[INCEPTION] Fic: Not to mention the gods (Robert/Saito) PG-13
Not to mention the gods
Robert/Saito
The five times Saito’s assistant put someone important on hold to wait for Saito to finish his (God damn) business (with Robert Fischer).
fermine's incentive for staying up with me all night. even though she did nap for a bit and left me all alone. shakesfist. and cause i'm procrastinating finishing my r/s vamp fic i give you this. also, ty to evocates for telling me about sapporo, hokkaido. that bit is for her. <3
i. david rockefeller jr, rockefeller family“-act like this!”
“I’m not behaving out of the ordinary. If there’s anyone who’s losing their-"
“Fuck off. Don’t act like you’re the-"
Silence through the wooden double doors of the conference room. It shouldn’t be this difficult to know what’s going on, Saito and Robert’s yelling aside. The conference room is walled in by nothing else but glass but Saito likes his privacy, and so does Robert, and Saito’s assistant knows that both are loathe to deal with anything private anywhere public, much less Saito’s office. The blinds were drawn, a neat row of thick canvas that touch the carpeted floor. Saito’s assistant can’t see a thing but he, and several others in the room with him, can pretty much know what’s going on without visual help.
“Robert,” Saito says after a while. His tone is more placating; calmer; and Saito’s assistant knows that his boss had taken several breaths to achieve that kind of evenness to his voice when only a moment ago he’d been shouting at the top of his lungs.
He doesn’t hear much else after that. The clock ticks seven-thirty five, in the evening.
The phone crackles under his hand and he realizes that the call is still on.
“Sir, Mr Saito will be just a moment,” he stutters slightly, trying to remembering that he has a five figure job to handle these types of calls and that he should start acting like he’s worth every God damn cent.
“What the hell is he making me wait for?” David Rockefeller all but shouts into his ear.
“He’s,” he glances at the doors, then at the glass walls, then at the people nearby eyeing him right back. All with question marks for eyes. Saito hires people like him, which makes Saito’s assistant pretty fucking game for any challenge presented to him. He steels himself and accepts it with a tilt of his chin at his colleagues. “Preoccupied.”
They smirk knowingly, waiting for his next move.
“Well of course he’s preoccupied,” Rockefeller snorts, “What the hell else will be keeping him away from-“
He pulls his mobile away from his ear, grimacing. He waits for five, ten, fifteen seconds, and when he’s sure that his earpiece is no longer trying to short-circuit its wires, he tries again. “He will only be a moment, sir.”
“Get him,” Rockefeller grinds out, and he can almost hear the old man’s molars grind against some unfortunate soul’s bone marrow. “Now.”
Saito’s assistant gulps, but there’s not much else he can do when he’s been stalling David fucking Rockefeller for the past twenty minutes. He knocks on the door, once, maybe twice, and when he’s sure that the men inside have gotten the message that someone is coming in so you better look presentable at the very least, he turns the knob and pokes his head in.
He’s seen his boss in several positions before.
He’s seen him swallowing someone’s soul from someone’s mouth in the hallway of the hotel Sofitel in Los Angeles with a blonde woman whose name he forgets.
He’s seen him in absolutely nothing, nothing but sauna mist and sweat, when he just had to answer someone’s call and that someone had sounded like the entire city was on fire and Saito was the only person who could put it out.
He’s seen him punch a bartender in the face after too many whiskeys.
He’s seen him after too many whiskeys in his study.
This one he hasn’t seen before, not even while Saito had still been married, or, for that matter, while Saito had still kept his Brazilian mistress on the side.
Their backs are to the door, both of them looking out the window. His boss’ bespoke suit stretch across his shoulders as his arms strain to wrap around the man in front of him and the man-Robert Fischer, no less-is leaning back against him. They’re whispering too lowly for him to pick up on any of the words.
He’s still for a moment, surprised, and that’s all that Robert and Saito needs, really, for smiles to be exchanged, and for Saito’s arms to tighten even more. Robert Fischer, whom he had never seen smile before, is smiling. Smiling so widely and so unguardedly that he finally remembers that things like this aren’t meant for his eyes.
So he looks away for a moment, before he finally clears his throat and the silence is ruptured.
Robert jumps, but Saito’s arms keep him there, pressed up against him. Saito doesn’t so much as bat an eyelid when he turns his head; but his glare at his assistant does speak more than he needs to.
“Mr David Rockefeller on the line for you, sir.”
Saito grimaces, shaking his head, but when he looks at Robert, he does so with great tenderness that his assistant wonders if Saito had ever needed affirmation from anyone in his entire life.
The answer, it appears, is yes.
Robert nods, but he doesn’t look happy about it. Saito doesn’t, either, but he does pull away, and holds out his hand.
He gives his boss the phone. “I’m sorry for the interruption, sir, but Mr Rockefeller insisted that I-“
Saito waves him off, distractedly, already holding the phone to his ear.
He turns to leave, but before he does, Saito turns back to him, pressing a hand against the speaker. “Next time. You wait for me, do you understand?”
“But sir-"
Saito shakes his head, once, sharply. Very sharply. And he knows that Saito is dead serious. “You wait for me.”
He can only nod, but Saito has already turned away, exchanging hurried pleasantries, but he can almost swear that the entire time Saito’s on the phone, or as much of the conversation he can glean from it as he turns to leave the conference room, his eyes were on Robert alone.
ii. richard stengel, managing editor, time magazine“Where is he?” She asks him the moment he tells her that, Sorry, madam, Mr Saito can’t be with you right at this time but-
“He’s-"
--in a meeting with the company’s board of trustees. From where he’s seated at some corner of the room, right beside the other assistants, all with Macbooks open on their laps, mobile phones in their hands, and both of their ears and all of their attention concentrating on everything their respective bosses say, he sees only Saito’s back, a forbidding line of fine, tailored suit, cut off by the equally forbidding line of fine, tailored leather upholstery of the swivel chair he’s sat in.
