closeness like it's second nature, because it is now, and leans down to kiss him. This part, the casual kisses and touches outside of the bedroom, is still rather new for them, and Louie’s pulse picks up every time.

“Good bath?” he asks, and Anoush nods. 

“Perfect. Very needed.”

He smells really, really good again, like orange and mint this time. Louie kisses him, Anoush tugs on his chain to tease him and bring him closer, and somehow he ends up pressed against the clean counter by Louie.

“Hey,” Anoush protests, playfully shoving him off in contrast to his stern, determined expression zeroed in on Louie. “Talking.”

“I know, talking,” Louie nods before stealing one more kiss. “We can talk and do this at the same time.”

Sighing, Anoush slips out of his embrace and picks up both his and Louie's glasses, making his way over to the sectional. “Come on.”

Anoush sets Louie’s half-full martini glass down on the egregiously large coffee table in the middle of the living room, but keeps his wine glass in hand as he takes a seat in the corner spot of the couch. Louie leaves one cushion of space between them when he sits down - he leaves his drink on the table for now. Louie relaxes his arms over the back of the couch and turns his head to face Anoush. 

“What’s up?” Louie asks as if he doesn’t know pretty much exactly what they’re going to talk about. He's never been good at this. He's never been good at this because most people have never cared about him enough to do this with him, regardless of the outcome. People often don’t want to talk with Louie - they want to talk at him. He supposes he’s guilty of that here and there himself, but Anoush’s insistence on talking is as much reassuring as it is daunting.

Anoush looks at him blankly, worrying the corner of his bottom lip between his teeth in slight annoyance. “I told you. before we-“

“Before we fucked like rabbits,” Louie supplies the rest of the sentence with a sinister grin, and Anoush sighs into the rim of his glass before taking a sip.

“Yeah. That,” Anoush acquiesces. “I guess I'm just curious… what do you want?”

“What do you mean, what do I want? I want all of it,” Louie shrugs easily. too easily.

“Okay. And what does ‘all of it’ mean to you?” Anoush asks.

Louie picks up his martini glass, takes a sip, swishes it around in his mouth, then swallows. “You want a five paragraph essay or what?” Louie teases, but straightens up when he sees Anoush’s unwavering expression. “I want all of it. All the typical relationship stuff. The sex, the dating, the PDA, the plus-one shit. I want that with you.” 

Anoush can’t fight off a small smile, even as he tries to maintain a cool front in the face of Louie’s more flippant approach to the conversation. he had figured that was the page Louie was on, but he knows he had a right to be nervous when all (well, most) of their flirting and touching and sweet-talking has been behind closed doors (car doors included).

“And that’s not just Hawai’i talking?”

“No, that’s not just Hawai’i talking,” Louie answers, looking Anoush directly in the eye. Anoush draws in a big breath and matches Louie’s intense, crystalline eye contact. “I told you earlier. From day one. I mean it. The first time I kissed you…”

“Yeah?” Anoush speaks in his smallest, softest voice. 

Louie shakes his head. “There's nobody like you. And I know you wanna play bad cop right now, and I know you want this to be difficult like it is in the movies, but how I feel about you is so fuckin’ easy. Don’t get me wrong: it’s scary. You scare the shit out of me, Anoush.” 

Anoush is kept from tearing up only by the smell of homemade baked ziti, which makes his stomach rumble. 

“You scare me, too,” Anoush admits with a breathless laugh. “I just- it’s easy to say you want a relationship when you’re only picturing the good stuff, you know? It’s…a whole other thing when it gets difficult. and when you have to make big decisions.”

Louie reaches for his hand on the back of the couch and laces their fingers together. He nods in understanding. 

“ ‘Kay. Well. I wanna fight with you. I want to tell you you’re wrong so you can tell me I’m wrong for these 18 different reasons that you’ve printed on an alphabetized list. And then I want to make up with you and tell you I love you.” Anoush’s clammy hand squeezes Louie’s suddenly, instinctively, like Anoush is free falling and Louie is the only thing to hold onto. “And I wanna do that as many times as you’ll let me,” Louie finishes.

The thing is, Anoush has dreamed of this exact moment. Not just with Louie, but for as long as he can remember. He's tried so hard to accept and embrace isolation as a fact of life. He's an only child, so he figured at some point he would just get over the empty feeling that had followed him around for as long as he can remember. But even among a group of people who love him and care for him, he’d still notice the empty pangs.

For years, he'd sought out companionship in increasingly varied and desperate forms, lying to himself every time he sent an intro message to a beautiful woman, and every time he went home with them. At some point, he reasoned, he would find a girl, and they would tolerate each other enough to settle and finally make his parents happy with grandchildren and the whole nine yards. Still, he never could never quite give up the fantasy of the mythical man who would lay it all on the line for him, who would never be embarrassed to make his love known, whose feelings for Anoush ran so deep and fierce that Anoush would never be empty again.

And since spring, when the dealership had been dead quiet all day, when Anoush and Louie had first taken out their boredom and frustration on each other behind a locked office door, the emptiness was just gone.

He wants to tell Louie all of this, but apparently the comprehensive speech and verbal contract he finalized in the bath washed away with the bubbles. What comes out of his mouth instead is “You want to fight me forever?” 

Louie blinks, then starts laughing. “Yeah, basically.” He shuffles closer - a gap between them never lasts for long, Anoush has noticed. “We've had that part down for years, baby.”

Anoush laughs too, and the tear he's been holding back finally falls. Louie's right there to wipe it away. “Why didn't we do the rest years ago?” Anoush asks gently. “Why now?” he stretches out, draping his legs over Louie’s lap. What’s done is done, he's not going to torture himself or Louie over lost opportunities, but he's curious. 

