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dontcare77ghj · 3 years

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Leisure Sickness

Natasha x reader x Tony x Steve

Leisure sickness is defined as a psychological condition in which people, read workaholics, can become ill when given time off.

Leisure sickness's symptoms can include headaches, nausea, insomnia, and vomiting.

These symptoms quickly became synonymous with Steve, Natasha, Y/N, and Tony whenever they went on vacation.

The four of you had decided that you'd had enough with the media and the general public for this season. It seemed as if everyone had an opinion on the team, and you were all sick of it.

So Steve had pitched the idea of the four of you going on vacation for a couple of weeks.

It had been a lot of back and forth before the four of you came to a decision that you were all happy with.

The four of you would take three weeks off from the world unless it was about to end and stay at a house on Tony's private island.

"This place is massive. I'm pretty sure I've been lost for the last hour." You said, entering the kitchen where Natasha and Steve were putting groceries away.

"You've been gone ten minutes, doll." Steve chuckled, stocking the fridge full of drinks.

"Are you sure? Because I'm pretty sure it's been an hour." You commented, taking a seat on the counter. "Are we sure time doesn't work differently here?"

"How much coffee have you had?" Natasha asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"I had two cups on the plane." You told her honestly.

"You mean the cups that were basically soup bowls?" Steve clarified.

"I drank whatever was served to me." You shrugged.

"We're going to talk about that later," Natasha said, pointing a finger at you. "But first, can you find Tony? We haven't seen him since we got here."

"Sure. I've explored a lot of this place. I should be able to find him." You shrugged, jumping off the counter.

"Alright, we'll see you in an hour," Steve said, receiving the middle finger from you.

To be fair, Steve might have been pretty spot on. To explore just the ground floor took you about twenty minutes, and there were still two floors, both with dozens of rooms each, to search.

"What's behind door number nineteen?" You mumbled, pulling open your nineteenth door, you'd been counting, to reveal another bathroom.

Except this one held your Tony. A Tony who wasn't looking so good.

"Tones?" You asked quietly, moving to kneel beside the empty bathtub Tony was occupying. "What's wrong, hon?"

"Just a bit of a headache," Tony mumbled.

"And you're in the bathtub because?"

"It's nice and cool," Tony told you, keeping his eyes closed.

"Okay, how about you stay here, and I'll get you something for your head?" You suggested, gently brushing hair off his forehead.

"Thank you," Tony mumbled, leaning his head back once more.

"Couldn't you find him?" Steve asked when you reentered the kitchen.

"No, I found him." You told him, beginning to look through the cupboards. "Hauled up in a bathtub with a raging headache. Did we pack any Tylenol?"

"Here," Natasha said, throwing it to you. "I thought he looked a little pale on the plane." She commented.

"He was fine before we got on the plane, though," Steve mentioned. "You think it's an extreme form of jetlag?"

"Could be. It could also be the fact that Tony's not looked after himself at all the past week." You said. "He's been working himself to the bone. His body probably doesn't understand what's going on."

"So we should expect him to feel worse." Natasha deduced. "I'll make something to settle his stomach." She nodded to herself.

"And I'll deliver this." You said, shaking the pills.

"I'll come with you. I imagine the bathtub's not that comfortable, and Tony might not want to walk to the bedroom." Steve said, moving to follow you.

"Has death finally come for me?" Tony asked when the two of you made your way back to him.

"Not yet, Tones." You told him, kneeling in the same place as before.

"And not for a long time," Steve added, bending beside you.

"Ugh, I really thought it was him that time." Tony sighed before cracking his eyes open. "Did you bring the good stuff?"

"I did." You nodded, dosing out two of the tablets and handing them to him. "Give me a second, and I'll get you some water." You said, rising to stand, but Tony took the two dry. "That's disgusting."

"Water's for bitches." Tony grunted before closing his eyes again.

"Come on, Tony, let's get you to bed," Steve said to him.

"Too much work." Tony denied before Steve picked him up. "Woah! Give a man a little warning." Tony grumbled as Steve chuckled quietly.

"Asking's for bitches." You teased, walking in front of the two and opening doors.

"Get some rest, Tony," Steve said, putting onto the bed and pulling the covers over him.

"I'll shut my eyes for a few minutes, and I'll be fine," Tony mumbled, rolling over onto his side.

It didn't even take Tony another minute before he was fast asleep.

The next time the four of you decided to go on vacation, you'd decided to go a bit more touristy.

The four of you were in London for two weeks and would be spending your days visiting every popular tourist attraction. It was your second day in London, the first dedicated to sleeping off the jetlag, and you would soon be leaving the house.

At least you would be if you could settle your stomach.

Your stomach had been churning all night, and no matter what, you couldn't stop it. You'd managed to crawl into the bathroom and not wake anyone, but now you were stuck on the floor.

"Sweetheart? Y/N?" You could hear your name being called. "Y/N, where are you?"

The bathroom door opened, but you couldn't lift your head from its position.

"Found her," Natasha called before walking over to you. "You look like shit, med," Natasha said, placing a hand on your back.

"Nice, real nice." You groaned, lifting your head slightly. "Just give me a minute to get up and get dressed, and we can get going."

"The only place you're going is back to bed," Natasha told you as Steve and Tony entered the bathroom.

"Doll, are you okay?" Steve questioned you.

"I'm fine. I just need help getting up. And maybe getting dressed." You told him.

"Y/N, you are sick," Natasha said firmly.

"Nu-uh, I haven't thrown up yet." You denied.

"You don't look too far off from it, babe," Tony informed you. "How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. It was still dark when I came in." You grunted before dry heaving, but nothing would come up.

"Okay, Steve, would you please get some ginger ale?" Natasha asked, pulling your hair off your face. "Y/N, when was the last time you ate?"

"Not sure."

"Okay, add some saltines to that order too, Steve," Natasha told him.

"Do you honestly not remember the last time you ate?" Tony asked, coming to sit next to Natasha.

"I was working on that paperwork for Nick until the minute we left." You mumbled. "Forgot to eat."

"And that's most likely why you're feeling like crap now." Natasha hummed. "Do you think you'll be okay if we get you back to bed?"

"Just leave me here to perish." You groaned.

"No can do, you're stuck with us," Tony said as he helped Natasha pull you to your feet.

"Sorry I ruined vacation." You whimpered as you were laid in bed.

"You didn't ruin anything, med," Natasha promised, brushing hair from your forehead. "Not at all."

"We still have time before we have to go home." Tony soothed your guilty conscience. "There's plenty of time to do all the touristy bullshit your little heart desires."

"Yay." You moaned, curling into a ball.

It was a long time before the four of you were able to go on another vacation.

Missions had begun to become back to back and would last weeks, Tony was forced to travel for SI, and Fury seemed to have an unhealthy attachment to long meetings.

It was after Natasha had been on a mission for two months, Tony had been in Japan for one month, and you and Steve had endured countless hours in the hands of Fury that Steve declared you all needed a vacation.

Steve had literally googled relaxing vacations before deciding upon Brittany, France.

Though Steve had argued with Fury, for what felt like days, Steve was only able to barter a week off for the four of you.

"Tony, why do you have more bags than me?" You asked as Steve attempted to play Tetris with your luggage.

"I like to have options, dear," Tony said, pulling his sunglasses on. "Never know when one of those parasites are going to spot me."

"Don't call reporters parasites." Steve chided.

"Are we ready to go yet?" Natasha asked, pulling on a jacket despite it being a warm day. "The plane is going to leave soon."

"Just one more bag, and we can get going," Steve told her, picking up a small suitcase.

"Can I once again point out how ridiculous that is? I own the plane. It should wait for me." Tony scoffed, climbing into the car with Natasha right behind him.

The four of you faced no more problems until halfway through the flight. Natasha had jumped from her seat, startling the three of you from your half-asleep states, and bolted into the plane's bathroom.

It was seconds before the sounds of retching filled the plane.

"Tash?" Steve asked as the three of you stood up.

"I'm good." Natasha choked out. "Get away from the door, Steven."

"How'd she know it was only me?" Steve grumbled, walking back over to you and Tony.

"Spy, Steven!"

Natasha stayed in the bathroom for another seven minutes exactly. When she exited, her skin was flushed, she was covered in a thick layer of sweat, and she was shivering violently.

"FRI give me Nat's temperature," Tony demanded as you rushed to pull Natasha to a chair.

"101.3, boss," FRIDAY informed you all.

"Shit, Nat," Steve swore. "How long have you been running a fever?"

"Not running a fever." Natasha denied, lounging back in the chair and pulling her jacket closer.

"101.3 is a fever, Tash." You said, pulling her jacket off. "We might have to get you to a hospital."

"How long until we land, FRI?"

"Three hours, boss."

"We're going to have to bring her temperature down ourselves," Steve said, grabbing a towel and dumping his iced water on it.

By the time the plane landed, the three of you had successfully managed to bring Natasha's temperature down.

The four of you emerged from the plane, Natasha cradled in Steve's arms.

"That was probably the most stressful start to a vacation," Tony commented as you all entered a waiting car. "Let's get you to a hospital, hey, Nat?"

The four of you stayed away from vacations for a long time after that incident. Not because you were all slightly traumatized but because life seemed to pick up its pace once more.

It had been a year and a half since Natasha had a raging fever, and now the four of you were on yet another getaway.

Except for this time, it was for new reasons.

The four of you had had a commitment ceremony just two days ago, the Asgardian equivalent of a polyamorous wedding.

It had been a long time coming and a lot of planning, but it was worth it. And it had meant everything to you all.

Now the four of you were on your honeymoon in Tony's rebuilt Malibu home.

"Do you think we'd get in trouble if we moved here?" Natasha asked, pulling her sunglasses down.

"From who? We're all adults. Who would we get in trouble with?" Tony asked her.

"Fury. The government. The news. The world." You listed off.

"At the end of the day, how much do they really matter?" Tony shrugged, pulling you onto his lap.

"You would avoid Nick?" Natasha asked, quirking a brow.

"The pirate doesn't scare me." Tony shook his head as you and Natasha grinned. "Don't tell him I said that."

Before either of you could respond, the sound of footsteps coming closer caused you all to look up.

Steve was staggering over to the poolside, looking very much worse for wear.

"Jesus, Stevie, how many laps did you do?" Natasha asked as Steve stole her water and gulped it down.

"One." Steve gasped. "I felt like I was going to pass out, so I quit."

"Jesus Christ, sit down, Steve." You ordered, standing and moving over to the blonde. "You are really pale." You tsked, holding his head in your hands.

"That's the Irish in him." Tony joked, now standing behind you with Natasha at his side.

"When was the last time you slept?" You asked, running your finger over the prominent dark circles.

"The wedding night." Steve sighed. "I haven't been able to sleep since."

"You're exhausted, Steve." Natasha pointed out. "You can't run on willpower alone."

"I know that, but I physically can't make myself sleep," Steve told her. "I don't know what it is, but I can't."

"Maybe it's because you're trying to force yourself to sleep instead of allowing yourself to." Tony reasoned.

"Why did you get all philosophical?" Steve asked him.

"Always have been. Let's get you to bed, Cap." Tony said, helping Steve to his feet. With a bit of maneuvering, the three of you were able to move the bulky super soldier to your large bed and put him under the covers.

"Stay, please," Steve mumbled, already half asleep.

"Always, Stevie." You said as the three of you crawled in beside your Steve.

Vacations could always be stressful, but it seemed for the four of you it was always amplified. Especially when someone always managed to get sick.

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greenbriar-j · 3 years

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Muscle Memory, full wip, unedited 4.7k, scroll at ur own risk; tagging some people who showed previous interest @halleiswriting @chazzawrites @pe-ersona @druidx and also @pens-swords-stuff this is what I’ve been up to lately

Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church bustles with activity. It’s peculiar, for it being a weekday. More peculiar still that the bustling is being done by young men and women who could very well be engaging in… more satisfying summer indulgences.

The Youth Group’s power couple sweeps in an hour late, ever put together even when, by all rights, they ought to be melting right out of their fancy outfits. Cheers rise from the crowd when they appear, each splitting off in their own directions to their own stations.

Y Nhi beelines for the painters, flicking her sleek ponytail to make sure it’s out of the way. The girls hand her a brush while detailing what’s left to be done. Vinny bustles for the sound technicians - who, really, are already done for the day, but are staying for the social factor.

Two things to note about St. Joseph’s power couple:

Y Nhi isn’t sure she believes in God very much anymore.

They are not a couple, but it’s easier to let everyone think so than to correct it.

“Jude,” Mary says (everyone calls her Jude because she and Vinny made a big deal of it years ago), “Are you sure you can’t help out during the week?”

Y Nhi shrugs. She’s not busy or anything, but it feels wrong to shepherd children into a religion she’s falling out of - even if Vacation Bible School had been one of her favorite summer memories for her entire life. That’s where she met Vinny, after all.

Vinny, laughing with the guys at the sound booth. To be more accurate, Vinny himself is only smirking, but that’s as close to a laugh as he gets around here. Stupid smirk. Stupid boy.

“I have work. Unfortunately,” Y Nhi mutters, dragging her brush across a cardboard cutout. “Vinny’s taking the week off, so I’m picking up his slack.”

Mary grins widely at that. “I swear it’s like you’re married.”

For whatever reason, Y Nhi’s heart clenches at that. Picturing herself and Vinny in wedding attire on the altar sickens her, but putting a faceless someone in her place makes her feel worse. But it’s not like she likes him. She’s sworn to herself that she’d become a cat lady in her old age - her army has already begun with a fluffy black kitten. It’s not looking too good for her future; Toothless likes Vinny more than her. She’s already failed as a parent.

Belatedly, Y Nhi realizes she’s supposed to be engaging in a conversation, not thinking about Vinny and their co-parenting of a cat. If it can be called that.

“Don’t hold your breath. The wedding is a long way off,” she says tightly. Like. Never. Never is a long, long way off.

“I wouldn’t be too sure.”

This time, Y Nhi lets the comment slide. She paints while singing under her breath, as she always does. A long time ago, she had no qualms about belting it out, but time has weathered away her volume, reducing it to only this. No one’s noticed the change or found it strange.

The conversation turns to something - anything - else. Degrees, internships, other boys who don’t dress in all black and aren’t named Vincent Truong. Y Nhi listens, but doesn’t contribute.

By the time the call goes out for a lunch break, Y Nhi is finishing three tasks at once. One of the other girls brings her a burger, slathered with ketchup and mayo and tomatoes. Y Nhi thanks her and continues wrapping one of the white pillars in cardboard paper to simulate a palm tree.

Not long after, someone nudges her. Eyes flickering upward, she’s met with the bored eyes of her very best friend. “Bite.”

She doesn’t, not yet.

Vinny wiggles the burger he’s holding in front of her mouth. “Only half a slice of cheese. No tomatoes. Freshest patty of the batch. Eat.”

She still doesn’t take the bait, even though he’s tailored this burger to her weirdly specific tastes.

Vinny sighs. “Jude. No one’s watching you. I promise all they can see is my back.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” It’s true she had a complex about eating in public for a while, for reasons she’s never told anyone including him. “Just not hungry.”

“Not very Gucci of you to lie in the house of God.”

“Not very Gucci of you to breathe.”

“Jude! The fuck, man.” But he’s grinning. Not the half-assed grin he gives everyone else, but an honest, mirthful grin reserved for Toothless and Y Nhi only (usually Toothless. Damn cat).“Just eat this, okay? I’ll eat the other one.” His whole demeanor softens as he picks up the burger she had ignored - the one that is surely cold by now.

She is hungry. After all, the reason they were late is because Vinny had to coax her to every step of getting ready this morning. He even applied her eyeliner with the even strokes of a practiced hand - so practiced that even Y Nhi admits it looks like her own work. If she had a choice, she would waste away in bed for the day, but Vinny has never been much of a fan of that plan.

