These days, Orion barely has the spare time to breathe.

The upcoming AQUA initiative had a lot of legal hoops to jump through, and it was his job to ensure they didn't have lawsuits on their hands before or afterward. On top of that, Rocket's return had the public swarming the offices insisting everyone and their mother had to be an undercover Rocket, because Karen was a goddamn bitch and there's no way someone that evil wasn't working for a criminal empire.

His head hurts, he's stressed, and he's not paying any attention to his surroundings as he slouches out of his Lilycove office and into the sticky Hoennian air. Sunglasses do their best to shield the bags under his eyes, some important document or another clutched desperately in his right hand to be used as a shield should he be assaulted by a member of the press.

A bouquet is shoved toward him, and Orion nearly drops both it and the sensitive documents he already had on hand. Thankfully for both his embarrassment and his job, he barely manages to keep hold of both.

Flustered, it takes several seconds for him to register the intrusion.

"Oh — Cyril."

The guilt is immediate. He hadn't called like the other had asked him to. It had started out as simply being too busy to schedule a date, and then he'd been too nervous, and by the time he was feeling desperate enough, it felt as if it had already been far too long and surely the handsome, charming @cyril had already found some other pretty thing to flirt with.

But he's here, instead, looking downright bashful, and Orion sees both a second chance and a perfect excuse to get the hell away from the cameras.

"Please," he agrees, breathless.

Dazed by the brilliance of @cyril's playful grin, Orion doesn't register their closeness until the Kalosian has flung an arm around him to physically guide him away from the press. It's at that point that his brain all but short-circuits, anxiety overloading his thoughts like a blown fuse.

Ushered into the back of a vehicle that even smells expensive, Orion blinks several times as if to pull himself from the daze.

"You smell nice," is spoken off-hand and immediately regretted, blush flooding his cheeks. But he doesn't take it back. Cyril does smell nice, like spice and flowers.

"No," he admits of Purple Miltank, "but I've heard of it."

A lot of his colleagues liked to dine there for work brunches; it was exactly the sort of expensive fare he could see Silph organizing. Orion, on the other hand, spent most of his not inconsiderable salary on maintaining the large array of Pokémon he kept and rehabilitated.

"It sounds nice," he adds, to confirm he's on board.