“-busy.”
“Too busy for me? Come now, that simply cannot be. This article cannot be stalled for any longer than necessary,” Stengel clicks her tongue.
“Thirty-five percent to Shell,” someone says from the opposite end of the table. A meaty fist pounds on the table top.
Saito’s shoulders tighten, and his arms brace themselves on the armrests. His knuckles turn white.
“No,” Saito says. It’s the first time he speaks and the meeting has been going on for nearly an hour now. “Thirty-five percent goes to us. Fischer-Morrow is a topnotch company that has just been served on a silver platter and the other companies are rushing to get at least one percent. We have this opportunity to get a large share, I suggest we take it.”
The trustee scoffs. Saito’s hands tighten even more until his assistant can almost hear the leather groan at the pressure. “Fischer-Morrow was worth twice as much when Maurice Fischer was still alive. Now that the ownership had moved on to his son,” he shakes his head, “It’s barely a commodity.”
This is when Saito’s assistant knows he should intervene. Otherwise, it’s going to be another repeat of the Valencia Expo ’03, which Saito had had to make up for by working twice as hard for the rest of his life.
“Mr Saito,” he quips, and several heads swivel to his direction. “A phone call for you.”
Saito grunts, but he does rise from his chair. He doesn’t ask who it is. He simply grabs the mobile and leaves the room.
He’s gone for nearly half an hour and when he comes back, the board had moved on to other affairs-the Pfizer deal that’s been on the grill for months now-and he doesn’t speak another word for the next three hours.
***
When he picks up Saito’s personal mail, picking through the bills, the junk mail, the random letter or two from his parents in Japan, he finds a copy of next month’s Time.
On the cover is Robert Fischer.
***
Three weeks later, on the front page of the New York Times’ business section-
--is Robert Fischer.
***
Nearly two months later, Fischer-Morrow flashes brightly in the marquee along Wall Street.
15.4% in green.
***
During the board meeting the week after, the corporation purchases the thirty-five percent of Fischer-Morrow and Saito isn’t there.
His assistant, however, tells him the good news over the phone but Saito only laughs before ending the call.
Saito already knows, even before Fischer had been the cover of Time, before that fantastic interview on Anderson Cooper 360, before Fischer had even decided to dismantle his father’s corporation.
He likes to think that he works for the master of circumstance. Saito never settles for coincidences; he fucking makes them.
iii. eitaro itoyama, real estateThey’d arrived in Hokkaido just three hours ago, and shortly after that had immediately headed straight to Sapporo. It’s cold, and he shivers slightly inside the coat he had sworn was thick enough for this kind of weather, from the numerous times he had come to Japan with his boss, but apparently, he’s doomed to this kind of suffering whatever he does.
Beside him, Fischer’s assistant barely bats an eye as a cold gust of wind hits him in the face the moment he leaves the warmth of the van they’d ridden in.
Saito and Fischer are already inside. It’s Fischer’s first time in Saito’s house in Sapporo. From what he remembers, Fischer doesn’t like the cold very much.
His-or, rather, Saito’s-mobile buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out.
“Saito-san?” he’s immediately greeted by.
“I’m sorry, sir, but this is his assistant. He’s currently-"
“It’s alright, it’s alright, I’ll wait. But I won’t too long, yes?” the man says in heavily accented English. “The green is waiting and Saito owes me a game,” he laughs, the sudden spurt of laughter that business men seem to have a knack for when other people find nothing at all funny about the situation. Or the joke. As Saito’s assistant, however, he’s obliged to laugh as well. Then the man turns serious, “Tell him.”
He rushes inside, bypassing the thin stream of Fischer’s security detail already taking their posts at the entrance. (He doesn’t see the point in this, considering that Saito’s neighbors are ridiculously wealthy people who probably won’t even have half a mind for petty thievery. But the Americans are always careful.)
Once inside, he’s relieved by the warmth that immediately thaws the stiffness of his ears.
It’s homey. He’s been here before. On several occasions with Saito’s wife, when she felt like going for a ski and Saito had felt like going to Brazil to escape from her.
They’re talking in the living room and he strains to hear them.
Their voices echo against the wood, muffled slightly by the crackling fire in the large hearth nearby.
“It’s quite lovely, isn’t it?” Saito asks Robert, looking almost hopefully at him. His eyes shift to his assistant, right over Robert’s shoulder, and he holds up a hand. Makes him wait. Saito always makes him wait, but he’s used to that already.
He takes the moment to let the warmth tingle down his spine and un-freeze his suit from his sides.
Robert shrugs, unimpressed. He’s pulling the gloves from his right hand with his teeth. “It’s fine, I suppose.”
Saito frowns, and if his assistant didn’t know any better, he can almost mistake the slight shift of Saito’s black turtleneck around his chin as Saito actually shrinking, tentative. “I bought this ten years ago. We can have it renovated, of course.”
He’s trying to sound casual, and he does succeed to a point. The way he shifts to look at the miniscule cracks on the walls, or the very thin film of dust on the Gemelli coffee table right by his feet.
However, he knows his boss. He’s been in his employ for nearly twenty years now; he also knows that Saito keeps this house spotless, practically hires a team to redecorate it every year, despite him not being around for most of it.
(He’s visited the Ethan Allen website too many times to know that Saito likes details and he chooses every piece of furniture himself.)
Robert smiles, but it’s strained, and patient. Indulgent. Saito sees right through it but he does it anyway. “I don’t care. As long as you don’t fly out of hear the following morning then,” Robert chuckles, shaking his head, “I really don’t care.”
