FIC: (Bandom) They keep moving the cheese - Gabe/William - 1/2
TITLE: They Keep Moving the Cheese
AUTHOR: Dee
PAIRING: Gabe/William
RATING: Adult (language, themes, sex)
SUMMARY: Gabriel Saporta used to be hot business property, but no one's sure what he is now. William Beckett's a bright young up-and-comer with a chance to fast-track his career plan. (Corporate!AU.)
NOTES: A zillion thanks, hugs and kisses to airgiodslv, who's encouraged this beyond the call of duty at every point. The title is a Spencer Johnson reference too delightful to avoid, and the italicised lyric quotes all come from the Something for Kate song "Pinstripe". This is a corporate-businessmen AU, but I know remarkably little about the operation of business, so let's all just cross our fingers and hum along, please? If it helps, think of this and this. *G*
DISCLAIMER: I do not know the personages depicted in this story, and I neither claim nor wish to imply that the events, actions and emotions herein are in any way real or actual. This is FICTION.
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have you set down your course or are you out of control, my dear?
or are you accidentally part of some involuntary movement here?
we thought we knew it so well we could do it
with our arms tied behind our backs and our eyes shut tight.
i thought i knew it so well i could stop, so i stopped, and i can't,
can't start again
William couldn't sleep for nerves, so he got up half an hour before his alarm was due to go off, which turned out to be just as well, because he changed his tie five times, his shirt twice and his socks once before he left the apartment.
"Weren't you wearing something else a moment ago?" Christine asked, all tousled blonde hair and bleary eyes and bare legs beneath William's old college sweatshirt and he didn't have time to get distracted this morning.
He fiddled with his half-Windsor, trying to make it sit perfectly. "How do I look?"
"Hot," she slurred, still half asleep, reaching out.
But William ducked out from under her hand, kissing her cheek on the way past. "Wish me luck."
"What for?" she called after him as the door snicked shut behind him.
"Do you know Gabriel Saporta?" Mr Wentz had said, at lunch the week before.
That had been the second time that day William had been struck dumb, the first being when Wentz had asked, "Want to join me for lunch?" after having just popped into William's office and offered compliments on last quarter's results. It had taken William a full twenty open-mouthed seconds to respond. William had his Plan, of course he did, but lunch with the company's brilliant young talent-scouting exec wasn't due for another six months.
His speechlessness had been decidedly temporary. He hadn't needed Siska and Mrotek making flabberghasted signals from the bullpen to know that the correct response to being offered a shortcut to your glorious future plans was, "Yes, that'd be great."
Lunch had been at the Washington Club, and when they arrived the third party was already lounging at the table, thumbing through his blackberry with his jacket unbuttoned and his tie half an inch loosened. The third party was Gabriel fucking Saporta.
Yes, William knew Saporta, but he'd figured it for a rhetorical question. Everyone in the city - hell, everyone in the business - knew him. What everyone was less sure about was what precisely had happened when his company had quietly disintegrated, or where he'd been for most of the winter. (The official story was "desert retreat"; watercooler gossip translated that as "rehab in Arizona".) He'd set up as a consultant, which everyone was assuming was a polite euphemism for feeling out the waters.
Gabriel Saporta had been hot business property, but after whatever had happened back at Midtown, no one was quite sure what he was now.
William had read endless rehashings of it on the insider blogs, and that phrase (hot business property) was stuck in his head as Mr Saporta put down his blackberry and turned his dark eyes lazily up to William.
Yes, William knew Saporta.
"He spoke at that young business professionals mixer a couple of years back," William said lightly, glancing at Wentz; when he looked back, Saporta's gaze was still on him, even as he stood up. "I don't know that it constituted actually meeting." Stepping forward, William offered a hand. "William Beckett."
Saporta shook his hand, just a firm handshake, a moment of eye-contact, no power games, and then William was taking his seat at the table as Mr Wentz greeted him with an expansive, "Gabe!"
"Looking good, Pete," Saporta declared, the handshake turning briefly into a hug before he stepped back again. "That a new suit?"
"Some of us have style," Wentz shot back, as they took their seats.
The grinning, cheerful barrage of their catching-up carried them through the appetisers with minimal opportunity for William to be involved, which was absolutely fine with him. He'd done his best to be sparing with the wine, despite it being the best drop he'd had since they'd celebrated Christine's first fulltime teaching appointment. He wasn't sure why he was here, let alone why he was here with Gabriel Saporta, but he wanted his wits about him when it came down to it.
Which it did after the entree plates were cleared, Wentz leaned forward and, with the sort of forthright approach that had netted him the youngest ever partnership in the firm, said, "Enough fucking about; Gabe, I'm here to make you an offer."
One of Saporta's eyebrows lifted, his mouth twitching, but he seemed to swallow his first impulse. After a moment, he said simply, "Go on, then."
"We want something new, something different, and I think you can get it for us." William didn't miss the singular pronoun, and he didn't think Saporta had either. Wentz was putting personal stock in this. It was a risk, but the other reason he was the youngest partner in company history was because he had yet to fuck up. "Three month developmental period for an open project, contracted and paid as a consultant, in partnership with one of our brightest young managers." He flicked his wrist in William's direction, and William barely heard him say, "After that, we'll see."
Fuck sparing; William downed a third of his wine in one mouthful. Over the rim of the glass he caught Saporta's eye, an amused glance so incredibly fleeting - Saporta's attention already back on Wentz - that William wondered if he'd imagined it.
"We'll see?" Saporta was repeating, amusement almost entirely covering his scathing tone.
Wentz just leant back in his chair, lifting one shoulder nonchalantly. "You have a better offer, feel free to turn me down." The longer Saporta stayed silent, the wider Wentz's smirk grew.
On the steps of the club afterwards, Saporta squinted consideringly at him (Wentz down on the street already, blackberry against his ear in one hand, lit cigarette in the other) and William was sure he was about to be asked his opinion on this venture. Truth was, he had no idea. He'd been thinking hard, trying to fit this into his Plan. This could be a sterling opportunity to raise his personal profile. It could also be an opportunity to get screwed with his pants on. It depended on what Saporta had in the bag. It depended on what William could wring out of this. Minimise his exposure, maximise his profit; it was a maxim for a reason.
When Saporta said, instead, "That mixer. We wouldn't have met somewhere else as well?" William was so surprised he actually got blindsided by a memory.
"No," he said, blinking it away. "No, don't think so."
William was halfway across the foyer to the elevators when he realised he didn't know what floor he was going to. His office - his team, working for the next three months without him - was on the twelfth floor, but even at five-to-five on Friday afternoon, HR hadn't been able to give him a straight answer about where Saporta was going to be based.
Ducking out of the stream of traffic, William circled back to the reception counter. A bright-eyed young thing looked up with a big smile, but before William could do any more than knock a knuckle against the counter and offer an apologetic smile of his own, a voice behind him hollered, "Beckett!"
Saporta himself - William actually recognised the voice before he even turned around and saw him coming in the door balancing a cardboard tray of three coffees. (His tie was a deep orange, shirt a pale blue; William was glad he'd not worn the green tie.)
"Morning again, Ross," Saporta said, pausing beside William at the reception counter.
"One of those for me?" the bright-eyed young thing asked.
"Get your own," Saporta told him.
"Bitch." The big smile hadn't shifted even a fraction of an inch.
Saporta laughed, and smacked the back of his free hand against William's arm. "Come on." He led the way back across the foyer, saying back over his shoulder, "They appreciate I need room to work my magic, or maybe they're just worried about the influence I'll have on all you earnest workers--" William looked up, but if there'd been a smirk accompanying that, he'd missed it. "--but anyway, they've given us the flexi space in sub-level one."
They were past the banks of elevators now, and Saporta balanced the tray of coffee on one palm as he reached for the door of the fire stairs. "Sub-level one?" William repeated.
Saporta grinned at him. "The basement," he clarified, with enough ghoulish glee to be an enthusiastic Bela Lugosi impersonation.
One flight of stairs down, there was the bank of elevators, like a ghostly, cramped echo of the foyer above, and the doors at one end leading to the parking levels, and at the other, another door that had been wedged open with a pile of paper. Saporta went striding right in, so William trailed after him. He hadn't even known this was down here, but he wasn't going to be admitting that any time soon. It was a large space, roughly a quarter of an entire floor, he estimated. High windows along the far wall let in a little grey sunlight to play over the scattering of abandoned furniture - three desks pushed against one wall, a big round table, two stacks of generic chairs, a leather desk chair with a tear in the seat and a grey suit jacket thrown over the back, and two whiteboards, one of which was having fire drill instructions cleaned off it by the owner of the suit jacket, a young man with slightly too long brown hair and his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow.