According to her own plan, Y Nhi had been wasting away since before yesterday’s dinner. Famished might be a better word to describe her present state.

But today is one of those days that she feels guilty cementing the married couple narrative any more than it needs to be. They’re not getting any younger, Vinny and Y Nhi, and just because she’s sworn off marriage doesn’t mean he has. How’s he supposed to get a nice girlfriend if she keeps hanging around?

Objectively, it’s a stupid reason to risk passing out in a church of all places, but something about him just makes her stupid. Always has.

The longer she ignores his peace offering, the twitcher he gets. He finishes his own burger in ten massive bites. When Y Nhi still doesn’t eat hers, he eats that whole thing too. “We’re leaving early. Say an hour? Think about what you want to eat.”

With that, he’s gone. Y Nhi is not hyper aware of his presence as it moves through the open space. She does not miss having him next to her. Not even a little.

Y Nhi writes, appetite??? in her journal when she gets home. It’s the third time something of this nature has appeared on its list which isn’t titled - but if it was it would be something like “Things About Vinny T. that Don’t Make Sense.”

Even after inhaling two burgers, he took her out for pho and Thai tea, and he ate so slow that his noodles expanded in the broth. Still, he finished a medium bowl with relative ease, and Y Nhi was content after she’d finished a small.

How does someone who eats like that look like that? It has to be some sort of stupid freaky metabolism. Genetic polymorphism, she thinks, then adds that she might be incorrectly using the term she’d heard in class about two semesters ago.

She writes freeloading on the list. It’s not technically true, but he spends enough time at her place to make it feel like it. Right this minute, he’s setting up the living room to sleep in, awaiting her delivery of the overnight bag he always leaves stocked in her apartment for emergencies.

That goes on the list too. Definition of ‘emergency.’

According to recent months, an alarming amount of things fit under this category of Vinny’s mind. It might be nearing time to stage an intervention, but who’s Y Nhi to tell him to relax when she’s the one bordering on anxiety attacks all the time? Only god knows how many times he’s clutched her shaking hands until they stopped.

Y Nhi closes the journal. Snaps the band over the cover. Shoves it under her pillow. Vinny wouldn’t dare read it to begin with, but for some reason, she doesn’t even want him to know of its existence.

Quickly divesting herself of the impeccable outfit she’d worn for the day, she slips easily into one of Vinny’s large, large shirts and the shorts she affectionately calls game day shorts. Ever since high school, she’s worn them for events that require equal amounts of comfort and courage - or just for comfort, to be honest.

“Hey, loser,” she greets Vinny, emerging from her room. He’s got her guitar in hand, and is humming some tune that she recognizes but can’t place. “Your stuff is on my bed. Have you seen Toothless?”

He nods, and keeps playing. It’s in experience, being stared at with such intense eyes while trying not to stare at the other party’s stupid pretty hands playing her guitar. Fuck him, honestly, she thinks angrily.

Leaving him there, she pours each of them a glass of water in the kitchen. A shadow looms on top of the fridge, and she jumps. “Toothless, baby. Please stop napping on the fridge.”

Toothless is not napping. He stands up, shakes his tiny body and hops to the counter, then to the floor, twining around Y Nhi’s feet before scuttling off.

Vinny is singing now. It’s a new song, she supposes, and it sounds like a love song.

Slowly, Y Nhi moves around the kitchen, making as little noise as possible while doing absolutely nothing. She just wants to listen to Vinny and his new love song without him watching her reaction.

Once she gets past the lyrics about gentle touches and midnight escapades, she realizes something. Re-entering the living room, she deposits his water on the table. “Is that my melody? Why would you steal it?”

The guitar is placed awkwardly on the floor, the neck of it leaning on the couch. “Oh, is that where it’s from? Thought it was familiar,” he says with mild disinterest. “Well, I wasn’t that attached to it anyway.”

“Are you saying it sucks?” Y Nhi settles on the floor on the other side of the table, pulling her knees into her chest. Glancing through her lashes, Y Nhi watches Vinny’s expressions.

“I’m saying I’m not taking your work, you brat.” Then he hesitates. “I mean. Can I, just for one person?”

“What the fuck.”

Vinny twitches, finally. “I… Wrote the song for someone… So I’d like to sing it for her, just once.”

Something vile rises in her throat, and she wishes Toothless would notice her distress. Hugging the cat might make her feel a little better about the fact that Vinny’s written a song about a girl using her melody - and it’s not about herself and for some odd reason, that bothers her.

“Can- Can I hear it?” Y Nhi asks in a tiny voice. It’s easier than No, you cannot take my song to sing to some other girl who will take you away from me.

“Haven’t you been hearing it?”

“Vincent.” Because that’s easier than You colossal idiot, what shit are you pulling after two years?

“Jude-”

She stands suddenly, fleeing to her room. Shutting the door, locking it, she tries to breathe. Of all people, Vinny should be the last person to push her to this reaction. She doesn’t know what to think.

Vinny knows.

Vinny knows where her hard limits are. Technically, he hasn’t passed them. But he’s pretty damn close.

Y Nhi slips into the shower, leaving it on the hottest setting to boil the emotions out.

For the next two days, Y Nhi doesn’t emerge from her room. Her phone dies, and she lets it. Her body self-destructs in hunger and dehydration from crying, and she lets it. She stays in bed for most of it. Whether Vinny continues to sleep on the other side of the wall for those nights, she doesn’t know. Nor care.

It’s punishment for believing she might be ready to give love another chance.

The third day, a letter slips under her door.

She almost flushes it down the toilet without reading it. Everything is in position to do so, paper fluttering in unsteady hands above the toilet bowl. But she wants to know. What can Vinny possibly say for himself?

Jude. I wrote the song for you. I didn’t mean to steal your tune - honest to god, I didn’t. But when I found out, I thought it was fitting that we’d worked on it together. (“Together”)

Jude, the song is up to your interpretation, but it’s yours. I wrote it from my core, and it’s yours. Charge your fucking phone and check the lyrics I sent you.

Take a shower, and call me when you’re ready. You have a few days’ worth of takeout in the fridge. Please take care of your health; I know you’re not right now. I mean it in the best way.

It cuts off there. Unceremonious and blunt, and so very him. She hates it very much.

Y Nhi charges her phone while she showers. Working quickly because she’s so unsteady on her feet, she does the bare minimum before stumbling into the kitchen for food.

While she nibbles on the stir fried noodles he left, she pens her own note.

Vinny,

I will not read the lyrics. I don’t want to know, and you don’t have to pretend it’s about me.

Your joke took two years to reach completion. Congratulations. I hope I was amusing and that my downfall wall be the stunning conclusion you wanted.

She tapes it on her front door so he’ll see it the next time he comes over. Soon, probably.

Momentarily, she wonders if she’s being rash. Is it so impossible to think that he could find romantic attraction to her?

Then she remembers. Y Nhi is not built to be loved, if her history is anything to go by. Even if she’s wrong, even if Vinny loves her for real, she will resist. Losing him this way is better than the alternative: watching him dissolve to some monstrosity while loving her.

Nothing changes after that. Apart from Vinny’s absence from her apartment, they interact in exactly the same way.

Vinny says something borderline rude.

Y Nhi retorts with something blatantly rude.

They laugh about it and move along.

There are no gentle touches to avoid because Vinny rarely touched her to begin with - despite the way he slings his arm around everyone else, he wasn’t like that with her. No arm around her shoulder, no hugs, not even extended contact with her hair.

Y Nhi pretends not to notice when he goes through a full dinner with an arm draped over the back of his friend Justin’s chair. He leans on it, adding the tiniest space between himself and Y Nhi. He still passes her the condiments and spices she likes before she asks for them. He takes her home at the end of it.

This should be enough. Up until now, it always had been. These tiny acts were his long distance hugs. It had always been enough, but now it isn’t, and Y Nhi doesn’t know what to do.

Isn’t this what you wanted? For him to get a life away from you?

“How’s that girl?” She asks on the way home, just because the silence is killing her and perhaps because she’s a masochist. “The one you wrote the song for?”

Vinny looks at her for a brief moment, something like grief in his eyes. It’s a confusing expression. “She hasn’t really talked to me since.”

Y Nhi tries not to sit straighter at this revelation. “Oh, really? Hm. That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Something about the word is profoundly heartbroken. She can almost feel the emotions hurtling off him in waves, but he doesn’t lash out at her. All it does is enclose each passenger of the car in a separate bubble. This is the closest they’ve been in a long time, but Y Nhi has never felt so isolated.

Her throat constricts, and her hands start to shake. “Do you… Know why?”

Vinny thinks for a moment, tapping his fingers on the wheel. “I think she doesn’t believe me. But I don’t really think it’s me, I think she thinks that love is meant for everyone except herself. She’s pretty bent on self-destruction now, as far as I can tell - No, don’t say anything yet.”

Every girl Vinny’s talked to in the last week pops up in her mind. Which of them seems most self-destructive? If she can’t keep herself by his side, he should at least have someone who can care for him. She could talk to them, probably, if she knew who it was.

“I… She thinks this is sudden, but I’ve been in love with her since I was fifteen. Or something. Like it kind of just happened over time, and I thought she knew.”

Fifteen means Vinny’s been futilely in love with someone else while she fell for the guy who ended up cheating on her.

They were happy in high school. It was college that broke them. Distance. The communications became less frequent in an inverse relationship to Y Nhi’s alcohol intake. Her grades suffered, and she convinced herself that she was too stupid for higher education. On his birthday, she drove for hours to his dorm to surprise him, only to find him making out with another girl. Sober.

Not that any level of inebriation could excuse him, but perhaps it would’ve hurt a little less.

Vinny isn’t done. “I fucking cut fruit for her every time we hung out. I did her dishes sometimes. I don’t know, I- I thought I did everything right. My mom thought I was doing everything right.”

“You tell your mom about your love life?”

Y Nhi doesn’t. Her parents don’t care enough to know anything about it beyond that she let go of a future doctor and that she’ll never find another because she’s past her prime. That’s what it feels like, anyway.

She’s literally twenty four. She has time.

“Not really. But they’ve met.” Vinny parks the car in front of her apartment, but he makes no move to get out or to let Y Nhi get out. “Jude, listen to me.”

“I’m listening,” she says. Training her eyes on her kitchen window, she thinks about the dishes she hasn’t done yet, the fruit she hasn’t cut yet, and how she hates thinking about it because it reminds her Vinny is fading.

Human adaptability is a remarkable thing. One more week, and this new normalcy will cement itself.

“The girl I love is you. Okay? I’ve walked around the topic for years, and I understand if you’re still not ready for it. But I know you’re getting the wrong idea in that head of yours. It’s you, and it’s always been you, and I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it if you let me. I’ll also bow out forever if that’s what you need from me. But I need you to talk to me. I-”

Holy shit, is he about to cry? With wild eyes, she glances at him. If she’s made him cry, he’ll return the favor five-fold. No, she backtracks. That’s not Vinny. That’s the behavior of her second ex, the one that reduced her to a stiff puppet of a girl.

“Come back to me,” he says in a small, strangled voice. “I don’t even care if you break me in the process, but please come back to me. You can do whatever you want, as long as you do it by my side.”

For the longest moment, they say nothing. Then Y Nhi opens the car door. “Can you cut my strawberries for me? They taste better when you cut them.”

Vinny washes her dishes and her strawberries and quarters the already small fruit for her. He deposits the snacks in front of her and watches her eat - slowly, since they’ve just come back from dinner, after all.

“So it’s me?”

“Always has been.”

“And you never said anything.”

“I did. You ignored it on purpose.”

“No, I’m just a stupid hoe.”

“You’re not stupid. Or a hoe.”

“You’re always calling me stupid.”

“Not like that, stupid.”

“You’re going to have to undo a lot of damage if we date.”

“I know. I’ve been working on it already, didn’t you notice?”

“Yeah, but it’s gonna get worse if we date.”

“Have you considered therapy?”

“Vinny, I’ll be a pariah.”

“A happy one, maybe.” Hesitantly, he reaches for one of her hands. Halfway, he flips the palm up and waits for her to complete the gesture on her own. “You don’t have to decide right away. It’s just a thought.”

She puts her hand in his a little too eagerly, then pulls back a little too harshly. It feels like touching the flame of a candle.

A defeated look momentarily crosses Vinny’s eyes, but Y Nhi barely has the time to look at it before she steels her nerves and takes hold of his hand again. The coldness of his rings grounds her somehow. “We need a list,” Y Nhi says, “of things. First, you’re going to Google touch starvation.”

Her best friend jerks in a little victorious motion, jamming his knee unceremoniously on the table leg as he does. “Fuck, that hurt.”

“What was that about?”

“I wasn’t sure if you were actually touch starved or if you didn’t like men touching you.”

“And you didn’t ask?” Y Nhi is incredulous.

“How am I supposed to ask? ‘Jude, when I touch you, does it remind you of your sleazy ex boyfriends?’ You’d say no. Like a liar. Or so I thought.” He pauses. “Anyway, this means I can hug you now, right? 24/7.”

“If you ease into it.”

“And you’ll stop wearing those gigantic shirts that literally drown you.”

“...No. What?”

“Okay, never mind, nothing. What else? What other boundaries do we have?”

Of all questions she’s been asked today, this one is probably the most confusing. Her previous relationships are no help; she hasn’t exactly had the best exposure to “healthy relationships.” She’s aware that the bare minimum counts as decadence for her, so the question has her a little frozen.

After watching her face flicker through whatever emotions it’s displaying, Vinny rubs a thumb over her knuckles. “How about this: I have a specific thing I want your help with, and when things come up, we can talk about it.”

Y Nhi nods, though they both know she won’t talk about shit. But perhaps watching Vinny sort out whatever issue he needs sorted will give her inspiration on how to approach this. “Can we-?” She starts and stops abruptly.

Vinny blinks, then feeds her a strawberry slice. “Go ahead.” It’s a tactful move. Putting food in her mouth means she has to chew, meaning she has a few more seconds to gather herself and her thoughts, or at the very least, the desire to continue speaking.

“Can we not label this?” She finishes. “Whatever is between us.”

To her surprise, Vinny nods and acts like she hasn’t asked the bitchiest question of the night. “Sure.” You can do whatever you want, he’d said, as long as you do it by my side.

“And… Get rid of Jude.”

“What?”

“Jude. You remember why I picked that name?”

“Because of some fictional fairy queen that had the same name? You thought she was a conniving boss ass bitch and-”

“Shut up. Saint Jude. Patron saint of?”

Technically speaking, he hasn’t been wrong about the fairy queen bit. Unlike the suckers who fell for Cardan Greenbriar, Y Nhi’s wimpy ass was all in for Jude Duarte, mortal queen of the fae. And it was easier to admit that than to admit the truth that was dawning on Vinny’s face in 3… 2...

“Hopeless causes,” Vinny answers easily. Then his expression sobers. “Oh.”

Y Nhi nods. “But the me with you isn’t a hopeless cause. I don’t want her to be, anyway.”

There’s a lot that goes unsaid, but she’s certain Vinny hears it. Logically, she can’t keep relying on whatever instinct says, He’ll understand because he’s Vinny, but up to this point, it should work out okay.

Gently, he says, “Y Nhi,” reacquainting himself with the syllables of her given name. “Y Nhi.”

“Yes, Vinny?” She says just as gently.

He lowers his voice to a husky whisper, “You’ve never been a hopeless cause. You were a cause for hope.”

Vinny’s request is this: that Y Nhi teach him to be soft again.

