[INCEPTION] Fic: But we've been bright in our decline (Robert/Saito)
But we've been bright in our decline
Robert/Saito
For the inception_kink prompt: Saito buys himself airlines on a whim. Fischer can bribe governments to do his will. Obviously, the same old flowers 'n chocolate aren't hgoing to cut it in their relationship. - So, what kind of gifts do they give each other to make up after they've had a lovers' spat? Yez, fermine is my go-to guy for betas. So if this sucks, it's totally not her fault because I'm a stubborn son of a bitch.
“You shot my assistant.”
Saito was looking at Robert with a face that shouldn’t be as amused as it clearly was, given the situation.
The hallway smelled of blood and gun powder and Robert grimaced at the grotesque splatter on the walls and the warm gunmetal against his palm.
He was tired, it was three in the God damn morning and all he wanted was to rest before the board meeting he needed to attend.
He frowned at Saito, before switching on the safety of his gun and tossing it onto the console table where it rattled against his bureau.
“Robert, you’re not even going to apologize for that?” Saito asked him as he turned away, back to his bedroom where the rest of his clothes and most of his dignity were waiting for him.
(Stumbling out of bed in just pajama bottoms-silk, sure, but still pajama bottoms--with a semi-automatic, Robert didn’t even think about putting on a crisp suit when the noises outside his door had sounded very much like an army of cat burglars stomping around in his living room.
“It wasn’t my brilliant idea to have your assistant sneak around in my damn hallway in the middle of the night,” Robert threw over his shoulder. He was already nudging his bedroom door open with his bare foot.
“I was trying to be romantic,” Saito replied and by the crisp clicks of leather on wood, Robert could tell that Saito wasn’t going to give this up anytime soon.
Robert sighed, and held up a hand. He turned around, slowly, trying to compose himself as well as the slight shudder of his bare chest as the vent on the ceiling blasted cold air against his skin.
By the look in Saito’s eyes, Robert could tell that Saito was trying to not appreciate the view.
“Go home. I got your damn flowers. I’ll shower you with kisses in the morning.” He shot Saito a look that meant he wasn’t kidding, that he was deadly serious, and that he had several other guns in his bedroom that were all within easy reach. That he’d had enough practice with Saito’s assistant (blown kneecap, straight through the bone) that he wasn’t even going to think twice.
But Saito was a stubborn bastard. And they both knew it.
“You are a very hard man to please.”
Robert snorted. “Fuck off, you owe me.”
Saito was smirking, like he’d just won the game that Robert hadn’t even realized had already started.
He shut the door in his face and dreamt about shooting it, over and over again.
(But as his dreams went, Saito never went away until Robert ran out of bullets and woke up as frustrated as ever.)
***
Robert woke up three hours later, to the sound of a vacuum cleaner wolfing down air and the rest of Robert’s pleasant morning.
After getting dressed, he was greeted by someone in an impeccable suit and a nervous face standing in his living room.
“Who the hell are you?” Robert demanded. The maid he knew. Had known her for almost ten years now, and he appreciated that she didn’t utter a single word as she scrubbed away at the blood staining the wallpaper.
This guy, though, he reeked of Saito.
“Mr Saito,” whoo-fucking-pee, Robert exclaimed in joy, “wished for your presence at-"
“Breakfast, yeah, I know,” Robert finished for him, dismissively.
The guy stepped back, almost, with wide eyes that tried their damn hardest not to look so stupid on his face.
“What?” Robert demanded.
“Nothing, Mr Fischer.”
Robert didn’t ask any more, because he really didn’t care. But he did notice the man’s hand hover at what must be a holstered gun at his hip and Robert almost smirked if not for the fact that this man had a gun and he, at the moment, did not.
***
“The next time you have someone pick me up, I’d appreciate it if they’re not armed to the teeth.”
Saito looked up from the newspaper spread in his hands.
Robert sat across from him, waving away the waiter whose instinct it was to make him feel like a damn invalid who, apparently, couldn’t even pull out his own chair. He dumped his suitcase on the chair next to him.
Saito made a noise under his breath.
Robert hated it when people made noise under their breath because it meant that someone knew something and wasn’t going to share it with Robert. He glared at Saito, never mind that the New York Times was held up in front of his face like a shield against Robert’s wrath. Robert didn’t like what was happening and that kind of sentiment didn’t go unacknowledged.
Eventually, Saito did fold up his newspaper. But he was smiling, and it was the indulgent kind of smile that Robert hated, even though it was a very comforting thing, to be smiled at like that by anyone who wasn’t his mother.
“He’s probably heard about what happened last night.”
Robert raised an eyebrow, just as the waiter came with his usual coffee. Black and steaming and in a very large cup.
“Was he wearing a bullet-proof vest?”
“How should I know?” Robert scoffed, then thought about it after a moment. “Is he a bodyguard?”
Saito looked at him, indulgently. Always the indulgence with Saito, Robert sighed. It made him feel like the biggest tool in the shed and that Saito, by comparison, was a saint.
(And Saito was not a saint, God damn it.)
“Of course he is,” Robert muttered to himself, as he took a sip of his coffee.
Saito unfolded the newspaper, and went back to his reading. Even turned a page, for the hell of it, Robert thought, because by the glazed look in Saito’s eyes and the way his ear was turned to Robert’s direction, Robert knew that Saito was reading none of the Times crap at all. “I should invest in bulletproof trousers next time. The vests are wasted on you.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t shoot to kill.”
“My heart begs to differ.”
Robert groaned.
Saito eyed him over the newspaper. Robert couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not.
(He could, because Saito smiled with his eyes. But sometimes, it took more than that for Robert to fully gauge what Saito really meant because Saito’s eyes lied, too. Much better than Saito’s words did.)
“Does this mean that I’m forgiven?” Saito ventured.
“No.”
Saito folded up the newspaper-again, and by the angry, crisp rustle of paper on paper, probably the last time too-and threw it on the table. “I brought you flowers.”
“Your assistant brought me flowers,” Robert corrected him.
“You shot my assistant,” Saito fired back.
You have a mistress, Robert wanted to say. But didn’t, because things like that weren’t for breakfasts in mild-mannered restaurants in New York where people wore more beige than any other color. “Well if that doesn’t say how much I hate flowers then I don’t know a much plainer and obvious way to say it,” he said instead.
That quieted Saito. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping on the armrests, with a thoughtful look on his face.
Fuck, Robert cursed. Silently. Because he didn’t curse in public.
By the sudden mischief in Saito’s eyes, and the contemplative twist of his lips, Robert knew that Saito wasn’t going to give up now.
