Yes, I have already posted this, but I posted it too quickly and when I was tired, and so have added a few bits and pieces, especially after a couple of reviews showed people were confused. Again, a big thank you to Ming-sama, Pixxy Dust, Chaseha-Wing, Lirin Sama, Kinomyia, LovelySinner7 and Sugar-Hype-Queen for your reviews of Chapter 3, and thank you to those of you who have reviewed Chapter 4 so far!

I hope Version 2 is better! Enjoy!

Tala did not know what he was talking about, Kai thought for the fiftieth time. How the hell was being stuck at home while his laissez-faire sort-of boss let the imbeciles make their own decisions going to help him become less stressed?

The only reason that he wasn't pacing around the room was that it was too much bother. Instead, he was slumped on the sofa, still in his night-time T-shirt and boxers, watching ... something.

He had only got up an hour ago, after being deliberately stupid in drinking himself into unconsciousness with cheap wine he'd bought at the supermarket on the way home. The state he'd been in, it hadn't taken long. As a result, that morning he had a clear head but a roiling stomach and a fuzzy sock masquerading as a tongue.

It had only taken him half an hour to do pretty much everything there was to be done in the flat. He'd even washed out the wine bottles and stacked them outside for recycling! By colour! So, well done, Ivanov; boredom, irritation and the niggling belief that work was already going to hell without him did not a relaxed Kai make.

It took three inane advertisements passing unseen in front of his eyes before he confronted the awkward question "What did make him relaxed?"

Surely it shouldn't be that difficult to answer?

"Mrow!"

A smile twitched his lips, and he stretched a hand down from the sofa to ruffle the cat's grey fur. Staring at the approaching hand with a look of alarmed disdain, the cat leapt straight onto his chest and started to knead it with an expression of feline delight. Normally, the needling pain of ten sharp claws contracting and relaxing in his barely shielded skin would have caused Kai to say several rude things and send the cat flying, but this time he gritted his teeth and waited until the cat had softened him enough to curl up and settle down.

"Purrrrr."

"Well, there's you," he muttered thoughtfully. Unusually, the cat allowed him to stroke its fur without so much as a tail flick of protest. "You relax me, don't you, furball?"

"Mreah?" the cat mewed, moving its head an inch to regard Kai with its half-shut eyes. It sounded disbelieving.

"S'pose you're right," Kai sighed. The cat displayed its displeasure at the way this made his chest move by violently flicking its tail. It hit him in the eye and he sighed again. "You spend more time being annoying than you do relaxing me," he grumbled. The cat yawned and settled down again.

Great.

Like metal to a magnet, his gaze was dragged over to that little green card on the bedside table just visible through his open bedroom door.

Ray.

Sexual frustration wasn't relaxing either. It wasn't difficult to alleviate, for heaven's sake, he just needed a spot of privacy, a free hand and the images that his brain provided so regularly. It was just ... irritating, that was the word.

Handshakes aside, he hadn't touched another man in five years. That did weird things to your head, he was beginning to surmise. But still.

It wasn't like he thought he would end up sacked, not anymore. Tala didn't seem the type to do something as counter-productive to the company as that. All the same.

Straight out of university. Well, 'bent' out of university, to be quite truthful. And then he'd gone for a job and he'd got it straight away, of course, but then promotion time came around again and again and nothing happened. And people talked. It hadn't taken him long to put two and two together. It equalled Never Again. Literally. He had kissed his boyfriend goodbye one night and just never come back. Cue his celibate lifestyle – did phone and cyber- sex count, though? He'd always wondered.

Few months later, he found out his ex had committed suicide. But that was all right in the end too, when he was finally promoted.

He just didn't see how it could work anymore. The thought of going to office parties was usually bad enough, but the idea of bringing a man (Ray, dressed smartly, shirt sleeves to show off his arms, a green tie – oh shut up) made him feel vaguely dizzy with scrunched up emotions.

Seized by a sudden impulse, he got up from the sofa (the cat yowled its displeasure and his head whirled almost badly enough to cloud his vision) and went into the bedroom. Swearing as he tripped over the shoes he had kicked carelessly off last night, he picked up the card and stared at it, brow furrowed.

Before he quite he knew what was happening, his mobile phone was turning on with a beep in his hand, and his treacherous fingers were tapping the touchpad, entering the numbers swimming in front of his eyes. With quivering fingers, he raised the phone to his ear.

'Ring ring, ring ring ...' The dialling tone went on for almost a minute. Instead of hanging up, Kai just pressed the phone closer to his ear. With every passing second when no one picked up, the anticipatory knot is his stomach loosened, until suddenly;

"Hello, Leazes Massage Therapy, how can I help?" The woman sounded out of breath.

His head whirled with panicked obscenities. He didn't know what to say. He didn't even know why he'd rung. "Hello?" the receptionist repeated.