Saito doesn’t seem reassured by this. If anything, he looks like he’s stumbled even deeper into despair. “If this is about that Matisse painting, we’ll have it here,” he points to the wide, white ceiling beside the fireplace. It’s where his wife’s paintings used to be; they’d all been of her. “How wide is it? Some five feet? Six?”
“It’s fine,” Robert interrupts. He’s not looking at Saito. He’s rubbing his eye with his ungloved hand and lowering himself on the newly vacuumed settee, an old Barbara Barry that Saito himself had flown to London to purchase in person. “Really,” Robert looks up at him, tired but earnest. “I’m fine.”
Saito frowns, he doesn’t believe that.
Then the earpiece crackles against his palm and he remembers that someone’s still waiting on the other line. “Sir?”
Saito looks up at him, eyebrows raised. “Who is it?”
He checks the LED screen for the ID. “Eitaro Itayoma on the line.”
Then Saito’s face lights up and reaches over to take the phone from him.
(It’s not that easy, his assistant has to weave through an 19th century round table, a large bonsai, and some statue of a dog that may be gold, may not be gold, but still looks too expensive for him to accidentally bump and break into tiny little pieces.)
“Ah, Itayoma-san,” Saito greets the man once he’s pressed the phone to his ear. He throws a smile at Robert before walking off to the kitchen to take the call.
“Who’s Eitaro Itayoma?” Robert asks him, looking up at the ceiling with vague interest. His arms wrap around his middle, even though his coat is probably already too thick for the warm air indoors.
He tells Robert and Robert only sighs in response.
They both know what this call means.
***
Saito bought a house.
“Rented it,” Saito corrects Robert over breakfast some few weeks later. “My good friend thought it’s the ideal place for a vacation and I know we both need one every now and then.”
Robert hums; he doesn’t even bother to try to look excited when Saito already knows how unexcited he is about it.
Saito looks at him intently. “In Spain.”
Here, Robert does look interested. In fact, his eyes even light up, and Saito’s assistant doesn’t remember Mr fischer looking so engaged in anything related to Saito’s expenditures. Normally he scoffs at them when he learns of his latest big spend. “Where in Spain?”
“Madrid.” Saito smiles mischievously.
Robert smiles back, biting his lower lip in an effort to not grin altogether. “Really.”
Saito shrugs, feigning casual dismissal. “I didn’t think you’d be interested, of course. But my friend did insist that-"
“For fuck’s sake,” Robert laughs. “You had me at Madrid.”
Saito grimaces at the cliché reference, but he laughs too, and soon enough they even forget that Saito has a meeting at ten-thirty, or that Robert has a flight to make later that noon. They forget that their two assistants are waiting at the table beside them, and that they’d already finished their breakfast hours ago.
iv. roger blumenthal, m.d., johns hopkins university school of medicineSaito is delirious and has been for the past several hours now. His skin burns to the touch when his assistant presses a warm palm across his forehead; he flinches at the fever that’s suddenly spiked since the last time he’d checked.
He has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the most unprofessional he’s ever been since he’d been hired by Saito years ago.
They’re in Tokyo, thousands of miles away from the doctor on hold and the only other people left within shouting distance are three of Saito’s bodyguards and the maid who’s already busy cooling blankets in the kitchen.
“-high?” Blumenthal asks him.
“Higher than two hours ago, sir,” he answers, the mobile wedged in between his chin and his shoulder. He’s too busy tracking Saito’s body temperature with one hand, unbuttoning Saito’s shirt with the other.
Saito collapsed in the middle of a meeting earlier that morning, and since batting away his assistant’s hands in the few seconds he’d been lucid, he’d promptly fallen beneath some kind of fog that he hasn’t surfaced from since they’d called for the security detail to assist Saito to his car.
He claims it’s only the heat, but the A/C in the conference room had been set to near freezing.
“Has he finished his medication?”
He hesitates at that. On Saito’s bedside table are several bottles. He rattles the one nearest to him. It’s still heavy; he himself had bought it almost two weeks ago.
“Well?” The doctor prompts him.
“N-no.” After Saito’s streptococcal infection had faded a few days ago, he didn’t appear to have bothered to continue with the medication.
Blumenthal sighs. “Get him-"
Saito moans, turning his head to press his cheek against the pillow. He mumbles something into it and his assistant dislodges the phone in his ear to lean forward, trying to catch the words.
“-bert.”
“He’s not here right now, sir. But you need to drink something, alright?” He tries to sound placating, but Saito’s not having it. He knows that the person he needs is not there.
Saito sighs, his eyes screwing shut with a tightness that looks painful to watch. “Find him.”
Negative. Robert Fischer is in Australia, and has been there for the past few weeks trying to pin down a merger deal he’s been working on, day and night. Saito’s assistant knows this from the several times he’s been sent to find Fischer and invite him to dinner with Saito-most of those times, he’d returned to his boss with nothing remotely good to say.
“I-Sir,” he tries, more forcefully this time. He puts the phone down on the bedside table before getting the pill bottle and shaking a couple into his hand. He grabs the water bottle he’d asked for the maid to bring in earlier.
Saito shakes his head, then turns his back to him. He shivers, slightly, underneath his wrinkled shirt, but his pillow is stained with sweat, and the line of his shoulders is tense, stubborn, even in his semi-conscious state.
He sits on Saito’s bed for a moment, but Saito doesn’t stir again.
So he grabs the mobile, ends the call with Blumenthal without so much as a goodbye and speed-dials Robert Fischer’s private line as he pushes himself up and walks out of the room with a soft click of the door.