***
There was a knock on his office door and Robert, without looking up from the papers on his desk, told whoever it was to come in.
(He should really stop doing that.)
“Are you busy?”
Robert, before he even glanced up, knew that it was Saito.
What he didn’t expect was the ridiculously large tin can in his hands as well as the ridiculously large bold lettering down the side of it.
H E R S H E--
Robert looked away with a grunt, but he did lean back in his chair, tossing his pen on his desk and waited.
“Flew this in from Italy.”
Robert smiled, humorlessly. “Hershey’s chocolates are made in Hershey, Pennsylvania.”
Saito held up a finger, to stop him right there. Robert braced for the rest of his argument. “These are Italian Hershey’s chocolates.”
“Really.”
Saito smiled, eagerly, now that Robert showed some morsel of interest in his gift for a change. He put down the tin on Robert’s desk and pried the top open. Tilting the can towards Robert, he proceeded to show that every other Hershey chocolate that was ever invented were all wrapped in gold foil, pristine and untouched and un-melted.
“Nice. Are all of them white chocolate?”
Saito nodded appreciatively. “Most of them.”
Robert leveled his gaze. “I hate white chocolate.”
Saito’s smile fell. He started rummaging through the tin, tossing chocolates this way and that, all perfectly shaped kisses. “There are dark ones in here too.”
“Great. Nougat?”
Saito smiled again, rejuvenated.
“I hate nougat.”
Saito’s smile fell a second time and it must be a record, Robert thought. That was barely even thirty seconds in between joy and dejection.
He almost felt guilty, if not for the way that Saito set his jaw and his eyes flashed dangerously.
Robert shook his head at himself as Saito left, with the silent promise of coming back with something bigger and better.
He tried to go back to his work but his office already smelled of white chocolate and dark chocolate and nougat and Saito and he liked to think that it was because of all of those, especially Saito, that he couldn’t comprehend past the standard office header on the financial report that was suddenly all white noise and no numbers at all.
***
“Oh my God, this is an Airbus.”
Saito stood proudly at the foot of the plane stairs, hands in his pockets, not even the slightest bit ruffled by the fact that he was standing next to a mammoth of an airplane.
“What the fuck is it doing on my private runway?”
“It’s yours,” Saito said, grinning. “I bought it for you.”
Robert waited. But Saito was still smiling and he didn’t seem to be disturbed by the lack of explanation behind this one.
(He never seemed disturbed by the lack of explanation for a lot of things. Saito always thought that convenience was a good enough excuse for any expenditure and Robert winced on his bank account’s behalf.)
“I already have a private jet.”
“But it’s not an Airbus.”
“Which is why it’s called a private jet,” Robert cared to point out.
Saito shrugged. “More space, more leg room. You can fit a whole building in it if you want to.”
Robert frowned. He had yet to find the logic in this. “I’m an only child. My father’s dead, my godfather’s estranged now that I’ve fired him, and I live alone in a penthouse in Manhattan.”
“For you and your friends.”
Robert smirked, but he wasn’t amused. “I don’t have any friends.”
Saito seemed surprised by that, but he didn’t comment on it. He recovered quickly enough, with a slight noise in his throat and a distracted glance at the Airbus. “For us, then.”
“You already have an airline.” Really, it was getting tiring, shooting down Saito’s gifts like they were an excess of quail at Dick Cheney’s ranch.
“None of those planes got you to come with me to Tokyo.”
“The Airbus is still a plane, and it still won’t get me to come with you to Tokyo.”
Saito didn’t seem disappointed by that at all.
***
Robert came to, cold and shivering under a very thick duvet. It took him a while to realize that the duvet didn’t smell like the usual fabric softener his maid used, or the fact that the sun didn’t brighten the room like it should.
Or the fact that the room didn’t look like his at all.
Robert blinked, and stared up at a ceiling that was far too warm and brown to look even the slightest bit familiar to him.
He sat up in mild panic.
“Good morning,” Saito greeted from where he was sat at an elaborate sitting area on the other side of the room.
It was a lavish set up, but the white walls and the dark wood was far too oriental.
“What did you do this time?” Robert asked him, warily. He pulled up the duvet to his shoulders. Fuck, it was cold.
“I finally persuaded you to come to Tokyo with me.”
Robert looked at him in alarm. “Did I agree to this?”
Saito smiled, sheepishly. He was in a bathrobe, Robert realized. A bathrobe that looked really soft, and fluffy, and white, and he wondered how Saito could carry a God damn bathrobe like he carried a God damn suit, all square shoulders, a dignity to his chin. All confidence and no hesitation.
Robert was in his territory, and fuck was Saito smug about it.
“Did I agree to this,” Robert asked again, forcefully, because Saito wasn’t answering his question and Robert absolutely hated it when his questions weren’t answered the way he wanted them to be.
He wanted Yes, Robert, you did agree to this. You were lucid at the time.
But Saito gave him, “No.”
Robert fumed. “This is kidnapping.”
“If this is kidnapping then what is my motive? I don’t need your ten million dollars.”
Robert sighed, and fell back against the pillows. “Did you at least tell my head of security?”
He was met with silence, but cloth rustled and air shifted, and soon enough, Saito was standing by the bed, looking down at him with eyes that were soft and comfortable. He wasn’t smug anymore.
“The easiest way to apologize is for you to just apologize,” Robert told him.
Saito sat down beside him, until his face was just there, and his hand was on top of the duvet, the added weight cocooning Robert further in warmth and softness and he was feeling too damn comfortable to be annoyed.
“You know,” Saito began, his fingers coming up to brush Robert’s hair from his forehead and Robert’s skin burned more at the tenderness of the gesture than the actual contact. “I never brought Sonia here.”
Robert wanted to bristle, but couldn’t, because Saito was leaning forward until their chests touched. The duvet was a mile of cloth and comfort between them, but Saito’s face was close enough to his that Robert knew he didn’t need the extra effort to lean in and give Saito what he wanted.
“So the mistress has a name?” was what Robert gave him, instead.
Saito sighed. A warm rush of air on Robert’s cheek.
“And an apartment in Brazil too, right?”
“Robert,” Saito snapped.
Robert stopped, but didn’t avert his eyes, not even when Saito bowed his head until his forehead rested on Robert’s chest. His hair smelled faintly of shampoo.
“She’s an educated woman,” he said after a while, words muffled slightly.
“I’m an educated man,” Robert countered. He wasn’t mad, not really, not when he had Saito to himself, draped languidly on top of him.
Robert brought up a hand before he could convince himself not to, his palm cupping the back of Saito’s head, fingers touching the fine hair.