The red button on his phone briefly lit up. There. He threw it on the bed and stared at it, then turned on his heels and went into the ensuite bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face and didn't look at himself in the mirror.

There was no doubt about it, he didn't feel himself. Even taking the ill-advised binge last night, he felt tired and disconnected from the world. No prizes for guessing what had caused that; now he was glad he'd never had two consecutive blackouts during his school years. Obviously, he did need to – what was that word Andrew used? – chill. To relax. He could sort of identify that. Get less angry, at least. And massages were supposed to be relaxing, definitely. That was the point. So ...

Ten minutes later, he picked up the phone again.

Feeling a little bit achy, but apparently that was a side-effect of deep-muscle massage, Kai sat up from the massage table. The towel hat had been covering him fell to the floor, and only now, after the entire session, did he think he look down and realise that the boxers he was wearing had a hole in them.

"Fuck's sake," he whispered to himself. His voice lacked the chastisement that would usually be inherent in such a self-directed reprimand. Achiness aside, his body felt weirdly wobbly and he was that peaceful sort of relaxed where he wasn't sleepy at all, he just didn't want to move.

However, he had to move. The masseur might come to see what the delay was, and while he was usually pretty immodest, boxers with a hole in appalled even his rusty social-interactions-meter

So, he thought to himself as he tried to shove his foot into the laced shoe by sheer force, this does actually work. Good.

"Can I come in?" asked the man's voice from the other side of the door. Kai replied in the affirmative, and a tall blue-eyed blond entered the room, brushing his hands against his jeans. "Well, you look better than you did when you came in," he said with a grin. Kai smirked, and stood up. He was half a head shorter than the masseur ... what was his name? Started with an 'M', maybe? "Will you be booking another appointment?" the man asked. Kai shrugged. A slight pause followed. "Well, if you would like to, the number's – "

"I know what the number is," Kai interrupted. Shifting his weight, he drew the green card slightly out of his trouser pocket, carefully showing the least crumpled corner.

"Oh, oh, well, all right then." Though looking a little taken aback, the masseur (Miguel! That was it!) smiled at him politely.

Despite that fact that Miguel was undeniably good-looking (he looked a bit like Max, if Max went on serious growth steroids and developed a deep tan), there had been no erection this time around. This, to be honest, was disconcerting Kai. It suggested that it wasn't just simply a misbehaving libido behind his reaction to Ray.

As though summoned by Kai's thoughts, when he opened the door to leave, Ray was waiting outside.

Their eyes met and Kai realised with a shiver that he had been kidding himself in truly spectacular fashion. He had thought that he had been so clever, booking a session with a different person. He was relaxing. He was putting his continued productivity at work first. What a good boy.

Except he knew now that he had done it purely and simply so that he might catch even a glimpse of Ray again.

A complicated stew of emotions travelled across Ray's face. There was hurt there, Kai realised with a jolt. Hurt and confusion and most of all, surprise, and still that little bit of attraction.

Kai was a very, very good 'people-reader'. He just rarely bothered to do it. Attraction was something he'd always found easy to spot; in his teenage years he could spot someone whose attention he'd caught from one look across a dark club floor. Everyone thought they could do this, especially with alcohol-inspired confidence, but really they couldn't. There was an innate knack to it.

So he read every emotion in the few centiseconds it took for them to cross Ray's face, but then found that his body wasn't letting him step away (run for it) like his brain was ordering him to. It took all his self-control not to reach out to try in some way to wipe that look from Ray's face.

Ray recovered his composure first. Unconsciously reaching up to tuck some hair behind his ear (it didn't need it; nervous tick, the functioning part of Kai's brain informed him helpfully), he smiled briefly and said,

"Hi, Kai."

Fuck, he remembered my name.

"Hey, Ray," he replied just as Ray started to walk past him. Ray did a visible double-take, and Kai grinned inwardly. Yeah, I remembered yours, too.

Ray hesitated and opened his mouth as if to speak, but then five years of business reminded Kai's dick what he was doing, and he hurried off, going into the toilets so that he looked less like he was running away.

Again, he splashed water on his face and didn't quite meet his own eyes in the mirror. His previous lazy relaxation was almost completely obliterated.

When he eventually emerged after five minutes of chasing the same thoughts round and round his head, he found Ray waiting for him. Oddly enough, this time his head stayed in one cool piece. He nodded to Ray with a small smile and made as if to walk past.

"Here."

He turned and looked. Ray was holding out a neat square of white paper. And just like that, his composure disappeared again. He could suddenly hear his pulse in his ears.

"I've already got it," he said quickly, and got three steps before Ray made an amused noise and said,

"Don't be stupid, Kai."