Louie shrugs, running his hand up and down Anoush's leg. “Brain problems,” he says after a pause. “You and me, we both got fuckin’ brain problems.”

Anoush nods. “Clearly.”

“Didn't even know you were into dudes for the first year,” Louie says, and after a withering look from Anoush he adds, “Not officially.”

“Hm. yet you were constantly hitting on me,” Anoush remarks, giggling to himself when Louie blushes.

“if we're gonna start in on the accusations,” he says, “How ��bout Narek’s retirement party?”

Anoush gasps, smacking Louie’s arm. “You promised we’d never bring it up again!”

Louie returns the slap on Anoush’s leg, and when Anoush retaliates and starts raining down blows, Louie laughs and hauls him fully onto his lap and holds back his onslaught without much effort. They're both laughing now, Anoush exhilarated and breathless. Louie kisses his cheek, his forehead, his jaw, his lips.

“Bottom line,” he says, “I’m just fuckin’ tired of clocking out and goin’ home without you. It don't make any sense.” 

Anoush hums assent and kisses Louie again. He knows exactly what he means. When one of them spends the night--or a couple of nights--they fall into a domestic rhythm so easily. He's glad he doesn't need to be afraid of that anymore.

“I love you too,” Anoush murmurs between kisses, and he can feel Louie's giddy smile against his own. The windows are open, it's breezy in the living room and the sun is gone. It's just the two of them and a couple of frogs in the yard. Louie kisses Anoush slowly, squeezing his thigh.

“Hey,” he whispers. “After we eat, I think we should head back up…”

“You're delusional,” Anoush says, chuckling like the thought hadn't crossed his mind too--maybe they’ve both lost their minds--and as soon as he says it, there's a commotion from the foyer.

“It's not funny, Anthony!!” Sam shouts. “You know I'm allergic!”

“Why the hell would you come to Hawai’i if you're allergic to coconut?”

“Coconut FLAVORING!”

Sam storms into the main room, throwing herself down on the couch right next to Anoush and Louie, who have absolutely no time to change their position. Anoush is frozen on Louie’s lap, and all he can do is be thankful that he isn't straddling Louie and they both have clothes on.

“He's being a complete tool,” Sam gripes, folding her arms and fixing Louie with a stormy glare. “Tell him he's being a tool. He only listens to you.”

Anthony comes in, buried somewhere in his hoodie, and flips her off behind her back. “I smell food,” he says, opening the oven to look inside. “What the fuck? Ziti and no garlic bread?”

Neither teen is remotely fazed by seeing Anoush and Louie so close.

“Hey, get your head outta my fuckin’ oven unless you wanna sleep in there,” Louie calls over to the kitchen. He rubs his thumb back and forth over the small of Anoush’s back. Anoush remains frozen, firmly holding the belief that if he stays still, he’ll turn into a wax figure and not have to exist anymore. 

“Did you just threaten to kill me?” Anthony asks, bemused, as he closes the oven and opens the fridge.

“You could have ACTUALLY killed me!” Sam fumes, and Anoush has a very sobering thought as he hears the remaining two car doors slam outside.

Dating Louie means dating a LaRusso. It means dating Daniel’s cousin, dating the man who’s basically an uncle to Sam and Anthony. Dating someone with a family who already loves Anoush enough to drag him along on a family vacation.

“It was JUST. CHAPSTICK,” Anthony rebuts, still grinning, but Louie can see his bravado faltering just a tad. “I didn't know piña colada had coconut in it.”

Anoush snaps out of his trance. “You didn’t know that piña colada has coconut in it?”

 Louie sees a tiny smile appear on Sam's face for the first time since she walked in.

“Can we stop talking about piña colada?” Amanda whines from the foyer and closes the door behind herself and Daniel. She works on taking off her strappy sandals by the door. “It was the entire car ride, plus the last five minutes at the restaurant. I wanted to finish my seafood risotto, but my kids wanted to— oh. Um.”

She stops in her tracks when she sees Anoush and Louie on the sectional, but tries to stay as composed as possible when she notices that Sam and Anthony are completely unbothered by the display. She sighs and turns towards the kitchen.

“Louie, you still haven’t told him that he’s a tool,” Sam reminds him, flashing him her best set of puppy dog eyes. It worked when she was 8 and it still works at 18.

“Alright, Anthony, stop tormenting your sister. Just ‘cause you’re younger than her don’t mean I can’t call you out for being a dick,” Louie tells his scowling young cousin.

“Woah!” Daniel exclaims as he walks into the main room from the foyer. His eyes widen upon seeing Louie with Anoush in his lap. “Uh- woah at the- the. The dick thing. Not the- this is totally-“

“Yeah, alright,” Louie waves him off, then shamelessly rests that hand on Anoush’s leg in a spot mild enough for a PG movie but risky enough that someone might call HR if they were at work. “It ain't anything he and his friends don’t call each other when they play Fortnite together.” Anthony draws his eyebrows together and drops his jaw, scandalized. “Oh, and Daniel, your son looked me in the eye and asked me why the garlic bread wasn’t in the oven yet when the ziti’s only been in for 20 minutes.”

Daniel’s attention completely shifts focus and he shakes his head at Anthony. “Okay,” Daniel points at Louie, “I’ll let this one slide. Anthony, just apologize to Sam so we can all move on with our lives, please.”

“Are you TRYING to ruin my life?!” Anthony nearly shrieks at Louie.

“At the beach today, you said it’d be funny if I got stung to death by jellyfish,” Louie shrugs one shoulder, currently getting an A+ in taking the piss out of his family members. Anoush gets comfier in his lap, snuggling closer to Louie’s torso, and sips on his wine.