"Nathaniel Novarro," Saporta said, and the young man turned around - he had a nose ring, which made William blink. "My assistant. Yours too, while we're here, if you like. Nate, this is William Beckett."
"Hi," Novarro said.
He had a direct gaze, but William had been sized up by support staff before. He smiled, but his, "Pleased to meet you," was suitably distant.
"Coffee's up," Saporta declared, unnecessarily, as he slid the tray onto the round table. He pulled one cup out, passed it across to Novarro, and held another out towards William. "Sugar, no cream, right?"
That's how William had had his coffee at lunch last week. "Right."
And perhaps this was starting to make sense, Saporta's almost ridiculous level of magnanimity. Just because he was being nice didn't mean William intended to get in the habit of letting him take the lead.
So he picked up his coffee and looked around as Saporta was breaking into his own takeaway cup. Waited until he'd taken a mouthful before he said, "Right, well, I'll bring my stuff down and we'll get settled."
William was halfway out the door when Saporta called after him, "Want to borrow Nate?"
Waving a hand and a smile back into the room, William said, "No, no, you'll need him to get things in order down here."
He took the stairs back up to the lobby. It was actually much easier, and there was no sense in ruining a good exit just because the elevators were feeling touchy about going below the first floor.
"You don't work here anymore," Mrotek said, as William walked past his cubicle.
"Don't make us call security," Siska chimed in, as smoothly as though they'd practiced. Maybe they had. Despite the fact that they always delivered on time and in quality, William had never actually seen them doing work. Siska hadn't even turned around from his computer; the minesweeper clock was ticking.
"Ha ha fucking ha," William told them, not slowing down. "Just came for my boxes."
He was throwing the last few items into them (he'd packed most of the things up on Friday) when he saw the shadow from the corner of his eye. He didn't look up to where Mike was leaning in the doorway of his office, and Mike didn't say anything.
They'd pretty much said everything there was to be said last week, hashing it out over again and again - the benefits, the problems, the opportunities and liabilities - after work on the day William had had lunch at the Washington Club. Their table had been a sticky mire of empty beer bottles and husks of lime by the time Siska said, "Oh, yeah, he'd be fucking criminally stupid not to, but that doesn't mean I have to like it." Which seemed to settle things.
Mike had caught William's eye over the forest of bottles, but he hadn't actually said anything until it was just the two of them, sitting in the playground down the block from William's apartment. Mike, who sounded sober right up until the point he passed out, had fielded the phonecall from Christine, but even from where he was lying on the slide, William could hear her on the other end, saying, "What you mean is that he's too drunk to talk to me himself."
After he hung up, Mike said, "Gabriel Saporta."
Dark gaze, enveloping hands, easy chuckle. Gabriel Saporta. William took a deep breath, staring up at the wheeling stars, and said, "I can do this."
He looked up now, and said, "I can do this."
Mike looked at him for a long moment, measuring gaze and arms folded across his chest, then nodded and stepped back.
Siska came along to carry William's other box and, William assumed, to check out for himself the state of things in the basement. William wasn't complaining, because there was no one like Sisky for throwing other people off their carefully planned rhythm, and whatever Saporta's was, it was unarguably not in William's best interests to allow it free rein.
The elevator doors pinged open on sub-level one, and Saporta's liquid laughter invaded the space. William led the way out, back into the big space where the whiteboards (now clean) had been arrayed around a sort of conference area comprising the round table and half a dozen chairs. One of the desks had been dragged across to one side, set up with a chair and an elderly bookcase William hadn't even noticed before. He took this opportunity - Saporta and Novarro engaged in some sort of wrestle over a chair - to dump his stuff on that desk. Siska dumped his load a moment later, not even breaking stride to wander about curiously.
Saporta took it pretty well, offering introductions and taking the returning, "Adam Siska, part of Bill's team," with a grin and an unreadable glance over his shoulder at William. "Sorry we're stealing him from you," he shot back.
Siska's grin was more measured, curved like steel. "Well, we know where he is," was all he said.
"So," William said, after the elevator doors closed behind his departing employee, "shall we get this place sorted?"
It was Christine's turn to cook, but she'd had to work late again, so dinner was Chinese takeout. Not that William would have noticed if he'd stayed thirty seconds longer before leaving Saporta listing every contact he had in everything ever on the left-hand whiteboard. As it was, he ran into the delivery guy on the stairs.
"It was your new thing today, wasn't it?" Christine said as she shovelled Szechuan pork into two bowls. "Sorry, you know how I am when I'm just up. How did it go?"
"Good, I think," William said, throwing his briefcase onto the armchair and then moving it to the floor before Christine was halfway through saying his name. He shucked his suit jacket, draping it over the back of his chair as she brought out plates balanced on one arm, open bottle of wine in the other hand until he took it. The glasses were already on the table. "I'm not sure. It's all pretty unorthodox, but it could be an incredible opportunity if it works out. If I play it right."
He poured; she handed him chopsticks; they ate like clockwork. She asked, but he couldn't really explain what he was doing with Saporta. He asked, but the intricacies of fifth grade still made no sense.
"Lunch," William declared, as his second day in sub-level one neared midday. "Novarro, you'll excuse us."
Saporta's hand hit the first-floor door of the fire escape as William went to pull it open, the sound of his open palm against the surface echoing in the concreted space. William looked at his fingers splayed against the fading red paint - the long joints, the deceptively narrow palm - and then up the length of Saporta's coated arm, like it was magnetic, like he couldn't fucking resist, to his face. To his mouth, curling up at one corner.
"You know," Saporta said, "your whole posture changes when you give orders."
William looked up, to his eyes. They were of a height, which was rare enough, and William told himself that's why he felt so knotted up, so stiff next to Saporta's loose-limbed lean against the door. "I thought we'd have this conversation over paella," he said, "but if you want to have it here..."
"Not at all." Saporta stepped back, gave a little two-handed fluttery wave. "Carry on giving orders. I'll just watch."
But now it was William who laid his hand against the door, having taken it off the handle. "Fine," he said, "we'll have it here." He leaned weight against the door, shook his hair out of his eyes. "Just to make sure we understand each other from the outset. You're Gabe Saporta and you were cutting deals while I was cramming for finals, but that's not who you are now, and if you think I'll be content to prop you up and take whatever scraps you toss my way, you will be amazed by how thoroughly I can rip the guts out of your opportunity here before I walk away."
Saporta had gone... still. His face had the chill of stone, hands in his trouser pockets and shoulders set. "And you're Pete Wentz's golden protege," he said, quiet in the close space of the firestairs, "but that can change, and if you think I got where I was by sitting back and letting children feather their nests, you're too fucking stupid to be here."
William had, actually, expected nothing else, but being worthy of the threat was a compliment in and of itself. He took his hand off the door, smoothed his lapel. "We're clear, then."
Saporta bared his teeth, not quite a grin. "You mentioned paella?"
"Just a little place I know nearby," William said, and tugged the door open. "After you."
They went for lunch, and talked about the Yankees' chances of making the playoffs, and the viability of trading in communication versus industrial tech futures.
William put it on the company card, and Saporta let him.
When they got back, Saporta stopped in the firestairs, hand on the handle of the basement. William had been following his quick pace, made almost as loose-limbed by half a bottle of zinfandel, and skidded to a halt barely a step further up.
Too close by far; when Saporta spoke, William could almost smell the spice on his breath. Could certainly see the glitter in his eyes as he said, "When you swear you do the same thing, with the posture."
Off balance, William thought for half a moment, no longer, about curling his fingers around the lapels of Saporta's charcoal pinstripe suit, about pulling him closer as he teetered, about making him bend with William.
Saporta pulled the door open and stalked out, William catching it swinging shut with his forearm. In their office, Novarro had compiled their whiteboard lists into a database, had the phone pressed against his shoulder while he yelled abuse at the IT department. Half an hour later they had a printer of their own wedged into a corner and a hard copy of the database on each of their desks.
Saporta stopped it with the friendly, after that. With William, at least. He still hailed by name whichever bright-eyed young thing was manning building reception, conducted his phone conversations with effusive good humour and usually casual profanity.
William got his own coffee in the morning, and frankly, it tasted better.
They had a whiteboard each, in the no man's land in the centre of the office space, thick with ever-shifting lists of contacts, leads, possibilities. They started out in the morning neat and printed in Novarro's square, capable block capitals, but by the late afternoon they were mires of strike-outs, arrows, asterisks, shorthand and additions. They were looking for something - an angle, an opportunity, Pete Wentz's elusive something new and something different.