***
Robert arrives later that evening and by that time, Saito’s fever had already fluctuated and altogether left. He’s sitting up against a pile of pillows, dressed in a plain undershirt his assistant had unearthed from somewhere he didn’t bother to ask about.
His assistant immediately stands up from where he’s slumped in the sitting area nearest the LED television mounted on the wall but Robert waves him off and heads straight to Saito.
He leaves them once he hears Saito’s tired laugh, and he’s sure he’s not needed anymore.
***
He gets a call from Blumenthal a couple of hours later. He’s downstairs when the phone rings, thudding on the marble countertop in the center island of Saito’s kitchen.
He grabs it as he rushes, leaving his half-eaten sandwich behind, taking the stairs two at a time.
He almost bumps into Robert, who’s dressed down to his shirtsleeves, his suspenders hanging by his legs.
“He’s resting,” Robert stops him with.
“Yes, but the doctor’s on the line and-"
Robert grabs the phone from him. (They both have a habit of doing that, he muses.) “I’ll take it from here.”
He hesitates, and Robert clearly sees it.
“It’s fine,” Robert reassures him, turning to go back to the bedroom. “Get us some food too, would you? I finally convinced him to eat something,” Robert says over his shoulder.
v. kanon saitoTen weeks in Japan, during the winter, and he’s just about ready to sleep in for the rest of the weekend. Saito had promised him a break, after almost forty-eight hours, straight, of too much traveling and too little sleep for the both of them.
He’s reclined in his economy class seat. He has a flute of champagne in one hand, and White Tiger in the other. His legs feel like lead.
Then his phone rings.
Of course. His phone always rings.
He puts everything down and fishes his mobile from his coat pocket. Almost fifteen thousand feet up in the air, somewhere over Africa, and a call still gets through. Saito, of course, buys an airline that allows cellphone use on board.
“Why is my son not answering his phone?” A calm, slow voice of a woman speaks softly into his ear.
Shit.
He glances at the curtains that separate the first class cabin from the rest of the plane. Rather, Robert and Saito from the rest of the passengers (which consists only of him, five security personnel, Robert’s assistant, and five of Robert’s security personnel-they’re all separated by rows upon rows of empty seats).
Those curtains have been drawn since the moment they’d boarded the plane.
“Mrs Saito,” he begins, already stumbling out of his seat and into the aisle. He doesn’t have his shoes on. “Your son is-“
“I just received that package he sent last week,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard him, and it’s in the same soft, placating tone that he wishes his mother would use every so often. “I want to thank him.”
Saito’s assistant chuckles nervously. He’s right by the curtains. The plane kitchen is empty, save for the packed lunches (all in plates, covered in thin plastic film, chicken, lovely) stacked against the wall. “I can tell him for you if you like, Mrs Saito.”
“No, no,” she answers, breathily. She pauses. She pauses so long that he’s not even sure she’s still there when his thumb hovers over the END CALL button. “No. I want to tell him.”
He curses, silently. “Well, Mrs Saito,” he says in a much louder voice, hoping that his boss would take the hint and go outside. He personally doesn’t want to poke his head in there. “Mr Saito will be available in a moment if you would like to stay on the line.”
He hears Robert’s laugh from beyond the curtains, quickly muffled by something. Someone.
He stands by the curtain for a while longer, holding the phone near his ear to make sure that the call is still connected. He shifts, from one foot to the other.
He checks their lunch. Oh, beef and chicken.
He checks the economy cabin, and finds Fischer’s assistant asleep, propped up against the window.
He goes to the lavatory, double checks it to make sure it’s empty. (Of course it is.)
Saito still hasn’t come outside.
He sighs. “Mrs Saito?”
A very long pause. He even hears her breathe rather loudly. “Yes?
He sighs again. “Hold on a moment, please.”
He’s starting to get frustrated. Checking his watch, he realizes that it’s been almost fifteen minutes since he’d hinted, really quite loudly, that his boss’s mother is waiting on the line.
Just as he gets to the curtain, Saito draws it with a quick jerk of his arm. He’s in his suit, impeccable as always, but there’s a flush to his cheeks that his assistant is sure isn’t some lingering symptom of the illness he’d just recovered from a few days ago.
Wordlessly, he hands the phone to his boss. If he’s too confident with the raised, and albeit unamused, eyebrow, he chalks it up to exhaustion and sleep deprivation.
Saito, however, is in a good mood, and simply smirks at him as he takes the phone.
“Ma?” he greets her, and wanders back into the first class cabin. He leaves the curtains open.
Around him, his assistant realizes that the cabin now looks like the entirety of a private jet’s cramped interiors. The several seats had been removed, to give way to a white settee to one side, a carpet in the middle, and the most comfortable looking airplane seats to the other side.
Robert is on the settee, draped lazily on it, with his feet dangling from the arm rests. His feet are completely bare, and his undershirt rides up to reveal a patch of pale skin.
“Is that your mother?” Robert mouths at Saito.
Saito nods, and they share a wide grin. “No, Ma, it’s only Robert,” he says into the phone.
“We’re sorry about the wait, Kanon,” Robert calls out. “Your son is a very important man. He’s terribly in demand.”
Saito rolls his eyes at Robert as he resumes his seat on the settee. Robert lifts his legs to accommodate him, then rests his feet on his lap once he’s settled in. “She says thank you for that coat you’d bought for her.”
Robert shrugs, but the sight of Saito’s assistant lingering at the aisle distracts him. He’s given a look; a very meaningful one that possibly means the longevity of his employ, so he ducks his head, resumes his seat, and when he hears more laughter, and more talk, and the sharp draw of the curtains some few minutes later, he can only be relieved that his mobile isn’t on his person anymore and he doesn’t need to disturb Robert and Saito again for the remainder of the flight.