“Oh my god, I didn't say TO DEATH!!” Anthony yells, then devolves into a fit of giggles when he sees Louie’s straight face crack. Louie chuckles too, and even Sam joins in. Anoush smiles as his body shakes with Louie’s laughter.

“Alright, come on, I think we can let these two get back to their dinner we crashed,” Daniel announces. Louie makes a small noise of protest, but it’s Anoush who speaks up. 

“Oh, no, I'm sure there’s plenty for everyone if you guys are still hungry,” he reasons, then looks at Louie to confirm. Louie nods, but Anoush rolls his eyes when he catches the way Louie’s alternating staring quite intensely at his mouth. His one-track mind is something to be admired.

Sam accepts an awkward, mumbled apology from Anthony and lies horizontal on the couch to watch Tiktoks next to Louie and Anoush. Daniel and Lucille drag Anthony into the kitchen to make him prepare the garlic bread. Amanda meanders over as Louie and Anoush approach the end of their drinks.

“Okay, grenache blanc for Anoush,” she says without even having looked at the bottle, “And, Louie- dirty martini?” 

“Yeah, but we’re out of olives,” Louie laments.

Amanda pulls a face. “We've been here three days and you already ate all our olives?” Try as she might, Amanda still doesn’t have the knack for hiding her mild (and mostly playful) contempt for Louie.

“I like olives,” Louie shrugs.

Anoush lets Amanda take his now-empty wine glass. “Okay…” Amanda responds, then looks between the two of them. “And did you use your best judgment?” she directs the question at Louie, but Anoush almost chokes on nothing anyway.

Louie plays dumb. It's a very reliable defense mechanism. “I mean, I felt like shit after I ate half the jar in one sitting.” 

Amanda stares a hole through his forehead. Anoush looks back and forth between them, eyes narrowing.

“C’mon,” Louie says in a low conspiratorial voice, shifting and fidgeting under Anoush. “You think Anoush would do somethin’ that stupid?”

Amanda's mouth presses into a thin line, turning her glare onto Anoush. “He's with you, so I guess I don't know anymore.”

Louie snorts. “Fair enough, Mandy.”

Shaking her head, Amanda points two fingers right at Anoush in an “I’m watching” gesture before walking away. Sam glances up from her phone for a second before losing interest.

“What the fuck was that?” Anoush hisses in Louie’s ear, and Louie dismisses him with a wave of his hand.

“Don't worry ‘bout it. Aunt Lucille, get outta the oven! It needs another twenty at least.”

“You didn't cover the top of the damn dish!” Lucille yells back from the now-bustling kitchen. “You're gonna burn the cheese.”

Louie throws up his hands. “How the fuck is it gonna burn when we keep opening the oven every two minutes?!” 

Anoush exhales deeply and takes a long sip of his wine. This is the LaRusso experience he’s used to, and not even Amanda's wry disapproval can shake his newfound sense of calm in the midst of the chaos.

Daniel and Anthony get the garlic bread in with the ziti so everything is finished together, and despite just coming home from dinner, everyone has at least a few bites so they can grade Louie’s sauce (very good, even though Lucille thinks it needed more time to simmer). Daniel gets the fire pit going outside, and Sam and Amanda bicker over what movie to put on inside. Anoush gets banished to the backyard by Louie when he offers to help clean up, and ends up bonding with Lucille by the fire over their mutual love of true crime novels. Through the open doors, he sees Louie and Sam laughing on the sofa, then Louie getting hit in the face with a throw pillow by Anthony.

“He’s always been so good with them,” Lucille says out of the blue, startling Anoush. He should know by now nothing gets past her.

“He is,” he says with a smile.

“It's not too late, you know.” She eyes him over the rim of her wine glass.

Anoush is lost. “Sorry, too late for what?”

“Babies!” she replies, like it's so obvious and casual. “I mean, it's not like you two have biological clocks to contend with-”

“Heyyyyy, I have cake!!” Daniel, who’s coming back from inside and caught enough of his mom’s words to know he needs to intervene now, saves Anoush from having to reply. Anoush is incredibly grateful--he's been through a lot today, in the best way possible. Going down that road is a bridge too far, simply because if he thinks about it for longer than two seconds he'll probably disintegrate.

He doesn't get to talk to Louie again until after Amanda and Anthony doze off during the movie, and Daniel reminds them all what time they're supposed to leave for the boat. They go back upstairs, and Louie kisses Anoush as soon as the door is closed. Anoush welcomes Louie's big hands on his hips, but a sudden breeze sends a shiver up his spine.

“Oh my god, you forgot to close the doors,” Anoush complains, looking over toward the open balcony doors. 

“You’re the one who opened them,” Louie counters, murmuring against Anoush's temple.

“You’re the one who carried me through them back and forth like a ragdoll,” Anoush protests.

Louie pulls back to admire the pinched expression on Anoush’s face. “Not my fault you couldn’t walk back in by yourself.”

“Uh, no, it quite literally is your fault. Do you hear yourself when you talk or is it, like, elevator music in there?” Anoush asks.

Louie just snickers and bends down to kiss Anoush’s clothed shoulder. “Mm, elevator, that’s a good idea,” Louie whispers.

“What?”

“We should fool around in an elevator,” Louie clarifies and stands up straight. Anoush stares at him incredulously. 

“Just go close the doors, I'm freezing.” he turns toward the bed, away from Louie, but Louie stops Anoush with a hand around his wrist.

“Hey,” Louie says softly, cupping Anoush’s cheek when he faces him once more. “I love you.”

And it works on Anoush because of course it does, because he’s alone with Louie and Louie doesn’t have to choose him but he does anyway, because he knows Louie would move the earth for him if that’s what he wanted. Anoush kisses Louie again, something soft and quick that very nearly warms Anoush up completely, but not quite. 