The request makes her question if she and Vinny exist in the same dimension because who the hell convinced him he wasn’t soft? Hardened, prickly souls don’t master winged eyeliner for the sake of their loved ones. They don’t volunteer extra hours at Vacation Bible School while working graveyard shifts at the hospital. Don’t do the dishes because as much as they hate them, their roommate hates them more.

Vinny is soft, and Y Nhi is out for blood. “I need names, Vincent. And addresses if you have them.”

“My ex,” he says.

An awkward sound emerges from Y Nhi’s throat.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “What? I dated around. Didn’t think I should be hung up on you, but nothing ever went as planned. Anyway, my one ex did a really good job making me become someone I wasn’t. I didn’t like the person she made me, but it was kind of too late to turn around.”

Again, Y Nhi is confused. The narrative is promising, though, so she lets him continue in hopes that it’ll clear something up.

“If you don’t know me, how would you describe me?”

“Vinny.” She doesn’t have an answer, she just doesn’t want to say it. It’s not all good, and they just came back from an awkward fight. Was it a fight?

They’ve slipped back into their normal existence so easily. Nothing has changed, but at the same time, everything has.

“Just- The rings and the black and the tattoos. You’d think I drove a motorcycle or something, right?”

“You drive a Lexus. It’s the same in terms of your fuck boy vibes.”

“Y Nhi!”

“BMW would’ve sealed the deal. How many Hennessys do you drink a night, again?”

A pout settles on his face. She likes this version of him. “I see you get my point. I look like a baddie.”

“Yeah. Bad at life.”

“I swear to god.”

“Don’t do that, that’s a sin. Don’t use the lord’s name in vain and all.”

“Anyway. You of all people know I am soft, actually. She didn’t like that. And so I gained a second personality and-”

It’s rude, the way Y Nhi interrupts, but Vinny doesn’t seem to mind at all. “So if you’re always soft, what’s left for me to help you with?”

“You’ll see,” he says. “Actually. No, I’m going to tell you. I get embarrassed about my relationships. So if it ever looks like I’m pushing you away… I’m just really fucking embarrassed, at least for this first stage. Do what you will with that.”

- bonus/epilogue -

They return home for Y Nhi’s mom’s birthday. They’ve always rode home together, since they are neighbors no matter where they are. No one finds it odd that they hold hands more than before, that Y Nhi is still averse to touching everyone but him.

They appear at social events hanging on each other’s arms. Commentary about their status as a “married couple” breeze over their heads, but they never confirm nor deny anything. In public, they remain aloof to each other. They show tenderness in only the smallest of gestures.

In private, they are as they ever were. Vinny still does her eyeliner on her bad days, but now she cuddles him on the couch on his bad days. Between the two of them, there are a lot of bad days, days when they almost threw in the towel.

But they didn’t. Instead, they’ve introduced all manner of pet names (Vinny’s favorites to use are love, darling, and lately, em. Y Nhi’s favorites are Vinny and anh). They write songs to each other, for each other, with each other. Every morning, they make the choice to keep loving each other the way they have since they were fifteen - and while they joke that they wasted so much time, it was a necessary time for them to spend apart to learn how to exist together and how to choose each other even when it’s the harder choice than letting go.

Even I get lonely too

It’s not hard

Every question’s got an answer

And mine is you

Where you go then I will follow

All my life

You’re the name that I will whisper to the night

#musclememory.wip #it turned out differently than planned #but I hope you enjoy it!

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vventure · 4 years

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Pairing: Ennoshita Chikara x American!reader

Genre: Fluff

Plot: Rain? Not ideal, but Chikara won’t let it ruin a perfect opportunity.

HaikyuuWriters’ Monthly Prompt Event - Prompt: Summer

Word Count: 2020

Warnings: None

All characters are aged to 20+

A/N: Me? Writing fluff? More likely than you think djfkd My family has been going to the lake every summer for about 15 years now, so I wanted to share a little bit of that while also including Ennoshita and his Capricorn stellium. From my research, those with Capricorn stelliums in their natal charts like to plan in advance, and the best way forward is through. Hope you enjoy! I tried to make it enjoyable for those who aren’t American as well <3

Dappled light sparkled over white knuckles as the small convertible wound its way around sharp bends under your direction. Your begrudging passenger, Ennoshita, held your hand as though his digits were a snapping turtle that’d finally caught its prey. He was no coward, but the bottomless ravines caging the road coupled with the seasoned driving of a person unafraid of kinks in the path of the vehicle set his teeth on edge.

“You don’t trust my driving?” You queried, peeking over to discover his normally shiftless face uncharacteristically tense behind his dark sunglasses.

You’d rented the car when your flight landed in America and Ennoshita insisted he would drive the entire way to the lakeside cabin in the mountains. Having never driven while placed on the left side of the car he did remarkably well; it was a treat to observe his handsome profile as warm air blustered through his short locks.

The confidence he’d possessed then evaporated the moment the road urged him to maneuver around a curve, prompting your boyfriend to pull over and admit he needed his designated passenger to take over, explaining that since you’d grown up driving ‘this way’ you should be the one to do it.

You understood his hesitation. When you’d moved to Japan for university, the only transportation you felt comfortable using was the train, the bus, or your own two feet. These modes took you far, but Ennoshita took you farther by offering to drive when you were too intimidated to even learn.

In this moment, the regret rolling off of him in waves was palpable even in the open air of the compact car.

“I trust you, I do,” he spoke feebly. “It’s just that...are you sure you’re okay with driving? It’s been years since you’ve done this.”

“I’m sure, baby,” came your response laced with finality. You lifted his hand to your lips, skimming them delicately over the smooth skin of his knuckles as you approached another twist in the road.

“Pay attention!” He cried, his rock-solid composure slipping as his free hand clapped over his eyes; the car continued to glide smoothly along the asphalt.

“I am,” you intoned against his hand before smiling. “Relax! You never get this worked up.”

“Don’t like when plans change,” he mumbled, a pout creasing his visage.

“What?”

“I just don’t like when things don’t go the way I planned.”

“I know,” you said with an inaudible sigh. “Don’t stress, just go with the flow.”

“Easier said than done,” came his garbled response that you chose to ignore. This was just the way that your boyfriend was: he was happiest when things worked out exactly in the manner he had planned.

“We’re almost there, smooth sailing now.”

You could see him visibly relax from the corner of your eye as the road straightened out ahead, the turn onto the graveled drive leading to the lake house approaching quickly. The view that each person navigating the narrow road gained when pulling into the driveway of the wood-clad cabin made the rattling of brains over potholes and oversized crushed rocks worthwhile.

Pine trees so tall they could tickle the sky framed the expanse of the crystalline lake with powder white clouds embedded in pristine cerulean reflected along its surface, inviting any passerby to dip their toes into the chill water.

Hopping out of the convertible, you were eager to grab the groceries and assist Ennoshita inside when the lake captured your attention. This happened every time your family visited your go-to location for summer vacation.

There was something about the lake that made it your solace. Not so much the lake, but the memories shared here, like kayaking through hidden alcoves at dawn, swimming out as far as possible until your brain begged you to go back lest you be captured by a non-existent lake monster, and burning marshmallows over a fire that blazed too hot for too short a time as mosquitos buzzed away from your bug-sprayed skin.

The lake acted as a looking glass for you, sending snippets of the past through your mind as you leaned against the front of the car.

“[Y/n]?” Ennoshita prodded, his arms laden with plastic bags. “I’ve got everything, are you coming?”

“Oh!” you responded, snapping from your reverie with a small smile. “Let me help you.”

His mind was almost always consumed with plans. Planning for becoming a physical therapist from the beginning of high school. Planning the perfect way to ask if you’d like to see a movie with him after he met you in a general education class at university. Planning out what you both were looking for in a shared apartment and how to make it the best location for your careers. Planning how to make your relationship permanent.

He hated the saying “Change is inevitable,” and throughout life he’d worked to ensure that no matter what happened he stuck to his guns and completed the task at hand, so why did this sudden alteration of his image for the day feel different?

Dread had settled in Ennoshita’s spine, the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing stock-straight as he peered out over the tumultuous lake from the enclosed porch of the cabin.

The day had risen beautifully with the sun beaming along the peaked waves as boats skipped across the water. He was overjoyed to wake up to your beautiful face glowing in the morning light. Although the itinerary for the day seemed run-of-the-mill--preparing barbecue chicken and then enjoying a bonfire once it was dusk--there was something special that he wanted to spring on you that demanded perfection from the atmosphere.

The atmosphere was a fickle entity to work with, and his optimism surrounding the day was lashed down by pouring rain. It hammered against the once tranquil water and afforded the lake an ominous appearance, almost as if a monster was preparing for the perfect moment to show its grisled face. Dark thoughts were a hallmark of his mind on its descent to self-doubt, though he rarely stood at this precipice due to thorough plotting.

There was no way that he could explain this to you without revealing his hidden agenda. How was a chicken barbecue and bonfire supposed to be a special occasion? You’d tell him to move the dinner plans to tomorrow and order pizza in, problem easily solved.

“Storms roll in fast,” you explained, your voice rising in volume with every step you took towards him. These were the first real words you’d spoken to him that weren’t whispered affections across the valley between your pillows in the dark. Translating for each set of parents had been all-consuming, but rewarding, leaving no time for conversations between lovers.

“I have to start the coals,” he said, placing his warm hand between your shoulder blades. “Where can I find an umbrella?”

“Let’s just order--”

“No, it’s okay,” he said, kissing you on the cheek. “The chicken won’t be good tomorrow anyway.”

“There’s a big yellow umbrella in the coat rack just inside the doorway,” you explained. “Let me at least help you.”

“No, stay in here so you can translate, it won’t take me that long to get this cooked up.”

Ennoshita quickly snatched the bag of marinated chicken from the fridge and the cheery yellow umbrella and made his way down to the grill to find your father standing over it, the coals smoking as they heated.

“You didn’t have to do that, sir,” he called in english to the man standing dangerously close to such high heat. “I was just coming down. Why don’t you go inside, I don’t want you to get sick.”

It was thoughtful of him to assist and save Ennoshita the time it would take to get everything set up. Now, all he had to do was dump the coals and start grilling. Rain sizzled along the white-cast charcoal nuggets as they cascaded into the belly of the grill before he put the grate over top. Water was already accumulating along the slotted metal as it sat waiting for food to be placed upon it. This wouldn’t work, the downpour might affect his ability to cook everything thoroughly.

So Ennoshita sacrificed his comfort for the fate of dinner.

‘Not ideal,’ was the understatement of the year as Ennoshita stood in a cloth hoodie with rain soaking him all the way through. He steadfastly held the yellow umbrella over the hot grill as the marinated chicken cooked and took on flavor as though it were another sunny day at the lake.

No matter what, this was going to happen. He wouldn’t let rain ruin this evening.

It was fine if he was soaked, he could change quickly and meet everyone for dinner before the chicken was too cold. The best way around any obstacle is through.

The sound of the rain was so consuming that he hadn’t realized you were approaching until the rain was no longer sluicing off his face, a warm hand now firmly against his back. Looking up, he spotted a black umbrella now hovering over him to protect him from the elements. And to his left, there you were in your hoodie, your palm against his abdomen, and your eyes full of concerned love.

“What’re you doing out here?” He asked before turning to examine the food.

“I told you I’d help.”

“Don’t they need a translator?”

“The language of afternoon judge shows is universal,” you quipped teasingly, to which he returned his usual bored look. “They’re okay for now, I think they were just preparing the side dishes.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.

“But I wanted to. Besides, we haven’t talked in days. I miss you.”

He smiled down at you, drinking in how your face still glowed with an inner beauty in the murky twilight and how the shine in your eyes never dulled by any undesirable circumstances.

Giving you a small peck on the lips, he finally tore his eyes from your face and deemed the chicken ready for the family dinner.

Laughter flitted through the open screens of the porch where Ennoshita stood surveying the sight that greeted him once he was dried off and changed: five of the most important people to him stood around the fire pit. The rain had cleared to reveal a nearly blinding cherry sunset capped with deep plum, its appearance reflected on the now-calm lake it oversaw.

Japanese and English were quickly replaced by laughter as you reminisced and told jokes over the past, even Ennoshita’s least favorite childhood story of putting on a musical all about his stuffed animals for his mother surfaced in the jovial atmosphere.

Something about the way you stood, your back turned so you were merely a silhouette in the saturated light, had his eyes locked onto your form as you swirled and sipped from the wine glass in your hand between the two families he hoped to unite.

People spoke of moments where everything dropped away and it was only the other person in front of them. Things often fell away for Ennoshita when he was focused on achieving a goal, superfluous people and emotions blurring, so he thought he knew what these so-called people were talking about. He was wrong.

Now he knew, watching your head tilt back to free the lilt of your laugh, this was the moment he’d been missing out on. Perhaps he’d experienced it during your first kiss, or even when you’d said yes to moving in with him—but this was different. The moment he’d planned this entire trip for had come, and he ceased his nervous fiddling.

Although the day wasn’t perfect, you were.

“Chikara,” came your sweet call, your upturned face adorned with an affectionate smile reserved for him alone. “Come join us!”

The sound of your voice drew him from his thoughts, the square velvet box he’d been fidgeting with dropping to the bottom of his pocket as he made the journey downstairs to join the group.

Any plan could change as long as he had you.

Taglist: @miyuswriting @burnthoneymint @bb-noya

#Ennoshita Chikara #haikyuuwritersnet #haikyuuwriters 0620 #Ennoshita Chikara x reader #Chikara Ennoshita #Haikyuu!!#haikyu!!#hq!!#Haikyuu!! x reader #fluff #Haikyuu!! fluff

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cherryonigiri · 4 years

Text

HQSS III GIFT!

Title: I’ll Make You a Deal Pairing: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou + implied Kenma Kozume/Kuroo Tetsurou Word count: 1704 Rating: Teen and Up Potential Trigger Warnings: sexual innuendo (Kuroo makes one joke)

@shibayvki here’s my gift for your @haikyuusecretsanta! Merry Chirstmas and Happy Holidays!

AO3 link here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21963742

“Welcome back Kuroo,” Akaashi calls, pulling another tray of cookies from the oven. Placing the tray on rack he leaves the cookies to cool as he turns to greet Kuroo.

The black-haired man was in the process of taming his bedhead, the black strands splaying everywhere. Akaashi snickers to himself---he’d missed Kuroo, even though he’d probably never admit that out loud. “Hey, Akaashi. How’s the place been without me?” Kuroo wiggles his eyebrows, golden eyes gleaming with renewed energy.

“Oh, you know, not too bad. I just had my best baker ditch me for a week to go on a last-minute trip to Hakone.” Akaashi turns to check on his batch of muffins before adding, “So, it’s been just the tiniest bit busier.” They looked a little more done than he liked, perhaps he’d take them out of the oven early.

“The honeymoon was great by the way!” Kuroo shouts from the lockers. Akaashi rolls his eyes before opening the oven. The blast of warmth wafts through the air, the scents of melted butter and blueberry mixing with the rest of the delicious aromas floating around the bakery. Emerging from the locker room, Kuroo dons an apron over his white attire. “I’m ready to go boss. Your lead baker, refreshed from his vacation, enlightened by marriage, and ready to please the people.”

Akaashi chuckles at Kuroo’s dramatic pose. “Alright, oh enlightened one, how about you bless me with some of your danishes and croissants,” raising an eyebrow as he pointed towards the seating area, “Before opening time?”

“First day back and you’re already putting me back to work. Sheesh Akaashi, you really are a slave driver.” Kuroo turns towards his counter, flouring the surface before heading to the fridge to find the pastry dough Akaashi had made the night before.

“You’ve always been better with pastries than I have,” Akaashi reminds Kuroo. “God, I swear I almost just took them off the menu because they were turning out all kinds of weird without you here.”