By Friday they had a rhythm, meeting each other halfway at five o'clock. Across the round conference table, they'd decipher and translate their own day's work from the arcane diagram the whiteboards had become, further refining the results as Novarro took the notes that would become the following day's hardcopy and starting premise.
Which made it sound a lot more systematic than it actually was. Options for development were relegated to the secondary list - mostly by Saporta's grand decree - only to be resurrected the following day upon receipt of conflicting information. A strong-running contender through Wednesday and Thursday was torn up and thrown out on Friday (literally, Saporta's toss at the trashcan ricocheting around the rim before finally dropping in). There was no single area of commercial activity they were concentrating on, new avenues continually opening even as others closed off.
"I'll know it when I see it," Saporta simply said, with aggravating equilibrium, fingers laced behind his head and sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
"I fucking hope so," William retorted.
Since Saporta was being autocratic, William left after the meeting closed, making it home by half-past six almost every night that week. Christine asked if she should change her after-school commitments, make a habit of seeing him when it was still daylight, but William didn't expect this state of affairs to continue.
It had better not.
Tuesday the following week Saporta spent mostly out of the office, and William left before he got back. Novarro gave him an appraising look - the kid didn't seem to ever be suspicious, just curious - when William said, "I have a thing; let's do the meeting in the morning, yeah?" But he didn't say anything.
In the morning, William got there earlier than usual, and brought the coffee, three cups. When Saporta walked in, talking over his shoulder to Novarro, William had his feet up on the central table as he leafed through yesterday's notes. To his credit, Saporta didn't even pause on his way to his own desk to drop his briefcase, shuck his coat. The look Novarro gave William, though, was at least twice as appraising as yesterday's had been.
"Sorry I had to leave early yesterday," William said, pushing the tray across the round table. "Coffee? And I thought we might revisit the secondary list."
Saporta didn't so much as crack a smile, but he did lift his coffee cup a little before he took the first mouthful, almost a salute, watching William with that dark and steady gaze.
They revisited the secondary list. William started working later.
The whiteboard lists grew leaner. As Friday afternoon's meeting pushed on towards seven, they crammed both lists together on the one whiteboard (William's) as Saporta's was turned into an idea map. Even with the vagary of the terms, the wobbly connection lines, the abundant question marks, William felt like he was actually looking at progress. Novarro had left at six, contract hours, so they left a note at the top of the board: don't erase me!
"It's in here, somewhere," Saporta declared, pushing the cap back on his marker, with the first grin William had seen all week not directed at someone else. "Don't know about you," he continued, tossing the marker spinning onto the table surface, "but I could really use a beer."
William, shrugging into his jacket, looked at his watch and opened his mouth. And then hesitated. "I'd really like to," he said, and meant it.
"But?" Saporta said, not sounding surprised as he yanked his own tie loose.
William stopped before he repeated himself; it hardly mattered what Saporta thought. "It's already seven-thirty; I should get home."
Saporta shoved the tie into the pocket of his jacket. "Ah," he said. "Wife?"
"Girlfriend," William corrected, tossing things into his briefcase.
When he glanced up, Saporta was leaning against the central table, fingers braced against it, hips canted. "Better get on then," he said, around a yawn he lifted one hand to cover. "If you're going to be sleeping on the couch because of me, I'd like to have actually done something."
That was what William would blame later, when he discovered on Sunday he'd forgotten to bring home documents for the couple he and Christine were having over for dinner that night.
"You've got to be kidding me," Christine said, in her bathrobe and still an hour from ready as William tied his shoelaces. She smelt inviting (and the kitchen smelt amazing) but didn't look it, arms folded and face forbidding. "You promised, Bill. No more weekends."
"I'm not going in," he insisted. "I'm just popping in. I'll pick up the papers, I'll come right back. Hey." He sidled as close as she'd let him in the doorway, pressed a kiss to her just-cleaned cheek. "I'll get that bottle of dessert wine we forgot."
"Tokaji," she said, slightly mollified. "Be back by six."
"Of course."
The building was always eerie on the weekend. The offices themselves could be peaceful enough, sparsely populated and relaxed, but in the year William had been working nearly every weekend, he'd always found the lobby echoing and somehow faintly menacing.
He swiped his card at the basement office door and shoved it open. For a moment, long enough to blurt, "What are you--?" he thought he'd interrupted a burglary in progress, or something just as dire. It took him that long to recognise the tall, dark figure at Saporta's desk (bare feet up, keyboard in lap, chair on two precarious legs) as Saporta himself. William wouldn't have thought jeans and a hoodie could make such a difference.
Saporta blinked at him, letting his chair settle back on all four legs. "Beckett," he said, sounding more bleary than surprised.
"How long have you been here?" William asked, closing the door behind him and hearing the electronic lock catch again.
"I don't..." Saporta started, tilting up an arm so the sleeve slid back, revealing a bare wrist. "No idea. It is still Sunday, right?" He smiled, still seeming a little dazed.
William looked away. "Yeah," he said vaguely. "About five or so." The idea map on the whiteboard had become... complicated. A lot more notes, connections, circlings, arrows. Post-it notes had been stuck on, a few sheets of paper taped to the edges to expand the space. And towards the centre was one of Saporta's scribbled drawings, the sort William had noticed him making when he was on the phone or thinking hard. William went around the table to get close enough to make it out - a stylised airplane, like a kid might draw, except there were sinuous shapes coming out of the windows that it took William a moment to recognise as snakes.
The rest of the board made more sense as William looked it over. In fact, as his gaze meandered through the additions, he started to get an idea of the shape of what was coming together, and it was--
He fumbled in the tray at the bottom of the board, picked up a pen without looking away from the scribblings on the board. "Here," he said, drawing a circle around synthetic dynamism in the top-right corner. "And this." Another circle; the pen he'd picked up was red, standing out against the blue-and-black writing.
When he stepped back, William's shoulder bumped against Saporta, where he'd come to stand close behind. William apologised, shuffled aside, but Saporta didn't even seem to notice, leaning forward to press a finger against the board in another spot, half wiping away the curve of a g. "This as well, I think, but I can't figure out how to reconcile it with the sustainability issue." He stepped back again, shoulder-to-shoulder with William. "And something else that's still missing."
"But it's here," William declared, waving the pen to encompass the board. "It's on here, somewhere. We'll find it."
Saporta grinned, pushing the fingers of one hand into his hair. "I was starting to think this was all just fucking crazy."
William shrugged, adding flames to the drawing before capping his pen and dropping it back onto the tray. "Fucking crazy just means we haven't figured out why or how it makes sense yet."
"Thanks, Confucius." Saporta smacked the back of his hand against William's shoulder, still chuckling as he turned back towards his desk. Leaning over the keyboard, he tapped at it a few times, then said over his shoulder, "Why are you here, anyway?"
William blinked, then said, "Shit, the papers," and strode over to his own desk. The documents were half-hidden under a conference notification on a corner of his desk, and he yanked them out, checking his watch - still plenty of time; great - as he headed back towards the door. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, at the door, but as he glanced back he noticed Saporta was zipping up his hoodie, his computer screen in the shut-down process. After a moment's hesitation, William said, "Do you need a lift somewhere?"
Saporta looked up, shoving keys and coins and other jingly things into his pockets. "Nah, I'm good. Meeting someone downtown. Thanks, though."
William nodded. "See you tomorrow," he said again, and left. It would have been more polite to wait, he knew that, but he didn't actually want to end up in the firestairs with Saporta again.
By Tuesday the idea map had been redrawn in Novarro's steady penmanship, six core concepts (the three decided ones, and three that seemed most likely to be related to the missing elements) arrayed around the board, with the stupid cartoon of snakes on the burning plane in the centre. William gave Novarro an appraising look of his own over that, but the kid was imperturbable. "I was thinking of maybe getting it on a t-shirt," he said. "Erase it and I'll reformat your harddrive."
Leaving work that night, William bumped into Wentz's pet associate in the lobby, Stump giving him a genial smile and a clap on the shoulder. "Beckett. Hear you're doing some fascinating extra-curricular work. Pete's been talking about how curious he is about how you're getting on."
"It's going great," William declared, beaming even as inside he started to shriek. He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. "You'll excuse me, I have to..."
He couldn't think of anything feasible, but Stump was still smiling, saying, "Of course, of course; I'll see you later." He waved as he headed out the revolving doors into the city twilight.
