Takasaka had known he wouldn't get much more done that evening what with Katsumi's presence, so he had made the informed decision to set his alarm for even earlier than was his habit so he could get some more paperwork finished before he had to go into work that morning. If he was quiet (and he normally was) he wouldn't have to worry about disturbing Katsumi. He wasn't all that surprised, therefore, when he was woken by the alarm at the crack of dawn. What he wasn't expecting was what happened next.
"It's too early."
Katsumi hated alarm clocks with a passion. He had broken five since the beginning of the year and hadn't yet got round to buying a replacement for the fifth, which currently lay in pieces on one of the work surfaces in his kitchen. After being woken up with a hangover once too often, he had taken it to bits with a screwdriver. He'd thrown the last one out of the window so to his mind the ex-clock had gotten off lightly.
Maybe he should put this one through the washing machine and see what happened, he thought idly to himself, then wondered how long it would take before he got back to sleep.
"Katsumi."
Now Takasaka remembered why it was he hadn't thought the clock would wake Katsumi. He hadn't expected Katsumi to be in his bed.
"Katsumi, why are you in my bed?" he asked. There were plenty of other questions he wanted to ask but this struck him as by far the most important.
'Ah' indeed. That seemed about right to Takasaka. Katsumi, meanwhile, belatedly remembered to wonder if he was wearing anything. On inspection 'anything' turned out to be the top half of a pair of pyjamas. He didn't really feel comfortable asking Takasaka the same question. The one question that he really wanted to ask: 'what the hell did we do last night?' seemed pretty redundant given the circumstances.
"…and I wasn't even drunk," he said, a sentiment Takasaka found himself agreeing wholeheartedly with. If they had been drunk, then maybe they'd have been able to laugh this rather awkward incident off, but…
This definitely came under the classification of 'an embarrassing situation'.
Katsumi, meanwhile, had closed his eyes again and turned away, in an attempt to hide the fact that he was blushing. He didn't like being seen blushing. His recollections of the incidents of last night were a lot clearer than they would have been in an ideal world. He remembered it all and that was embarrassing. He hadn't been drunk. He'd been upset (over what he was no longer quite sure), but no more so than he normally got when he was by himself and thinking too much. Okay, so maybe he'd been mildly drunk and more than a little depressed-he had the horrible feeling that Takasaka had somehow managed to get him talking about his mother, or Madoka, or both-but that didn't explain away all… all this.
This… Katsumi didn't have a clue how it had happened, but it had. This was not the way he'd expected to lose his virginity. Well, he'd expected it to be with a woman for a start. Not with a man who, for all his good sides, was still Takasaka and just over ten years older than he was. Ten years. To Katsumi's mind that was a pretty big age gap.
Katsumi couldn't help but remember the way he'd tried to warn Koji off his relationships with Minamimoto (an older woman, but not all that much older than Koji was when you sat down and thought about it) and Izumi (a man). If Koji got a hold of this, he'd never hear the end of it. Sleeping with an older man, and Takasaka at that… great, Katsumi, just great. For instant social death, just add rain water.
What was worse, he couldn't escape the feeling that he'd managed to totally wreck his relationship with Taka.
Bad move. Very, very bad move. It wasn't worth it for one night, and Katsumi knew it as he lay on his front in Takasaka's bed and stared at the wall, trying to work out what the hell to do next. This was worse than the first time. A far bigger mistake than the 'mistake' he'd made to get Taka to notice him in the first place. Not that he could call the first thing a mistake really… however, he didn't think he could say the same about this incident. It was a mistake. Taka couldn't have…
And the guy was too damn calm. This was Takasaka. He flipped out over every little thing that went wrong. This was not a little thing and he was too calm. He was embarrassed, he had to be... but it wasn't even showing! A bad sign. Takasaka only got like this when things were really bad.
After getting dressed in yesterday's clothes, Katsumi, still acutely aware of the sheer wrongness of his situation, sat in Takasaka's living room, still unsure of what he should do next. He really should go home and get changed (Koji and the others would think it odd if he showed up at work in the same clothes for two days running), but he was tired. Too tired to want to walk the God only knew how many miles back to his flat, not to mention flat broke. He wasn't even sure he knew how to get there from here.
Plus, Katsumi wasn't entirely happy at the idea of… well, walking out on Taka, for wont of a better word. They had to try and get this situation sorted out somehow, if only to work out how on Earth they would manage to act like it hadn't happened when they finally made it in to work. Normally Katsumi's preferred approach would be to brazen it out, but Taka, he knew, would not see things in quite the same way. He wasn't sure he saw this in quite the same way either.