“I love you,” Anoush echoes, “And I'll love you even more when you close the doors.”

Louie scoffs a laugh, and within a matter of seconds, Anoush is buried underneath the white covers of their king-sized bed. Louie crosses the room, grabs the edges of each door, and pauses to take in the last few moments of the nighttime breeze. He can faintly hear waves crash in the distance. The palm trees on the edge of the property sway gently. The cool breeze hits Louie's face and he can't help but smile.

He pushes the doors closed, turns the lock, and retreats to bed to be with his boyfriend, his lover, his Anoush.

[cptsdstudyblr]

Some tools I use to keep my work life organized

Paper planner - All of my daily tasks are on my paper planner. The one I use has a full page per day, which is a must for me with how busy I am.

Time blocking (digital calendar) - I put all of my recurring tasks as repeating events on my digital calendar. This way, I know approximately when I want to do them, how long they will take, how busy I am, etc. This also makes sure that I keep track of them, since recurring events are fairly foolproof. It's also very easy to move them around just by dragging and dropping. As a note, I do also include these tasks as daily tasks in my paper planner, so that I can see them all in one place.

Flagged emails & unread emails - I use flagged emails to indicate that I need to remember or reference something. I mark emails as unread to indicate that it's an urgent task I haven't addressed. My goal is to have 0 unread emails at the end of each day, but I may flag a lot of emails through the day for later. I even have a time set away each week to go through my flagged emails.

Outlook email rules - I receive and send hundreds of emails every day. I took a couple of hours once I got settled in my role to set up 20+ rules to automatically categorise emails so that it's easier for me to go through them. For example, I have a folder where auto-generated reports go. I can open that folder and go through emails only in that category, which makes it a lot easier to tackle things in cohesive chunks.

Notebook - I use my notebook for any meeting notes I take. While I do have at least a dozen meetings weekly, my biggest use for this is during my twice-weekly team meeting where we divide up and plan tasks. During this meeting, I write my tasks in a notebook, and then I later add them to my planner. This allows me to take my time to plan them out as they fit in my schedule, while having detailed notes elsewhere.

Spreadsheets - I have a computer science background, so I am able to create very powerful spreadsheets. I created for our team multiple comprehensive tracking spreadsheets, so that we can keep track of (for example) thousands of contracts with ease. It took a while to perfect each tracker, but it's well worth the effort.

"Housekeeping" to-do list - My team has created a to-do list of housekeeping items, such as updating templates, etc. This list is mostly for me due to my role, so I tackle these smaller, less-urgent items when I have some spare time.

[cha-melodius]

Oh my goodness, I've just seen your fic festival request post and am excited to sneak in to participate before it closes. I love your writing and your stories so very much!

My prompt suggestion is... firstprince in Edinburgh, Scotland... in particular, the Edinburgh pride parade (if I may be so oddly specific). AU welcome, canon welcome, makeouts welcome, ahem.

Thank you and good luck wrangling everyone's prompts!

(Firstly, I have to say I love your url and your profile pic! Secondly, this is heavier on the Pride and lighter on the Edinburgh as far as the details go, but I hope it delights. Inspired in part by a tweet shared on tumblr; rated M for dick jokes. Happy Bisexual Awareness Week!)

Something To Be Proud Of

(firstprince, 3.3k, M; read it below or on AO3) read all the fandom fest fics

Henry stares at the carbon copy of the email in his inbox and wills time to go backwards. Just a few minutes, that’s all he needs. Enough time to go back and keep autocorrect from transforming whatever he’d typed after ‘he’ in his pronouns after his name into… that.

Thank you so much for all your help. Together we can make this a truly exceptional Edinburgh Pride. Regards, Henry Fox (he/hung Sent from Outlook for iOS.

How had he not seen it before he hit send on an email going out to every volunteer on their mailing list? How had he not noticed?

Maybe no one else would notice either. No one looks at email signatures that closely, right?

~~~~~

Ok, he’s not delusional enough to think that no one noticed. He had, however, naively believed that everyone would recognise it for what it was and politely ignore his gaff. He gets away scot free for a few days, and then, at the end of an email sent by a volunteer that is mostly as expected, he sees:

Best, Alex (he/him) PS: not sure I did the pronouns right. Does ‘Pride’ over here include being proud of your big dick?

It’s a damned good thing that he wasn’t taking a sip of his tea at the time, or he might be wearing it instead. Once he’s finished choking on nothing and perhaps isn’t quite the colour of a tomato (oh, who is he kidding, of course he still is), Henry professionally answers Alex’s questions about the schedule for the day of the march. He pauses before the sign off, wondering if he should acknowledge the flub or pretend it never happened. In the end, he writes:

Regards, Henry (he/him) PS: Your pronouns look correct to me, but they are, of course, your choice.

He only checks the email about ten times before he sends it. Hopefully, that should be the end of it.

~~~~~

It’s not.

Apparently, Alex has more questions. Apparently the law firm he works for is one of this year’s sponsors and is interested in potentially running a free legal clinic associated with the festival. A noble endeavour, which Henry is only too happy to assist with. He makes a mental note to look into logistics with Kate, the event’s chair, and continues reading. Finding out that Alex is apparently mature enough to be a lawyer lulls him into a false sense of security, though. At the tail of the email, he finds:

PS: regardless of the size of your dick, I’m impressed by the balls it takes to not acknowledge the typo. Then again, maybe it wasn’t? PPS: I’m trying out new pronouns. How do you think (daddy/sir) would go over?

Henry does spit his tea all over his phone this time.

