Craig put the crook of his arm up to his face and sneezed into his shirt sleeve. He sighed as he reached for a tissue, thinking back to all of the anime and manga he had consumed back in middle school. According to old Japanese superstition, when you sneeze suddenly, it's because someone is talking about you. He had no clue who would be talking about him right now, but whoever it was, he assumed it wasn't something good.

He looked at the time on the bottom of the computer screen. 7:24 PM. Ugh. He was supposed to get off work at five, but here he was, still at his desk. Then again, he wasn't the only one. Tomorrow morning was the deadline for the latest issue of Treble and Bass magazine, or T and B, as the cool kids called it. At least Craig assumed that's what they'd call it if cool people even read magazines anymore. Print sales had been falling steadily each year.

When it was deadline time, the entire staff worked until late to get everything in. Craig had only been a staff member for about a year. Before that, he had worked as an intern for the company straight out of university. Music had always been a passion of his, but he had no musical talent and no motivation to keep practicing until he improved. He did, however, always have a way with words. At least that's what his teachers in high school had told him. That's what led him to majoring in journalism with a minor in music history. His parents had told him it was an awful idea, but he rarely listened to them anyway. He just had dreams of being able to see concerts for free and then being able to critique them in great detail, whether good or bad.

Of course, that's not how things actually worked in the real world. Not at the beginning of one's career, that is. Craig was currently more of a grunt than anything. He helped with research and fact checking sometimes. Other times, he would assist with formatting when a writer was deemed too important to do that themselves. Mostly, though, he did random small tasks around the office. Including coffee runs. Once he became an official staff member, not much had actually changed from when he was an intern.

However, Craig had managed to convince the editor-in-chief to let him write a small blurb every month. No more than two hundred and fifty words. The editor-in-chief cared so little about this blurb, knowing full well that no one would ever read it, that she didn't care what it was about. She probably never read them herself, to be honest.

Craig realized that he could write about whatever the fuck he wanted. At first, he simply wrote about anything in the music industry that he found interesting. However, after writing a few bits about queer musicians or issues facing the industry, he realized that he could use his small featurette as a platform to showcase LBGTQ+ performers. There were few queer voices in print music publications, and as a proudly open gay man, he wanted to change that.

Thus the Queer Spotlight was born.

Craig rubbed the back of his neck. How long had he been sitting in this chair? He had been so involved with all of the other busy work this month that he hadn't gotten around to putting something together for the Queer Spotlight, and now that he was at the deadline, he was panicking. He was stuck with writer's block. The section was only two hundred to two hundred and fifty words, and yet he couldn't even pull something kinda-sorta meaningful out of his ass.

"Hey! Tucker!"

Craig spun around in his chair to find his boss's assistant standing in the doorway. He was always made to do the editor-in-chief's dirty work, which was obviously why he was here right now. Craig never really liked the guy. He was the poster boy for being a kiss-ass.

"What do you want, Cartman?" Craig asked.

"I told you to call me Eric. Cartman doesn't sound professional at all, and someday, I'll be your boss, so you'd better get on my good side."

"Did you only come down here to give me vague threats, or did my actual boss have a message for me?"

Craig knew that being snide was never going to get him far in his career, but it was a habit that he could never break. His mouth had gotten him in trouble more times than he could remember.

Eric grimaced and crossed his arms. "She wants to know if you're finally done with your gay little snippet. She'd like it on her desk by eight, but I'm going to assume by the blank screen behind you that that's not gonna happen."

Craig's shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His air of confidence and assertiveness melted away into concern.

"Yeah, there are your true feelings," Eric said, nodding. "Your worry is just so delicious. But I don't think I could have another serving. I have to check in on everyone else in this entire fucking office, so I can't stay much longer."

He turned to leave, but lingered in the doorway.

"If you want, I can try to get you an extension. I can't promise much, but I can probably get you another hour."

Craig ran his fingers through his ebony locks. They felt greasy and flat. He had forgotten to take a shower the other day in his panic about the deadline. He mentally made a note to take one once he finally got home.

"Yeah, that would help. Why would you bother doing that for me, though?" he asked.

Eric turned back to look at Craig. "I may hate you, and I may hate my boss even more, but I love this magazine. I wouldn't want it to go to print looking like shit. What kind of editor-in-chief would I be someday if I allowed each issue to not be the best damn issue ever? A shitty one. I'm looking for end game, Tucker. And maybe you should, too."

Eric left the room, not bothering to close Craig's door. Craig sighed and stretched in his chair. He decided to assume that he was going to get the hour extension—Eric was quite good at convincing others to do things—and get up to take a break.

He went to the break room to heat up some water. He filed through the handful of tea offerings in the room, scowling when he didn't find one that interested him. All of the tea bags were some green or white tea fruit blend, or what made him even more pissed off, some sort of hipster tea made from flowers or roots.