William gave a little wave in return, and then practically tore a seam getting his blackberry out of his pocket. Saporta answered on the fourth ring, as William was swimming against the tide of departing workers back towards the door to the firestairs. William didn't even let him finish saying his name before he gasped, "Tell me you haven't left the building."
There was both confusion and amusement in Saporta's voice as he said, "I haven't quite left the--whoa!"
William got the last part in stereo, as he went barrelling through the firedoor and just about fell over Saporta. He flung his right hand (not holding the blackberry) out to scrabble against the wall as Saporta's left hand (also not holding his blackberry) came flying up to brace against William's shoulder, though he was practically leaning against Saporta, teetering on the step above him. All the air had been pushed out of William's lungs; the breath he drew back in tasted like Saporta. Fuck. Too close.
"Good," he said, a little breathlessly, and just about bounced off the door as he stepped back.
Saporta's hand dropped away from him, but he hadn't stepped back down the stairs. In fact, he took the final step up, crowding William's space on the top landing with a smirk on his face. "What the hell?" he inquired.
"I just ran into Stump in the lobby," William said, and cut off the obviously incoming response of you just ran into me right here by simply continuing, "and he was talking about Wentz being curious about--"
Saporta's face flashed into a frown, and he interrupted, "Patrick Stump?"
William blinked. "You know him?"
"I know everyone." It was dismissed with a faint flap of his hand, the line between Saporta's brows deepening. "And Wentz being curious means?"
"This was our unofficial notification," William said. And perhaps he was wrong, because he'd never been in this situation before, but he'd heard about it, around the watercooler and over the photocopier, a dozen instances where it had happened to other people. The Wentz worked in mysterious ways, and Stump was his prophecy. "Wentz is coming to inspect our progress. We need at least an informal presentation."
"When?" Saporta asked, but he was already turning, leading the way back down the stairs as William followed close behind.
"I'd guess this week," William said. "Thursday, maybe Friday. Probably not tomorrow."
"Probably," Saporta repeated, shooting William a tight smile as he fished out his keycard and let them back into the basement office. "Right."
William dropped his briefcase back beside his desk, and thumbed his blackberry back awake. Christine answered with, "What's up?" just as across the room, William heard Saporta saying, "Nate? Get your ass back here and bring dinner." He found himself smiling as he said, "Sorry, we've sort of had an emergency." He hoped she couldn't hear it in his voice; knew she probably could; tried to stop. "I'm going to be stuck here for a while. I know it's my turn to cook, but..."
"What?" Christine said. ("You can flex off any day next week, I don't even fucking care," Saporta was saying.) "Shit, again? No, it's fine. I'll be fine. Should I wait up?"
The year he'd worked most weekends he'd been known to work until midnight. Christine had still been in school, then. She hadn't minded so much when he woke her up at one in the morning, sliding his hands up beneath her nightdress. "I don't know how late I'll be," he said. "Leave a light on if you go to bed."
"Right," she said. "Good luck."
As she hung up, Saporta said, "Beckett, Mexican or Thai?"
"Thai," William said. He put his blackberry down, and yanked his tie loose.
Wentz leaned back in his chair, pulled out from the round table, and tilted his head, a smirk playing around his mouth. "And how long did that take you to put together?"
"Fifteen minutes," Saporta lied, glib and grinning in front of the whiteboards.
Wentz laughed; from where he'd been sitting on the end of his desk, adding interjections when necessary, William lifted an eyebrow. Saporta lifted both back, and William found himself laughing as well.
"Not bad," Wentz said, standing up again. "Not bad," he repeated, giving William a nod as he rebuttoned his jacket. "It's not great, of course, but you've got time yet." His easy smile got that edge to it as he leaned forward to shake Saporta's hand. "Don't waste it."
"Absolutely not," Saporta said, with the sort of sincerity William instictively distrusted. "In fact, we're just going to have a serious thinktank; care to join us?"
"I bet you are," Wentz said, the smirk back again. "Some of us have work to do," was his parting shot as he headed out of the office space.
Saporta looked at William as the door closed behind Wentz. "What?" he said, hands and grin spreading.
William didn't bother trying not to roll his eyes. "Come on, then," he said, standing up.
They went two blocks over to the sports bar William's team had always frequented; the girl behind the bar greeted him with a cheerful smile and a mild scold for not having been in for a few weeks. That was all the excuse Saporta needed, of course, to castigate William as reprehensible. By the time William could drag him off to a table with a jug of beer, he and the girl (Stacey) were on flirtatious first-name basis. By the time they were on their second jug, Novarro had joined them and Saporta was tucking his twenty into the cleavage Stacey had laughingly provided for him to do so.
"Stop that," William demanded, as she walked away, still laughing as she fished it out again. "You can't do that."
"Can," Saporta said, folding up another twenty. "Loosen your tie, I'll do it to you too."
Saporta's own tie, of course, had long been dangling completely loose around his neck, the top two buttons on his shirt undone. Novarro hadn't been wearing a tie all day. All week, actually, if William thought about it. "My tie is loosened," he said.
"An inch does not count," Saporta declared.
"I don't know, depends what you do with it."
Saporta stared; William made himself not blush or look away or even start to wonder why on earth he'd said that; Novarro burst out laughing. It was only a second, really, until Saporta started laughing as well and William could lift his eyebrows, twist his mouth, roll his eyes and reach for the new jug.
With the third jug came a hand on his shoulder, familiar figures looming in his peripheral vision and Siska's voice booming, "What's all this, then?" By that time the place was starting to fill up, afterwork suits and the game on the big screen, but they managed to pilfer sufficient stools for everyone. Siska and Mrotek bracketed Novarro, who looked naively unalarmed by this event; Mike nudged William aside to slide in between him and Saporta.
"So," he said, getting settled, "you're Gabriel Saporta, huh?"
"Gabe!" Saporta declared, with an easy smile.
William cleared his throat and nudged Mike right back. "Beer?" he asked pointedly.
The first round of tequila appeared as though by magic shortly thereafter. William got drunker; the bar got rowdier; the game got more interesting. Mike left after not very long, patting William's shoulder and ignoring the eyeroll he got for it.
"Hey," Saporta said, leaning across the table in the middle of the bottom of the sixth. William had to lean in to hear him properly, elbows careful on the edge of the table. Saporta was brightly drunk, his hair mussed, his mouth quirked. William was watching it as he said, "I don't want to be not bad. I want to be great."
"Yeah," William said, barely a breath, and then he blinked hard. Rallying his thoughts wasn't unlike herding cats, but when he had them all mostly together, one had brought an idea. "I think I know the guy we need to call in," he said, leaning back a little.
"Yeah?" Saporta echoed, sitting up a little straighter, but William was already slipping off his stool, threading into the crowd as he tugged his blackberry out of his pocket, squinting at the screen as he thumbed through options. Saporta caught up to him in the back corridor, catching William's arm as he was raising the blackberry to his ear. "Wait, you sure you want to call now?"
William batted his hand away, pulling his phone out of range like they were playing keep-away. "You think I'll remember tomorrow?"
"I'll remind you," Saporta said, but he was grinning even as he reached half-heartedly.
William shoved him off with minimal effort. "It's already ringing," he said, planting one hand in the middle of Saporta's chest as he lifted the blackberry to his ear again.
On the other end of the line, it clicked through to voicemail, and William scowled at Saporta (who looked interested but hardly intimidated; but at least he was no longer struggling) as Travis's greeting played out. After the beep, he said, "Hey man, William here. Got a few ideas to bounce off you, maybe even a project we could use you on. Dying for the magic touch, you know you've been waiting years for me to say that. Give me a call."
He'd relaxed his bracing arm in the concentration of sounding entirely lucid (not that Travis would have cared); when William looked up, Saporta wasn't that far away at all. "Magic touch?" Saporta repeated, tone willing and eager to give the phrase whole new levels of meaning. "Who's the contact?"
"Mine," William said pointedly, tucking his phone back in his pocket.
"Come on, partner," Saporta wheedled, crowding William back.
"Saporta," William said, longsuffering, and realised as his shoulder hit the wall that he should have been reacting differently, should have been pushing him off, maybe making a joke--
"Gabe." A dark smile, far too close. "Didn't I say that already?"
But William wouldn't - couldn't even - let himself think like that, not like this, not like this.
So he didn't call him anything, just looked away, back towards the bar and its muted cheering and thumping. He said, "I wonder what time it is. I should really be getting home."
"Right." Saporta backed up a bit, hand off the wall. "The girlfriend."
William would be sleeping on the couch anyway; Christine said when he was drunk he radiated heat, got handsy in his sleep, was impossible to spend the night beside. "Yeah," he said. "The girlfriend."