“She’s married to a politician.”
Robert smirked, flicking Sato on the ear with a slight jerk of his thumb. “I own politicians.”
Saito smiled, looking up at him. “And you own me.”
Robert’s face fell as he shook his head. “Not all of the time,” but he still threaded his fingers through Saito’s hair.
“But more often than I see her.”
It almost made Robert laugh, how that made sense and how, technically, Robert should be glad about it, but it was a sobering thought, that there was a ‘she’ at all when there should only be him and Saito in the first place.
***
“Sonia’s pregnant.”
Saito’s eyes shot up. “What?”
Robert smiled at him as he took his usual seat in their usual restaurant for their usual breakfast.
“Sonia’s dead?” He tried again.
“Robert, please,” Saito pleaded-almost, because Saito never pleaded for anything in his life-but he did relax, slightly, even though he still kept his newspaper in front of him. And still pretended to read.
Robert didn’t know why he even bothered with the farce anymore. “That's unfortunate,” he said, but there was nothing even close to sympathy in his voice. “I was this close to forgiving you too.”
The waiter brought his coffee and Robert sipped at it, deliberately not looking at Saito even as the newspaper was folded back up and discarded on the vacant chair next to him. Saito waited for Robert to say something else and Robert was going to make him wait even longer.
***
“What will it take, then?” Saito finally asked later that evening, when they were both dressed down to their shirtsleeves, their suit jackets slung delicately over the high chairs at the kitchen counter.
Robert was unpacking the several Sushi Yasuda take-out cartons from the paper bag. He made a thoughtful noise as he rummaged around the bag for the chopsticks.
They were in Robert’s apartment, it was late in the evening, and Saito wasn’t on the first plane to Rio for a change. They spent most evenings together now, ever since they’d come back from Tokyo almost two months ago.
“You are torturing me, Robert,” Saito said around the chopsticks he held between his teeth. His hands deftly unfastened his cufflinks, then rolled his sleeves to halfway up his elbows.
“You’re only really doing it to yourself,” Robert pointed out, pushing the carton of fugu at Saito and taking the teppanyaki for himself. They didn’t bother with plates, because Robert’s maid wasn’t coming in the next day and he didn’t want to wash the dishes. “You’re a smart man. Figure it out.”
Saito made an impatient noise as he took the chopsticks from his mouth and proceeded to pull it apart with more force than necessary. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
Robert looked up at him, a scoop of rice halfway to his lips. “Really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Do you put in as much effort when Sonia-"
“Robert,” Saito sighed, focusing too intently on his food, his chopsticks poking at his fugu.
Robert shook his head, shoveling food and answers down his throat.
***
Robert opened his front door to a man.
A very good-looking man, with eyes waxing poetic and hair that was just-well, from how it looked in the warm light of the hallway-just plain waxed. Tall, broad-shouldered, with legs lean in a perfectly tailored dress pants.
He was smiling at him.
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Robert said, once he’d recovered from surprise. “But who are you?”
The man shifted, and that’s when he noticed Saito in the living room, with his usual newspaper spread out in front of him.
The man opened his mouth but Robert cut him off with a hand. “Excuse me for a while.”
He closed the door behind him and rushed down the hallway to the living room.
Saito didn’t look up, but he was smiling, and it didn’t look right at all how he smiled with his lips and not with his eyes.
“There’s a man in my hallway.”
“A very handsome man,” Saito corrected him.
“Yes, but he’s still in my hallway.”
Saito shrugged, and pointedly turned a page with a brief lick of his thumb. “George Huntingdon. He’s English, he’s rich, and he’s great in bed.”
Robert blinked, then deposited his suitcase on the coffee table. “That’s great to know.”
Saito nodded, agreeing, but didn’t look up from his damn newspaper.
Annoyed by that, Robert pulled the newspaper from Saito’s hands and dumped it next to his suitcase.
(He didn’t notice that he missed by a mile, and it landed in a careless heap on the floor.)
Saito drew in a breath, and leaned as far back as he could manage, hands in his pockets. He looked smug. No, Robert realized, he looked damn determined to look smug, but it was failing at the edges, softened by something like doubt.
“Well?” Robert prompted him.
“He’s a very discreet man.”
“A threesome is not an apology,” Robert cared to point out. “And I don’t even like threesomes.”
Saito grimaced, as if disgusted by the thought. And he probably was. Saito was an intimate man, Robert knew this. And he liked romance and flair and theatrics, but for all of that, he was as passionate as he was personal.
“Care to explain before I call security and throw the both of you out of my apartment?”
“He’s a mistress,” Saito blurted out.
And if Robert hadn’t been surprised enough. He shook his head, disbelieving. He would’ve laughed at the ridiculousness of that suggestion if not for the fact that Saito was not laughing. And he wasn’t joking either.
And that the silence was too thick in the air for any of it to be ridiculous at all.
“You’re keeping your mistress,” Robert bit out, “So now you’re giving me my own.”
Saito grimaced again. “He’s a-"
“I don’t care about him,” Robert dismissed.
Saito tried to say something but didn’t look like he had anything worthy to say so Robert just shook his head and turned away. “Get out.”
He went to his bedroom, not caring that Saito was already on his feet or that the strange man was still waiting for him in the hallway, not quite knowing what to do with himself.
“You too,” Robert told him, and closed the door with a slam.
***
There was a noise outside his bedroom door.
Robert met it with a Glock in his hand.
The noise yelped.
“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?” Robert demanded.
The noise fumbled until something fell and broke into a million pieces. It cursed and it stumbled back and back and back until it hit the wall and the chain on the door rattled under the weight.
Robert edged to the switch. He flicked on the lights.
There was a vase and an elaborate bouquet of flowers, both broken and in disarray, in the middle of the hallway and the noise was actually a man in a suit.
Robert sighed and lowered his gun. “Clean that up and bring it back to your boss.”
The man violently shook his head. “I have-"
“I don’t care.”
The man didn’t even want to argue any more than that, not with Robert’s finger hovering over the trigger. He rushed to gather the mess of broken glass and flowers in his arms and rushed to the door as quickly as he could manage.
“And tell him I don’t need any more of his damn flowers.”
***
He didn’t need any more of his damn chocolates, either.
An unopened box of Ferrero Rocher wound up in his trash bin the minute it arrived in his office.
(He never really liked chocolates in the first place.)
***
“Sir, Mr Saito-"
Robert brushed past him.
“-breakfast.”
Robert opened his front door, and waited until Saito’s assistant understood that Robert wasn’t going anywhere with him.
He closed the door with a resounding click and called his secretary to hold all calls from Saito.