He doesn’t email Alex back right away, but that’s because he has to wait to hear back from Kate. It has nothing to do with the fact that the prospect of dragging this interaction out longer is both horrifying and vaguely thrilling. Henry has noticed that he uses Americanised spellings in his text, which seems to fit with his general demeanour. It piques Henry’s curiosity, even though the thought of actually having to face Alex in person still makes him flush automatically. Eventually he gets an email from Kate that includes additional questions for the firm, as well as telling him that he can pass it off to someone in sponsor coordination. He is, after all, just the volunteer coordinator for the march. This need not involve him.

He still emails Alex back with the questions. And:

PS: Although I support your creativity, I am concerned those pronouns may not be appreciated in a professional setting such as, for instance, a court of law. Just a thought. However, I do suspect they might be rather popular at Pride.

~~~~~

They keep on exchanging emails, even though Henry should have sent Alex’s contact info to sponsor coordination ages ago, even though it becomes clear that Alex is not the one who will be ultimately responsible for the clinic either. On every one, there is a postscript in which Alex makes some kind of joke about the size of Henry’s dick.

do you have to get all your pants specially made with extra room in the crotch

do you have to check your dick as luggage when you fly

have you ever used it as a tripod

is your dick in another time zone

do you call your dick Sir Richard because it’s that prominent

In turn, Henry responds as dryly as possible, which only seems to encourage him. Oddly for someone who is volunteering at the event, Alex seems to have a lot of questions about Pride itself, as though this is the first one he’s attending on any continent. They exchange emails almost right up to the day of the march itself, but if they do taper off, Henry is too busy to notice. Coordinating volunteers for something as big as Edinburgh Pride is intense, and the days tick by before he even knows it.

He’s standing off to the side at the volunteer check-in tent on the morning of the march, going over some last minute logistics with one of his staff, when a voice carries over the hubbub, deep and rich with an out-of-place American accent.

“Sorry, but I was hoping… is Henry here?”

Henry straightens up and turns toward the voice only to find perhaps the most stunning man he’s ever seen standing at the front table. Dark, curly hair, a sharp jaw, big brown eyes with the longest eyelashes Henry has ever seen— he’s actually impossibly beautiful. Unbelievable, really. As is the fact that he’s asking for Henry.

“Hello,” Henry says as he walks over to the front. “How can I help you?”

The man’s eyes snap over to him, and he very clearly looks Henry up and down and swears, “Jesus fuck,” under his breath. Then his eyes come back up to Henry’s face, and he swallows. “You’re not Scottish.”

Henry cocks an eyebrow at him. “Neither are you.”

“Yeah, sorry. I just— need to adjust what you sound like in my head,” he says nonsensically. “I’m Alex?”

Oh.

Oh, Christ.

Henry should have known, because how many other Americans could there be volunteering at Edinburgh Pride? That reality does nothing to help him cope with the situation presented before him, though, in which this is the man who’s been teasing him about the size of his dick for the last month.

“I, uh,” he says eloquently as he tries to pull himself together. There are far too many people standing around watching this exchange. “Hello. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Did your firm get everything sorted with the clinic?”

“Oh,” Alex says, blinking. “Yeah, thanks. Look, I’m sure you’re busy, but I have something for you?”

It kind of comes out as a question, and he’s scratching the back of his head uncertainly, so even though Henry has no idea what’s coming, he nods. Then Alex reaches into his pocket, fishes out something small and round, and places it on the table between them.

It’s a button. A pronoun button, not unlike the one Henry’s already wearing, but instead it reads: he/hung.

Henry’s eyes snap up to find Alex grinning at him with the kind of mischief that Henry honestly should have expected from him sparkling in his eye. “Wanted to make sure you were prepared,” he says with a little one-shouldered shrug. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”

Then he takes his volunteer t-shirt and saunters off—and Christ those jeans are ridiculously tight and doing everything for his arse—leaving Henry gawping after him. A moment later, one of his regular volunteers, Robin, bustles by, catches sight of the button, and lets out a sound that can only be described as a cackle.

“My god, it’s perfect,” they say. “Did he really make this for you?”

Henry can only sigh, dragging a hand over his face. “It appears so. Robin, can you do me a favour?”

“Make sure you’re working the same stations all day?” they surmise. Henry doesn’t need to look to imagine the knowing grin on their face.

Henry wants to say no. Just because Henry’s already managed to combine the affection engendered by their previous email conversations with Alex’s stunning good looks into a powerfully intoxicating cocktail of a crush—well, that’s on Henry and his poor decision-making.

Instead, he says: “Yes, exactly that.”

~~~~~ ~~~~~

Alex had only signed up to volunteer at Pride on a whim. He’s always complaining that he doesn’t know anyone in Edinburgh outside of his coworkers, and one such coworker—someone that he could safely call a friend—suggested that getting involved in the festival would be a good way to meet people. Alex had tried to explain that he wasn’t actually queer, but she’d just given him an odd look and told him that allies were welcome at Pride too. It had felt a little weird signing up despite her assurances, but also kind of good. He was finally going get out there and have a life beyond his job.

He certainly hadn’t expected to strike up a prolonged email exchange with the volunteer coordinator, Henry. He also doesn’t really know why he kept finding excuses to send him new messages, except for Henry’s responses to Alex’s stupid jokes made Alex imagine him rolling his eyes and trying not to laugh, which only egged Alex on further. It was fun. That’s all.

Nothing about any of this made him prepared to show up to the volunteer check-in tent  today and be plunged directly into a sexuality crisis. But that seems to be exactly what’s currently happening now that he’s been confronted by quite possibly the hottest man he’s ever seen. Alex doesn’t even get it because it’s not like he hasn’t been able to objectively appreciate attractive men before, and blond hair and blue eyes have historically never really done it for him. Even if they are combined with swooping cheekbones, and broad shoulders, and obscenely full, pink lips.