*
[ continued... ]
AUTHOR: Dee
PAIRING: Gabe/William
RATING: Adult (language, themes, sex)
SUMMARY: Gabriel Saporta used to be hot business property, but no one's sure what he is now. William Beckett's a bright young up-and-comer with a chance to fast-track his career plan. (Corporate!AU.)
NOTES: A zillion thanks, hugs and kisses to airgiodslv, who's encouraged this beyond the call of duty at every point. The title is a Spencer Johnson reference too delightful to avoid, and the italicised lyric quotes all come from the Something for Kate song "Pinstripe". This is a corporate-businessmen AU, but I know remarkably little about the operation of business, so let's all just cross our fingers and hum along, please? If it helps, think of this and this. *G*
DISCLAIMER: I do not know the personages depicted in this story, and I neither claim nor wish to imply that the events, actions and emotions herein are in any way real or actual. This is FICTION.
=====
have you set down your course or are you out of control, my dear?
or are you accidentally part of some involuntary movement here?
we thought we knew it so well we could do it
with our arms tied behind our backs and our eyes shut tight.
i thought i knew it so well i could stop, so i stopped, and i can't,
can't start again
William couldn't sleep for nerves, so he got up half an hour before his alarm was due to go off, which turned out to be just as well, because he changed his tie five times, his shirt twice and his socks once before he left the apartment.
"Weren't you wearing something else a moment ago?" Christine asked, all tousled blonde hair and bleary eyes and bare legs beneath William's old college sweatshirt and he didn't have time to get distracted this morning.
He fiddled with his half-Windsor, trying to make it sit perfectly. "How do I look?"
"Hot," she slurred, still half asleep, reaching out.
But William ducked out from under her hand, kissing her cheek on the way past. "Wish me luck."
"What for?" she called after him as the door snicked shut behind him.
"Do you know Gabriel Saporta?" Mr Wentz had said, at lunch the week before.
That had been the second time that day William had been struck dumb, the first being when Wentz had asked, "Want to join me for lunch?" after having just popped into William's office and offered compliments on last quarter's results. It had taken William a full twenty open-mouthed seconds to respond. William had his Plan, of course he did, but lunch with the company's brilliant young talent-scouting exec wasn't due for another six months.
His speechlessness had been decidedly temporary. He hadn't needed Siska and Mrotek making flabberghasted signals from the bullpen to know that the correct response to being offered a shortcut to your glorious future plans was, "Yes, that'd be great."
Lunch had been at the Washington Club, and when they arrived the third party was already lounging at the table, thumbing through his blackberry with his jacket unbuttoned and his tie half an inch loosened. The third party was Gabriel fucking Saporta.
Yes, William knew Saporta, but he'd figured it for a rhetorical question. Everyone in the city - hell, everyone in the business - knew him. What everyone was less sure about was what precisely had happened when his company had quietly disintegrated, or where he'd been for most of the winter. (The official story was "desert retreat"; watercooler gossip translated that as "rehab in Arizona".) He'd set up as a consultant, which everyone was assuming was a polite euphemism for feeling out the waters.
Gabriel Saporta had been hot business property, but after whatever had happened back at Midtown, no one was quite sure what he was now.
William had read endless rehashings of it on the insider blogs, and that phrase (hot business property) was stuck in his head as Mr Saporta put down his blackberry and turned his dark eyes lazily up to William.
Yes, William knew Saporta.
"He spoke at that young business professionals mixer a couple of years back," William said lightly, glancing at Wentz; when he looked back, Saporta's gaze was still on him, even as he stood up. "I don't know that it constituted actually meeting." Stepping forward, William offered a hand. "William Beckett."
Saporta shook his hand, just a firm handshake, a moment of eye-contact, no power games, and then William was taking his seat at the table as Mr Wentz greeted him with an expansive, "Gabe!"
"Looking good, Pete," Saporta declared, the handshake turning briefly into a hug before he stepped back again. "That a new suit?"
"Some of us have style," Wentz shot back, as they took their seats.
The grinning, cheerful barrage of their catching-up carried them through the appetisers with minimal opportunity for William to be involved, which was absolutely fine with him. He'd done his best to be sparing with the wine, despite it being the best drop he'd had since they'd celebrated Christine's first fulltime teaching appointment. He wasn't sure why he was here, let alone why he was here with Gabriel Saporta, but he wanted his wits about him when it came down to it.
Which it did after the entree plates were cleared, Wentz leaned forward and, with the sort of forthright approach that had netted him the youngest ever partnership in the firm, said, "Enough fucking about; Gabe, I'm here to make you an offer."
One of Saporta's eyebrows lifted, his mouth twitching, but he seemed to swallow his first impulse. After a moment, he said simply, "Go on, then."
"We want something new, something different, and I think you can get it for us." William didn't miss the singular pronoun, and he didn't think Saporta had either. Wentz was putting personal stock in this. It was a risk, but the other reason he was the youngest partner in company history was because he had yet to fuck up. "Three month developmental period for an open project, contracted and paid as a consultant, in partnership with one of our brightest young managers." He flicked his wrist in William's direction, and William barely heard him say, "After that, we'll see."
Fuck sparing; William downed a third of his wine in one mouthful. Over the rim of the glass he caught Saporta's eye, an amused glance so incredibly fleeting - Saporta's attention already back on Wentz - that William wondered if he'd imagined it.
"We'll see?" Saporta was repeating, amusement almost entirely covering his scathing tone.
Wentz just leant back in his chair, lifting one shoulder nonchalantly. "You have a better offer, feel free to turn me down." The longer Saporta stayed silent, the wider Wentz's smirk grew.
On the steps of the club afterwards, Saporta squinted consideringly at him (Wentz down on the street already, blackberry against his ear in one hand, lit cigarette in the other) and William was sure he was about to be asked his opinion on this venture. Truth was, he had no idea. He'd been thinking hard, trying to fit this into his Plan. This could be a sterling opportunity to raise his personal profile. It could also be an opportunity to get screwed with his pants on. It depended on what Saporta had in the bag. It depended on what William could wring out of this. Minimise his exposure, maximise his profit; it was a maxim for a reason.
When Saporta said, instead, "That mixer. We wouldn't have met somewhere else as well?" William was so surprised he actually got blindsided by a memory.
"No," he said, blinking it away. "No, don't think so."
William was halfway across the foyer to the elevators when he realised he didn't know what floor he was going to. His office - his team, working for the next three months without him - was on the twelfth floor, but even at five-to-five on Friday afternoon, HR hadn't been able to give him a straight answer about where Saporta was going to be based.
Ducking out of the stream of traffic, William circled back to the reception counter. A bright-eyed young thing looked up with a big smile, but before William could do any more than knock a knuckle against the counter and offer an apologetic smile of his own, a voice behind him hollered, "Beckett!"
Saporta himself - William actually recognised the voice before he even turned around and saw him coming in the door balancing a cardboard tray of three coffees. (His tie was a deep orange, shirt a pale blue; William was glad he'd not worn the green tie.)
"Morning again, Ross," Saporta said, pausing beside William at the reception counter.
"One of those for me?" the bright-eyed young thing asked.
"Get your own," Saporta told him.
"Bitch." The big smile hadn't shifted even a fraction of an inch.
Saporta laughed, and smacked the back of his free hand against William's arm. "Come on." He led the way back across the foyer, saying back over his shoulder, "They appreciate I need room to work my magic, or maybe they're just worried about the influence I'll have on all you earnest workers--" William looked up, but if there'd been a smirk accompanying that, he'd missed it. "--but anyway, they've given us the flexi space in sub-level one."
They were past the banks of elevators now, and Saporta balanced the tray of coffee on one palm as he reached for the door of the fire stairs. "Sub-level one?" William repeated.
Saporta grinned at him. "The basement," he clarified, with enough ghoulish glee to be an enthusiastic Bela Lugosi impersonation.
One flight of stairs down, there was the bank of elevators, like a ghostly, cramped echo of the foyer above, and the doors at one end leading to the parking levels, and at the other, another door that had been wedged open with a pile of paper. Saporta went striding right in, so William trailed after him. He hadn't even known this was down here, but he wasn't going to be admitting that any time soon. It was a large space, roughly a quarter of an entire floor, he estimated. High windows along the far wall let in a little grey sunlight to play over the scattering of abandoned furniture - three desks pushed against one wall, a big round table, two stacks of generic chairs, a leather desk chair with a tear in the seat and a grey suit jacket thrown over the back, and two whiteboards, one of which was having fire drill instructions cleaned off it by the owner of the suit jacket, a young man with slightly too long brown hair and his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow.
