Standard disclaimers apply.
Author's notes: This fic is dedicated to Awaresa, for believing in this fic when I had written it off as so much rubbish and just for being there when I needed her. Without her support and nagging for new parts I am sure that the fic would never have been completed and would simply have languished in development hell forever...
***
Katsumi was well aware that Koji had been giving him those funny looks out of the corner of his eye for most of the afternoon and he didn't give a damn. That said, Koji had every right to be doing it.
Katsumi had arrived at work depressed and hung over and had been silent (at least silent for him) for most of the morning. Then he'd taken a break at about 1 PM and retreated into an office with the intention of sleeping off his hangover. He'd left the office fifteen minutes later looking like a cat that had been at the cream-that is, horribly pleased with himself and slightly guilty with it. He'd spent the afternoon in a horribly good mood and Koji had been left wondering (to himself) if his friend wasn't on drugs.
Koji was not in the best of moods himself, so he had been quite glad to have Katsumi quiet for once and wondered why he had ever thought it might last. More than once during the course of the afternoon he had forced himself to resist the desire to hit Katsumi, who was doing a fantastic impression of an airhead. Koji knew Katsumi was not stupid so why he had to act like an idiot all the time was quite beyond Koji's ability to work out.
"I thought you had a hangover." Koji said a little crossly after Katsumi had made several totally uncalled for remarks about Izumi.
Koji wondered to himself what Takasaka had made of Katsumi kissing him. Koji kind of wished he had been there, although if he had been there then nothing would have happened. Still, it must have been kinda funny.
Koji guessed correctly that Katsumi's sudden good mood was to do with Takasaka too but it probably wouldn't have been a great idea to take it up with either Katsumi or Takasaka. Katsumi was too busy being a pain to give him a straight answer to anything that afternoon and Takasaka would like as not have made several clumsy evasions and had a panic attack. Or quickly changed the subject. Or something. That man was not cut out to be a manager. He had said so himself.
Looking at Katsumi he attempted to suppress a giggle (again for the good of his image-men like Koji did not giggle, they left that to the Katsumis of this world). Katsumi was the kind of person who was kindly described as "vivacious", unkindly as "a pain in the ass". He could be serious when the occasion demanded it but preferred not to. Takasaka on the other hand… well, he often hung around Katsumi (or rather Katsumi often hung around him, there was a pretty large difference) and they seemed to get on all right but in terms of character he couldn't think of two men more dissimilar.
They'd make an absurd couple.
***
Katsumi wondered how long he could keep up acting like an idiot. He didn't want to act this part right now but he couldn't have revealed his true feelings at the moment (the fact that he desperately wanted to ask Koji just how exactly you went about dating another guy without the world finding out didn't come into it, of course). Not in front of Koji who thought he was an idiot for even entertaining slightly impure thoughts about Taka-chan.
If Koji knew just how impure some of his thoughts had got…
That would have been, well… embarrassing. And necessarily he had to keep the fact that he'd just attempted to teach Taka-chan how to kiss in a deserted office strictly to himself.
Taka-chan was actually surprisingly good at kissing. Katsumi wondered how he'd learnt considering he appeared to have nervous attacks every time someone so much as brushed his sleeve, how on earth he'd ever managed to learn to kiss was probably going to have to remain one of life's little mysteries.
As would the fact that… gods, he'd practically asked Taka-chan out! Talk about embarrassing! Katsumi often gave the impression of being completely unembarrassable and more or less unshockable. He wasn't. He was just good at hiding it. He had been more than a little startled when Koji had started to chase after Izumi and had actually tried to warn him off.
Anyway, what with the fact that Taka-chan's sensibilities meant that the affair had to be kept more or less secret-telling Koji would NOT be advisable for a start, and he was probably Koji's best friend-this was going to be a lot harder than it had looked.
He was already starting to think in terms of places to meet where they could be guaranteed total privacy. Again not for his sake (he wouldn't have minded telling the world and indeed almost wanted to) but for… his lover's?
This really is going to be tricky.