To tell him that he was off ice-fishing.
In Antartica.
***
Saito kept calling him, because Robert gave him his personal number and Robert wasn’t going to cut that line for anyone, not even for Saito.
“I miss you,” Saito first told him when Robert finally picked up his call after the nth time on the nth day of no breakfasts, and no dinners, and absolutely no tolerance of any of Saito’s gimmicks.
“I’m sure you do,” Robert snorted. He was in a meeting and Robert gestured for them to continue even as he talked on the phone.
“I don’t think you know how much.”
“You’ve run my secretary to the ground. I think I know.”
“Then come to breakfast tomorrow.”
Robert shook his head, and Saito wouldn’t see it but the silence on Robert’s end should be telling enough. He ended the call with a click, and handed his phone to his secretary.
The meeting continued undisturbed, but Robert’s mind had already focused on something else entirely.
***
Someone was following him.
Several someones, in fact.
Robert first noticed in The Coffee Bean, where Robert was waiting for his coffee. Someone was looking at him; the back of his head burned at the weight of someone’s stare, but when he looked around, there was no one there.
Then at Saks, where Robert was shopping for a suit to the Met ball.
Then at the airport, just as Robert was boarding his plane back to Sydney.
He thought he was safe in Australia, but the eyes only seemed to have multiplied. He’d told his head of security about it but after a thorough check of his apartment, and an added security detail, they found nothing and no one out of the ordinary.
The eyes remained, and Robert was getting annoyed by it.
After three weeks in Sydney, he arrived in New York with a sigh of exhaustion. He was still being watched.
It wasn’t until he’d made it safely to his apartment and went out to his penthouse’s balcony that he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Just there, on the helipad at the top of the building nearest his, was a helicopter bearing Saito’s company insignia.
He fished out his mobile, bypassed the TEN MISSED CALLS flashing on the LED, and speed-dialed Saito.
“Tell your army to retreat,” Robert demanded without preamble.
Saito’s chuckle crackled through the phone, then came a distinct sound of sliding metal, then a sudden breath of rushing wind.
From Robert’s vantage point on his balcony, he could see a man disembark from the helicopter.
“Didn’t even bother to be subtle, did you?” Robert sighed, but he was smiling, and he could tell Saito was smiling too.
It was cold outside, despite it being in the middle of the summer. Seventy floors and jetlag and all of that with only Saito’s spies to keep him company; they were enough to send a shudder down his spine. He wrapped his arms around his middle, not caring if his suit jacket was wrinkled by the wind, or that his hand gripped his side too tightly.
“Desperate men and desperate measures.”
“Well, we’re talking on the phone with a million-foot drop between us.” Robert didn’t even want to look down. His hand tightened on the railing.
But Saito didn’t seem fazed by it. He was standing calmly by his helicopter, facing Robert, with his hand in his pocket, and his suit jacket flapping everywhere around his hips. “This is the first time you’ve talked to me in me weeks, Robert.”
Robert worked around his breath in his throat. “I just know what I deserve.”
Saito nodded, a miniscule shift of his head from so far away, and Robert felt a resounding pang in his chest when he realized that he missed Saito’s expressive face, and how every twist of his lips and crease of his brow spoke volumes of things he didn’t really want to say. “Come to breakfast tomorrow.”
There was a pause, and Robert waited.
“Please, Robert.”
“Only if it means I’m sleeping tonight without anyone watching me the whole time.”
Saito laughed, and Robert saw him shake his head. “I promise.”
“Good.”
“Good night, Robert.”
Robert licked his lips. “Good night.”
He ended the call but stood on the balcony for a bit longer, watching Saito watching him. Until he turned and left, and as he went into his room and settled in for the night, he heard the beat of helicopter blades hovering over his roof for a while and lulled him to sleep.
***
There wasn’t anyone to pick him up the next morning. Instead, he took a cab to the restaurant.
Saito was at his usual seat. Already there was a cup of coffee waiting for Robert, still hot and steaming. Saito didn’t have a newspaper held up to his face this time, and he sat with an unusual alertness that tightened the line of his shoulders, his hands folded on his crossed knees.
“Good morning,” Robert greeted him as he sat down.
Saito smiled at him, but didn’t speak for a while. Just stared, as if memorizing his face in great detail.
Robert almost bristled, but he met Saito’s eyes and fought the urge to smile back.
Saito unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. “It takes a grand gesture to get Robert Fischer to eat breakfast with me.” He didn’t take his eyes off Robert.
Robert shrugged, and sipped on his coffee.
“I really did miss you, you know.”
“I know.” And Robert did know. He knew from the numerous voice mail messages in his inbox, the numerous missed calls, the exasperation of his secretary from dealing with too many of Saito’s calls.
“And?”
Robert missed him too, but he damn him if he was going to admit it. “And I admire your-"
Saito raised his eyebrows, looking at him expectantly.
“-Perseverance,” Robert finished with a smile.
Saito smiled back, but it was a poor attempt at being casual.
Robert was a little more convincing than him. “Spent all this time in Brazil, I’m guessing.”
“No,” Saito replied, curtly, and its crispness surprised even Robert.
“No?”
Saito shifted, cleared his throat, appeared more apprehensive than Robert thought he had the capacity for something so discomfiting. “I wanted to be here when you came back.”
“Really.”
“Are you surprised?”
Robert chuckled humorlessly. “Pleasantly so.”
Then Saito smiled widely, his eyes crinkled and his shoulders eased. “I’m glad something I’ve said finally got the response that I wanted.”
“What about what I want?” Robert pressed on.
“I was planning on bribing your bodyguards into bringing you to Tokyo again.”
Oh, well that answered quite a lot of things that Robert had been wondering about. But it wasn’t what he was looking for.
“Then I thought about buying off your company in Australia.”
“Really.”
Saito shrugged. “I don’t like it when you leave.”
Robert smirked, shaking his head. “You always left for-"
But Saito raised his hand, and Robert fell quiet. “I’m not leaving anymore. So you shouldn’t either.”
Robert’s smirk eased, to something like surprise. He didn’t expect that, but God how he wanted it.
Saito smiled as he leaned forward, his hand came up to grasp Robert’s in his, his thumb in Robert’s palm, his grip firm and warm, all in plain sight. In a restaurant full of people in beige and brown and eyes that judged and mouths that gossiped.
Robert smiled back, and truly felt it this time. A wide smile that stretched his lips and brought a flush to his cheeks. He glanced away for a moment, to the waiter that immediately averted his eyes to his floor, then looked back at Saito, who was just there.
