A massive thank you to Echo in the Dark, LovelySinner7, black-wolf-kot and Sa-kun for your reviews! Another thanks to those of you whom had added this to your favs or alerts!
I'm very happy that people are enjoying this! :D
This is tentatively still a 'T' rating , though there's a bit of swearing and masturbation at the end. Important warning - does not contain Ray! :O
Enjoy!
Kai leant back in his chair and tried not to feel guilty. He had just sent Tyson Granger out of his office after a telling-off so accurate and cutting that the usually rebellious man had left in slump-shouldered silence. No doubt he had gone straight to Max Tate, the young man who Kai swore to Tala was his only reliable subordinate these days, to complain.
It had been deserved, for heaven's sake. Tyson was a sales representative. He was supposed to sell. He was not supposed to do nothing for most of the month, then, as the deadline approached, suddenly spring into action like a hurricane and make more sales in two days than most of the staff had managed in the month. It was just not right that he could do that. It was also frustrating - if those results were consistent, he would be in line for goodness only knew what in the way of bonuses and promotions. This would get him out of Kai's hair in a fashion more mutually beneficial than the sacking Kai regularly considered. He had told Tyson this, but the man had brushed it aside, politely enough for him. He liked it where he was, with his friends Max, Andrew and Alan. They went out for boozy 'lad's nights' together and swapped stories of their wives; no doubt Tyson regaled them with endless tales of his six-month old son, Makoto, as he told everyone within earshot every single bloody day.
He would bet money that they swapped tales about him, as well. Their sour, perfectionist, workaholic, unlikable boss. They all respected him, of course. He'd made sure of that by being strict and very, very observant (it spooked them brilliantly) and, above all, never letting his guard down for a second. Yes, they knew that he was pleased with Alan's work ethic and liked Max's careful politeness in the face of the most virulent sarcasm. He would just never reveal that sometimes their jokes were funny, especially the ones about Tala and even the ones about himself. And he would certainly never reveal that their relationships woes wound him up to such a state of despondent need that he felt like punching anything more solid than cloth.
He heard the homophobic jokes Andrew and Tyson made, the laughing references to "them and gingers being the only acceptable discrimination". These were the very not funny jokes, the ones where he sat at his desk, with the door propped ajar as ever, hands scrunched into fists and every muscle trying to follow suit as he listened.
Of course, they had suspected him of homosexuality several times in hushed whispers behind his back, at the rare office parties he actually attended, when he turned up alone time after time and spurned every drooling, drunken woman employee who tried it on. Rumours were just rumours, though. He could cope with that.
Ring, ring! Ring, ring!
Snapped out of his thoughts just as they took on a familiarly melancholy colour, he picked the phone up.
"Mr Hiwatari speaking."
"You sound worse than I feel, Kai."
Kai groaned and gripped his tense neck very hard with one hand. He so did not need Tala right now.
"Anything useful to say, Ivanov?"
"Yes, have you been back to that massage place yet? You said you might be going back."
"I said nothing of the sort."
Tala snorted. "Technically no, but you emitted positive grunts."
"Hm."
Silence. Kai refused to give in. Tala might literally be his boss, but he was happy to let Kai do all bar the most bureaucratic jobs associated with the position. It made them awkward sort-of equals, and made conversations like these a bitch.
"Bet you can't even flex your hands without them hurting," Tala challenged. Kai sighed, refusing to test that bet. He changed the subject instead to someone he and Tala had spent much of the day before discussing.
"I pulled Granger up for his ... erratic workload."
"His name is Tyson."
"His surname is Granger," Kai countered, maybe a bit childishly, but fuck it. Tala conceded the point.
"I hope you didn't scare him into quitting."
Kai laughed sourly. "Nothing could do that."
"Wish he'd give us results like that more often."
"Yeah, you're telling me."
"Yes."
Kai pulled a face and readjusted the phone next to his ear.
"You say that like I'm supposed to do something about it," he said with a touch more affront in his voice than was perhaps wise.
"Well, someone's got to," Tala replied sharply.
A thousand retorts crowded into Kai's head and started it pounding. They ranged from swallowing his pride and going along with Tala for now, to telling him to sort Granger himself, to just snarling "Fuck off" and slamming down the phone like some sort of moody teenager. He bit down on his finger hard enough to draw tears to his eyes.