END
Robert/Saito
The five times Saito’s assistant put someone important on hold to wait for Saito to finish his (God damn) business (with Robert Fischer).
fermine's incentive for staying up with me all night. even though she did nap for a bit and left me all alone. shakesfist. and cause i'm procrastinating finishing my r/s vamp fic i give you this. also, ty to evocates for telling me about sapporo, hokkaido. that bit is for her. <3
i. david rockefeller jr, rockefeller family“-act like this!”
“I’m not behaving out of the ordinary. If there’s anyone who’s losing their-"
“Fuck off. Don’t act like you’re the-"
Silence through the wooden double doors of the conference room. It shouldn’t be this difficult to know what’s going on, Saito and Robert’s yelling aside. The conference room is walled in by nothing else but glass but Saito likes his privacy, and so does Robert, and Saito’s assistant knows that both are loathe to deal with anything private anywhere public, much less Saito’s office. The blinds were drawn, a neat row of thick canvas that touch the carpeted floor. Saito’s assistant can’t see a thing but he, and several others in the room with him, can pretty much know what’s going on without visual help.
“Robert,” Saito says after a while. His tone is more placating; calmer; and Saito’s assistant knows that his boss had taken several breaths to achieve that kind of evenness to his voice when only a moment ago he’d been shouting at the top of his lungs.
He doesn’t hear much else after that. The clock ticks seven-thirty five, in the evening.
The phone crackles under his hand and he realizes that the call is still on.
“Sir, Mr Saito will be just a moment,” he stutters slightly, trying to remembering that he has a five figure job to handle these types of calls and that he should start acting like he’s worth every God damn cent.
“What the hell is he making me wait for?” David Rockefeller all but shouts into his ear.
“He’s,” he glances at the doors, then at the glass walls, then at the people nearby eyeing him right back. All with question marks for eyes. Saito hires people like him, which makes Saito’s assistant pretty fucking game for any challenge presented to him. He steels himself and accepts it with a tilt of his chin at his colleagues. “Preoccupied.”
They smirk knowingly, waiting for his next move.
“Well of course he’s preoccupied,” Rockefeller snorts, “What the hell else will be keeping him away from-“
He pulls his mobile away from his ear, grimacing. He waits for five, ten, fifteen seconds, and when he’s sure that his earpiece is no longer trying to short-circuit its wires, he tries again. “He will only be a moment, sir.”
“Get him,” Rockefeller grinds out, and he can almost hear the old man’s molars grind against some unfortunate soul’s bone marrow. “Now.”
Saito’s assistant gulps, but there’s not much else he can do when he’s been stalling David fucking Rockefeller for the past twenty minutes. He knocks on the door, once, maybe twice, and when he’s sure that the men inside have gotten the message that someone is coming in so you better look presentable at the very least, he turns the knob and pokes his head in.
He’s seen his boss in several positions before.
He’s seen him swallowing someone’s soul from someone’s mouth in the hallway of the hotel Sofitel in Los Angeles with a blonde woman whose name he forgets.
He’s seen him in absolutely nothing, nothing but sauna mist and sweat, when he just had to answer someone’s call and that someone had sounded like the entire city was on fire and Saito was the only person who could put it out.
He’s seen him punch a bartender in the face after too many whiskeys.
He’s seen him after too many whiskeys in his study.
This one he hasn’t seen before, not even while Saito had still been married, or, for that matter, while Saito had still kept his Brazilian mistress on the side.
Their backs are to the door, both of them looking out the window. His boss’ bespoke suit stretch across his shoulders as his arms strain to wrap around the man in front of him and the man-Robert Fischer, no less-is leaning back against him. They’re whispering too lowly for him to pick up on any of the words.
He’s still for a moment, surprised, and that’s all that Robert and Saito needs, really, for smiles to be exchanged, and for Saito’s arms to tighten even more. Robert Fischer, whom he had never seen smile before, is smiling. Smiling so widely and so unguardedly that he finally remembers that things like this aren’t meant for his eyes.
So he looks away for a moment, before he finally clears his throat and the silence is ruptured.
Robert jumps, but Saito’s arms keep him there, pressed up against him. Saito doesn’t so much as bat an eyelid when he turns his head; but his glare at his assistant does speak more than he needs to.
“Mr David Rockefeller on the line for you, sir.”
Saito grimaces, shaking his head, but when he looks at Robert, he does so with great tenderness that his assistant wonders if Saito had ever needed affirmation from anyone in his entire life.
The answer, it appears, is yes.
Robert nods, but he doesn’t look happy about it. Saito doesn’t, either, but he does pull away, and holds out his hand.
He gives his boss the phone. “I’m sorry for the interruption, sir, but Mr Rockefeller insisted that I-“
Saito waves him off, distractedly, already holding the phone to his ear.
He turns to leave, but before he does, Saito turns back to him, pressing a hand against the speaker. “Next time. You wait for me, do you understand?”
“But sir-"
Saito shakes his head, once, sharply. Very sharply. And he knows that Saito is dead serious. “You wait for me.”
He can only nod, but Saito has already turned away, exchanging hurried pleasantries, but he can almost swear that the entire time Saito’s on the phone, or as much of the conversation he can glean from it as he turns to leave the conference room, his eyes were on Robert alone.
ii. richard stengel, managing editor, time magazine“Where is he?” She asks him the moment he tells her that, Sorry, madam, Mr Saito can’t be with you right at this time but-
“He’s-"
--in a meeting with the company’s board of trustees. From where he’s seated at some corner of the room, right beside the other assistants, all with Macbooks open on their laps, mobile phones in their hands, and both of their ears and all of their attention concentrating on everything their respective bosses say, he sees only Saito’s back, a forbidding line of fine, tailored suit, cut off by the equally forbidding line of fine, tailored leather upholstery of the swivel chair he’s sat in.