“Mhm.” Kuroo mumbles in response, already focused on rolling the dough into the buttered layers Akaashi knows will turn into golden and fluffy pastry under Kuroo’s talented hand.

Akaashi taps Kuroo on the back. “Hey, congratulations. Really. I’m so happy for you and Kenma.” Before he can turn back to his own work, Kuroo grabs his wrist.

“See, that’s the thing. You call my husband,” Kuroo says while grinning widely, “by his first name because you two have been friends since childhood. Now that I’m married to Kenma, shouldn’t you also call me by my first name? You know, what’s Kenma’s is mine, including being on a first-name basis with you.”

“Kuroo I swear--”

“And in the spirit of helping change the habit, I will only--”

“--be responding to ‘Testurou.’ Yes,” Akaashi sighs in exasperation. “Kenma warned me about it when you two got back last night. I was just seeing how long I could push it before you actually insisted on this ridiculous idea.”

“Oh betrayed, by the man I just married! How can I ever recover?”

“Could you please focus on baking your damn pastries Ku--Tetsurou?”

“Of course, Keiji.”

“You are a conniving bastard Tetsurou, I hope you are aware of that.” Kuroo laughs at that, before returning to his pastry.

Things only really went south once the bakery opened. Between stuttering over Kuroo’s (No, Testurou’s, he reminds himself) first name and coming in an hour early instead of two to bake in Kuroo’s place, he was flustered. It didn’t help that Tetsurou’s brief vacation had allowed Akaashi to forget about his constant snarking, but now that the lanky baker was back, he’d have to get used to it again.

“So, Keiji,” Keiji pinches the bridge of his nose, hoping that at some point it won’t feel weird to call his employee by first name. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

“Nothing much, other than my failure to re-create half of the pastries we sell.”

“C’mon Keiji, you may be better at dessert stuff, but you’re way better than a lot of other pastry chefs out there. I saw how you do pastry in school, and trust me, student you could outclass half of the other bakers on this street.”

“Alright, my perfectionist self was not satisfied because my amazing pastry lead was off on his honeymoon. Other than that, it’s been a perfectly normal--”

“AKAAAAASHI!” The two bakers hear the short before they hear the auditory carnage of the door being pushed through their windchimes to slam against the wall.

“Crap. I forgot,” the green-eyed man hissed as he ran for the front of shop. “Bokuto-san! I’m over here!”

Kuroo peeks out from the back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the person who might owe them a new set of windchimes, and potentially a new door. A white-haired man approaches the counter. “Bokuto-san, what have I said about the door?”

“Sorry ‘Kaashi,” mystery man suddenly looks sheepish, “I missed our coffee dates. I’m not mad or anything, I mean I get it, you were missing your head baker, it’s like if I was missing one of my baristas, but I thought we said we’d meet up today?”

“No, it’s my bad. I guess I got so used to coming straight to work that I didn’t stop by your place today.”

“Hey, hey, it’s fine ‘Kaashi. I even got you your favorite.” Kuroo eyes this ‘Bokuto -san’ with interest as he raises up a carrier. “An iced black coffee with agave.”

“Why don’t I take a half-hour off. We can just sit in the corner here and have our date Bokuto-san.” Akaashi gestures to the table in the corner, “I’ll be right back with some pastries.”

The white-haired man suddenly bursts into a megawatt smile. “Thanks ‘Kaashi!” he says, pressing a quick kiss on Akaashi’s cheek and zooming away towards the back corner table.

Turning around, Akaashi gestures for Kuroo to come out of his hiding spot.

“Is that? Are you two? How?” Kuroo grabs Akaashi by the shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?”

“I mean, it only became serious a few weeks agao. We took things slow--”

“Keiji, as your head baker and best-friend-in-law I am incredibly hurt that I did not know you had found yourself a man--”

“A man that is waiting for me to bring him our breakfast, now if you’ll excuse me Kuroo. I’ll be back in about half an hour, I’m sure you can handle things until then.”

“Oh hush, there’s no one coming in for a while, now that opening rush is over. I think I’ll go say hello to your boyfriend.”

Akaashi glares at Kuroo, a slight blush tinging his cheeks. “Fine, you can meet him, but I expect you to be manning the counter and checking stock after five minutes.”

“You got it Keiji,” Kuroo replies, shooting finger guns at his flustered boss.

Keiji reaches into the display case and snags two of the blueberry muffins he baked from his batch in the morning. Slipping them onto a plate, he turns to leave the counter but is stopped by Kuroo.

“Woah, woah. Aren’t you going to put that in the register? Pay for the goods?” Kuroo knows Akaashi is serious about not giving out freebies until closing. Heck, half the time the man charges himself if he snags a cookie between rushes.

“Nope,” Akaashi replied while walking towards Bokuto. “He gets them for free, on the house.”

“Bokuto-san, this is Kuroo Tetsurou, my head baker. He wanted to…meet you. Tetsurou, please…just don’t be an idiot,” Akaashi introduces the two, sits down and prays that the two will get along without embarrassing him.

“So, how did you and my boss meet?” Kuroo asks. “And what on earth did you do to him? I’ve never seen him give out free goods, even to me, his head baker and pastry savior. If I snag a piece of bread he’ll take it out of my paycheck.”

“Oh, we have a deal!” Bokuto replies, handing Akaashi his coffee.

“Ohohoho, what kind of deal? Does it involve anything…interesting?” Kuroo wiggles his eyebrows.

“Oh it’s nothing like that,” Bokuto replies. “’Kaashi and I are taking it slow. I just bring him free coffee, so he gives me free baked goods and pastries.”

“You forgot the part where you chased me down the street screaming about free coffee when you tried to ask me out,” Akaashi teases.

Kuroo looks at Bokuto confused. “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I own the coffee shop down the block, Fukurodani. ‘Kaashi had been coming around for coffee for a while and I thought I might try to bribe him into a first date with free coffee.”

“Which I thought was an unfair trade so I brought some of our pastries to that date,” Akaashi adds. “I’ve been getting free coffee from Bokuto-san ever since.”

Kuroo is silent, staring at the couple. “’Kaashi, is he okay?” leans in to whisper, looking at the baker with concern.

“Keiji, what about Lacy? What did you do with her?” Kuroo asks, looking at Akaashi with pleading eyes.

“She’s still sitting in my kitchen, pristine as the first day I put her there.”

“So you mean…you mean. You haven’t used her? AT ALL??” Kuroo wails. “Keiji, how could you? This is Lacy we’re talking about!”

“Yes, but Bokuto-san actually knows how to make coffee. And I find his coffee much better than Lacy’s.”

“Why? How could you do this to me?” Kuroo flails his arms before storming into the back.

“’Kaashi?” Bokuto says, eyes flickering between Akaashi and Kuroo. “Who’s Lacy?”

“Lacy? Oh, that’s the ridiculous name Kuroo came up for the Keurig he bought me a few months ago. The guy invested a lot in that present, trying to get my ‘blessing’ to marry Kenma.”

“Oh, your best friend from high school?”

“Yup. Just…ignore Tetsurou for now. I’m sure he’ll come around.”

“I heard that Keiji!” came a shout from the kitchen. “And I feel very betrayed right now!”

“Like I said Bokuto-san, just ignore him. Besides,” Akaashi smiles, “we have some coffee and pastry dates to catch up on.”

#hqssiii #haikyuusecretsanta2019 #BokuAka #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu fanfic #KuroKen #Bokuto Koutarou #Akaashi Keiji #Kuroo Tetsurou #Kenma Kozume #haikyuu #hq imagines

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trustyourgutblog · 4 years

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Hey, friends ~

I tried writing this blog last week, but was feeling so tired and worn down that my writing was just not coming together. I’m hoping to speak to this feeling today.

It has now been 3 weeks since I’ve been in full quarantine. Meaning that with the exception of seeing a few neighbors while walking outside, my husband is the only person that I’ve physically interacted with. This transition from seeing coworkers, friends, children and families that I work with, etc. daily has been a huge transition for me.

I used to end a long day of therapy feeling like a washcloth that had been wrung out one too many times because of the amount and depth of the social interaction that I was engaging in. Today, I have a similar, worn out feeling, but I’ve moved to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. My craving for physical, social interaction is almost as fierce as a chocolate craving while I’m on my period. TMI? Sorry, but it’s true.

The other day, I was on a Zoom meeting with my coworkers and my husband was home from work because he’s been working a different schedule to accommodate for their new COVID-19 precautions. I had shut myself in the office, but my cat, Phoebe, had been scratching at the door to get in, so I left the door was left ajar. My husband thought that the door being open signaled that I was done with my meeting, so he came into the office to chat with me and ended up making a celebrity appearance in my work meeting. My immediate reaction was to scold him for interrupting, but my coworkers erupted in a chorus of greetings and excitement to see another person’s face.

You guys, this is the level of crazy that isolation is making us. Not even all of my coworkers have met Kyle and they were all but climbing through the screen to make a connection.

Even though I’m trying to focus on some of the good things that have come from slowing down, I think it’s important to recognize the fact that we’re all trying to cope with the effects of this polarization ~ going from interacting with so many people on a daily basis to complete and total isolation.

Nothing about this “pause” in normal life feels restful. I didn’t expect this to feel like a vacation or anything, but I would think that turning in and spending more time at home would make me feel more rejuvenated.

I tend to struggle, emotionally, when I’m not able to identify and verbalize how I’m feeling. Or even write it down. As I’m settling into this new normal, with the help of talking with others and reading articles, I’m starting to realize that this discomfort and feeling of exhaustion that I’m feeling is grief.

I’m grieving the loss of social interaction with my friends and family. The loss of my honeymoon trip planned for mid April. The loss of freedom to jump in my car and go to a spin class at the local studio. The loss of being able to run simple errands like grocery shopping and grabbing coffee on my way to work. The loss of being able to go to the library and pick out a new book.

Don’t get me wrong ~ I’m so grateful for my beautiful safe haven that I am privileged enough to call home. I’m grateful that I have a fridge full of food that is constantly stocked by my husband. I’m grateful for the security of my relationship when I consider women who are in a domestically violent relationship and are not safe with their partner at home.

I’m grieving the loss of structure in my days. If you’re an anxious person, you understand how much relief you can find in structure and routine. I’m doing my best to create structure and a schedule, but it’s just vastly different than the way that I’ve been operating for pretty much my entire life.

And when you come to this realization, I think this validates what we are experiencing right now. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable. It’s okay to feel like you’re grieving. It’s okay to feel lost and helpless. If we don’t identify how we’re feeling, we can’t begin to understand how to cope with it.

Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who is one of the leading global experts on trauma research, defines trauma as “being unable to do anything to change the situation.” Talk about nailing the hammer on the head. This loss of control has definitely sent me into a spiral more times than I’d like to admit.

This post isn’t going to include tips for coping or “5 ways to make it through quarantine.” I just hope that you receive a message of validation in sitting with your feelings ~ whether it be sadness, hopelessness, grief, helplessness, anger, anxiousness, etc. I sat in my feelings for about a week, struggling to identify them, and now that I’m starting to process and verbalize what I’m experiencing, I do feel a genuine shift in my moods and energy as a result.

Last weekend, my husband and I found out that an acquaintance of ours passed away due to what are believed to be COVID-19 complications. She was our age. This shook us. For days. My husband is a HUGE foodie and couldn’t eat. He started experiencing so much anxiety that he was manifesting symptoms of the virus.

That night, he wasn’t able to fall asleep. He is the type of person who is usually snoring within 30 seconds of laying down. After several conversations of attempting to pry him open, he was finally able to admit that his ultimate fear is that I’ll die. That he’ll bring the virus home from work and I’ll get sick enough to die.

I didn’t know what to say or how to react. I listened and validated his fear. But, there was nothing that I could say to make him feel better. Again, that helplessness was rearing its ugly head. So, I tucked him in under my weighted blanket, asked him to meditate with me, and stroked his hair.

We are coping the best that we can right now and I hope that everyone is doing the same. It’s okay to not have all of the answers and it’s okay to experience this ebb and flow of complete and utter hopelessness and moments of joy and gratitude. What you’re feeling is valid.

All we can do is practice compassion with ourselves and empathize with others. Be kind and hold onto the hope that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. Take good care, friends.

#quarantine #coping with grief #health #crohn's disease #ibd #symptoms #crohn's problems #crohns #ibs #inflammatory bowel disease #mentalwellbeing #mental health awareness

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fumi-faust · 5 years

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Jeanmarco Revival Week Day 7 - Meet the Family

“Are you sure it’s okay with your family that I come?”

“Yes Jean, for the hundredth time. I’m not leaving my boyfriend alone on thanksgiving vacation. Besides, they’re all dying to meet you.”

“Who’s ‘they’ exactly?”

Marco snickers. “Well, there’s my parents, My older sister Nessie and her husband Matt, their little girl Emma, my little brother Marius, my uncle Mickey and his boyfriend Mike… Ymir and Krista will be there.”

“How exactly is she related to you again?”

“She’s uncle Mickey’s daughter from his first marriage.”

“Huh, where’s her mom?”

“She… well, they got a devorce for a few reasons but… In my opinion, she was kinda crazy. Her name was Anna. Ymir doesn’t really like to talk about her.”

“That’s fair, I barely talk to my dad anymore either. He’s got issues.”

Marco moves across the floor and comes to let next to Jean on his bed. “You really don’t want to go see your mom for break?”

“Nah, I already talked it over with her. I’m not driving eight hours just to spend one day at home.”

“But you don’t mind driving for two with me?”

“Nope, I’m looking forward to it.”

Marco gives him and easy smile. “Glad to hear it.”

Stepping into the Bodt household was like stepping into another world for Jean. The whole place was decked out in autumn dicor, Marco’s father, taller and a little broader than Marco with the same dust of freckles over his nose, greeted them at the door and ushered them into the house without a second thought.

“Hi I’m Dave, Marco’s dad. Nice to meet you, Jean right?”

“Yeha, I’m Jean. Nice to meet you too.” Jean holds out his hand and Dave takes it pulling him into a manly hug.

“It’s about time my son finally brought someone home, I was getting to think he’d be alone forever!”

Marco groans shutting the door behind him. “Dad, please!”

“Go see your mother in the kitchen, she broke out the good Chianti.” Dave leads them both by the shoulds to the kitchen where they were greeted by a short, bubbly little Italian woman with a glass of wine in hand.

“Marco, baby! Welcome home!” She sets down her glass and rushes to her son pulling him into a bear hug. She pulls back and dusts off his sweater beaming.”Oh, and this must be Jean! Nice to meet you sweetie!”

Jean smiles as he’s pulled into a similar hug. “Nice to meet you too ma’am.”

“Oh no no, call me Aurora! Or mom, if that’s easier!”

“Mom, please don’t scare him off.” Marco begs.

“It’s okay.” Jean laughs. “”This is a nice change of pace from my family.”

“Would you like a glass of wine dear? Or anything else? The pantry and the fridge are stocked.”

Jean grins at her. “I’ll try some of that wine.”

Aurora pours them both a glass and tells them to go see everyone in the living room. Jean meets Marco’s little brother Marius first who is an exact carbon copy of Marco but about two feet shorter and had his nose buried in his phone. He gets a simple “hey” before being directed to Marco’s sister Nessie and her little girl Emma on the floor.

“Unko Maako!” Emma squeals in delight as she gets up from her spot on the floor and rushes to him. Marco scoops her up and kisses her on the cheek.

“Emma, this is my friend Jean. He’s going to stay for Thanksgiving with us.”

She gives Jean a bashful wave and hugs Marco’s neck. “Hi Jean.” she says hiding her face.

“Oo, you better watch out Marco, I’ve seen her give those eyes to boys before.” Marco’s sister snorts.

“And this is my sister Ness.” He says rolling his eyes.