"I'll see how he is next month," he said eventually.
"See that you do. Andrew, too. He's been zig-zagging above and below quota for a while."
"Yes. Right."
When he eventually put the phone down, his teeth were clenched so tightly that pain was stabbing from his jaw upwards, his head was throbbing, and he just generally felt like a spring wound to breaking point. So he snapped at everyone even more than before, delighting when Tyson lost his temper and answered back because it meant that he could tear into him with full verbal dexterity. He only stopped because the others had started to look away in embarrassment. And then he too was embarrassed at his behaviour, so he spent the remainder of the day in his office with the door shut, pounding away at the computer keyboard with hands that, indeed, hurt to flex.
When he got home that evening, he tumbled onto his bed and lay there face down, aware and irritated that every muscle in his body was quivering.
Mrow.
There was a thump as his cat jumped up onto the bed. It miaowed again, loudly. Kai grunted tiredly into the mattress in vague acknowledgement. A soft paw, claws sheathed, batted his cheek. It made him jump. He didn't bother to move, mumbling into the mattress, "Go catch a mouse or something."
Mrowlss!
This time, the poking paw had claws.
"Fu-uck," Kai complained, shoving himself upright. He put one hand gingerly to his cheek. It came away red and wet. He looked in aggravated disbelief at the grey cat, which miaowed and waggled the base of its tail happily. "Schizo cat." He got to his feet - his head throbbed and sent his vision momentarily haywire - and went into the kitchen. The cat's noises redoubled and it twined between his feet enthusiastically. "Stupid cat. Idiot cat," he mumbled as he shook dry cat food into one bowl and salty tuna into the smaller bowl.
He wasn't even supposed to have a cat, it was one of the conditions of his rent. But he'd bought and done a pretty good job of concealing a cat flap for the door leading out to the fire escape, and cats were fastidious creatures so the place never smelt. A quick vacuum got rid of any hair, or feathers if the animal had decided to actually behave like a cat for once.
"Owners are not for eating," he scolded as he bent down (several joints cracked) and put the bowls on the floor. The cat ignored him and buried its face in the food without further ado. Shaking his head fondly, Kai popped quickly into the bathroom and eyed his face in the mirror above the toilet. (Yes, most people had a mirror above the sink. So what? If for some insane reason he wanted to look at himself while he was doing his teeth ... well, he usually brushed them at the same time as going to the toilet anyway.) The blood was already clotting. He spat on his fingers and dabbed at the sticky trails half-heartedly.
He wasn't hungry, but he fixed himself something anyway. He knew from experience that if he didn't, his stomach would feel nothing short of chewed on by tomorrow morning. Halfway through the microwaved stuff (it might have been macaroni cheese at some point in its previous life), the cat jumped up onto his lap and sniffed at his plate curiously.
"Mine," Kai said with a hint of sulkiness, nudging the cat's head away. It let out a affronted miaow, but then curled up on his lap with an adoring look upwards. It headbutted Kai's arms as they moved to and forth above its grey head. "Stupid cat," Kai said again, relinquishing his knife in order to give it the fuss it was demanding.
Soon, it began to purr. Kai smiled.
Once the cat had allowed him to move again and he had run out of mind-numbing television on obscure satellite channels, he decided that bed was quite probably in order.
On his bedside table, propped up against the alarm clock, was the green business card Ray had given him. Because despite what Tala thought, he hadn't forgotten. Oh no, he hadn't forgotten a single thing about that experience. There was so much not to forget about Ray; his muscular arms, his pleasant, confident voice, his hands.
Kai sat there and looked at that card, and he thought about how it would feel to lie on that massage table and feel Ray's hands roaming over his back, teasing lower and lower, while that gorgeous voice whispered filthy things into his ear - and then he came all over the bed.
That, Tala, he thought heavily, is why there was no way in hell he was going back for another session.
Anyone got any complaints about the future sex scenes I intend to include? Let me know. :)
Don't worry, next chapter will have Ray! And I'll try to restrain myself from writing lots about the cat! XD Isso CUTE.
All opinions, comments and criticism welcome!
xIlbx