Against all instinct, Robert kissed him, fully, on the lips. And felt that he had every damn right to.
Robert/Saito
For the inception_kink prompt: Saito buys himself airlines on a whim. Fischer can bribe governments to do his will. Obviously, the same old flowers 'n chocolate aren't hgoing to cut it in their relationship. - So, what kind of gifts do they give each other to make up after they've had a lovers' spat? Yez, fermine is my go-to guy for betas. So if this sucks, it's totally not her fault because I'm a stubborn son of a bitch.
“You shot my assistant.”
Saito was looking at Robert with a face that shouldn’t be as amused as it clearly was, given the situation.
The hallway smelled of blood and gun powder and Robert grimaced at the grotesque splatter on the walls and the warm gunmetal against his palm.
He was tired, it was three in the God damn morning and all he wanted was to rest before the board meeting he needed to attend.
He frowned at Saito, before switching on the safety of his gun and tossing it onto the console table where it rattled against his bureau.
“Robert, you’re not even going to apologize for that?” Saito asked him as he turned away, back to his bedroom where the rest of his clothes and most of his dignity were waiting for him.
(Stumbling out of bed in just pajama bottoms-silk, sure, but still pajama bottoms--with a semi-automatic, Robert didn’t even think about putting on a crisp suit when the noises outside his door had sounded very much like an army of cat burglars stomping around in his living room.
“It wasn’t my brilliant idea to have your assistant sneak around in my damn hallway in the middle of the night,” Robert threw over his shoulder. He was already nudging his bedroom door open with his bare foot.
“I was trying to be romantic,” Saito replied and by the crisp clicks of leather on wood, Robert could tell that Saito wasn’t going to give this up anytime soon.
Robert sighed, and held up a hand. He turned around, slowly, trying to compose himself as well as the slight shudder of his bare chest as the vent on the ceiling blasted cold air against his skin.
By the look in Saito’s eyes, Robert could tell that Saito was trying to not appreciate the view.
“Go home. I got your damn flowers. I’ll shower you with kisses in the morning.” He shot Saito a look that meant he wasn’t kidding, that he was deadly serious, and that he had several other guns in his bedroom that were all within easy reach. That he’d had enough practice with Saito’s assistant (blown kneecap, straight through the bone) that he wasn’t even going to think twice.
But Saito was a stubborn bastard. And they both knew it.
“You are a very hard man to please.”
Robert snorted. “Fuck off, you owe me.”
Saito was smirking, like he’d just won the game that Robert hadn’t even realized had already started.
He shut the door in his face and dreamt about shooting it, over and over again.
(But as his dreams went, Saito never went away until Robert ran out of bullets and woke up as frustrated as ever.)
***
Robert woke up three hours later, to the sound of a vacuum cleaner wolfing down air and the rest of Robert’s pleasant morning.
After getting dressed, he was greeted by someone in an impeccable suit and a nervous face standing in his living room.
“Who the hell are you?” Robert demanded. The maid he knew. Had known her for almost ten years now, and he appreciated that she didn’t utter a single word as she scrubbed away at the blood staining the wallpaper.
This guy, though, he reeked of Saito.
“Mr Saito,” whoo-fucking-pee, Robert exclaimed in joy, “wished for your presence at-"
“Breakfast, yeah, I know,” Robert finished for him, dismissively.
The guy stepped back, almost, with wide eyes that tried their damn hardest not to look so stupid on his face.
“What?” Robert demanded.
“Nothing, Mr Fischer.”
Robert didn’t ask any more, because he really didn’t care. But he did notice the man’s hand hover at what must be a holstered gun at his hip and Robert almost smirked if not for the fact that this man had a gun and he, at the moment, did not.
***
“The next time you have someone pick me up, I’d appreciate it if they’re not armed to the teeth.”
Saito looked up from the newspaper spread in his hands.
Robert sat across from him, waving away the waiter whose instinct it was to make him feel like a damn invalid who, apparently, couldn’t even pull out his own chair. He dumped his suitcase on the chair next to him.
Saito made a noise under his breath.
Robert hated it when people made noise under their breath because it meant that someone knew something and wasn’t going to share it with Robert. He glared at Saito, never mind that the New York Times was held up in front of his face like a shield against Robert’s wrath. Robert didn’t like what was happening and that kind of sentiment didn’t go unacknowledged.
Eventually, Saito did fold up his newspaper. But he was smiling, and it was the indulgent kind of smile that Robert hated, even though it was a very comforting thing, to be smiled at like that by anyone who wasn’t his mother.
“He’s probably heard about what happened last night.”
Robert raised an eyebrow, just as the waiter came with his usual coffee. Black and steaming and in a very large cup.
“Was he wearing a bullet-proof vest?”
“How should I know?” Robert scoffed, then thought about it after a moment. “Is he a bodyguard?”
Saito looked at him, indulgently. Always the indulgence with Saito, Robert sighed. It made him feel like the biggest tool in the shed and that Saito, by comparison, was a saint.
(And Saito was not a saint, God damn it.)
“Of course he is,” Robert muttered to himself, as he took a sip of his coffee.
Saito unfolded the newspaper, and went back to his reading. Even turned a page, for the hell of it, Robert thought, because by the glazed look in Saito’s eyes and the way his ear was turned to Robert’s direction, Robert knew that Saito was reading none of the Times crap at all. “I should invest in bulletproof trousers next time. The vests are wasted on you.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t shoot to kill.”
“My heart begs to differ.”
Robert groaned.
Saito eyed him over the newspaper. Robert couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not.
(He could, because Saito smiled with his eyes. But sometimes, it took more than that for Robert to fully gauge what Saito really meant because Saito’s eyes lied, too. Much better than Saito’s words did.)
“Does this mean that I’m forgiven?” Saito ventured.
“No.”
Saito folded up the newspaper-again, and by the angry, crisp rustle of paper on paper, probably the last time too-and threw it on the table. “I brought you flowers.”
“Your assistant brought me flowers,” Robert corrected him.
“You shot my assistant,” Saito fired back.
You have a mistress, Robert wanted to say. But didn’t, because things like that weren’t for breakfasts in mild-mannered restaurants in New York where people wore more beige than any other color. “Well if that doesn’t say how much I hate flowers then I don’t know a much plainer and obvious way to say it,” he said instead.
That quieted Saito. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping on the armrests, with a thoughtful look on his face.
Fuck, Robert cursed. Silently. Because he didn’t curse in public.
By the sudden mischief in Saito’s eyes, and the contemplative twist of his lips, Robert knew that Saito wasn’t going to give up now.
***
There was a knock on his office door and Robert, without looking up from the papers on his desk, told whoever it was to come in.