All he knows is that as much as this doesn’t make sense, it also suddenly does. Why he’d felt drawn to sign up in the first place. Why he spent the last month reading about the history of Pride in Edinburgh and around the world. Why he’d gone on a deep dive doing research about different sexualities, brushing it off as wanting to be informed before meeting new people.

Why he was so obsessed with Henry’s dick.

Jesus fuck.

He thinks he manages to hold a short conversation. Somehow he even gives Henry the custom button he brought as a joke, smiling the whole time like he’s not moment’s away from dropping to his knees. He flees the table safe in the knowledge that Henry will likely be too busy coordinating stuff all day and Alex probably won’t see him again. That confidence is shattered when, not even an hour later, Henry shows up at the station Alex is supposed to be working. He’s even wearing the joke button, under his regular pronoun button and next to a little rainbow flag pin. Alex is going to die.

“Oh hey,” Alex says in a reasonable facsimile of nonchalance. “Did you need me for something?”

“Not exactly,” Henry replies. “I’ll be working this station too.”

Yeah, Alex is definitely not going to make it through the day.

~~~~~

It actually turns out to be not as bad as he feared, despite how Henry’s volunteer t-shirt is probably a size too small (never mind that in the context of everyone else at Pride he looks downright conservative) and Alex keeps getting caught staring at his shoulders or his back or his waist. Henry keeps on giving him weird looks at the beginning, probably because he’s expecting Alex to be cracking crude jokes. Too bad Alex is way too wound up in his own head to think of anything at all.

They’re pretty busy all day, but they do get a chance to chat occasionally, mostly small talk stuff about jobs and how they both ended up in Edinburgh. Henry is there for grad school, apparently, and has been volunteering for Pride since he moved out from under his grandmother’s restrictive shadow. In turn, Alex tells him about applying for the law job on a whim, desperate to set himself apart from his parents, and how much he likes Edinburgh (despite the weather). As the day stretches on and the streets fill up, Alex feels himself relaxing into his skin again, undeniably enjoying the festivities as well as Henry’s company.

See, the other thing he never, ever expected is how good it feels to be here. All the people around him loudly comfortable in themselves, and the color and glitter and celebration— it’s amazing, but it’s not just that he’s watching other people be happy. There’s a kind of ecstatic joy that bubbles up inside him at the fact that he’s part of it, one that he feels down to his bones. A sense of belonging that he’s never really experienced before, and that, more than anything else, makes him more certain of his newfound revelation.

Straight people probably don’t feel like this at Pride.

At the end of the day, he’s helping pack up the main volunteer tent when he comes across a table full of pins depicting different pride flags. He dimly remembers seeing them when he’d checked in and thinking that none of them applied to him. Now, he stares down at them and bites his lower lip uncertainly.

“There’s a box for those under the table,” Henry tells him from across the tent, misinterpreting his hesitation.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Alex says, and Henry’s already turning back to whatever he’s doing when he manages to continue, “Hey, can I— um, can I take one of these?”

Henry stops, his brow creasing as he tips his head slightly. “Of course. That’s what they’re there for.”

“Right, thanks,” Alex says with a tight smile.

He puts his hand out, hesitates, then picks up one with pink, purple, and blue stripes. Stares down at it for another moment before he realizes he’s probably being weird and he’s pretty sure Henry is still watching him. He swallows hard, then pins it to his shirt next to his pronoun button.

No one jumps out to call him out for being an impostor. Henry offers him a careful smile, then turns back to his work like he knows Alex needs a moment to himself. He lets his fingers rub over the surface of the pin, feeling the little enamel ridges, and something settles under his skin, like an itch he hadn’t even been aware of until it was gone.

He feels almost normal by the time Henry walks up to him once they’re finished and everything is packed away in someone’s car.

“Thanks so much for your help today,” Henry says. 

“It was my pleasure,” Alex replies, and means it more than he can say. “I’m really glad I decided to sign up.”

“I realize you may very well be tired of my face at this point, but if you don’t already have plans, I was wondering if you’d like to go get a drink?”

Alex would like to make a joke about how it might be literally impossible to get tired of Henry’s face, but at this point he’d probably fuck up and confess his undying love for a guy he just met. “Sounds great,” he says instead, looking around at where a few of the other volunteers are lingering nearby. “Do y’all usually all go out together afterward?”

Henry coughs slightly and glances down at the ground for a few seconds as his cheeks turn faintly pink. “Well yes, a group of them usually do. But I was actually asking if you wanted to go out with me,” he says. “Just the two of us.”

“Oh,” Alex breathes as his stomach decides to do a backflip. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Spending all day volunteering with Henry was fun. Going on a date with Henry, being the sole focus of his attention, is intoxicating. Alex feels like he could sit here all night listening to Henry talk about his research on queer history, although that’s far from the only thing they talk about. As the night wears on and the pub slowly empties, Alex is buzzing with a few drinks and the euphoria of really clicking with someone, already wondering when would be too soon to ask Henry out again.

Henry shifts slightly so his legs press against Alex’s where they’re tangled together under the table—have been for several hours, actually. He’s playing with the stirrer in his empty glass, and a little teasing smirk sneaks onto his lips as he looks up at Alex.

“So you made me a custom pronoun button but forgot your own?”

“Ah, you know,” Alex replies with a shit-eating grin and a one-shouldered shrug, “thought it would be too distracting, what with how everyone would be hitting on me all day.”

Henry hums thoughtfully, biting back a wider smile. “If you wanted to avoid that, you probably should have chosen some looser trousers.”

“That’s fair. I suppose you had to go for the room in yours.” Alex pauses a beat. “You know, on account of the size of your dick.”