“-busy.”
“Too busy for me? Come now, that simply cannot be. This article cannot be stalled for any longer than necessary,” Stengel clicks her tongue.
“Thirty-five percent to Shell,” someone says from the opposite end of the table. A meaty fist pounds on the table top.
Saito’s shoulders tighten, and his arms brace themselves on the armrests. His knuckles turn white.
“No,” Saito says. It’s the first time he speaks and the meeting has been going on for nearly an hour now. “Thirty-five percent goes to us. Fischer-Morrow is a topnotch company that has just been served on a silver platter and the other companies are rushing to get at least one percent. We have this opportunity to get a large share, I suggest we take it.”
The trustee scoffs. Saito’s hands tighten even more until his assistant can almost hear the leather groan at the pressure. “Fischer-Morrow was worth twice as much when Maurice Fischer was still alive. Now that the ownership had moved on to his son,” he shakes his head, “It’s barely a commodity.”
This is when Saito’s assistant knows he should intervene. Otherwise, it’s going to be another repeat of the Valencia Expo ’03, which Saito had had to make up for by working twice as hard for the rest of his life.
“Mr Saito,” he quips, and several heads swivel to his direction. “A phone call for you.”
Saito grunts, but he does rise from his chair. He doesn’t ask who it is. He simply grabs the mobile and leaves the room.
He’s gone for nearly half an hour and when he comes back, the board had moved on to other affairs-the Pfizer deal that’s been on the grill for months now-and he doesn’t speak another word for the next three hours.
***
When he picks up Saito’s personal mail, picking through the bills, the junk mail, the random letter or two from his parents in Japan, he finds a copy of next month’s Time.
On the cover is Robert Fischer.
***
Three weeks later, on the front page of the New York Times’ business section-
--is Robert Fischer.
***
Nearly two months later, Fischer-Morrow flashes brightly in the marquee along Wall Street.
15.4% in green.
***
During the board meeting the week after, the corporation purchases the thirty-five percent of Fischer-Morrow and Saito isn’t there.
His assistant, however, tells him the good news over the phone but Saito only laughs before ending the call.
Saito already knows, even before Fischer had been the cover of Time, before that fantastic interview on Anderson Cooper 360, before Fischer had even decided to dismantle his father’s corporation.
He likes to think that he works for the master of circumstance. Saito never settles for coincidences; he fucking makes them.
iii. eitaro itoyama, real estateThey’d arrived in Hokkaido just three hours ago, and shortly after that had immediately headed straight to Sapporo. It’s cold, and he shivers slightly inside the coat he had sworn was thick enough for this kind of weather, from the numerous times he had come to Japan with his boss, but apparently, he’s doomed to this kind of suffering whatever he does.
Beside him, Fischer’s assistant barely bats an eye as a cold gust of wind hits him in the face the moment he leaves the warmth of the van they’d ridden in.
Saito and Fischer are already inside. It’s Fischer’s first time in Saito’s house in Sapporo. From what he remembers, Fischer doesn’t like the cold very much.
His-or, rather, Saito’s-mobile buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out.
“Saito-san?” he’s immediately greeted by.
“I’m sorry, sir, but this is his assistant. He’s currently-"
“It’s alright, it’s alright, I’ll wait. But I won’t too long, yes?” the man says in heavily accented English. “The green is waiting and Saito owes me a game,” he laughs, the sudden spurt of laughter that business men seem to have a knack for when other people find nothing at all funny about the situation. Or the joke. As Saito’s assistant, however, he’s obliged to laugh as well. Then the man turns serious, “Tell him.”
He rushes inside, bypassing the thin stream of Fischer’s security detail already taking their posts at the entrance. (He doesn’t see the point in this, considering that Saito’s neighbors are ridiculously wealthy people who probably won’t even have half a mind for petty thievery. But the Americans are always careful.)
Once inside, he’s relieved by the warmth that immediately thaws the stiffness of his ears.
It’s homey. He’s been here before. On several occasions with Saito’s wife, when she felt like going for a ski and Saito had felt like going to Brazil to escape from her.
They’re talking in the living room and he strains to hear them.
Their voices echo against the wood, muffled slightly by the crackling fire in the large hearth nearby.
“It’s quite lovely, isn’t it?” Saito asks Robert, looking almost hopefully at him. His eyes shift to his assistant, right over Robert’s shoulder, and he holds up a hand. Makes him wait. Saito always makes him wait, but he’s used to that already.
He takes the moment to let the warmth tingle down his spine and un-freeze his suit from his sides.
Robert shrugs, unimpressed. He’s pulling the gloves from his right hand with his teeth. “It’s fine, I suppose.”
Saito frowns, and if his assistant didn’t know any better, he can almost mistake the slight shift of Saito’s black turtleneck around his chin as Saito actually shrinking, tentative. “I bought this ten years ago. We can have it renovated, of course.”
He’s trying to sound casual, and he does succeed to a point. The way he shifts to look at the miniscule cracks on the walls, or the very thin film of dust on the Gemelli coffee table right by his feet.
However, he knows his boss. He’s been in his employ for nearly twenty years now; he also knows that Saito keeps this house spotless, practically hires a team to redecorate it every year, despite him not being around for most of it.
(He’s visited the Ethan Allen website too many times to know that Saito likes details and he chooses every piece of furniture himself.)
Robert smiles, but it’s strained, and patient. Indulgent. Saito sees right through it but he does it anyway. “I don’t care. As long as you don’t fly out of hear the following morning then,” Robert chuckles, shaking his head, “I really don’t care.”