"Who doesn't offer plain fucking black tea?" he mumbled to himself.

Craig liked the simple things in life. Some people would say that he liked the boring things. Actually, most people would say that. Most of his previous boyfriends ended up leaving him for that very reason. They were all interested in going out every night. They wanted drama. Excitement. Craig wanted to cook some instant ramen and watch shows about cute animals. That was his idea of a great fucking night.

He reluctantly returned to his office with plain black coffee. He wasn't a huge fan, but it got the job done.

7:47 PM. Craig took a quick sip from the coffee, immediately regretting it when it burned his tongue. He tapped his fingers on his cheap wooden desk. He chewed on his lower lip. He noted that his lips were awfully chapped. Seriously, what sort of upstanding gay man is he if he allows his lips to get this bad? Then again, it's not like anyone has been kissing him lately, so why should he really give a shit? He decided to buy some lip balm in the morning anyway. Just in case.

Craig let out a growl of frustration and smashed his keyboard.

"There! There's my Spotlight for the month! I think everyone will be able to relate to this one!" he yelled out to no one.

Craig deleted his frantic string of vowels and consonants, finally admitting defeat. He decided that this month's Queer Spotlight was just going to be some quick mention about Lady Gaga's new movie. That was gay enough, right? He just hoped that readers would be excited enough to read about her some more that they wouldn't notice that the writer had clearly gone through the motions this issue.

Craig opened the door to his shitty apartment and immediately knew that his roommate had someone over for the night. Thankfully it was only some unknown clothes strewn on the floor that clued him in, and not the foul stench of sex. When you're having sex, the smell just kind of goes with the whole experience. However on its own, when you're tired and lonely, it just may be one of the worst scents known to humankind.

Craig rolled his eyes and closed the door, locking the four deadbolts that decorated it. In this neighborhood, you could never be too cautious. It wasn't his first choice of neighborhoods to live in, but when you're young and trying to make it living in New York City, you have to make some sacrifices. Craig's biggest sacrifice was living in the most affordable neighborhood, which also happened to have the highest crime rate per capita. He often kicked himself for not trying to find a place just outside of the city—maybe in New Jersey—and commute in. He kicked himself for letting his roommate make most of the decisions in regards to location. He usually didn't want to get involved with anything major, but he realized about a week later that maybe he should have been involved in that one thing.

He went into his room and flopped face first onto his bed. He had managed to get his awful entry in on time, thanks to the extension Cartman secured for him. He still didn't feel proud of what he wrote. It had felt more like something you'd find in People magazine, and Craig typically held himself to high standards. Whatever. It was over. Next week was when work on the new issue began. A fresh start.

Craig narrowed his eyes. What was that faint squeaking sound? Was it getting louder?

Oh fuck. His roommate was going in for round two. Or seven. Who knows how long they'd been here before Craig got home. Fucking Stan. He knew that tonight was Craig's deadline. Did he have to bring home some new plaything tonight? Craig rolled over in bed and covered his head with his pillow. The squeaking got louder, and was now accompanied by the bed banging against the wall and moaning.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Times like this made him feel very lonely, and—as much as he didn't like to admit it—very horny. Craig picked up his phone and swiped the screen. He opened up his Facebook app and headed straight to one page in particular. That of his most recent ex.

Craig felt like he should be over Thomas by now. It had been almost a year since they had broken up. In his defense, they had been together for three years, and things had gotten serious to the point of discussing the idea of marriage. They had met in college while doing laundry in the dorm basement, and had nearly instant chemistry. Maybe that's what was their eventual downfall? That they had too much in common? That they were too much of a good thing? Craig liked to tell himself that, but really it was that they drifted apart once they had graduated and entered the working world. Both of them worked too many hours trying to establish themselves in their careers, and their schedules rarely synched up. Eventually Thomas was the one who suggested that they move on. That he didn't regret the happy years he spent with Craig, but at this point they were treading water with no land in sight. Craig's often flat affect when things got emotional stayed just that, even as the person he loved most was breaking up with him. He just nodded and agreed. He didn't try to put up a fight for their relationship. That was probably what he regretted most. He still believed that if he had tried to show how much he cared about him and their relationship, Thomas may have stayed.

But that's not how things happened. So now Craig was once again stalking Thomas's page. It looked like he had finally moved on, assuming that the profile picture of him kissing another man on some unfamiliar beach was any indication.

Craig closed the app and opened his stash of photos on his phone. He scrolled through until he found the special ones he had taken of Thomas on their second anniversary. He shoved his hand down his pants and whimpered when he wrapped his hands around his aching cock. He hadn't been with anyone other than his hand since the break-up. Fuck, he craved the feeling of another person, but he just couldn't get himself to go out to any bars or clubs. He sure as shit wasn't about to join Grindr or some other hook-up app pretending to be a dating app.