"Nathaniel Novarro," Saporta said, and the young man turned around - he had a nose ring, which made William blink. "My assistant. Yours too, while we're here, if you like. Nate, this is William Beckett."
"Hi," Novarro said.
He had a direct gaze, but William had been sized up by support staff before. He smiled, but his, "Pleased to meet you," was suitably distant.
"Coffee's up," Saporta declared, unnecessarily, as he slid the tray onto the round table. He pulled one cup out, passed it across to Novarro, and held another out towards William. "Sugar, no cream, right?"
That's how William had had his coffee at lunch last week. "Right."
And perhaps this was starting to make sense, Saporta's almost ridiculous level of magnanimity. Just because he was being nice didn't mean William intended to get in the habit of letting him take the lead.
So he picked up his coffee and looked around as Saporta was breaking into his own takeaway cup. Waited until he'd taken a mouthful before he said, "Right, well, I'll bring my stuff down and we'll get settled."
William was halfway out the door when Saporta called after him, "Want to borrow Nate?"
Waving a hand and a smile back into the room, William said, "No, no, you'll need him to get things in order down here."
He took the stairs back up to the lobby. It was actually much easier, and there was no sense in ruining a good exit just because the elevators were feeling touchy about going below the first floor.
"You don't work here anymore," Mrotek said, as William walked past his cubicle.
"Don't make us call security," Siska chimed in, as smoothly as though they'd practiced. Maybe they had. Despite the fact that they always delivered on time and in quality, William had never actually seen them doing work. Siska hadn't even turned around from his computer; the minesweeper clock was ticking.
"Ha ha fucking ha," William told them, not slowing down. "Just came for my boxes."
He was throwing the last few items into them (he'd packed most of the things up on Friday) when he saw the shadow from the corner of his eye. He didn't look up to where Mike was leaning in the doorway of his office, and Mike didn't say anything.
They'd pretty much said everything there was to be said last week, hashing it out over again and again - the benefits, the problems, the opportunities and liabilities - after work on the day William had had lunch at the Washington Club. Their table had been a sticky mire of empty beer bottles and husks of lime by the time Siska said, "Oh, yeah, he'd be fucking criminally stupid not to, but that doesn't mean I have to like it." Which seemed to settle things.
Mike had caught William's eye over the forest of bottles, but he hadn't actually said anything until it was just the two of them, sitting in the playground down the block from William's apartment. Mike, who sounded sober right up until the point he passed out, had fielded the phonecall from Christine, but even from where he was lying on the slide, William could hear her on the other end, saying, "What you mean is that he's too drunk to talk to me himself."
After he hung up, Mike said, "Gabriel Saporta."
Dark gaze, enveloping hands, easy chuckle. Gabriel Saporta. William took a deep breath, staring up at the wheeling stars, and said, "I can do this."
He looked up now, and said, "I can do this."
Mike looked at him for a long moment, measuring gaze and arms folded across his chest, then nodded and stepped back.
Siska came along to carry William's other box and, William assumed, to check out for himself the state of things in the basement. William wasn't complaining, because there was no one like Sisky for throwing other people off their carefully planned rhythm, and whatever Saporta's was, it was unarguably not in William's best interests to allow it free rein.
The elevator doors pinged open on sub-level one, and Saporta's liquid laughter invaded the space. William led the way out, back into the big space where the whiteboards (now clean) had been arrayed around a sort of conference area comprising the round table and half a dozen chairs. One of the desks had been dragged across to one side, set up with a chair and an elderly bookcase William hadn't even noticed before. He took this opportunity - Saporta and Novarro engaged in some sort of wrestle over a chair - to dump his stuff on that desk. Siska dumped his load a moment later, not even breaking stride to wander about curiously.
Saporta took it pretty well, offering introductions and taking the returning, "Adam Siska, part of Bill's team," with a grin and an unreadable glance over his shoulder at William. "Sorry we're stealing him from you," he shot back.
Siska's grin was more measured, curved like steel. "Well, we know where he is," was all he said.
"So," William said, after the elevator doors closed behind his departing employee, "shall we get this place sorted?"
It was Christine's turn to cook, but she'd had to work late again, so dinner was Chinese takeout. Not that William would have noticed if he'd stayed thirty seconds longer before leaving Saporta listing every contact he had in everything ever on the left-hand whiteboard. As it was, he ran into the delivery guy on the stairs.
"It was your new thing today, wasn't it?" Christine said as she shovelled Szechuan pork into two bowls. "Sorry, you know how I am when I'm just up. How did it go?"
"Good, I think," William said, throwing his briefcase onto the armchair and then moving it to the floor before Christine was halfway through saying his name. He shucked his suit jacket, draping it over the back of his chair as she brought out plates balanced on one arm, open bottle of wine in the other hand until he took it. The glasses were already on the table. "I'm not sure. It's all pretty unorthodox, but it could be an incredible opportunity if it works out. If I play it right."
He poured; she handed him chopsticks; they ate like clockwork. She asked, but he couldn't really explain what he was doing with Saporta. He asked, but the intricacies of fifth grade still made no sense.
"Lunch," William declared, as his second day in sub-level one neared midday. "Novarro, you'll excuse us."
Saporta's hand hit the first-floor door of the fire escape as William went to pull it open, the sound of his open palm against the surface echoing in the concreted space. William looked at his fingers splayed against the fading red paint - the long joints, the deceptively narrow palm - and then up the length of Saporta's coated arm, like it was magnetic, like he couldn't fucking resist, to his face. To his mouth, curling up at one corner.
"You know," Saporta said, "your whole posture changes when you give orders."
William looked up, to his eyes. They were of a height, which was rare enough, and William told himself that's why he felt so knotted up, so stiff next to Saporta's loose-limbed lean against the door. "I thought we'd have this conversation over paella," he said, "but if you want to have it here..."
"Not at all." Saporta stepped back, gave a little two-handed fluttery wave. "Carry on giving orders. I'll just watch."
But now it was William who laid his hand against the door, having taken it off the handle. "Fine," he said, "we'll have it here." He leaned weight against the door, shook his hair out of his eyes. "Just to make sure we understand each other from the outset. You're Gabe Saporta and you were cutting deals while I was cramming for finals, but that's not who you are now, and if you think I'll be content to prop you up and take whatever scraps you toss my way, you will be amazed by how thoroughly I can rip the guts out of your opportunity here before I walk away."
Saporta had gone... still. His face had the chill of stone, hands in his trouser pockets and shoulders set. "And you're Pete Wentz's golden protege," he said, quiet in the close space of the firestairs, "but that can change, and if you think I got where I was by sitting back and letting children feather their nests, you're too fucking stupid to be here."
William had, actually, expected nothing else, but being worthy of the threat was a compliment in and of itself. He took his hand off the door, smoothed his lapel. "We're clear, then."
Saporta bared his teeth, not quite a grin. "You mentioned paella?"
"Just a little place I know nearby," William said, and tugged the door open. "After you."
They went for lunch, and talked about the Yankees' chances of making the playoffs, and the viability of trading in communication versus industrial tech futures.
William put it on the company card, and Saporta let him.
When they got back, Saporta stopped in the firestairs, hand on the handle of the basement. William had been following his quick pace, made almost as loose-limbed by half a bottle of zinfandel, and skidded to a halt barely a step further up.
Too close by far; when Saporta spoke, William could almost smell the spice on his breath. Could certainly see the glitter in his eyes as he said, "When you swear you do the same thing, with the posture."
Off balance, William thought for half a moment, no longer, about curling his fingers around the lapels of Saporta's charcoal pinstripe suit, about pulling him closer as he teetered, about making him bend with William.
Saporta pulled the door open and stalked out, William catching it swinging shut with his forearm. In their office, Novarro had compiled their whiteboard lists into a database, had the phone pressed against his shoulder while he yelled abuse at the IT department. Half an hour later they had a printer of their own wedged into a corner and a hard copy of the database on each of their desks.
Saporta stopped it with the friendly, after that. With William, at least. He still hailed by name whichever bright-eyed young thing was manning building reception, conducted his phone conversations with effusive good humour and usually casual profanity.
William got his own coffee in the morning, and frankly, it tasted better.
They had a whiteboard each, in the no man's land in the centre of the office space, thick with ever-shifting lists of contacts, leads, possibilities. They started out in the morning neat and printed in Novarro's square, capable block capitals, but by the late afternoon they were mires of strike-outs, arrows, asterisks, shorthand and additions. They were looking for something - an angle, an opportunity, Pete Wentz's elusive something new and something different.