Saito doesn’t seem reassured by this. If anything, he looks like he’s stumbled even deeper into despair. “If this is about that Matisse painting, we’ll have it here,” he points to the wide, white ceiling beside the fireplace. It’s where his wife’s paintings used to be; they’d all been of her. “How wide is it? Some five feet? Six?”
“It’s fine,” Robert interrupts. He’s not looking at Saito. He’s rubbing his eye with his ungloved hand and lowering himself on the newly vacuumed settee, an old Barbara Barry that Saito himself had flown to London to purchase in person. “Really,” Robert looks up at him, tired but earnest. “I’m fine.”
Saito frowns, he doesn’t believe that.
Then the earpiece crackles against his palm and he remembers that someone’s still waiting on the other line. “Sir?”
Saito looks up at him, eyebrows raised. “Who is it?”
He checks the LED screen for the ID. “Eitaro Itayoma on the line.”
Then Saito’s face lights up and reaches over to take the phone from him.
(It’s not that easy, his assistant has to weave through an 19th century round table, a large bonsai, and some statue of a dog that may be gold, may not be gold, but still looks too expensive for him to accidentally bump and break into tiny little pieces.)
“Ah, Itayoma-san,” Saito greets the man once he’s pressed the phone to his ear. He throws a smile at Robert before walking off to the kitchen to take the call.
“Who’s Eitaro Itayoma?” Robert asks him, looking up at the ceiling with vague interest. His arms wrap around his middle, even though his coat is probably already too thick for the warm air indoors.
He tells Robert and Robert only sighs in response.
They both know what this call means.
***
Saito bought a house.
“Rented it,” Saito corrects Robert over breakfast some few weeks later. “My good friend thought it’s the ideal place for a vacation and I know we both need one every now and then.”
Robert hums; he doesn’t even bother to try to look excited when Saito already knows how unexcited he is about it.
Saito looks at him intently. “In Spain.”
Here, Robert does look interested. In fact, his eyes even light up, and Saito’s assistant doesn’t remember Mr fischer looking so engaged in anything related to Saito’s expenditures. Normally he scoffs at them when he learns of his latest big spend. “Where in Spain?”
“Madrid.” Saito smiles mischievously.
Robert smiles back, biting his lower lip in an effort to not grin altogether. “Really.”
Saito shrugs, feigning casual dismissal. “I didn’t think you’d be interested, of course. But my friend did insist that-"
“For fuck’s sake,” Robert laughs. “You had me at Madrid.”
Saito grimaces at the cliché reference, but he laughs too, and soon enough they even forget that Saito has a meeting at ten-thirty, or that Robert has a flight to make later that noon. They forget that their two assistants are waiting at the table beside them, and that they’d already finished their breakfast hours ago.
iv. roger blumenthal, m.d., johns hopkins university school of medicineSaito is delirious and has been for the past several hours now. His skin burns to the touch when his assistant presses a warm palm across his forehead; he flinches at the fever that’s suddenly spiked since the last time he’d checked.
He has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the most unprofessional he’s ever been since he’d been hired by Saito years ago.
They’re in Tokyo, thousands of miles away from the doctor on hold and the only other people left within shouting distance are three of Saito’s bodyguards and the maid who’s already busy cooling blankets in the kitchen.
“-high?” Blumenthal asks him.
“Higher than two hours ago, sir,” he answers, the mobile wedged in between his chin and his shoulder. He’s too busy tracking Saito’s body temperature with one hand, unbuttoning Saito’s shirt with the other.
Saito collapsed in the middle of a meeting earlier that morning, and since batting away his assistant’s hands in the few seconds he’d been lucid, he’d promptly fallen beneath some kind of fog that he hasn’t surfaced from since they’d called for the security detail to assist Saito to his car.
He claims it’s only the heat, but the A/C in the conference room had been set to near freezing.
“Has he finished his medication?”
He hesitates at that. On Saito’s bedside table are several bottles. He rattles the one nearest to him. It’s still heavy; he himself had bought it almost two weeks ago.
“Well?” The doctor prompts him.
“N-no.” After Saito’s streptococcal infection had faded a few days ago, he didn’t appear to have bothered to continue with the medication.
Blumenthal sighs. “Get him-"
Saito moans, turning his head to press his cheek against the pillow. He mumbles something into it and his assistant dislodges the phone in his ear to lean forward, trying to catch the words.
“-bert.”
“He’s not here right now, sir. But you need to drink something, alright?” He tries to sound placating, but Saito’s not having it. He knows that the person he needs is not there.
Saito sighs, his eyes screwing shut with a tightness that looks painful to watch. “Find him.”
Negative. Robert Fischer is in Australia, and has been there for the past few weeks trying to pin down a merger deal he’s been working on, day and night. Saito’s assistant knows this from the several times he’s been sent to find Fischer and invite him to dinner with Saito-most of those times, he’d returned to his boss with nothing remotely good to say.
“I-Sir,” he tries, more forcefully this time. He puts the phone down on the bedside table before getting the pill bottle and shaking a couple into his hand. He grabs the water bottle he’d asked for the maid to bring in earlier.
Saito shakes his head, then turns his back to him. He shivers, slightly, underneath his wrinkled shirt, but his pillow is stained with sweat, and the line of his shoulders is tense, stubborn, even in his semi-conscious state.
He sits on Saito’s bed for a moment, but Saito doesn’t stir again.
So he grabs the mobile, ends the call with Blumenthal without so much as a goodbye and speed-dials Robert Fischer’s private line as he pushes himself up and walks out of the room with a soft click of the door.