(He should really stop doing that.)
“Are you busy?”
Robert, before he even glanced up, knew that it was Saito.
What he didn’t expect was the ridiculously large tin can in his hands as well as the ridiculously large bold lettering down the side of it.
H E R S H E--
Robert looked away with a grunt, but he did lean back in his chair, tossing his pen on his desk and waited.
“Flew this in from Italy.”
Robert smiled, humorlessly. “Hershey’s chocolates are made in Hershey, Pennsylvania.”
Saito held up a finger, to stop him right there. Robert braced for the rest of his argument. “These are Italian Hershey’s chocolates.”
“Really.”
Saito smiled, eagerly, now that Robert showed some morsel of interest in his gift for a change. He put down the tin on Robert’s desk and pried the top open. Tilting the can towards Robert, he proceeded to show that every other Hershey chocolate that was ever invented were all wrapped in gold foil, pristine and untouched and un-melted.
“Nice. Are all of them white chocolate?”
Saito nodded appreciatively. “Most of them.”
Robert leveled his gaze. “I hate white chocolate.”
Saito’s smile fell. He started rummaging through the tin, tossing chocolates this way and that, all perfectly shaped kisses. “There are dark ones in here too.”
“Great. Nougat?”
Saito smiled again, rejuvenated.
“I hate nougat.”
Saito’s smile fell a second time and it must be a record, Robert thought. That was barely even thirty seconds in between joy and dejection.
He almost felt guilty, if not for the way that Saito set his jaw and his eyes flashed dangerously.
Robert shook his head at himself as Saito left, with the silent promise of coming back with something bigger and better.
He tried to go back to his work but his office already smelled of white chocolate and dark chocolate and nougat and Saito and he liked to think that it was because of all of those, especially Saito, that he couldn’t comprehend past the standard office header on the financial report that was suddenly all white noise and no numbers at all.
***
“Oh my God, this is an Airbus.”
Saito stood proudly at the foot of the plane stairs, hands in his pockets, not even the slightest bit ruffled by the fact that he was standing next to a mammoth of an airplane.
“What the fuck is it doing on my private runway?”
“It’s yours,” Saito said, grinning. “I bought it for you.”
Robert waited. But Saito was still smiling and he didn’t seem to be disturbed by the lack of explanation behind this one.
(He never seemed disturbed by the lack of explanation for a lot of things. Saito always thought that convenience was a good enough excuse for any expenditure and Robert winced on his bank account’s behalf.)
“I already have a private jet.”
“But it’s not an Airbus.”
“Which is why it’s called a private jet,” Robert cared to point out.
Saito shrugged. “More space, more leg room. You can fit a whole building in it if you want to.”
Robert frowned. He had yet to find the logic in this. “I’m an only child. My father’s dead, my godfather’s estranged now that I’ve fired him, and I live alone in a penthouse in Manhattan.”
“For you and your friends.”
Robert smirked, but he wasn’t amused. “I don’t have any friends.”
Saito seemed surprised by that, but he didn’t comment on it. He recovered quickly enough, with a slight noise in his throat and a distracted glance at the Airbus. “For us, then.”
“You already have an airline.” Really, it was getting tiring, shooting down Saito’s gifts like they were an excess of quail at Dick Cheney’s ranch.
“None of those planes got you to come with me to Tokyo.”
“The Airbus is still a plane, and it still won’t get me to come with you to Tokyo.”
Saito didn’t seem disappointed by that at all.
***
Robert came to, cold and shivering under a very thick duvet. It took him a while to realize that the duvet didn’t smell like the usual fabric softener his maid used, or the fact that the sun didn’t brighten the room like it should.
Or the fact that the room didn’t look like his at all.
Robert blinked, and stared up at a ceiling that was far too warm and brown to look even the slightest bit familiar to him.
He sat up in mild panic.
“Good morning,” Saito greeted from where he was sat at an elaborate sitting area on the other side of the room.
It was a lavish set up, but the white walls and the dark wood was far too oriental.
“What did you do this time?” Robert asked him, warily. He pulled up the duvet to his shoulders. Fuck, it was cold.
“I finally persuaded you to come to Tokyo with me.”
Robert looked at him in alarm. “Did I agree to this?”
Saito smiled, sheepishly. He was in a bathrobe, Robert realized. A bathrobe that looked really soft, and fluffy, and white, and he wondered how Saito could carry a God damn bathrobe like he carried a God damn suit, all square shoulders, a dignity to his chin. All confidence and no hesitation.
Robert was in his territory, and fuck was Saito smug about it.
“Did I agree to this,” Robert asked again, forcefully, because Saito wasn’t answering his question and Robert absolutely hated it when his questions weren’t answered the way he wanted them to be.
He wanted Yes, Robert, you did agree to this. You were lucid at the time.
But Saito gave him, “No.”
Robert fumed. “This is kidnapping.”
“If this is kidnapping then what is my motive? I don’t need your ten million dollars.”
Robert sighed, and fell back against the pillows. “Did you at least tell my head of security?”
He was met with silence, but cloth rustled and air shifted, and soon enough, Saito was standing by the bed, looking down at him with eyes that were soft and comfortable. He wasn’t smug anymore.
“The easiest way to apologize is for you to just apologize,” Robert told him.
Saito sat down beside him, until his face was just there, and his hand was on top of the duvet, the added weight cocooning Robert further in warmth and softness and he was feeling too damn comfortable to be annoyed.
“You know,” Saito began, his fingers coming up to brush Robert’s hair from his forehead and Robert’s skin burned more at the tenderness of the gesture than the actual contact. “I never brought Sonia here.”
Robert wanted to bristle, but couldn’t, because Saito was leaning forward until their chests touched. The duvet was a mile of cloth and comfort between them, but Saito’s face was close enough to his that Robert knew he didn’t need the extra effort to lean in and give Saito what he wanted.
“So the mistress has a name?” was what Robert gave him, instead.
Saito sighed. A warm rush of air on Robert’s cheek.
“And an apartment in Brazil too, right?”
“Robert,” Saito snapped.
Robert stopped, but didn’t avert his eyes, not even when Saito bowed his head until his forehead rested on Robert’s chest. His hair smelled faintly of shampoo.
“She’s an educated woman,” he said after a while, words muffled slightly.
“I’m an educated man,” Robert countered. He wasn’t mad, not really, not when he had Saito to himself, draped languidly on top of him.
Robert brought up a hand before he could convince himself not to, his palm cupping the back of Saito’s head, fingers touching the fine hair.
“She’s married to a politician.”