And how was he going to manage to get changed before he got to work? There was no way he'd wear the same clothes two days in a row. That would be a dead giveaway. I suppose I could always wear that yukata, he thought, then fought down a giggle. It would almost-almost-be worth going into work in the stupid thing just to see what the band had to say. Koji's reaction would probably have been… interesting. Katsumi just didn't 'do' traditional. He had looked like a girl in it, whatever Taka might have said. And it was hardly as if he'd tried to negate that image by acting more masculine. Geez.
He looked up upon hearing the door opening, made eye-contact with Taka for the first time that day, and blushed awkwardly, Takasaka's expression practically mirroring his own. This whole thing was just too embarrassing, and if it was this bad in private… just imagine what it was going to be like at work.
It looked like it was going to be one of those days.
***
Katsumi had no idea how he'd managed it given that he'd barely spoken to Takasaka all morning, but he'd somehow managed to convince the man to let him borrow some clothing. It seemed that he had independently come to the same conclusion Katsumi had about his clothing – that he would never show up to work in the same clothes for two days running – and that he'd decided that the need to maintain the semblance of normality was paramount. The most mystifying thing about it was, despite the fact that they were his clothes, they looked totally different on Katsumi, and probably suited him slightly more.
Takafumi had been talking to Katsumi for the last five minutes, trying to find out if he had any idea of where Koji was, but he gave no sign that he had heard a word of it. After another few minutes had passed Kimie threw a notebook at him.
"What was that for?"
Katsumi had his mind on other things than Koji. Takasaka, for one. He hadn't been acting at all unusually by arriving in the office a bit too early and practically tying himself to his desk: nobody would have commented on it, unlike Katsumi's own vacant expression and his staring out of the window for twenty minutes whilst pretending to read a photocopied document on the subject of how to deal with Koji's fan mail, which technically speaking Katsumi didn't have to go anywhere near unless he wanted to. He had a horrible feeling that tonight he'd probably be going home and getting drunk, the way he'd done in July after the incident which had made it possible for him to be in this stupid mess in the first place.
It was a horrible day again, and Koji was probably still in bed. Katsumi wished he was too.
***
It was with an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu that he made his way to a small office at midday with the intention of avoiding anyone who might want him to be sociable on his lunch break. Well, I've been here before. He'd been in much the same mood last time, but this time he wasn't expecting anyone to come and lift it. The only person who could do that was Takasaka and he was barricaded in his office attempting to sort out another advertising deal with some cosmetics company whose name Katsumi could never remember and if the deal didn't fall through they would probably end up having to drag Koji to the shoot, possibly in the company of a bored and hostile Izumi.
Katsumi fiddled with the necklace he was still wearing from yesterday, a repetitive action which helped to blank out his mind. He'd been here before. Last time he'd been angry and upset, this time he just felt regretful that he'd managed to mess up such a good thing, wondering how it was he could sort out Koji's love life but couldn't manage his own. He certainly couldn't expect Koji to come sort this out, it wasn't that kind of friendship. Stupid.
It was dark in the office and Katsumi liked it. The only artificial light in the room came from the small glowing lights on the casing of the PC whose desk he was currently sharing, sitting next to it on top of the table, one foot resting on the strangely uncomfortable swivel chair, looking out of the window. The office hadn't been used in months – there was less chance of being disturbed. He just hoped nobody had seen him go in.
Last night… last night he had slept with Takasaka. In both senses of the word. He hadn't been any more than mildly drunk. He hadn't been depressed. Hadn't been blatantly propositioned. At some point during the evening he'd made the conscious decision to… well, to try to seduce Takasaka, and he'd managed it. That was why he now felt so uncomfortable, he suspected.
Katsumi may have wanted to, but he wasn't sure it was what Takasaka had wanted. Maybe Taka had thought they'd rushed it, maybe he hadn't wanted to and only gone along with it so that he wouldn't feel he had been rejected. Taka was so… considerate at times, you could never tell what he was doing because he'd wanted to and what he was doing because he felt he had to. If last night had just been obligation for him, Katsumi didn't want to have any part in it any more: it wasn't right to force anything on him. He respected Takasaka too much for that. Katsumi had no intention of becoming a slightly more passive version of Koji.