***
Robert arrives later that evening and by that time, Saito’s fever had already fluctuated and altogether left. He’s sitting up against a pile of pillows, dressed in a plain undershirt his assistant had unearthed from somewhere he didn’t bother to ask about.
His assistant immediately stands up from where he’s slumped in the sitting area nearest the LED television mounted on the wall but Robert waves him off and heads straight to Saito.
He leaves them once he hears Saito’s tired laugh, and he’s sure he’s not needed anymore.
***
He gets a call from Blumenthal a couple of hours later. He’s downstairs when the phone rings, thudding on the marble countertop in the center island of Saito’s kitchen.
He grabs it as he rushes, leaving his half-eaten sandwich behind, taking the stairs two at a time.
He almost bumps into Robert, who’s dressed down to his shirtsleeves, his suspenders hanging by his legs.
“He’s resting,” Robert stops him with.
“Yes, but the doctor’s on the line and-"
Robert grabs the phone from him. (They both have a habit of doing that, he muses.) “I’ll take it from here.”
He hesitates, and Robert clearly sees it.
“It’s fine,” Robert reassures him, turning to go back to the bedroom. “Get us some food too, would you? I finally convinced him to eat something,” Robert says over his shoulder.
v. kanon saitoTen weeks in Japan, during the winter, and he’s just about ready to sleep in for the rest of the weekend. Saito had promised him a break, after almost forty-eight hours, straight, of too much traveling and too little sleep for the both of them.
He’s reclined in his economy class seat. He has a flute of champagne in one hand, and White Tiger in the other. His legs feel like lead.
Then his phone rings.
Of course. His phone always rings.
He puts everything down and fishes his mobile from his coat pocket. Almost fifteen thousand feet up in the air, somewhere over Africa, and a call still gets through. Saito, of course, buys an airline that allows cellphone use on board.
“Why is my son not answering his phone?” A calm, slow voice of a woman speaks softly into his ear.
Shit.
He glances at the curtains that separate the first class cabin from the rest of the plane. Rather, Robert and Saito from the rest of the passengers (which consists only of him, five security personnel, Robert’s assistant, and five of Robert’s security personnel-they’re all separated by rows upon rows of empty seats).
Those curtains have been drawn since the moment they’d boarded the plane.
“Mrs Saito,” he begins, already stumbling out of his seat and into the aisle. He doesn’t have his shoes on. “Your son is-“
“I just received that package he sent last week,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard him, and it’s in the same soft, placating tone that he wishes his mother would use every so often. “I want to thank him.”
Saito’s assistant chuckles nervously. He’s right by the curtains. The plane kitchen is empty, save for the packed lunches (all in plates, covered in thin plastic film, chicken, lovely) stacked against the wall. “I can tell him for you if you like, Mrs Saito.”
“No, no,” she answers, breathily. She pauses. She pauses so long that he’s not even sure she’s still there when his thumb hovers over the END CALL button. “No. I want to tell him.”
He curses, silently. “Well, Mrs Saito,” he says in a much louder voice, hoping that his boss would take the hint and go outside. He personally doesn’t want to poke his head in there. “Mr Saito will be available in a moment if you would like to stay on the line.”
He hears Robert’s laugh from beyond the curtains, quickly muffled by something. Someone.
He stands by the curtain for a while longer, holding the phone near his ear to make sure that the call is still connected. He shifts, from one foot to the other.
He checks their lunch. Oh, beef and chicken.
He checks the economy cabin, and finds Fischer’s assistant asleep, propped up against the window.
He goes to the lavatory, double checks it to make sure it’s empty. (Of course it is.)
Saito still hasn’t come outside.
He sighs. “Mrs Saito?”
A very long pause. He even hears her breathe rather loudly. “Yes?
He sighs again. “Hold on a moment, please.”
He’s starting to get frustrated. Checking his watch, he realizes that it’s been almost fifteen minutes since he’d hinted, really quite loudly, that his boss’s mother is waiting on the line.
Just as he gets to the curtain, Saito draws it with a quick jerk of his arm. He’s in his suit, impeccable as always, but there’s a flush to his cheeks that his assistant is sure isn’t some lingering symptom of the illness he’d just recovered from a few days ago.
Wordlessly, he hands the phone to his boss. If he’s too confident with the raised, and albeit unamused, eyebrow, he chalks it up to exhaustion and sleep deprivation.
Saito, however, is in a good mood, and simply smirks at him as he takes the phone.
“Ma?” he greets her, and wanders back into the first class cabin. He leaves the curtains open.
Around him, his assistant realizes that the cabin now looks like the entirety of a private jet’s cramped interiors. The several seats had been removed, to give way to a white settee to one side, a carpet in the middle, and the most comfortable looking airplane seats to the other side.
Robert is on the settee, draped lazily on it, with his feet dangling from the arm rests. His feet are completely bare, and his undershirt rides up to reveal a patch of pale skin.
“Is that your mother?” Robert mouths at Saito.
Saito nods, and they share a wide grin. “No, Ma, it’s only Robert,” he says into the phone.
“We’re sorry about the wait, Kanon,” Robert calls out. “Your son is a very important man. He’s terribly in demand.”
Saito rolls his eyes at Robert as he resumes his seat on the settee. Robert lifts his legs to accommodate him, then rests his feet on his lap once he’s settled in. “She says thank you for that coat you’d bought for her.”
Robert shrugs, but the sight of Saito’s assistant lingering at the aisle distracts him. He’s given a look; a very meaningful one that possibly means the longevity of his employ, so he ducks his head, resumes his seat, and when he hears more laughter, and more talk, and the sharp draw of the curtains some few minutes later, he can only be relieved that his mobile isn’t on his person anymore and he doesn’t need to disturb Robert and Saito again for the remainder of the flight.
END