That makes Henry actually laugh and shake his head fondly. “I was waiting all day for that.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Alex says, chuckling along with him. It does feel like he owes Henry something of an explanation of why he was so weird all day. He looks down and licks his lips. “Can I confess something?”

“Of course,” Henry answers with a small, encouraging smile.

“A friend of mine suggested I volunteer for this because I wanted to meet people. Make new friends. But until today I actually thought I was… mostly straight?” Alex admits, trying not to wince as he stares fixedly into his empty glass. “Being part of this made me realize why I always felt a little like I wasn’t my whole self. So I was… kind of going through it a bit today.” He pauses, then adds, “Also you’re so ridiculously fucking hot that you kind of melted my brain.”

Henry laughs again, but it’s softer this time. Gentle. Alex kind of wants to sink into the sound. Henry’s cheeks are slightly pink as he extends a hand across the table, and Alex doesn’t hesitate before he slides his hand into Henry’s and links their fingers together.

“I’m glad to hear that, Alex,” Henry says. “I mean, the feeling like your whole self part. Not the brain melting part,” he adds, and Alex can’t help but laugh with him.

Henry doesn’t let go of his hand as they walk outside, and once they’re alone on the sidewalk he uses it to pull Alex close. He puts a hand on Alex’s hip and Alex has to tip his head up to look at him, and it’s a lot but he’s also pretty sure he’s never wanted anything more than to feel Henry’s lips pressed against his.

“I have a confession too,” Henry murmurs as he stares down into Alex’s eyes.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been dreaming of kissing you since the very first moment I saw you.”

Alex lets one corner of his mouth tug upwards. “What’s stopping you, baby?”

“Christ, Alex,” Henry breathes, looking momentarily overwhelmed, but then he’s pressing his lips to Alex’s, and Alex feels his blood sing. It’s brief and chaste and leaves him aching for more, but then Henry looks down at him with heavy lidded eyes and asks, “Given your recent personal revelations, would it be terribly forward of me to ask you back to my place?”

“Ask away, sweetheart,” Alex replies, then he reaches up to touch the side of the ridiculous he/hung button that Henry is still wearing for some reason. “I wanna find out how accurate this button is.”

(It doesn’t take long for him to find out that the answer is: extremely.)

[compo67]

Slowly, but Surely (Don't Call Me Shirley)

Hello, hello.

i am slowly, but surely, recharging my creative batteries. There's less pressure now, but with good things happening. A detailed account of what's been happening. All below the cut. TLDR at the end.

Let's start with the good.

I went to the Big Gay Market in Madison, WI for the weekend. It was marvelous. There were people of all kinds of genders, an affirming and friendly environment, and so many creatives. I felt like I was in community and it's been a long time since I've felt that way. I was sad when it ended. But I bought the most beautiful wreath to hang in my room. I'll snap a picture of it when I can.

I studied the entire month of June, whenever I had a spare moment and for dedicated study sessions.

I made a total of 300 flashcards, wrote 40 pages in my notebook, used 2 test prep books, 3 learning system books, a 100 page summary of competencies, and 2 apps. I answered 2800 practice questions on those apps. I practiced and practiced until I reached at least an 80% in each competency.

And what happened?

I PASSED.

I kicked that exam in the ass! When I saw "passed" on the screen, I nearly whooped in the testing center. I cried in my car as I relayed the news to my mom, who is also an HR professional. I could not believe it. I still can't. Cal Owens, SHRM-CP. It feels SO GOOD to have letters after my name.

I'm also still on that high of completing my HR Management certificate with "high honors" and then earning my SHRM certification right after it.

Then, at the end of May, right before my birthday, I sent in an application to the Arboretum nearby. They were looking for an HR Coordinator. And they weren't requiring at least 3 years experience or a BS in HR. After the radio silence for a month and a half, I gave up on them getting back to me. I sent a follow-up email, as instructed by my mentor, and still no reply. I figured I was set aside and I moved on to apply for more jobs.

Lo and behold, the Arb emailed last week and offered me a phone interview! I spoke with their Talent Acquisition specialist way past the 30 minute time slot, which I took as a good sign. Next step was to have a virtual meeting.

But guess what? They invited me for an in-person meeting instead! My interview was at 9 AM CST yesterday. it was LOVELY. i genuinely enjoyed speaking to the Sr HR Manager. We chatted for almost 90 minutes. It went by so fast. I felt like I had answers to all her questions, however, I wonder if I was direct and clear enough? I haven't interviewed since 2021, and before that since 2016. So I know I'm rusty, I hope my enthusiasm for the role got noticed.

I should know by early next week if they will move me to the third and final round--meeting the VP of HR. The Coordinator will be responsible for managing the VP of HR's schedule in Google. I just learned how to do scheduling in Outlook, I'm sure I can do it in Google.

Anyway! I can see myself working there. The pay meets the market for that kind of job around here, and the benefits are exceptional. And the view from the admin building? Beautiful. There's just a small lane to walk through from the parking lot to the building. I felt like I was in Jane Austen novel. *Dreamy sigh.*

Fingers crossed.

Okay, so let's get the not-so-good stuff over with.

Caregiving for my father continues to be a challenge. I am the only one of his 3 kids he 100% trusts and is close to. I don't get a lot of support from my sisters because A) he prefers me to handle things and B) they don't offer. I always have to ask, and even then, most of the time I end up doing the thing anyway. Sigh.

I tried a bunch of adaptive equipment things for my dad in June. I bought him an electric tea kettle that sits in a cradle and tips over to pour so you don't have to lift it. Well, it works okay for that, but he can't see how much he's filled the kettle. So that went back. I found a pen that "talks" to you. That's been a game changer. You get special labels with bumps on them, tap the pen to the label, and you can record a sound clip! so i attached them to every medication he has in the house. he's been using the pen! Now I just need to convince him to use his white cane.