Robert smirked, flicking Sato on the ear with a slight jerk of his thumb. “I own politicians.”
Saito smiled, looking up at him. “And you own me.”
Robert’s face fell as he shook his head. “Not all of the time,” but he still threaded his fingers through Saito’s hair.
“But more often than I see her.”
It almost made Robert laugh, how that made sense and how, technically, Robert should be glad about it, but it was a sobering thought, that there was a ‘she’ at all when there should only be him and Saito in the first place.
***
“Sonia’s pregnant.”
Saito’s eyes shot up. “What?”
Robert smiled at him as he took his usual seat in their usual restaurant for their usual breakfast.
“Sonia’s dead?” He tried again.
“Robert, please,” Saito pleaded-almost, because Saito never pleaded for anything in his life-but he did relax, slightly, even though he still kept his newspaper in front of him. And still pretended to read.
Robert didn’t know why he even bothered with the farce anymore. “That's unfortunate,” he said, but there was nothing even close to sympathy in his voice. “I was this close to forgiving you too.”
The waiter brought his coffee and Robert sipped at it, deliberately not looking at Saito even as the newspaper was folded back up and discarded on the vacant chair next to him. Saito waited for Robert to say something else and Robert was going to make him wait even longer.
***
“What will it take, then?” Saito finally asked later that evening, when they were both dressed down to their shirtsleeves, their suit jackets slung delicately over the high chairs at the kitchen counter.
Robert was unpacking the several Sushi Yasuda take-out cartons from the paper bag. He made a thoughtful noise as he rummaged around the bag for the chopsticks.
They were in Robert’s apartment, it was late in the evening, and Saito wasn’t on the first plane to Rio for a change. They spent most evenings together now, ever since they’d come back from Tokyo almost two months ago.
“You are torturing me, Robert,” Saito said around the chopsticks he held between his teeth. His hands deftly unfastened his cufflinks, then rolled his sleeves to halfway up his elbows.
“You’re only really doing it to yourself,” Robert pointed out, pushing the carton of fugu at Saito and taking the teppanyaki for himself. They didn’t bother with plates, because Robert’s maid wasn’t coming in the next day and he didn’t want to wash the dishes. “You’re a smart man. Figure it out.”
Saito made an impatient noise as he took the chopsticks from his mouth and proceeded to pull it apart with more force than necessary. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
Robert looked up at him, a scoop of rice halfway to his lips. “Really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Do you put in as much effort when Sonia-"
“Robert,” Saito sighed, focusing too intently on his food, his chopsticks poking at his fugu.
Robert shook his head, shoveling food and answers down his throat.
***
Robert opened his front door to a man.
A very good-looking man, with eyes waxing poetic and hair that was just-well, from how it looked in the warm light of the hallway-just plain waxed. Tall, broad-shouldered, with legs lean in a perfectly tailored dress pants.
He was smiling at him.
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Robert said, once he’d recovered from surprise. “But who are you?”
The man shifted, and that’s when he noticed Saito in the living room, with his usual newspaper spread out in front of him.
The man opened his mouth but Robert cut him off with a hand. “Excuse me for a while.”
He closed the door behind him and rushed down the hallway to the living room.
Saito didn’t look up, but he was smiling, and it didn’t look right at all how he smiled with his lips and not with his eyes.
“There’s a man in my hallway.”
“A very handsome man,” Saito corrected him.
“Yes, but he’s still in my hallway.”
Saito shrugged, and pointedly turned a page with a brief lick of his thumb. “George Huntingdon. He’s English, he’s rich, and he’s great in bed.”
Robert blinked, then deposited his suitcase on the coffee table. “That’s great to know.”
Saito nodded, agreeing, but didn’t look up from his damn newspaper.
Annoyed by that, Robert pulled the newspaper from Saito’s hands and dumped it next to his suitcase.
(He didn’t notice that he missed by a mile, and it landed in a careless heap on the floor.)
Saito drew in a breath, and leaned as far back as he could manage, hands in his pockets. He looked smug. No, Robert realized, he looked damn determined to look smug, but it was failing at the edges, softened by something like doubt.
“Well?” Robert prompted him.
“He’s a very discreet man.”
“A threesome is not an apology,” Robert cared to point out. “And I don’t even like threesomes.”
Saito grimaced, as if disgusted by the thought. And he probably was. Saito was an intimate man, Robert knew this. And he liked romance and flair and theatrics, but for all of that, he was as passionate as he was personal.
“Care to explain before I call security and throw the both of you out of my apartment?”
“He’s a mistress,” Saito blurted out.
And if Robert hadn’t been surprised enough. He shook his head, disbelieving. He would’ve laughed at the ridiculousness of that suggestion if not for the fact that Saito was not laughing. And he wasn’t joking either.
And that the silence was too thick in the air for any of it to be ridiculous at all.
“You’re keeping your mistress,” Robert bit out, “So now you’re giving me my own.”
Saito grimaced again. “He’s a-"
“I don’t care about him,” Robert dismissed.
Saito tried to say something but didn’t look like he had anything worthy to say so Robert just shook his head and turned away. “Get out.”
He went to his bedroom, not caring that Saito was already on his feet or that the strange man was still waiting for him in the hallway, not quite knowing what to do with himself.
“You too,” Robert told him, and closed the door with a slam.
***
There was a noise outside his bedroom door.
Robert met it with a Glock in his hand.
The noise yelped.
“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?” Robert demanded.
The noise fumbled until something fell and broke into a million pieces. It cursed and it stumbled back and back and back until it hit the wall and the chain on the door rattled under the weight.
Robert edged to the switch. He flicked on the lights.
There was a vase and an elaborate bouquet of flowers, both broken and in disarray, in the middle of the hallway and the noise was actually a man in a suit.
Robert sighed and lowered his gun. “Clean that up and bring it back to your boss.”
The man violently shook his head. “I have-"
“I don’t care.”
The man didn’t even want to argue any more than that, not with Robert’s finger hovering over the trigger. He rushed to gather the mess of broken glass and flowers in his arms and rushed to the door as quickly as he could manage.
“And tell him I don’t need any more of his damn flowers.”
***
He didn’t need any more of his damn chocolates, either.
An unopened box of Ferrero Rocher wound up in his trash bin the minute it arrived in his office.
(He never really liked chocolates in the first place.)
***
“Sir, Mr Saito-"
Robert brushed past him.
“-breakfast.”
Robert opened his front door, and waited until Saito’s assistant understood that Robert wasn’t going anywhere with him.
He closed the door with a resounding click and called his secretary to hold all calls from Saito.
To tell him that he was off ice-fishing.