“Hi Ness, nice to meet you.” Jean says shaking her hand. “And It’s nice to meet you too Emma. Can I shake your hand?”

Emma gives Jean another bashful smile and holds out her hand laughing a sweet little laugh as he takes it. Marco sets her down and she runs back to her mother giggling.

“Where’s Matt?” Marco asks turning around the room.

“In the garage with the other boys. Ymir Included.”

Marco shrugs. “Figures. Okay, well I’m going to take Jean to meet everyone else. We’ll be back.”

Jean waves and doesn’t miss Emma waving back at him.

“Man, your family really goes all out for these things, huh?” Jean asks falling in step with Marco.

“We’re a close family, we get together as often as we can. Mom loves having everyone over, so the holidays are big for us.”

Jean chuckles. “My family is the polar opposite. We avoid each other at all costs. Your family is great though.”

Marco grabs Jeans hand. “I’m glad you think so.”

They make it into the garage to find Ymir and who Jean assumes is Matt, Mike, and Mickey.

“Is this him?” One of them with a hat and a beer can pipes up. “Nice Job Marco! He’s got a nice ass.”

“Are you kidding?” the man next to him chides in. “I don’t buy Marco as a top for one second!”

Ymir bursts out laughing.

Marco is absolutely mortified taking a step in front of Jean as if to shield him. “Oh my god! Can you guys not? What is wrong with you?”

“Cheer up Marco! Nothing wrong with being a pillow princess!” The man in a hat stands up and holds his hands out to Jean. “I’m Mickey, Marco’s favorite uncle!”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Jean.”

“And I’m Mike! Want a beer Jean?” Mike asks holding up a can.

“I’ve got a glass of wine, thanks though.”

“Posh.” Mickey and Mike respond at the same time.

“Hi Jean!” Krista says coming over with a smile and a glass of wine in her own hand.

“Hey, you hanging out with the boys too?”

Yeah, it’s pretty entertaining.” she says smiling.

Matt stands up last offering Jean his hand. “Hi I’m Matt, Nessie’s husband.”

“More like wife.” Mike jokes.

“Haha, very funny uncle Mike.”

Marco sighs scrubbing a hand over his face. “Well, this is my family…”

“It’s nice to meet all of you.” Jean says grinning.

Ymir throws an arm around Marco and pulls him in for a nuggie “Ain’t it great to be home Marco?”

Marco shrugs her off and wipes a hand over his face.“You all exhaust me…”

Much to Marco’s relief, dinner goes extremely well. Jean seems to have a great time eating and laughing with his family. Marco’s mother talks them into spending the night and it was when they were curled up in Marco’s old bed in his childhood room Marco can laugh about his family’s actions.

“I can’t believe uncle Mike said that to me. I could totally top you.”

Jean snorts. “Yeah, and is probably love it…. your family is great. I haven’t had this much fun in a while.”

Marco grins leaning in to kiss Jean on the cheek. “They’re a bit much sometimes, but they’re family. I’m glad you had a good time.”

“Thanks for inviting me Marco.”

“Thank you for coming. This is going to sound stupid, but I was kind of scared you wouldn’t want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to?”

Marco shrugs burying his face into Jean’s neck. “Meeting the family is kind of a big step I guess. I didn’t know if you were ready for that.”

“Marco I… I love you. And I’m glad you want me to meet your family.”

Marco pulls back and gives him one of the most beautiful smiles he’d ever seen. “You love me?”

“Yes! I love you, and it’s cute that you’re so shy about things, but you don’t have to worry. I love this. I love you.”

Marco presses their foreheads together and leans in to press a soft kiss to Jeans lips. “I love you too Jean. Thank you.”

This fic is also on AO3

Kofi | Twitter

#jeanmarco #jeanmarcorevival #jeanmarco revival week #meet the family #cpl works #snk #snk fic

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winsister91 · 5 years

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FGA Daedric Princes (Part 12)

Summary: The group split up as Dean and Shannon take off for their mini vacation and the Sammys hold the fort at the Bunker. Heaven keeps a close watch...

Characters: Dean x Shannon (OFC), Sam x Sammy (OFC), Gabriel

Warnings: Fluff, Crack?.Pissy frustrated boys?

Word Count: 3821

A/N: Written by @sofreddie and @winsister91. Side project we’ve been working on. FEEDBACK IS GOLD!! We’d love to hear your thoughts as this was spawned from us trying out different writing and characters. We hope you enjoy! Somehow I survived the writing of the last chapter. Now it’s all about the slow calculated counter-attack ;)

Series Masterlist

SOFreddie’s Masterlist

Winsister91’s Masterlist

Shannon dropped her bag in the trunk and made her way to the passenger door of the Impala, climbing inside and carefully shutting the door behind her, “So, you gonna tell me where we’re going or…”

“I made some reservations,” Dean smiled proudly, “How does our own private hidey hole on the beach sound?”

“Really?” she beamed, her eyes lighting up with excitement as she looked over at him, “That sounds...awesome!” she laughed.

“Right?” Dean agreed, just as excited as she was, “So I was thinking we can get some booze, chill out on the sand...when it gets dark I’ll make a fire...properly scenic stuff.”

“You’ve got it all planned out, huh?” she smiled bashfully, “It’ll be nice to spend some time together. We haven’t really had a chance to just be, you know?”

“I know,” he nodded, “It’s been pretty non-stop, but...maybe this can be our thing once and awhile. An escape.”

“Well, let’s see how this goes first,” she laughed, “Who knows, you could get tired of me after spending so much time cooped up with nothing but me around.”

“If anything, you’ll be the one who gets fed up of me,” Dean laughed, “The only risk I got is getting addicted,” he tossed her a wink.

They drove along for several hours, music playing in the background as they took in the scenery and talked, about their lives, their dreams, and anything in between.

“Tell me a secret,” Shannon asked, shifting to turn in her seat, facing Dean, her elbow propped on the back of the seat as she let her eyes wander over him lovingly.

“A what?” Dean laughed slightly, glancing at her briefly, “Well...what kind of secret?”

“The kind you’re scared to admit to anyone, including yourself,” she urged gently.

“Well, you apparently already know everything I’ve done,” he countered, “and you’re still here which makes you doubly insane might I add.”

“Well, you’re hot as hell, so that helps,” she grinned at him, “And yeah, I know what all you’ve done. But I don’t know what you think or feel or want.”

He chuckled, cheeks slightly pinkening at her first comment, before he thought aloud, “What I want…” he mumbled, “I’m not even sure myself… but I know despite all the crap we’ve all been through the last month, having you around has made me the happiest I think I’ve ever been, truly.”

“I haven’t done anything but managed to bring demons and Heaven down on your head,” she sighed guiltily, “I don’t understand how that makes you happy.”

“Well not that stuff obviously,” Dean chuckled, “But that’s not your fault. I’m talking about...your smile. Your laugh. Seeing you look after everybody. You and Sammy bitching each other out but obviously loving each other to the end of the earth. Your sass...Need I continue?”

“I’m happy too,” she smiled softly, “The four of us, after everything, it just feels like a family unit, like we all click and fit together somehow. And I know that’s cheesy as all get out, but it just seems right, like this is how it’s supposed to be, for all of us.” she shrugged, blushing.

“Can’t argue with that,” he said with a nod, “‘cause that's exactly what it is. Right.”

Sammy’s eyes slowly opened, her head heavy and groggy. Sam’s room came into focus and she couldn’t stop the smile that grew on her face. With a grunt, she sat up, the cold air hitting her skin and making her shudder. Pulling the sheets around her, she glanced about for her clothes, finding them scattered haphazardly around the room.

That’s when she saw the clock, it was 1pm and her eyes went wide.

“Shit!” she hissed, scrambling to get dressed. An afternoon wake up wasn’t exactly abnormal, but it usually came after staying up until after dawn.

The Bunker was quiet as she paced the halls, a little too quiet, she passed by her own room and saw her game still sat on pause. Mentally telling her PS4 she’ll ‘be right back’ she went in search of coffee.

“Hey, Sleepyhead,” Sam said, smiling from the island as he was making a sandwich for lunch, “How did you sleep?” he automatically began making a second sandwich, knowing she’d be hungry.

“A little too well seemingly,” she smiled sheepishly, approaching the coffee machine and yawning heavily, “Where are them two?”

He chuckled lightly, “Would you believe Dean planned a romantic getaway?” he laughed, “They left a few hours ago. Said we could use some time to ourselves too.” he finished making the food, bringing the plates to the kitchen table, “Oh, and he said when they get back, we can take the car on our own trip.” he wiggled his brows excitedly at her.

Her eyes lit up at the food, before they narrowed, “Wait, they’re gone!?” she whined, “Shannon went up and left without saying bye to her wife!? I feel like I’ve been dumped…” she pouted.

“Babe,” Sam sighed, holding her hand in his own, “For what it’s worth, she didn’t want to go until after you woke up. But Dean was eager to head out and I figured you two would just catch up on the phone later.” he shrugged.

“Any other time, I’d have been awake,” she folded her arms in a fake sulk, “But someone went and...a-and….heh…” she blushed and smirked.

“You’re welcome,” he teased with a big grin, “What do those doctors know anyway? Should’ve just prescribed you a giant dose of Sam Fucking Winchester.” he chuckled.

“More…” she chuckled at her own thought before she could say it, “A giant fucking from Sam Winchester,” she giggled childishly, “But wait, did you say Dean’s letting us run away somewhere when they get back?”

“Baby, you ain’t been fucked...yet,” he smirked with a wink, “And yes. When they get back, we get to take the car and go where ever we want. So start thinking up a vacation.”

Her cheeks burned, brain going plenty of places that weren’t vacation ideas, “Heh...I...um...I’ll work on that later,” she rose from the table, “Right now, I got some gaming to catch up on.”

“You’re gonna make me jealous of that damn thing,” he pouted, pulling her into his arms and resting his chin on her belly as he looked up at her with his signature puppy-eyes.

“O-oh God,” she mumbled, “There it is. The famed puppy eyes, fuck! They really are effective…”

“How about…” he thought for a moment before giving her an innocent smile, “You go play for a bit and later, you can make it up to me?”

“Oh I’ll play,” she smirked, “Yeah, and then you’re gonna see what a counter-attack from Sammy Fucking Kelly is all about, just you wait!”

His grin turned sinister as he nipped at her stomach and one of his large hands gave her ass a squeeze, “I look forward to it.”

There was a small whine in her throat as her blush spread down her neck. Mind racing, she already regretted her words, there was no way anything she could think of was topping what he had planned she figured.

Dean pulled up to the small seaside cabin, just as the sun was beginning its decline behind the horizon. He threw the car in park, looking over at Shannon who had dozed off close to an hour before. He smiled, deciding to grab their bags and ready the cabin, before coming back to wake her, guiding her into the cozy abode.

“Wow,” she breathed out, taking in the small but lovely space, the back wall all windows looking out over the water. She smiled, walking towards the window and watching as the setting sun cast warm colors across the water, “This is pretty impressive, Dean.”

“It is,” he nodded in agreement, standing by her at the window, “I’ve always wanted to do something like this…”

She tugged on the sliding glass door with a wide grin, stepping out on the small deck, “Come on!” she cheered, running down the steps and onto the beach toward the surf.

His eyebrows raised watching her jog ahead, he grinned loving the sight of her being so care-free. He jogged after her, catching up to her just as she reached the water, “You’re gonna get your clothes all wet,” he chuckled.

She turned, wrapping her arms around his waist and smiling coyly up at him, “I was under the impression I wouldn’t be wearing them long anyway,” she cooed, pecking his lips lightly.

“Damn,” he grinned devilishly, pulling her in for a deeper kiss, his own hands snaking around her waist, fingertips lightly tucking into the waist of her pants.

“Unless, of course, this was meant to be an innocent escape,” she teased, batting her eyes at him.

“And what aspect of me do you think has ever been innocent?” he countered, his hand ruffling her hair as he lightly bit his bottom lip, “You’re beautiful Baby.”

“You’re not half bad yourself,” she teased, “So I’m guessing we have to run to the store tomorrow, stock up the fridge and whatnot so I can cook for you,” she grinned, “So what do you want to do about dinner tonight? I’m sure you’re starving.”

“Nuh uh,” he pressed a finger on her lips, “You’re not doing anything but relaxing. S’about time I showed you my own cooking expertise.”

“Mmm, that sounds good,” she agreed, “I could get used to this whole ‘playing house’ thing,” she joked, blushing bashfully.

“Well good, ‘cause you’ll have to get used to it,” he smiled, “You’re right though, we’ll need to go to the store so...takeout tonight?”

“Whatever you want, Dear,” she teased, kissing him once more.

“Dear?” he laughed, “Ok, darling.”

She scrunched her face in distaste, “Yeah, no...that’s just weird.” she laughed, releasing her hold on him and looking back over the water, “Maybe tomorrow we can go in the water? Swim a bit, ooh! We can walk the beach for shells!” she said excitedly.

“Sure,” he narrowed his eyes mischievously, pulling her back to him, “Or we can just go in the water now?”

Before she could answer, he had hold of her, spinning on his heels and falling back into the surf, dragging her down on top of him.

She squealed in surprise and gasped in shock as the water came rushing up to them once more, “Dean!” she giggled, slapping him on the chest, “Now we’re all wet.” she chuckled with a playful pout.

“I did warn you,” he shrugged, splashing the water like a child and laughing.

She grinned down at him, hovering above his lips, “Now we have to shower…” she mockingly complained.

“Well isn’t that just a pickle,” he bit his tongue playfully.

She leaned down, kissing him tenderly, pulling back with a happy sigh, “You do realize you’ve gone full romance novel, right?” she laughed, “Making out in the sand at sunset…” She moved to kiss him again, before a bigger wave crashed to the shore, washing over them abruptly, “Oh fuck!” she exclaimed, wiping the water from her face and getting to her feet, holding out a hand to help him up, her clothes and hair now soaked.

“That’s why romance novels are full of crap,” Dean joked, taking her hand and pulling himself up, and shaking the water off his face before grinning, “So how about that shower?”

“Uh...yeah,” she gave a small smile, blushing as she made her way back to the cabin. Her mind ran a million miles a minute. Did he plan on showering together? But that would mean he’d see her naked. Did she ask him to join her? She made her way into the house, grabbing her bag and looking around for the bathroom, her features betraying her nervousness as she nibbled on her lower lip.

Dean tossed his jacket onto one of the cabin’s small radiators, still chuckling softly to himself. He started looking around too, opening doors and peeking into the rooms. His eyebrows raised at finding the bedroom, a large queen sized bed which already gave him thoughts.

With only one door left, a huge wet room came into view, “Wow…” he said, “Okay so...uh…” he looked at Shannon and suddenly felt shy, “You get first dibs.”

“O-okay,” she breathed out shakily, nodding at him as she passed to go into the wet room. She gave him one last glance as she shut the door behind her, letting out a long breath once she was alone, before going about her shower. She came out a short while later, freshly cleaned and dressed in her tank top and sleep pants, smiling sheepishly at him, “It’s all yours.”

He found his eyes lingering on her, the tank top tight and showing off every delightful curve. Composing himself, he nodded, “I, uh, found some takeout menus so go ahead and pick something.”

She nodded, watching as he disappeared into the wet room, his wet clothes clinging to his back, his muscles visible beneath them. She let out another shaky breath, shaking her head and composing herself as she went to peruse the menus. By the time Dean returned, she had settled on what she wanted.

“Hey, I figured this could work,” she handed him the menu with the notes on what she wanted. Her eyes lingered on him, looking so relaxed in the simple t-shirt and track pants.