Watching my dad go through losing his vision has been very difficult. He's a completely different man than the one I knew just 5 years ago. Little by little, things are changing and that change can get overwhelming. I did manage to find him a peer to peer phone program for folks with low vision. He gets a call every month to chat with a lady name Yvies from New Jersey and just talk about what it's like being low vision. I am so grateful to her. The organization will be creating a caregiver support group in the fall and I am on the waitlist.

So, yes. I've gotten overwhelmed at some points, impatient at others, but I show up. In the future, I want to know, that without a doubt, I was there for my father. I just need to figure out how to balance this and find ways to get help.

I continue to miss Henry and my grandma.

Sometime between this past Saturday and Sunday, I fell ill. Like, nauseated, dizzy, lightheaded. [Content Warning: The GI System Going Whack] Then Sunday, I could not retain food or water. I held out for Monday and Tuesday to see if I got better with a little imodium and zofran. Wednesday morning at 7:30 AM, I called my doctor and she said, "Get thee to the ER."

So, I went. My mother was with me. In miracles of all miracles, I only had to wait an hour to be seen in the ER. I was there from 8 AM to 12:30 PM and in that period of time, I got an ultrasound, labs, an IV with a bag of saline, pain meds, and reassurance that my gallbladder and liver were doing fine. And no one misgendered me. It was a good ER trip.

The ER doctor and my PCP have no idea what knocked me out for 5 days. Could have been a virus. Could have been a side effect of mounjaro. It'll be a mystery for the ages, I suppose...

Of course, it took a huge toll on my body. Today was the first day I felt almost normal again. No bloating, no cramping, no burping, and no intense pain in my abdomen. Yay! I am supposed to be eating "light," but dammit, I deserved pasta tonight and I'm not going to regret it!

I also, in my journey through illness, reached the Medicare donut hole. I have to spend $8,000 before my advantage plan will start paying for my meds again. I have to pay 25% of the cost of all drugs. Thank goodness I was able to get on a patient assistance program for my antidepressant, because I could not afford it otherwise. I've moved all my meds, except two, to be generics. I am always trying to cut the cost down as much as I can, whether it's through GoodRx, OptumRx, or Costco. I spend most of my SSDI money on healthcare, medication, and treatments. If we had free universal healthcare, I would have been able to save up all this money, dagnabit.

The difficult things have been... well... difficult. But they are outnumbered by the good things, which makes me smile.

I am excited to be excited about working again. I am doing my best to visualize myself in that role, going into *my* office and sitting at *my* desk. I see myself growing in that department and becoming a specialist in all things HR. This is what I did as I interviewed for the 24/7 Helpline and I got that job. I saw myself getting on a train to Chicago every day until they'd let me go remote. I saw myself as a city queer again. I felt the train to the city already underneath me. I get that feeling with this role. I feel like, if I get it, I will have a Mary Tyler Moore moment.

She's gonna make it after all!

Thank you, if you've red this far. Thank you if you send good vibes for this Arb job. Thank you for just being here. Hell, thank you for being you.

One of my uncles will be visiting us from Chile in early August. I am eager for him to arrive and spend time with us. I know my mom could really use his support and sense of humor right now.

So I will be driving them (and my father, if I can convince him to join us) all around Chicago and the burbs. I hope to gather some TCV ideas from the places we will go. It's exciting to think about.

I really want to take a small trip to Cedarburg, WI. Spend a night there in a bnb, and take in all the shops and restaurants. But my car's oil needs to be changed and my brakes too, so I will have to hold off on traveling for a while.

I would like to get back to work because it's work, but I would also like to get back to contributing to my 401k, saving, paying off my medical debt and car, traveling, and actually affording medication without (too much) sacrifice. Medicare, I was told, would be cheaper than private insurance. Well, I couldn't afford a supplement, so I got stuck with an Advantage Plan. And it's not all that bad (I've met my out of pocket max), but man, do they make it hard to succeed in the system and this is a system primarily designed for seniors??? Sigh.

Anyway!

There you have it. A detailed account of things that I have been up to or coping with or working on since mid-May.

Hockey is gone. Thank goodness the Oilers didn't win the cup. Pavs retired. Wedgie was traded. Delly was traded. Faksa and Tanev were traded. We kept Dutchy, but that was about it. With a burning passion of a thousand suns, I hate Dumba and DeSmith. They will never be my Stars.

Okay. So. Where does this leave me now?

Well, I am slowly getting back "into" my work as an author. I'm hoping I can read a book or two in the next two weeks. I am inspired by the creativity of others and now that I've passed my exam, I have more free time to read and plot things out in my head.

It also helps to you know... not be extremely dehydrated.

Holy smokes, it's late. And this is long.

TLDR: Lots of caregiving, looking for jobs, studying, and recharging has happened in my break from writing. I am focused on securing a job at the Arboretum. I passed my SHRM-CP exam. I had an ER visit this week, but feel much better now.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the care to read this. I appreciate y'all and the safe space y'all have made for me. I'm so glad I get to lean on this cozy, peaceful corner of fandom.

One last time--thank you.

Let's chat more.

-Cal

[jeffhirsch]

Santa Claus Fails To Call , January Trifecta Update & 2025 Outlook

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[nightscythe]

what I don’t get is why people don’t use their outlook calendars?? you are out of office for a day, put it in there? Fill up the spaces you are not free so you don’t get bothered??

I’m not emailing you for a 30 minute conversation. scheduling assistant exists for this reason

[lunarscribbles]

why are we making apps and websites so user unfriendly?

why to schedule an email in Outlook now do I have to go into menu after drop down menu after menu when it used to be a simple click on the send button? Why is YouTube removing the watch later playlist from the profile panel in the app? Why is Spotify hell on earth now?