He stroked himself slowly at first, gazing at the beautiful naked form of his ex. Once he realized that he wasn't going to last very long, what with the photo plus the loud sex sounds in the other room, he gripped his cock tighter and stroked faster. He finally came. He covered his mouth with his free hand to muffle the long groan he let out.

He wiped his hands on his pants and dropped his phone on the floor. A normal person would have gotten out of bed to clean up in the bathroom. Craig never did whenever he jerked off to photos of Thomas. He was always so wrought by guilt that he could never look himself in the mirror afterward. He soon fell asleep; that guilty feeling, his blanket.

A week later, Craig was busy loading a new toner cartridge into the floor printer when Cartman found him.

"Hey, Tucker! Can I see you for a minute?"

"Can't you see I'm busy, Cartman?" he said, flatly.

"I told you to call me Eric!" He sighed and continued. "I can see that you're really busy," he said, his voice drenched with sarcasm, "but I'm pretty damn sure you're going to want to hear what I have to say."

"Ugh, fine. Give me five minutes to finish this stupid errand they gave me and I'll come by your office. Okay?"

Craig soon found himself sitting across from Eric in an office that was, unsurprisingly, nicer than his own. The difference in power was made obvious by Eric's choices in seating. He sat in a large, probably second-hand, but nevertheless nice leather chair. Craig, however, sat in a plain wooden chair.

"Craig, I invited you in here to discuss the opportunity of a lifetime."

"I don't give a shit about any of your get rich quick schemes, Eric," Craig interrupted.

"Will you let me finish my damn pitch? This has nothing to do with those." He sighed and folded his hands together. "This morning, the editor-in-chief got a call from the manager of some up and coming band out of Denver. I think they're called Humble Folx or some shit."

Craig raised an eyebrow. "Humble Folx? You're making that up."

"Nope. That's actually their name. They have a song on the radio right now. A cover of 'The Chain'."

"I think I might have heard it once or twice. Didn't know the band name."

"Anyway," Cartman continued, "word around the internet is that the lead singer has never done an interview. Anytime the band has been interviewed, he's nowhere to be found. They usually have some bullshit excuse, or say that he's trying to maintain an air of mystery. Ugh. Well, apparently this guy has finally decided that he's willing to do an interview."

"That's cool for him. What does this have to do with me, though?" Craig asked.

"It turns out that he has requested you to interview him."

Craig stared at Eric. This made no sense. How does anyone even know who he is? Sure, he knew he had some fans of his writing, at least according to the couple hundred followers he had on Twitter who weren't bots. Still, none of those people were signed performers. And why would this guy want him over any other music journalist? He sounded like an idiot. He could turn this into some sort of bidding war and make a good chunk of change. The person to nab the elusive interview of a hot young artist. It could help make the band's career if they got someone really famous to interview him.

"You're fucking with me," Craig finally replied.

"I can assure you that I most definitely am not. And you know how rarely I say that," said Eric.

"Why me?" Craig asked.

"I'm also still trying to wrap my head around that, but according to their manager, he read one of your gay strobelight things and liked it."

"It's Queer Spotlight, dick."

"Whatever. I overheard the conversation because the idiot-in-chief puts every call on speaker. She was going to say no to their proposition, but I ran in and managed to convince her otherwise. She said fine, but that I was in charge of the whole thing so that she didn't have to deal with it. This is my chance, Tucker. My first real big break!"

Eric's eyes beamed with hope.

"Wouldn't this also be my chance at a big break?" asked Craig.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess. So are you in?"

"Yeah, of course. What does this include? Do I have to go to Denver or are they going to stop in New York during their tour?"

Eric smiled confidently. "Both, technically. They are stopping in New York during the tour, but you still need to go to Denver. You're going to go on tour with them."

"Wait, what? Why do I have to do that for one fucking interview?!" Craig gripped at the arms of the chair, scratching his fingernails on the lacquered wood.

"It was part of the negotiation. Instead of just one interview, you're going to go with them and create a diary of sorts for their tour. It will be exclusive to our website to try to create some buzz. They're going to advertise it on their tour so that fans will go to our site, and people who are fans of us will get to know them. It's a win-win. Finally, at the end of the tour, you'll write a full interview for the magazine. It's a brilliant plan, Craig. And it's all mine."

"And you never thought that you should ask me about this first?"

"I'm asking you now, aren't I?"

Craig rubbed his face with his hands and groaned. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up. He just really wished that it hadn't been sprung up on him like this. He didn't exactly like surprises. Even so, he knew the answer he had to give.

"So when do I leave?"