“Works for me,” he said with a smile, mentally picking for himself and grabbing his cell. After placing the order, he went out to the car, grabbing some beers from the cooler he stashed on the back seat. He looked out over the beach as he made his way, chuckling to himself. If someone told him a month ago this is what was coming, he’d have never believed it. Stepping back into the cabin, his smile grew broader as he laid eyes on Shannon, holding a beer out toward her, “Drink on the deck?” he proposed.

She accepted the drink, nodding as she made her way back onto the deck, sitting in one of the chairs that faced the water. The sun was nearly dipped beneath the horizon, the outside growing dark, the sounds of the waves crashing the only noise around them.

Dean sat in the chair beside her, knowing he should probably be admiring the view, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away. “I know we pretty much just got here,” he said, “But what do you think? Think this could work as a regular escape spot?”

“You tryin’ to get a timeshare, Dean?” she laughed, looking over at him, “I think it’s perfect,” she admitted.

“Timeshare,” Dean scoffed, “Believe it or not, this place actually doubles as a hunter’s safe house. All I do is put the word out for everyone to stay the hell away.”

“This is a safehouse?!” she exclaimed, shocked, “Wow...y’all hunters got it made.” she whistled. “So wait...you own this place?”

“Trust me, the rest of them are dives,” Dean laughed, “Nobody really owns it, but it’s a favored spot. This is actually my first time here, word was some Hunter completely did the place up ‘cause he was fed up of having to crash in dumps.”

“Well if it’s a common house, then you can’t really keep people away, Dean. What if some hunter shows up because he needs a place to hide out?”

“They get some cash put in their hand and sent away to a motel,” he shrugged, “No one will show up, trust me.”

“I do,” she said, so simply and matter of fact. A knock at the door drew their attention and Shannon stiffened slightly, her eyes sliding to Dean in question.

“Huh…” Dean got to his feet, “Food comes real damn fast around here.” He ventured to answer the knock, his face dropping at the sight on the other side.

“Heya, Dean-o,” Gabe smirked in greeting, holding up the bag of food, “You ordered some Chinese, right?” Dean narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the archangel, “Oh come on!” Gabe protested, “You finally got some time alone with your Sweetie...just checking that all is well.” he smiled, looking over Dean’s shoulder to see into the house, “Nice digs.”

“Everything’s just fine,” Dean growled, snatching the bag of food, “Now get lost.”

“So,” Gabe lowered his volume, “Tonight’s the night, huh?” he smirked, wiggling his brows and rocking back and forth on his feet.

“Are you-” Dean nearly shouted, opting to step out and close the door behind him first to try and keep Shannon out of earshot, “Are you fucking serious!? Cas was supposed to tell you feathery dicks to leave us the hell alone!”

“Oh, he relayed your message,” Gabe confirmed, “But, you know, Heaven’s agenda, bloodlines, yada, yada, yada…”

“You know,” Dean shook his head, completely done, “If you guys put as much effort into other stuff that you do with this, the world may not be so fucked!”

Gabe’s happy expression dropped as he narrowed his eyes at Dean, stepping into his personal space, “Now you listen to me, dick,” he said, raising a finger for emphasis, “Why do you think Heaven is so intent on continuing the Winchester line, hmm? Your kid...your kid, is gonna be the one to stop things that you don’t even know are coming. And I am that kid’s...let’s just call it a...guardian. So how about you stop being so self-centered and focus on the bigger picture!” he growled, his anger shining in his eyes.

“Y-you,” Dean looked at Gabe in shock, “You are gonna be...my kid’s Guardian Angel?” Dean couldn't hold back the titter in his voice, “That’s hilarious, poor little bastard.”

“Archangels don’t usually take these gigs, but with Winchesters involved,” he shrugged, “So you do your part and I’ll do mine,” he smirked, before snapping his fingers and disappearing.

“Dean?” Shannon’s voice could be heard calling to him from inside the house and he realized how concerned she must be.

Dean shook his head, still processing the new information before heading back inside. After they ate, they found themselves back on the deck, drinking the last two bottles of beers as the moonlight shine across the sand and water.

Sam made his way from Sammy’s room to the kitchen, having been trying to learn the game she was intent on teaching him to play. He quickly pulled out his phone, deciding to check on Dean, as things always seemed to pop up on them.

“Hey,” Sam said into the phone, “Just wanted to check in, see how things were going,” he said to his brother.

“Yeah, having your little brother ring up while you’re trying to have a romantic getaway really adds to the mood,” Dean scoffed on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, well I wasn’t too thrilled when Gabe popped in earlier,” Sam groaned in frustration, “Randomly dropped off some Chinese food and said you were a dick.” he huffed.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dean also groaned, “He came over here, spinning shit about bloodlines again…”

“Why haven’t we killed him yet?” Sam asked, exasperated.

“I’m not sure if that’s an option anyways,” Dean huffed, “Turns out he’s taking the job of being… my kid’s guardian angel.”

Sam’s eyes went wide, trying to decide which bit of information he wanted to tackle first, “Uh...ok, I have so many questions…”

“Ditto,” Dean agreed, “They’re recruiting for a role that’s not even available, but...as much as a dick Gabe is, at least...well...this supposed kid should be relatively safe having him as guardian.”

“I’m surprised you’re so calm about it,” Sam said, “I’d be suffering from performance anxiety at a minimum after that bombshell.”

“Okay don’t emphasize it!” Dean hissed, “We’re just...hanging out right now. Couple of beers, watching the waves, there’s no rush….right?”

“Really, Dean? You’re off on some trip, with a beautiful woman, alone, and you’re dancing around it?” Sam scoffed, “I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were gay.”

“You’re not the one with Heaven breathing down your damn neck and practically watching!!” Dean snapped, “You worry about you, I’ll worry about me, and I’m not gay!!”

“You’re right, I’m not,” Sam agreed with a laugh, “So you have fun with that.” he teased, “Oh, and Dean?”

“What!?” Dean groaned.

“If I were you, I’d triple check my protection,” Sam laughed, “You’ve got a trickster hell-bent on plans after all,” Sam said, ending the call with a smug grin as he made his way back to Sammy.

Dean shoved his phone back in his pocket, glancing at his bag. Specifically, the pocket he stashed the box of condoms in, he slowly zipped it open, seeing the box still there. Raising his eyebrow, he pulled the lid open and it was empty. “Son of a bitch!” he growled.

Sam came back to Sammy’s room, chuckling to himself with a grin as he sat back on the bed next to her, smiling as she paused long enough to slurp some noodles before returning to her game.

“What’s so funny?” she looked at him in curiosity before swiftly turning back to the game.

Sam proceeded to fill her in on his conversation with Dean, laughing almost to tears as he struggled to explain. “It’s just,” he paused to catch his breath, “I know it’s a sucky situation to be in, but from the outside, it’s almost hilarious. Especially seeing him freak out over the whole thing, knowing how much he really wants it.” he started chuckling again, before scooting down the bed to sit behind her, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her shoulder as he watched her play, “Plus, it’s kind of nice to be out of the line of fire.” he admitted.

Sammy giggled in agreeance, leaning back into Sam comfortably, before her smile dwindled slightly, “Well...you say that,” she raised an eyebrow, “But Gabe showed up here too...he may not have said anything but...well, doesn’t that show we’re kinda still in the crosshairs a little bit?”

Sam’s eyes went wide, her words sinking in, as he quickly untangled himself from her, shooting off the bed and dashing to his room. Sammy could hear him shout from down the halls, “GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!! Gabe! You piece of shit!!”

Sam came marching back into the room, hopping as he was pulling his shoes on his feet, “I’m gonna run out real quick,” he said, somewhat out of breath, pecking her lips, “Be back in a few minutes.”

“Ooo!” Sammy jumped to her feet, “Let me come! I wanna buy some junk food.”

“Babe, we just got Chinese,” he laughed.

Her brow furrowed in confusion, “...And?”

He sighed, “Yeah, okay,” he relented, “Come on.”

SOFreddie’s Forevers:

@oneshoeshort

@winchesterprincessbride

@iamcmims

@roxyspearing

@reigningqueenofwords

@mogaruke

@ellen-reincarnated1967

@speakinvain

@shotgunintheimpala-blog

@atc74

@sterekloveaffairs

@winsister91

@mrs-meghan-winchester

@chook007

@growningupgeek

@goldenolaf25

@esoltis280

@hobby27

@sis-tafics

@arryn-nyx

@x-waywardaf-x

@shann-the-artist-moon

@sandlee44

@lucywinchester2000

@emoryhemsworth

@ohmywinchester67

@stanclub

@time-travel-bouqet

@buckysbrat

@papi-chulo-bucky

@captain-ak84

@find-sammys-shoe

@calaofnoldor

@donnaintx

Winsister91’s Forever Posse:

@sofreddie

@ria132love

@chicagolove88

@akshi8278

@sis-tafics

@younoeatcheeseyounobefat

@mandilion76

@supernaturalmagicfolk

@emoryhemsworth

@pheonyxstorm

@mrswhozeewhatsis

@itspronouncedsatanbitch

@the--real-wombat

@xagateophobiax

@jensen-gal

@castiel11235

@19agbrown

@mogaruke

@nyxveracity

@cole-winchester

@esoltis280

@internationalmusicteacher

@meganywinchester

@sweetness47

@roonyxx

@imperiusimpala

@lazinessisalliknow

@thisismysecrethappyplace

@choosemyname

@dean-winchesters-bacon

@hunterswearingplaid

@bella-ca

@rainflowermoon

@calaofnoldor

@scarletsoldierrr

@supernaturalonice

#collab fic #self insert #sam x ofc #dean x ofc #sam winchester #dean winchester #sam fluff #sam angst #sam flangst #dean fluff #dean angst #dean flangst #supernatural #spn #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic

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saleousucre · 4 years

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COVID is upon us and like many of you, I’m home for the next 3 weeks with Scott and the kids (3 kids are 5 years and under). I was thinking this morning about blogging about our experience. About a week ago, Scott had a fever and then a cough started. We didn’t think much about it as we hadn’t been away or in contact with a known COVID patient. I subsequently caught a cough and our son started having a fever and cough. Normal for this time of year however, in light of all the news, we started thinking it’s possible it’s COVID. Now, I’m not one to run to the doctor for just anything as I respect that our healthcare system is taxed at the best of times. I do find comfort in knowing that our healthcare system is there when we really need it and I truly hope that continues to be the case during this pandemic, though I believe that will take cooperation between our healthcare system and us, the public. So, I called our doctor’s office and asked what to do in our situation. Reception told me to go to the after hours clinic as my doctor is away. I took our son and off we went to the clinic, donning masks. We declared we had coughs, he had a fever and no travel or known contact with COVID. They looked at us like aliens from another planet and everyone seemed very concerned about our presence there which I found surprising as it’s all over the news but there are no clear instructions about what to do if you’re sick. After they asked the doctor how to handle us, they put us in a room alone and the doctor came in. The urgent care facility was eerily quiet to begin with. I guess most of us are not going to medical buildings for non urgent issues and they don’t welcome those of us concerned about COVID so that’s most people going to walk ins right now. The doctor said in the best case scenario, he’d test us, but there aren’t enough tests available at present so go home and self isolate until symptoms resolve. Not enough tests? As of today, almost EVERYTHING has closed including schools and here we are with fever and coughs (and I mean nasty coughs) and there’s no test? He said assessment clinics would open in several days so I guess we’ll wait it out. I cancelled my work appointments and hunkered down at home.

Without many medical options to fight this chest cold, I started thinking about all the home remedies we could use so I thought I’d share my list with you in case you find yourself in a similar predicament at some point because there’s a lot of news about how to avoid getting sick but not a lot of tips about what to do when you actually get sick.

Step 1 - Healthy Home

I have a sage diffuser in the main area of our home and also in our bedroom. I’m usually diffusing several oils like lavender, immune, goddess or liquid sunshine (sage brand). We try to keep our bedroom dust free and uncluttered ... think this step is really important. The environment of our home makes a real difference when we’re recovering from anything. I open windows (just a crack as it’s cold out) but allow the fresh air in and the sick energy to make its way outside. Burning beeswax candles enhances the aroma and sense of wellness in our home every day. Also, music! We play our favourite music in the kitchen (love Alexa or Google Home for ease of playing anything we feel like listening to).

Step 2 - Soup & Tea

Homemade soup and anything else you enjoy cooking. The aroma of sautéed onions, garlic, ginger and whatever vegetables we have in the fridge fills my soul with grounded wellbeing. When we aren’t sick, we always try to share some soup with friends or neighbours. There’s something very connected to Mother Earth for me about cooking and sharing soup. Also, muffins or any warm home cooking! Here’s a fun little tip... I left some of the onion on the counter as I remember reading that onion can absorb germs. It makes me feel good when I look at it and I imagine it sucking up the bacteria and viruses in our home - who knows but I’m sure it doesn’t hurt!

Step 3 - Be Prepared

Make sure you stock up on the following:

Tylenol for adults and kids if applicable

Laundry detergent (so much laundry when we’re sick)

Lysol wipes (so easy to wipe surfaces and door knobs for quick disinfecting)

Lots of hand soap - we are going through this way faster than toilet paper. Lol

Teas - my favourites are David’s Tea Cold 911, Mother’s Little Helper & Just Peachy

Not an overwhelming supply but enough food in the pantry like soups, pastas, sauces, etc... also some treats because we can still have fun in quarantine. We got fruit loops, ice cream and some chocolate eggs and it makes it feel like a little vacation some days.

Thermometer (we use a digital ear thermometer and it was one of the best purchases we made for our family for a fast and reliable temperature reading)

Crystals (more about this later but for now at least one for your bedside table that makes you smile)

Step 4 - Healthy Mind & Spirit

Sleep, sleep, sleep. As much as possible. Sleep is a hot commodity in our home especially when kids are sick but whenever possible, I try to give myself permission to sleep. This morning, one of my sons and I slept until 11am. Yay!

Smudge with Sage or Paolo Santo. I’ve read in several places that sage is a disinfectant but I can’t speak to the science of that. I can share from experience that it really does clear out the energy and provides a clean slate for our entire home. I meditate or simply imagine inviting wellness into our home after a smudge cleansing. This could go under step 1 for healthy home but it’s also great to do after the illness passes to clear the home of all that energy and start fresh.

Don’t forget the simple things in life like warmth. One of the first teachers I met at Waldorf taught me about keeping children warm in the spring when the ground is still cold. I try to encourage socks always even indoors this time of year, warm pants and use lots of wool or natural fibres in the clothes we make available to the kids. When our bodies are warm, our energy can more effectively be used to get well or stay well by boosting our immune system.

Media and device cleanses : It can be so addictive to check our phone or device constantly for social media and news updates but I try to turn off my phone and news for a while. I find spending present time with my family, reading a good book, working on something for my job vs watching all the news calms my nervious system and helps me feel more grounded during uncertain times.

There’s so much we can do for ourselves while we ride out COVID and other viruses. My hope is that you stay healthy but if you do catch something during this time, be prepared and ask for help. We are all in this together and here for each other.