Schooling his face into something that didn't reflect his sudden inner sheepishness, he turned around again. "I'm not being stupid," he muttered feebly. If his feet shuffled right now, he would cut the fuckers off. Ray took a step closer. He smelt like that oil they all used, and Kai could see where he had missed a patch shaving that morning. Just under the point of his jawbone. All the more visible for the way that he had stretched his hair back again.

"Yes, you are," Ray said firmly, though softening it with a smile. "Discretion's not a problem, you know."

Kai would have loved to not have understood that statement perfectly. Heat spread from his ears in embarrassment, so instinctively he took refuge in jibes.

"What, you prefer married men?"

Ray's face was a picture. His eyes flicked down to Kai's left hand. Smirking, Kai lifted his hand and waved it helpfully. Ray scowled.

"Cock," he muttered with an irrepressible smile. Kai shrugged. Ray seemed to regain his equanimity. "Seriously, though. You're not out, are you?"

An automatic icy flash of panic at the dangerous words made Kai look right and left. No-one there.

"That'd be yes, then?" Ray laughed outright this time. Kai glowered. "Ok, ok." He stepped backwards. Kai forbade himself to move so much as a millimetre forwards. "Just saying," Ray said airily, then before Kai could react in any way at all, Ray had grabbed his hand and put the piece of paper in it, then let go again. His hands were warm and soft.

That did it. The part of Kai's brain that was still twenty-four and viciously ambitious tore him away, and without another word he walked off.

Didn't look back.

Didn't drop the paper, though.

The first thing that he did when he returned to his flat was telephone work. Well, actually, that was a lie. The first thing he did was chuck a bird with a broken neck out of the window after saying thank you to his cat for being a humane killer for once. There weren't even any feathers, which was great because his bastard landlord, Hiro Granger was coming round for a routine 'visit' tomorrow, and he couldn't be fucked to vacuum the place. Butafter that, he phoned the communal office.

Brrrr, brrrrr ... "Hello, Tyson Granger?"

"Granger, dare I ask what you've done today?"

"Oh, Mr Hiwatari!" Tyson said, in his particular gleeful way that somehow made it sound far less respectful than just calling him 'Kai'. However, he sounded excessively happy this time. Kai's stomach winched itself downwards in anticipatory dread. "Sorry, but Tala's forbidden us to speak to you for at least three days."

Kai didn't swear. Not out loud. Anger ripped a familiar path through his grey matter.

"Get Tate."

"Nope, no can do." Tyson had never sounded so smug. Suddenly his tone changed to one of solicitude. "You're ok today, though?"

Kai ground his teeth together. The frustrating thing was that he could tell Tyson was entirely sincere. He was somehow simultaneously delighted to have Kai out of the office and worried about his health. It had to be very complicated to be as simple as Tyson.

"None of your business," he snapped.

"Ok, ok, I can take a hint!"

"No, you can't," Kai stated baldly. A hurt silence followed. Kai took advantage of it. "Tell Ivanov he'll regret this. So will you." He hung up and just stood there for a while, throwing the phone up and down one-handed, feeling anger gather hot momentum in his head. "No," he said quietly, as the phone nearly fell from his fingers. They were shaking. Again. "Not three days running." That would screw him up so much that he would feel almost justified in taking this imposed sick leave. He fingered the piece of white paper jammed in his other trouser pocket. Slowly, he keyed the scribbled number into the phone.

This was a really stupid idea. He pressed dial.

A really, really stupid idea. He lifted the phone to his ear.

But, nevertheless, if work didn't want him ...

"Hello?"

Kai swallowed. Anger buoyed him past the butterflies. "Hey, Ray. It's –"

"Kai. You did ring!" The exultant tone in Ray's voice took Kai aback. It apparently took Ray aback too, because he coughed and mumbled, "I didn't think you'd – "

"In the habit of giving your number out to any random man who comes along, then?" Kai said sarcastically.

"No. I just thought you wouldn't ring yet," Ray defended himself. Kai grunted. "You all right? You sound odd."

He can tell already? Kai thought incredulously, then rebuked himself for it. There was no way that Ray could tell from the limited times they had spoken to each other since they had met that Kai wasn't feeling right. Out loud, he answered, more truthfully than he had intended, "Just work trouble."

"You looked bad today, too. The massages are brilliant, but they don't cure bloodshot eyes."

"I'm fine."

"Right."

Good sarcasm, Kai thought. He held his silence, listened to Ray's breathing. He sounded out of breath. Kai lost himself for a second in a little fantasy that Ray had run straight out of the shower to answer the phone.

"So-o," Ray said awkwardly. "Want to meet up?"

"Yeah."

So, yeah. Let me know what you think. :) Any guesses as to plot? Any qualms about characterisation? And who was Kai's boyfriend, anyway?

Flames are fun too. The heating in my university accomodation is glitchy.

My apologies for the necessary repost.

xIlbx