By Friday they had a rhythm, meeting each other halfway at five o'clock. Across the round conference table, they'd decipher and translate their own day's work from the arcane diagram the whiteboards had become, further refining the results as Novarro took the notes that would become the following day's hardcopy and starting premise.
Which made it sound a lot more systematic than it actually was. Options for development were relegated to the secondary list - mostly by Saporta's grand decree - only to be resurrected the following day upon receipt of conflicting information. A strong-running contender through Wednesday and Thursday was torn up and thrown out on Friday (literally, Saporta's toss at the trashcan ricocheting around the rim before finally dropping in). There was no single area of commercial activity they were concentrating on, new avenues continually opening even as others closed off.
"I'll know it when I see it," Saporta simply said, with aggravating equilibrium, fingers laced behind his head and sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
"I fucking hope so," William retorted.
Since Saporta was being autocratic, William left after the meeting closed, making it home by half-past six almost every night that week. Christine asked if she should change her after-school commitments, make a habit of seeing him when it was still daylight, but William didn't expect this state of affairs to continue.
It had better not.
Tuesday the following week Saporta spent mostly out of the office, and William left before he got back. Novarro gave him an appraising look - the kid didn't seem to ever be suspicious, just curious - when William said, "I have a thing; let's do the meeting in the morning, yeah?" But he didn't say anything.
In the morning, William got there earlier than usual, and brought the coffee, three cups. When Saporta walked in, talking over his shoulder to Novarro, William had his feet up on the central table as he leafed through yesterday's notes. To his credit, Saporta didn't even pause on his way to his own desk to drop his briefcase, shuck his coat. The look Novarro gave William, though, was at least twice as appraising as yesterday's had been.
"Sorry I had to leave early yesterday," William said, pushing the tray across the round table. "Coffee? And I thought we might revisit the secondary list."
Saporta didn't so much as crack a smile, but he did lift his coffee cup a little before he took the first mouthful, almost a salute, watching William with that dark and steady gaze.
They revisited the secondary list. William started working later.
The whiteboard lists grew leaner. As Friday afternoon's meeting pushed on towards seven, they crammed both lists together on the one whiteboard (William's) as Saporta's was turned into an idea map. Even with the vagary of the terms, the wobbly connection lines, the abundant question marks, William felt like he was actually looking at progress. Novarro had left at six, contract hours, so they left a note at the top of the board: don't erase me!
"It's in here, somewhere," Saporta declared, pushing the cap back on his marker, with the first grin William had seen all week not directed at someone else. "Don't know about you," he continued, tossing the marker spinning onto the table surface, "but I could really use a beer."
William, shrugging into his jacket, looked at his watch and opened his mouth. And then hesitated. "I'd really like to," he said, and meant it.
"But?" Saporta said, not sounding surprised as he yanked his own tie loose.
William stopped before he repeated himself; it hardly mattered what Saporta thought. "It's already seven-thirty; I should get home."
Saporta shoved the tie into the pocket of his jacket. "Ah," he said. "Wife?"
"Girlfriend," William corrected, tossing things into his briefcase.
When he glanced up, Saporta was leaning against the central table, fingers braced against it, hips canted. "Better get on then," he said, around a yawn he lifted one hand to cover. "If you're going to be sleeping on the couch because of me, I'd like to have actually done something."
That was what William would blame later, when he discovered on Sunday he'd forgotten to bring home documents for the couple he and Christine were having over for dinner that night.
"You've got to be kidding me," Christine said, in her bathrobe and still an hour from ready as William tied his shoelaces. She smelt inviting (and the kitchen smelt amazing) but didn't look it, arms folded and face forbidding. "You promised, Bill. No more weekends."
"I'm not going in," he insisted. "I'm just popping in. I'll pick up the papers, I'll come right back. Hey." He sidled as close as she'd let him in the doorway, pressed a kiss to her just-cleaned cheek. "I'll get that bottle of dessert wine we forgot."
"Tokaji," she said, slightly mollified. "Be back by six."
"Of course."
The building was always eerie on the weekend. The offices themselves could be peaceful enough, sparsely populated and relaxed, but in the year William had been working nearly every weekend, he'd always found the lobby echoing and somehow faintly menacing.
He swiped his card at the basement office door and shoved it open. For a moment, long enough to blurt, "What are you--?" he thought he'd interrupted a burglary in progress, or something just as dire. It took him that long to recognise the tall, dark figure at Saporta's desk (bare feet up, keyboard in lap, chair on two precarious legs) as Saporta himself. William wouldn't have thought jeans and a hoodie could make such a difference.
Saporta blinked at him, letting his chair settle back on all four legs. "Beckett," he said, sounding more bleary than surprised.
"How long have you been here?" William asked, closing the door behind him and hearing the electronic lock catch again.
"I don't..." Saporta started, tilting up an arm so the sleeve slid back, revealing a bare wrist. "No idea. It is still Sunday, right?" He smiled, still seeming a little dazed.
William looked away. "Yeah," he said vaguely. "About five or so." The idea map on the whiteboard had become... complicated. A lot more notes, connections, circlings, arrows. Post-it notes had been stuck on, a few sheets of paper taped to the edges to expand the space. And towards the centre was one of Saporta's scribbled drawings, the sort William had noticed him making when he was on the phone or thinking hard. William went around the table to get close enough to make it out - a stylised airplane, like a kid might draw, except there were sinuous shapes coming out of the windows that it took William a moment to recognise as snakes.
The rest of the board made more sense as William looked it over. In fact, as his gaze meandered through the additions, he started to get an idea of the shape of what was coming together, and it was--
He fumbled in the tray at the bottom of the board, picked up a pen without looking away from the scribblings on the board. "Here," he said, drawing a circle around synthetic dynamism in the top-right corner. "And this." Another circle; the pen he'd picked up was red, standing out against the blue-and-black writing.
When he stepped back, William's shoulder bumped against Saporta, where he'd come to stand close behind. William apologised, shuffled aside, but Saporta didn't even seem to notice, leaning forward to press a finger against the board in another spot, half wiping away the curve of a g. "This as well, I think, but I can't figure out how to reconcile it with the sustainability issue." He stepped back again, shoulder-to-shoulder with William. "And something else that's still missing."
"But it's here," William declared, waving the pen to encompass the board. "It's on here, somewhere. We'll find it."
Saporta grinned, pushing the fingers of one hand into his hair. "I was starting to think this was all just fucking crazy."
William shrugged, adding flames to the drawing before capping his pen and dropping it back onto the tray. "Fucking crazy just means we haven't figured out why or how it makes sense yet."
"Thanks, Confucius." Saporta smacked the back of his hand against William's shoulder, still chuckling as he turned back towards his desk. Leaning over the keyboard, he tapped at it a few times, then said over his shoulder, "Why are you here, anyway?"
William blinked, then said, "Shit, the papers," and strode over to his own desk. The documents were half-hidden under a conference notification on a corner of his desk, and he yanked them out, checking his watch - still plenty of time; great - as he headed back towards the door. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, at the door, but as he glanced back he noticed Saporta was zipping up his hoodie, his computer screen in the shut-down process. After a moment's hesitation, William said, "Do you need a lift somewhere?"
Saporta looked up, shoving keys and coins and other jingly things into his pockets. "Nah, I'm good. Meeting someone downtown. Thanks, though."
William nodded. "See you tomorrow," he said again, and left. It would have been more polite to wait, he knew that, but he didn't actually want to end up in the firestairs with Saporta again.
By Tuesday the idea map had been redrawn in Novarro's steady penmanship, six core concepts (the three decided ones, and three that seemed most likely to be related to the missing elements) arrayed around the board, with the stupid cartoon of snakes on the burning plane in the centre. William gave Novarro an appraising look of his own over that, but the kid was imperturbable. "I was thinking of maybe getting it on a t-shirt," he said. "Erase it and I'll reformat your harddrive."
Leaving work that night, William bumped into Wentz's pet associate in the lobby, Stump giving him a genial smile and a clap on the shoulder. "Beckett. Hear you're doing some fascinating extra-curricular work. Pete's been talking about how curious he is about how you're getting on."
"It's going great," William declared, beaming even as inside he started to shriek. He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. "You'll excuse me, I have to..."
He couldn't think of anything feasible, but Stump was still smiling, saying, "Of course, of course; I'll see you later." He waved as he headed out the revolving doors into the city twilight.
William gave a little wave in return, and then practically tore a seam getting his blackberry out of his pocket. Saporta answered on the fourth ring, as William was swimming against the tide of departing workers back towards the door to the firestairs. William didn't even let him finish saying his name before he gasped, "Tell me you haven't left the building."