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bonannowasright-blog · 6 years

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Behind the futuristic promise of a world of fully linked people and objects, when cars, fridges, watches, vacuums, and dildos are directly connected to each other and to the Internet, there is what is already here: the fact that the most polyvalent of sensors is already in operation: myself. 'I' share my geolocation, my mood, my opinions, my account of what I saw today that was awesome or awesomely banal. I ran, so I immediately shared my route, my time, my performance numbers and their self-evaluation. I always post photos of my vacations, my evenings, my riots, my colleagues, of what I’m going to eat and who I’m going to fuck. I appear not to do much and yet I produce a steady stream of data. Whether I work or not, my everyday life, as a stock of information, remains fully valuable. 'Thanks to the widespread networks of sensors, we will have a God’s eye view of ourselves. For the first time, we can precisely map the behavior of masses of people at the level of their daily lives,' enthuses one of the professors. The great refrigerated storehouses of data are the pantry of current government. In its rummaging through the databases produced and continuously updated by the everyday life of connected humans, it looks for the correlations it can use to establish not universal laws nor even 'whys,' but rather 'whens' and 'whats,' onetime, situated predictions, not to say oracles. The stated ambition of cybernetics is to manage the unforeseeable, and to govern the ungovernable instead of trying to destroy it. The question of cybernetic government is not only, as in the era of political economy, to anticipate in order to plan the action to take, but also to act directly upon the virtual, to structure the possibilities. A few years ago, the LAPD bought itself a new software program called PredPol. Based on a heap of crime statistics, it calculates the probabilities that a particular crime will be committed, neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street. Given these probabilities updated in real time, the program itself organizes the police patrols in the city. A founder cybernetician wrote in Le Monde in 1948: 'We can dream of a time when the machine a gouverner will - for good or evil, who knows? - compensate for the shortcomings, obvious today, of the leaders and customary apparatuses of politics.' Every epoch dreams the next one, even if the dream of the one may become the daily nightmare of the other. The object of the great harvest of personal information is not an individualized tracking of the whole population. If the surveillants insinuate themselves into the intimate lives of each and every person, it’s not so much to construct individual files as to assemble massive databases that make numerical sense. It is more efficient to correlate the shared characteristics of individuals in a multitude of 'profiles,' with the probable developments they suggest. One is not interested in the individual, present and entire, but only in what makes it possible to determine their potential lines of flight. The advantage of applying the surveillance to profiles, 'events,' and virtualities is that statistical entities don’t take offense, and individuals can still claim they’re not being monitored, at least not personally. While cybernetic governmentality already operates in terms of a completely new logic, its subjects continue to think of themselves according to the old paradigm. We believe that our 'personal' data belong to us, like our car or our shoes, and that we’re only exercising our 'individual freedom' by deciding to let Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon or the police have access to them, without realizing that this has immediate effects on those who refuse to, and who will be treated from then on as suspects, as potential deviants. 'To be sure,' predicts The New Digital Age, 'there will be people who resist adopting and using technology, people who want nothing to do with virtual profiles, online data systems or smart phones. Yet a government might suspect that people who opt out completely have something to hide and thus are more likely to break laws, and as a counterterrorism measure, that government will build the kind of ‘hidden people’ registry we described earlier. If you don’t have any registered social-networking profiles or mobile subscriptions, and on-line references to you are unusually hard to find, you might be considered a candidate for such a registry. You might also be subjected to a strict set of new regulations that includes rigorous airport screening or even travel restrictions.'

The Invisible Committee, To Our Friends

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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The Private Chefs Risking Their Lives to Feed the Super Rich

For private chefs, coronavirus has forced difficult conversations with their wealthy clients

Everyone’s a little stir-crazy these days, even inside the sprawling Southern California mansion where Catarina* works as a private chef. The family she’s exclusively cooked for during the last eight years canceled their vacation last week, and now they’re practicing social isolation — at least, as far as they’re concerned. “The only people who are coming and going are myself, the housekeeper, the house manager, the dog walker, the dog trainer, and themselves,” she says, “because they’re going to the office, supposedly with no one else there.”

Caterina’s clients have rich-people blinders on when it comes to their own staff, she says, which is putting everyone in the house at risk. She’s doing her best to mitigate it: She wears gloves when she’s cooking in their kitchen. She maintains six feet of social distance. But the family fails to realize that an offhand request for omelets for breakfast can send her to grocery store after grocery store in search of a stocked egg case. If anyone’s going to be Coronavirus Mary, it’s her.

Like Caterina, Ashok* has been working on salary for a wealthy Arizona family for years, cooking soigne meals and catering parties at their house. When the state’s stay-in-place orders first came out his employers let him stay home, and he used the time to take on side clients for people in lower-income brackets: “less fancy things for people who just need food on the table,” he describes via text. He also started picking up extra food and cooking through the night to deliver free meals to older people in his community.

But the situation blew up last week when, coronavirus be damned, the wife of the couple he usually cooks for was determined to host a party for two dozen people. Ashok had to shut it down. “I told her there was no way to prepare the menu because I just cannot get a hold of the food supplies,” he explained on a chef-oriented Reddit thread. “Also told her I would not force my helpers — bartender, sous, servers, etc. — to come in during this time. I don’t want to lose my job, but it’s stupidly irresponsible of me to be going shopping on a near daily basis right now as well.”

The family agreed. In fact, he negotiated three paid weeks off, after which time he will deliver meals to them without making personal contact. It’s a good thing — in the last few days he started feeling feverish. He hopes it’s exhaustion. Now he’s at home, waiting out the symptoms, asking friends to take over the volunteer cooking he was doing on the side for other elderly neighbors.

Like delivery drivers and grocery store clerks, personal chefs who make a living cooking in other peoples’ homes are being asked to put their bodies on the line each day. But for what greater good? Some are comfortable with the extra safety steps they’re taking. Others aren’t sure they can afford to turn down the work. Most know that, in the face of blithe ignorance, it’s up to them to keep themselves and their clients safe. Even the employers who claim to be diligent about social distancing seem to think their kitchen is some kind of immunity bubble and that their chefs conjure up ingredients in a virus-free poof of smoke.

According to the U.S. Personal Chef Association, there are an estimated 9,000 private chefs working in the U.S. today. Association president Larry Lynch says 90 percent of the group’s 1,000 registered members cook meals in clients’ homes rather than in the relative safety of a rented commercial kitchen. That doesn’t count the untold number of private chefs like Catarina, under contract to a single wealthy family, or gig workers who book home-based dinner parties through popular online services such as MyTable, TakeAChef, Cozymeal, and Table At Home.

Many of these larger booking companies are operating like it’s business as usual. According to a March 19 email sent to participating chefs, Table at Home did relax its reservation policies and told chefs that canceling jobs wouldn’t count against their ranking, but at the same time, the company reassured them, “We will continue to try to drive requests on our platform using our marketing and promotional campaigns. If you are still interested in working, please propose on as many opportunities as you can.”

Another service, MyChef, is using the epidemic as a recruiting tool. On March 25, it placed an advertisement on the Boston job boards: “Are you out of work due to COVID-19?” it begins. “Would you like to still advance your career by creating your own culinary business?” The ad specifies, in fact, that its service brings cooks to clients’ homes, with no mention of ensuring their safety. (At the time this article was published, Massachusetts had not issued a stay-in-place order.)

Restaurants, too, have been asked to take on private cooking gigs — but they’re largely turning them down, not just because state and city stay-at-home orders only allow pickup or delivery. Taking their equipment over to an apartment that might be contaminated? Cleaning clients’ uneaten food off their dishes? One infection among the staff could be the death blow for an ailing business. But the situation is a little more fraught for personal chefs, many of whom operate as independent contractors or small businesses.

While Lynch says that some of his members have seen demand for prepared meals rise, that’s not the case for Grace*, a personal chef in the Washington, D.C., area. Grace has hung on to two meal-delivery clients, but others have canceled after losing their own jobs. “I’m empathetic because I understand if all you can afford is to go to the grocery. But then I don’t have a client.” She makes a good chunk of her income cooking private meals. One dinner in mid-March paid enough to cover her bills for the month. Nothing is on the books for April. She’s looking into a Small Business Association loan to carry her over until the work picks back up again.

“You can’t go home at night,” the client told him. “We need you to be here so we’re all sheltering in place together.”

DeWayne*, who normally spends his evenings cooking for small parties, has taken on grocery shopping for housebound clients to make up at least some of the income he’s short. Desperate to protect his 2-year-old daughter and her immunocompromised mother, he’s staying out of other people’s homes altogether for now. But the pandemic hasn’t stopped potential customers from asking. Some people, upset they can’t go out to their favorite place, have even directed him to the restaurant’s menu and asked him to recreate it. Not wanting to burn a potential future gig, he usually saves the lecture and just tells them he’s already booked. Another chef probably said yes.

Even though most state and municipal orders only consider restaurant takeout and food delivery to be essential services, Lynch of the Personal Chef Association believes that the work of providing nutritious meals to families in this crisis time fits the definition of an essential service, too. He’s working with lawyers to draft language making the case. One personal chef Eater spoke to said his wealthy client floated the “essential services” line past him — if he stopped working, the family would be stuck ordering takeout! — but he turned them down, essentially putting himself out of work.

In webinar after webinar, Lynch is sharing the latest information about contamination from the FDA, CDC, and EPA. Their safety guidelines suggest that cooked food itself won’t transmit the virus. That said, Lynch advises personal chefs to take many extra precautions. “You have to ask the right questions of clients and make it really clear: If you decide to engage, you’ll keep social distance,” he tells them. “You’ll be sanitizing every surface, including doorknobs. They’re to stay out of the kitchen. If you’re going to serve something, put it in the fridge and move out, sanitizing on the way out.”

Bill*, who has cooked for a family of Midwestern billionaires for many years, said that these added safety measures are just an extreme form of the social distancing that he already practices with his clients, and he’s fine with it. (“It’s not a Downton Abbey kind of thing, but I respect their privacy,” he jokes.) When they’re not traveling together to one of the clients’ coastal homes, he has begun cooking meals in his own kitchen and biking or driving the food over. He now puts on gloves once he enters the house and leaves dinner in the fridge, organizing it into plastic tubs with instructions on how to heat and assemble them.

But if it’s the coming-and-going and related exposure that’s the real concern, there’s one solution that a number of rich families have proposed to their chefs: Move in. DeWayne received one offer that sounded tempting at first: Full-time work at well above his $500-a-day rate. There was a catch, though. “You can’t go home at night,” the client told him. “We need you to be here so we’re all sheltering in place together.”

Catarina’s bosses have also suggested she self-quarantine in their home. She’s been close to the family for years, but for the moment, she is holding them off, smiling away the occasional snippy comment that she doesn’t have to be there if she doesn’t want to. “I’m concerned that I might have it as an asymptomatic carrier,” is what she tells them. “You don’t want me moving in.”

*To safeguard their livelihoods, Eater guaranteed anonymity to any source who requested it.

Jonathan Kauffman is a Beard Award-winning writer based in Portland, Oregon, and the author of 2018’s Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat.

Carolyn Figel is a freelance artist living in Brooklyn.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2R1Hh8J https://ift.tt/3dHEXxl

For private chefs, coronavirus has forced difficult conversations with their wealthy clients

“You can’t go home at night,” the client told him. “We need you to be here so we’re all sheltering in place together.”

*To safeguard their livelihoods, Eater guaranteed anonymity to any source who requested it.

Jonathan Kauffman is a Beard Award-winning writer based in Portland, Oregon, and the author of 2018’s Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat.

Carolyn Figel is a freelance artist living in Brooklyn.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2R1Hh8J via Blogger https://ift.tt/3bGoUhy

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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lukerhill · 5 years

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Two Duplex Kitchen Reveals – And Our Airbnb Listing Is Live!

Big day, big day, BIG. DAY. Not only are we gonna give you a tour of both completed duplex kitchens, we also FINALLY got our Airbnb listings up and running. Phew! So keep reading for all the photos & the details on how you can book a week there if you wanna check out Cape Charles for yourself (we think it’s the best summer vacation ever – but we might be a little biased).

So the picture above is obviously the kitchen with the blue tile & wood cabinets on the right side of the duplex (which you’ve seen bits of already in our post about installing the Ikea cabinets and tiling the backsplashes) but I’m actually going to pop over to the other side – the kitchen with the pink tile & blue cabinets (seen below) for the first part of this post.

We’ve got so much to show you, but I want to start off by rewinding to the state of things when we first bought the duplex in 2017. This was the view from the living room towards the now-kitchen (see that orange trim through the doorway?).

And the previous (clearly not original) kitchen had been shoved into a former side porch to the left of that orange trimmed window above, which didn’t exactly feel like the right spot for it.

Here’s a comparative “after” shot to the one I shared two photos up. Obviously one huge improvement was widening the doorway (and adding a transom!) to connect these two spaces and maximize flow and light. Plus, now you can see our wall of tile all the way from the front door.

The now-kitchen was actually a dining room of sorts before. We think. Although an old fridge was inexplicably floating in the middle of it. But clearly this bigger room was begging to be the new kitchen. At least that’s what the two-toned trim is saying to me in this picture.

Here’s a similar view of this area now. We raised the base of the window so we could run cabinetry across that wall and added pocket doors so the laundry can be closed off if it’s too loud while it’s running for anyone cooking or eating or watching TV.

One big update since you’ve last seen these rooms is that they’re actually stocked with stuff now. Blenders, toasters, coffee makers, pots & pans, knives, silverware, serving bowls, plates, cups, wine glasses, mugs, microwaves, even tupperware and salt & pepper are all ready for renters. And yes, there is a cheese grater on each side too. Along with wine openers and chip clips.

We mentioned in our backsplash post that we opted for a different treatment on the stove wall because it felt too chaotic to continue our patterned tile on that side too (we leaned it up to see how it looked and it felt too crazy on two walls). So we went for something subtle yet wipeable and easy to maintain. Note: We could have done the accent tile on the stove wall, but the back wall’s visible from the front door and has that nice centered window, so we wanted to make that wall the star, and cast the side wall as more of a “supporting character.”

Ok, but back to our “subtle yet wipeable solution.” Some call it planking, some call it horizontal paneling, and some call it faux shiplap (real shiplap interlocks), but we were inspired to jump on the bandwagon after long admiring how Shea McGee works it into her beachy/modern home designs, as well as loving Chris & Julia’s TV wall in their family room. Our verdict: what took us so long?! (Also, where do I pick up my Fixer Upper merit badge?)

I’ll share a photo tutorial of it soon, but it’s basically just thin pieces of plywood we cut down to planks, nailed to the wall with small spacers, and painted with durable and easy-to-wipe semi-gloss paint (we color-matched it to the the cabinets so everything blends). We think it’ll provide a more durable and stain-proof surface than plain painted drywall – like how people add beadboard backsplashes – and it was so cheap & easy to do.

And while we’re looking at the appliances, you can see how we chose stainless for the slide-in range and refrigerator, but went with a white countertop microwave so it blended right into the white wall behind it.

I know some people have been curious about the exhaust hood over the range so here are the details. We decided to give one of Ikea’s range hoods a try because we wanted something that looked completely built-in like cabinetry. So the hood is just an insert they sell that automatically comes with all of the materials and instructions to build it into a standard Ikea cabinet.

The only thing you need to figure out is how it vents. Since we can’t vent outside (due to the central firewall required in a duplex) we chose their option to add charcoal filters that clean & recirculate the air. That’s the reason we left the tiny gap above the cabinet instead of adding crown up there. The charcoal filter traps the greasy stuff at the bottom of the hood, but the clean air still needs a spot to escape, hence that little crack up top.

For the fridge we chose a not too fancy but still nice looking top freezer model. It’s not quite counter depth, but we were able to build it in with a side panel so it looks nice and unobtrusive. We were also sure not to buy one with an ice maker or water dispenser because both of those can break or cause leaks (when we lose power in Richmond our ice maker leaks onto our wood floors – ACK! So we don’t want to worry about that in a house that’s vacant in the off season). It may seem minor, but we’re trying to minimize/eliminate maintenance issues wherever we can – even the little ones. And we’ll leave ice in the freezer and a Brita filter in the fridge for renters, so they’ll have cold water & ice on hand.

If you were scratching your head wondering where the dishwasher is, well well well, look what we have here: a built-in, cabinet-fronted dishwasher! The first we have ever done! And we love it. We really didn’t want to interrupt that line of cabinets against that back focal wall, so we crossed our fingers that this would work – and it did. Our plumber installed the dishwasher but we added the cabinet panel & hardware ourselves, which really wasn’t hard at all. It does take some careful measuring (they provide a helpful paper template to eliminate the guesswork) but overall it was very straightforward.