Hard though it was for him to realise it, if all this relationship was to Takasaka was an obligation, something he'd only agreed to in order to spare Katsumi's feelings, then it had to end. Just thinking about it was hard enough for him, to actually do it would be near-impossible, but there was no way he wanted to force anything on Takasaka.
Last night, Katsumi knew, had changed almost everything about their relationship completely, and only time would tell if it had been for the good or not. Why had Koji never warned him that sex would make things so complicated?
***
"I mean, what the hell is with that guy today?"
Kimie was in a bit of a funny mood himself, but that wasn't really that important to Takasaka. He could tell who it was they were talking about and he felt slightly ashamed. Is this my fault? Katsumi had been uncommunicative all day (unusual for him), barely speaking unless someone spoke to him first. There was a precedent for this, but Katsumi had only ever been that silent once before, and that was to Koji. Then it had been because he was angry, but now he seemed strangely reserved and slightly sad.
Takasaka thought he knew why that was as well.
He needed to talk to Katsumi. He'd seemed so distant this morning. They'd both been embarrassed but maybe… it seemed to him that for Katsumi it had been more than straightforward embarrassment. Maybe he'd decided he wasn't interested after all, that only now he'd realised what exactly their relationship could involve, he wasn't so sure anymore.
He had to find out where he stood. Takasaka had never thought of himself as the forward type and his behaviour now certainly struck him as forward, but… he had to know. He wasn't prepared to let things go as they were and just hope they resolved themselves. His last proper relationship had self-destructed because he hadn't wanted to confront the problems it had run into. He didn't want this one to go the same way.
Since when had he considered his relationship with Katsumi a 'proper' relationship? He didn't know when he'd begun to see it like that, but he had. He wasn't prepared to let it go.
Normally he'd have freaked out just thinking along those lines about Katsumi. Takasaka wondered why it was that today he hadn't. He'd amazed himself this morning, he'd taken everything so calmly. Not like me.
Takasaka knew he had many character flaws. He'd never counted stubbornness among them before but what was this if it wasn't stubbornness? Katsumi's influence, he suspected. Katsumi could be very stubborn when he wanted to be. Takasaka just hoped he hadn't decided their relationship was over. He didn't know if he'd be able to talk Katsumi out of it.
***
Katsumi hadn't intended to budge out of the office, but after twenty minutes he'd decided he needed to drink some coffee. Office coffee was foul, but it had caffeine in it. His mild caffeine addiction was the only thing that would have got him to leave the little room without having thought of a solution to his relationship problems. So far the only 'solution' he had found was to resign, and he didn't want to do that. They needed him to keep Koji under control. Aside from him, Takafumi was the only other one who could manage this and it wasn't fair to expect him to cope all alone.
As irony would have it, he'd run into Takasaka on the way back to the deserted office. And of course, that had unnerved him and he'd ended up spilling the coffee over the floor and a nearby rubber plant, as well as splashing the paperwork Takasaka had been carrying.
"Déjà vu." Katsumi said, then blushed again and examined his fingernails, the coffee on the floor, anything but have to meet Takasaka's gaze.
Takasaka put the coffee-stained papers down on a nearby desk. "Do you…" He wasn't quite sure what to say either. They'd put each other in a very embarrassing position. At least the office was practically deserted, it being lunchtime. "Do you…" Takasaka tried again, but it was still hard for him to get the words out.
He couldn't finish the sentence.
"Do you want to?" Finally, Takasaka thought. Coherence. "Is there something the matter?"
"Do you… regret last night?" That was it. That was what he'd meant to say. He wondered if perhaps he was going crazy. They were in public, this wasn't like him… where had his discretion gone? Does it matter? Is it really such a bad thing?
Katsumi bit his lip and looked over one shoulder before speaking. "I love you," he said quietly.
He'd never said it before to Takasaka. He'd never said it to any of the girls he'd dated and meant it. It sounded unusual from him.
Takasaka didn't look like he'd expected it. He probably hadn't. Another awkward situation… or at least it should have been, but for some reason it didn't feel like that to him. It felt… different. He knew that if anyone was to walk into this room and see them it would be embarrassing to say the least, not to mention near-impossible to explain. That didn't matter either. The irony of the situation was not lost on him: suddenly he felt like the impulsive one, whilst Katsumi was blushing, speaking hesitantly and looking mildly afraid.
As if to prove to Katsumi that nothing in life is ever so startling that any other unforeseen event seems unremarkable, Takasaka, acting on an impulse, kissed him.
Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it was close enough to touch.
~owari~