There was both confusion and amusement in Saporta's voice as he said, "I haven't quite left the--whoa!"
William got the last part in stereo, as he went barrelling through the firedoor and just about fell over Saporta. He flung his right hand (not holding the blackberry) out to scrabble against the wall as Saporta's left hand (also not holding his blackberry) came flying up to brace against William's shoulder, though he was practically leaning against Saporta, teetering on the step above him. All the air had been pushed out of William's lungs; the breath he drew back in tasted like Saporta. Fuck. Too close.
"Good," he said, a little breathlessly, and just about bounced off the door as he stepped back.
Saporta's hand dropped away from him, but he hadn't stepped back down the stairs. In fact, he took the final step up, crowding William's space on the top landing with a smirk on his face. "What the hell?" he inquired.
"I just ran into Stump in the lobby," William said, and cut off the obviously incoming response of you just ran into me right here by simply continuing, "and he was talking about Wentz being curious about--"
Saporta's face flashed into a frown, and he interrupted, "Patrick Stump?"
William blinked. "You know him?"
"I know everyone." It was dismissed with a faint flap of his hand, the line between Saporta's brows deepening. "And Wentz being curious means?"
"This was our unofficial notification," William said. And perhaps he was wrong, because he'd never been in this situation before, but he'd heard about it, around the watercooler and over the photocopier, a dozen instances where it had happened to other people. The Wentz worked in mysterious ways, and Stump was his prophecy. "Wentz is coming to inspect our progress. We need at least an informal presentation."
"When?" Saporta asked, but he was already turning, leading the way back down the stairs as William followed close behind.
"I'd guess this week," William said. "Thursday, maybe Friday. Probably not tomorrow."
"Probably," Saporta repeated, shooting William a tight smile as he fished out his keycard and let them back into the basement office. "Right."
William dropped his briefcase back beside his desk, and thumbed his blackberry back awake. Christine answered with, "What's up?" just as across the room, William heard Saporta saying, "Nate? Get your ass back here and bring dinner." He found himself smiling as he said, "Sorry, we've sort of had an emergency." He hoped she couldn't hear it in his voice; knew she probably could; tried to stop. "I'm going to be stuck here for a while. I know it's my turn to cook, but..."
"What?" Christine said. ("You can flex off any day next week, I don't even fucking care," Saporta was saying.) "Shit, again? No, it's fine. I'll be fine. Should I wait up?"
The year he'd worked most weekends he'd been known to work until midnight. Christine had still been in school, then. She hadn't minded so much when he woke her up at one in the morning, sliding his hands up beneath her nightdress. "I don't know how late I'll be," he said. "Leave a light on if you go to bed."
"Right," she said. "Good luck."
As she hung up, Saporta said, "Beckett, Mexican or Thai?"
"Thai," William said. He put his blackberry down, and yanked his tie loose.
Wentz leaned back in his chair, pulled out from the round table, and tilted his head, a smirk playing around his mouth. "And how long did that take you to put together?"
"Fifteen minutes," Saporta lied, glib and grinning in front of the whiteboards.
Wentz laughed; from where he'd been sitting on the end of his desk, adding interjections when necessary, William lifted an eyebrow. Saporta lifted both back, and William found himself laughing as well.
"Not bad," Wentz said, standing up again. "Not bad," he repeated, giving William a nod as he rebuttoned his jacket. "It's not great, of course, but you've got time yet." His easy smile got that edge to it as he leaned forward to shake Saporta's hand. "Don't waste it."
"Absolutely not," Saporta said, with the sort of sincerity William instictively distrusted. "In fact, we're just going to have a serious thinktank; care to join us?"
"I bet you are," Wentz said, the smirk back again. "Some of us have work to do," was his parting shot as he headed out of the office space.
Saporta looked at William as the door closed behind Wentz. "What?" he said, hands and grin spreading.
William didn't bother trying not to roll his eyes. "Come on, then," he said, standing up.
They went two blocks over to the sports bar William's team had always frequented; the girl behind the bar greeted him with a cheerful smile and a mild scold for not having been in for a few weeks. That was all the excuse Saporta needed, of course, to castigate William as reprehensible. By the time William could drag him off to a table with a jug of beer, he and the girl (Stacey) were on flirtatious first-name basis. By the time they were on their second jug, Novarro had joined them and Saporta was tucking his twenty into the cleavage Stacey had laughingly provided for him to do so.
"Stop that," William demanded, as she walked away, still laughing as she fished it out again. "You can't do that."
"Can," Saporta said, folding up another twenty. "Loosen your tie, I'll do it to you too."
Saporta's own tie, of course, had long been dangling completely loose around his neck, the top two buttons on his shirt undone. Novarro hadn't been wearing a tie all day. All week, actually, if William thought about it. "My tie is loosened," he said.
"An inch does not count," Saporta declared.
"I don't know, depends what you do with it."
Saporta stared; William made himself not blush or look away or even start to wonder why on earth he'd said that; Novarro burst out laughing. It was only a second, really, until Saporta started laughing as well and William could lift his eyebrows, twist his mouth, roll his eyes and reach for the new jug.
With the third jug came a hand on his shoulder, familiar figures looming in his peripheral vision and Siska's voice booming, "What's all this, then?" By that time the place was starting to fill up, afterwork suits and the game on the big screen, but they managed to pilfer sufficient stools for everyone. Siska and Mrotek bracketed Novarro, who looked naively unalarmed by this event; Mike nudged William aside to slide in between him and Saporta.
"So," he said, getting settled, "you're Gabriel Saporta, huh?"
"Gabe!" Saporta declared, with an easy smile.
William cleared his throat and nudged Mike right back. "Beer?" he asked pointedly.
The first round of tequila appeared as though by magic shortly thereafter. William got drunker; the bar got rowdier; the game got more interesting. Mike left after not very long, patting William's shoulder and ignoring the eyeroll he got for it.
"Hey," Saporta said, leaning across the table in the middle of the bottom of the sixth. William had to lean in to hear him properly, elbows careful on the edge of the table. Saporta was brightly drunk, his hair mussed, his mouth quirked. William was watching it as he said, "I don't want to be not bad. I want to be great."
"Yeah," William said, barely a breath, and then he blinked hard. Rallying his thoughts wasn't unlike herding cats, but when he had them all mostly together, one had brought an idea. "I think I know the guy we need to call in," he said, leaning back a little.
"Yeah?" Saporta echoed, sitting up a little straighter, but William was already slipping off his stool, threading into the crowd as he tugged his blackberry out of his pocket, squinting at the screen as he thumbed through options. Saporta caught up to him in the back corridor, catching William's arm as he was raising the blackberry to his ear. "Wait, you sure you want to call now?"
William batted his hand away, pulling his phone out of range like they were playing keep-away. "You think I'll remember tomorrow?"
"I'll remind you," Saporta said, but he was grinning even as he reached half-heartedly.
William shoved him off with minimal effort. "It's already ringing," he said, planting one hand in the middle of Saporta's chest as he lifted the blackberry to his ear again.
On the other end of the line, it clicked through to voicemail, and William scowled at Saporta (who looked interested but hardly intimidated; but at least he was no longer struggling) as Travis's greeting played out. After the beep, he said, "Hey man, William here. Got a few ideas to bounce off you, maybe even a project we could use you on. Dying for the magic touch, you know you've been waiting years for me to say that. Give me a call."
He'd relaxed his bracing arm in the concentration of sounding entirely lucid (not that Travis would have cared); when William looked up, Saporta wasn't that far away at all. "Magic touch?" Saporta repeated, tone willing and eager to give the phrase whole new levels of meaning. "Who's the contact?"
"Mine," William said pointedly, tucking his phone back in his pocket.
"Come on, partner," Saporta wheedled, crowding William back.
"Saporta," William said, longsuffering, and realised as his shoulder hit the wall that he should have been reacting differently, should have been pushing him off, maybe making a joke--
"Gabe." A dark smile, far too close. "Didn't I say that already?"
But William wouldn't - couldn't even - let himself think like that, not like this, not like this.
So he didn't call him anything, just looked away, back towards the bar and its muted cheering and thumping. He said, "I wonder what time it is. I should really be getting home."
"Right." Saporta backed up a bit, hand off the wall. "The girlfriend."
William would be sleeping on the couch anyway; Christine said when he was drunk he radiated heat, got handsy in his sleep, was impossible to spend the night beside. "Yeah," he said. "The girlfriend."
*
[ continued... ]