We also have built-in trash cans on the far end of that back wall. Ikea allows you to customize these, so we were able to match the look of all of the other 3-drawer cabinets in the room, but the bottom two are actually one big pull-out.

The floating shelves are another thing you haven’t seen yet, and another thing that I’ll write a tutorial for in a future post – including how we drilled through the tile without disaster (it. was. nervewracking.) along with how we built them ourselves to custom-fit the space. We pretty much followed the same technique that we used for these floating shelves in our bonus room, but they’re a little thicker and more heavy duty so they can support tons of bowls and mugs and cups.

Sherry stained them “Special Walnut” by Minwax, which is the same color we used for the floors throughout the house, so they tie in nicely and add some warmth and sort of an older/original vibe with the shiny new cabinets.

Okay, so now we’re back on the other side (the side with the green-y blue doors throughout). The kitchen layout is exactly the same on this side, just flipped, but the finishes and colors are different. So for example we have brass hardware in here, the shelves are a different color, the cabinets and backsplash are different, etc).

This is what this side looked like before, as seen from the living room. That window in the way back is the one that now sits over the sink.

Once again, widening that doorway and adding the transom really opened up this space in a major way. That kitchen window gets some of the best light on the first floor, so in person you can really appreciate how good it feels to have these rooms more open to each other.

This is the best before photo I could find of the now-kitchen itself. Apparently we were so distracted by the former kitchen (again, now the mudroom/laundry room) to take any good shots of the adjacent space. But it was basically just a big yellow room with a rando fridge in the middle of it. And some faux greenery… which I’m not knocking because faux greenery is basically our love language these days. #Foreshadowing

And here is a similar view today. You can see that we actually shifted/narrowed the opening to our now mudroom/laundry room a little (and added those pocket doors) in order to create some wall space for the cabinets to terminate into.

When I was talking about how we built our shelves, I should have mentioned that we designed them to be 8″ deep, which is intentionally too narrow for heavy items like large plates or bowls. We know some people don’t love the idea of open shelves because they worry the items might get dusty, so most of the actual serving stuff (bowls, wine glasses, plates, etc) are still stored in the cabinets. These are just a nice place for smaller overflow things like measuring cups and cutting boards and tea mugs that are often kept out on a rack or a counter anyway – along with some decorative things like vases/plants.

We lucked out that the pine we purchased to build these shelves was VERY similar in color to the Ikea cabinets that we chose. So instead of staining them, we just clear-sealed these so they’d echo the blonde cabinet color. In these pictures they don’t look as identical as they do in person (when you look at them in real life, they’re so similar it feels like they were sold as a matching set).

As for what else is in the cabinets, we’re thinking we’ll film some sort of “cabinet tour” once we’ve got everything fully moved in an organized. We ended up with a similar number of cabinets to our beach house kitchen, so we’re going to mimic a lot of the systems in there. Plates and flatware will go in the cabinet next to the sink. The drawers flanking the stove will get pots, pans, and other cooking stuff & servingware. The lesser used storage items will go in the upper cabinets, and we’ve got pantry storage in the adjacent mudroom/laundry room.

The smaller number of cabinets in here might not fit every possible gadget that someone might want to have in their full time home (especially a super chef-y person), but we love knowing that we have all of the basics covered with THREE CABINETS/DRAWERS TO SPARE. It’s nice to know there’s room to grow if we forgot something – but there’s already a ton of stuff in here (including things like ziplock bags, cooking oil, pyrex, a spaghetti strainer, soap & cleaning stuff, a vegetable peeler, an ice cream scooper, etc, etc, etc).

We’re hopeful that next week we’ll have photos of both fully finished mudroom/laundry rooms for you – plus give a peek at how our little twin bed sleeping nooks turned out. And by that point I think you’ll have pretty much seen everything except the backyard, which is still in progress.

And if you’re someone who has been thinking about renting the duplex, we’ve listed each side separately, so here’s the Left Side (with the pink doors) and the Right Side (with the blue doors). Each side sleeps up to 6 people (plus one baby – pack ‘n play & sheet provided!). If you’re interested in booking both sides at one time, just check the availability and book each of them for the same dates and the whole house is yours!

Right now we’re only offering weekly rentals for the peak summer season ((Saturday to Saturday, late June through August). We plan to offer shorter off-season rentals in the spring/fall too, but we’re warming up by renting for the summer season first – since we’ll be nearby at the pink house if an issue pops up. If you’re looking for something shorter than a week this summer, places like Hotel Cape Charles, The Northampton Hotel, and Bay Haven Inn offer nightly rooms for around $220-260. And as much as we love our dog, these rentals won’t be pet-friendly. We’re just trying to be extra sensitive to allergies and noise, especially considering that this is two homes with a shared wall.

It’s exciting (and nerve-wracking!) to finally open this sweet house up for reservations, so please bear with us as we work out any kinks during our first go at a short-term vacation rental. You know we’ll tell you everything we learn. And oh boy do we expect there to be a learning curve!

You can also check out our Cape Charles Travel Guide that we posted last year if you’re curious about what there is to do/eat there. Since we’ve written that, more shops have popped up – like a few new bakeries and even an escape room that’s coming!

P.S. You can see all of the other finished rooms of the duplex that we’ve already revealed along with how we tiled the bathrooms, planned the layout, and screamed into a pillow when the review board denied an architectural change we were dying to make here in our duplex category.

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Two Duplex Kitchen Reveals – And Our Airbnb Listing Is Live! appeared first on Young House Love.

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Vacation Rental Marketing - The #Bookdirect Blueprint

Reinventing The Wheel

#bookdirect day won't bring you direct bookings - This article will

Tomorrow (February 6th) is #bookdirect day but there's a lot more to getting direct bookings than sharing an image on your website or social media once a year.

In this article, I outline a strategy that you can adopt that will bring you direct bookings.

I also share a case study and real data that shows that this strategy works.

And I share why this is the only viable option going forward.

In many cases vacation/holiday rental businesses are unlike other businesses.

The majority of owners already had a second property that they used as their own vacation/holiday home before they decided to rent it out.

They read about the possibilities of earning extra income by joining the likes of VRBO and before they knew it, they were in the vacation rental business.

How we got to where we are now...

The first evolution of the wheel

As I said, most owners had a home and decided to list with a listing company. It was that simple 5 or 10 years ago - List it and they will come. People literally did just that. They joined VRBO, Stayz or Ownersdirect, paid the subscription and waited for bookings. And booking came. 'All you had to do' was deal with inquiries, meet and greet, handle cleaning and changeovers and you were in business.

The thing is, this isn't really a complete business model. All of the marketing was done through the listing site and if you don't control the marketing you don't control the business (as many have come to learn).

You can see this in the graphic below

The wheel represents the business and it's supported by a single spoke (in this case just one listing company).

Any wheel with just one spoke is vulnerable to bumps and potholes along the road and when Homeaway/VRBO introduced 'best match' and traveller service fees a lot of owners ended up with a bit of a business wobble caused by a buckled wheel.

The second evolution of the wheel

Owners quickly reevaluated their marketing strategy and they spread their offering by signing up with other listing sites and supplemented that with some social marketing.

These additional spokes made the marketing wheel more stable and less prone to catastrophic bumps in the road. They had spread the marketing risk but still didn't control any of the marketing itself. The marketing was just handled by more platforms.

This wheel was also pretty unsafe and as the big listing sites increased costs, added their own cancellation fees and took control of the money the wheel started to shake. Again, it became unsafe and it caused problems.

The third evolution of the wheel

By this stage, owners were beginning to see that this model of marketing was posing a danger to their businesses so many, if not most, started to add more and more spokes in order to spread the risks posed by any one platform changing it's rules or model.

The wheel below shows where many owners are today

The above wheel shows a mixture (clockwise from 12 o'clock) of Facebook marketing, email marketing (to past guests), booking(.com), Pinterest marketing, VRBO, Houfy, Local listing sites, Tripadvisor, Twitter, Airbnb, nurturing guests (with content marketing, extras and offers) and Homeaway.

Because this is a more stable wheel (with more spokes) it's a much safer to use than the two previous versions but it has a major flaw, and that's the hub.

The hub is the most important part of any wheel. it connects all of the other parts. It holds those parts together. It's where the power comes from.

The hub of any online business (and we're all running online businesses) is it's website and, believe it or not, around 50% of owners still don't have a website. The bad news is that even for those that do have a website the above wheel is flawed in a major way.

A lot of the spokes point outwards in a marketing sense and the main listing sites do everything in their power to stop any traffic arriving to your site.

Reinventing the wheel

There is a relatively new type of wheel that lends itself perfectly to this analogy. It doesn't have spokes and it has built in suspension that make rocky roads less bumpy.

It's called the Loop Wheel and whereas spoked wheels are constantly under tension, this wheel is relaxed and much more flexible. Just as before, the hub is the most crucial part and without it the wheel will fall apart.

As you can see, by using the Loop Wheel approach we've broken the marketing channels into 4 sections. An owners or managers website is the hub of the marketing wheel. Nearly all of your other touchpoints point back to your website. This is key.

Your marketing channels break down into 3 categories.

Guest Nurture (GEO)

The most important of the 3 categories, by far, is the guest nurture category, after all, it's the guests that pay the rent. I see lots of owners and managers talking about search engine optimisation (SEO) but very few are spending their time on GEO (guest experience optimisation). GEO covers the pre-stay, in-stay and post-stay aspects of the entire guest experience. Most owners and managers currently spend their time chasing bookings through third parties and very few focus their attention primarily at the guest and this is a big mistake.

Pre-stay

Pre stay marketing takes the form of content marketing. Owners spend their time creating articles that answer potential guests frequently asked questions. Once these are added to the website they sit in the search engines and drive traffic back to the site.

These can then be shared on our own Vacation Soup where we collect, collate and syndicate them for much-increased exposure (see the case study below for evidence of how this works).

In-stay

In stay nurture takes the form of great customer service. This can take all forms from a stocked fridge to an extra change of bedding half way through the booking. You can provide fresh flowers on arrival or an interactive iPad guide. The simple idea is that you simply offer a higher service level than your competitors.

If you are on Vacation Soup, then you can refer guests to the content on your website and they can access your recommendations through a map-based experience while they are out and about (see here for an example of how this works).

Post-stay

The cheapest cost per guest marketing is repeat guests. So up your game by sending regular newsletters that tell guests about new content on your website, last minute discounts and what upcoming events are taking place in your region. These also point back to the website and keep past guests engaged with your brand.

Adopt some form of customer relationship management (CRM) system and send Christmas cards, birthday cards and the like.

All of this keeps you and your property front of mind.

Social Platforms

The second part of the wheel applies to getting your message out on the social platforms. Each of these also point traffic back to your website.

I spoke about Facebook in a previous post so won't cover it here.

Youtube is much underused by owners and managers but you don't need to be a big marketing agency in order to leverage traffic from it (it's the second biggest search engine).

We all carry a smartphone that can take video, so consider shooting short recommendations (less than 3 minutes) when you are out and about. Just include a "For more information visit (yourwebsite).com" - Add the videos to your website content.

Pinterest is another great source for driving traffic back to your site. Create a business account (this is quick and free to do) and create boards for your location. Base your board titles and content around things to see, things to do, places to eat, photos, guides, etc. Include your destination in each boards title.

Every time that you share your website content to a board, Pinterest will automatically add a link back to the article on your website. You can drive a surprising amount of traffic this way.

3rd Party Sites

I recommend trying to wean yourself off of the big listing sites due to over saturation, fees, cancellation policies etc. That, and the fact that in reality they sit outside of the marketing wheel as they bring no traffic to the hub.

Local sites generally offer fewer properties so you have better odds of getting a booking. Many, if not most, don't add service fees so you will appear to offer better value and most allow direct communication with potential guests.

Many new sites like Vacation Soup, although we aren't a listing site per se, provide direct links back to your website, the same goes for Houfy, Florida rentals by owner, Emerald Coast by owner and others also link back to the owners' websites.

Proof Is In The Pudding

A case study

Meet Laurie,

Laurie and her husband, Jeff, own a condo on Maui. Before we go any further I should mention that there are over 21,000 competing rental properties on Maui and the island isn't even 40 miles long. There's a hell of a lot of competition.

Anyway, Laurie has adopted the Loop Wheel approach to her marketing and she created a website via our free website giveaway and video course.

She then followed our destination marketing course and started adding great articles to her website. Laurie has been kind enough to share her results with us and you can see them below.

First off, let's look at some examples of what she's been doing

Read 1,879 times on Laurie's website

Read 1,560 times on Vacation Soup

Laurie's Post Views On alohacondorentals.com

Laurie's most popular post has been read 1,879 times in the last 6 months. Her 5 most popular posts have bought 5,878 visitors to her site in that same time. All of her posts have resulted in over 18,000 site visitors

Laurie's Post Views On Vacation Soup

Laurie's top 5 articles on Vacation Soup have also been read another 3,150 times in the last 6 months. So, just her top 5 posts on her site and the Soup have been read over 9,000 times.

It's also worth noting that the average time spent reading each post is over 8 times longer if it's read on Vacation Soup.

You can also see (below) how traffic to these articles is growing, month on month, as the articles rise in Google's organic search. This graph shows traffic for the 'Best happy hours, Maui article which currently sits on the first page of Google in +/- 5th place.

Best happy hours Maui Traffic growth

Laurie's Overall Traffic For The Last 90 Days

Here are Laurie's stats for the last 90 days. Once again, you can see how this is growing.

Site Visitors

Here's a list of site visitors by channel.

As you can see, aside from Google there is a lot of direct traffic. As a brand grows this direct traffic grows as people search directly for the site by name. This is the advantage of building a Loop Wheel with everything pointing to your website.

You can also see good numbers coming from Pinterest and Facebook underlying the value of these social channels.

People coming from Vacation Soup spend more than double the time on the site than the average visitor. These leads have already been browsing Vacation Soup, and have looked at her property, so by the time they come through they are genuinely looking to book.

Bookings

Here's the proof that all of this works.

Laurie doesn't list with any of the big listing sites.

Laurie's had 46 Bookings in 18 months from a standing start

Laurie's website was launched 18 months ago today

Here is the breakdown of bookings taken, by channel

You can visit Laurie's Maui Guide here

The real reason that you need to do this...

You don't need to adopt this method because I say so. You don't have to adopt this method because it works. You have to adopt it because the method that you are currently using is failing - and it's going to get a lot worse. I'm not scaremongering here, this all comes down to simple math(s).

When I started a villa rental company in Algarve, Portugal in 2003-4 there were 3,000 competing properties in the area. There are now 59,000.

That's a 20 fold increase in competing properties in 15 years

Tourism to Portugal has 'only' doubled in that time.

The fact is, that only five years ago there were between 3 and 6 million rentals worldwide (depending on which data source you believed).

There are now 16 million rental properties listed on Hometogo alone.

I think it fair to say that that number could well double again in the next 5 years so no matter how you look at it that's going to result in fewer and fewer bookings per property.

There is NO escaping this fact

In Summary...

Those of you that don't have your own website really need to do something about that. You'll really struggle to get direct bookings without one.

If you have your own site then make every effort to point all of your marketing back to it.

You can't get direct bookings without traffic - Traffic doesn't just arrive at a website, you have to drive traffic and the most successful way of doing that is to produce great content. The more traffic that you drive to your site the more booking you'll get.

Don't focus on SEO too much because as you add more and more content to your website the SEO will come with it.

Pay attention to GEO instead. Great GEO will bring direct bookings, repeat bookings and social word of mouth.

I would love to know your thoughts on this subject so please share your ideas in the comments section below.