In Antartica.
***
Saito kept calling him, because Robert gave him his personal number and Robert wasn’t going to cut that line for anyone, not even for Saito.
“I miss you,” Saito first told him when Robert finally picked up his call after the nth time on the nth day of no breakfasts, and no dinners, and absolutely no tolerance of any of Saito’s gimmicks.
“I’m sure you do,” Robert snorted. He was in a meeting and Robert gestured for them to continue even as he talked on the phone.
“I don’t think you know how much.”
“You’ve run my secretary to the ground. I think I know.”
“Then come to breakfast tomorrow.”
Robert shook his head, and Saito wouldn’t see it but the silence on Robert’s end should be telling enough. He ended the call with a click, and handed his phone to his secretary.
The meeting continued undisturbed, but Robert’s mind had already focused on something else entirely.
***
Someone was following him.
Several someones, in fact.
Robert first noticed in The Coffee Bean, where Robert was waiting for his coffee. Someone was looking at him; the back of his head burned at the weight of someone’s stare, but when he looked around, there was no one there.
Then at Saks, where Robert was shopping for a suit to the Met ball.
Then at the airport, just as Robert was boarding his plane back to Sydney.
He thought he was safe in Australia, but the eyes only seemed to have multiplied. He’d told his head of security about it but after a thorough check of his apartment, and an added security detail, they found nothing and no one out of the ordinary.
The eyes remained, and Robert was getting annoyed by it.
After three weeks in Sydney, he arrived in New York with a sigh of exhaustion. He was still being watched.
It wasn’t until he’d made it safely to his apartment and went out to his penthouse’s balcony that he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Just there, on the helipad at the top of the building nearest his, was a helicopter bearing Saito’s company insignia.
He fished out his mobile, bypassed the TEN MISSED CALLS flashing on the LED, and speed-dialed Saito.
“Tell your army to retreat,” Robert demanded without preamble.
Saito’s chuckle crackled through the phone, then came a distinct sound of sliding metal, then a sudden breath of rushing wind.
From Robert’s vantage point on his balcony, he could see a man disembark from the helicopter.
“Didn’t even bother to be subtle, did you?” Robert sighed, but he was smiling, and he could tell Saito was smiling too.
It was cold outside, despite it being in the middle of the summer. Seventy floors and jetlag and all of that with only Saito’s spies to keep him company; they were enough to send a shudder down his spine. He wrapped his arms around his middle, not caring if his suit jacket was wrinkled by the wind, or that his hand gripped his side too tightly.
“Desperate men and desperate measures.”
“Well, we’re talking on the phone with a million-foot drop between us.” Robert didn’t even want to look down. His hand tightened on the railing.
But Saito didn’t seem fazed by it. He was standing calmly by his helicopter, facing Robert, with his hand in his pocket, and his suit jacket flapping everywhere around his hips. “This is the first time you’ve talked to me in me weeks, Robert.”
Robert worked around his breath in his throat. “I just know what I deserve.”
Saito nodded, a miniscule shift of his head from so far away, and Robert felt a resounding pang in his chest when he realized that he missed Saito’s expressive face, and how every twist of his lips and crease of his brow spoke volumes of things he didn’t really want to say. “Come to breakfast tomorrow.”
There was a pause, and Robert waited.
“Please, Robert.”
“Only if it means I’m sleeping tonight without anyone watching me the whole time.”
Saito laughed, and Robert saw him shake his head. “I promise.”
“Good.”
“Good night, Robert.”
Robert licked his lips. “Good night.”
He ended the call but stood on the balcony for a bit longer, watching Saito watching him. Until he turned and left, and as he went into his room and settled in for the night, he heard the beat of helicopter blades hovering over his roof for a while and lulled him to sleep.
***
There wasn’t anyone to pick him up the next morning. Instead, he took a cab to the restaurant.
Saito was at his usual seat. Already there was a cup of coffee waiting for Robert, still hot and steaming. Saito didn’t have a newspaper held up to his face this time, and he sat with an unusual alertness that tightened the line of his shoulders, his hands folded on his crossed knees.
“Good morning,” Robert greeted him as he sat down.
Saito smiled at him, but didn’t speak for a while. Just stared, as if memorizing his face in great detail.
Robert almost bristled, but he met Saito’s eyes and fought the urge to smile back.
Saito unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. “It takes a grand gesture to get Robert Fischer to eat breakfast with me.” He didn’t take his eyes off Robert.
Robert shrugged, and sipped on his coffee.
“I really did miss you, you know.”
“I know.” And Robert did know. He knew from the numerous voice mail messages in his inbox, the numerous missed calls, the exasperation of his secretary from dealing with too many of Saito’s calls.
“And?”
Robert missed him too, but he damn him if he was going to admit it. “And I admire your-"
Saito raised his eyebrows, looking at him expectantly.
“-Perseverance,” Robert finished with a smile.
Saito smiled back, but it was a poor attempt at being casual.
Robert was a little more convincing than him. “Spent all this time in Brazil, I’m guessing.”
“No,” Saito replied, curtly, and its crispness surprised even Robert.
“No?”
Saito shifted, cleared his throat, appeared more apprehensive than Robert thought he had the capacity for something so discomfiting. “I wanted to be here when you came back.”
“Really.”
“Are you surprised?”
Robert chuckled humorlessly. “Pleasantly so.”
Then Saito smiled widely, his eyes crinkled and his shoulders eased. “I’m glad something I’ve said finally got the response that I wanted.”
“What about what I want?” Robert pressed on.
“I was planning on bribing your bodyguards into bringing you to Tokyo again.”
Oh, well that answered quite a lot of things that Robert had been wondering about. But it wasn’t what he was looking for.
“Then I thought about buying off your company in Australia.”
“Really.”
Saito shrugged. “I don’t like it when you leave.”
Robert smirked, shaking his head. “You always left for-"
But Saito raised his hand, and Robert fell quiet. “I’m not leaving anymore. So you shouldn’t either.”
Robert’s smirk eased, to something like surprise. He didn’t expect that, but God how he wanted it.
Saito smiled as he leaned forward, his hand came up to grasp Robert’s in his, his thumb in Robert’s palm, his grip firm and warm, all in plain sight. In a restaurant full of people in beige and brown and eyes that judged and mouths that gossiped.
Robert smiled back, and truly felt it this time. A wide smile that stretched his lips and brought a flush to his cheeks. He glanced away for a moment, to the waiter that immediately averted his eyes to his floor, then looked back at Saito, who was just there.
Against all instinct, Robert kissed him, fully, on the lips. And felt that he had every damn right to.