(fic) Ouroboros (Saito/Fischer)
Ouroboros | radishface
Inception → Saito/Fischer
It was a long time ago and yet all at once when Saito fell in love with Fischer. 3000 words.
A/N, inceptionkink prompt for Saito/Fischer.
before
When Eames returns, Saito can finally let go.
now
Saito is light, particles and waves. He penetrates an indiscernible blankness, cuts through the white noise, illuminates a space, if it is not space itself.
He is everywhere and every little bit, but spread so thin, feeling so fragile. He is running at the speed of light, vibrating in a thin sheet of three dimensions, the thrumming of his movement rippling across space, manifesting as white noise, a dull, steady hum. Everything about him is colliding yet there is nothing to report for it, no explosions, crashes, accidents.
Just him, existing, running, colliding, forever.
meanwhile
Saito has eyes to see, and a solid body to feel, but this is merely a detail. He is standing in a white plaster room with a white plaster ceiling (or perhaps a foggy sky) some many meters above his head. A bright, sterile light emanates from nowhere, illuminating everything so that there are no shadows. A white noise fills his ears, clean and abrasive as bleach.
A white wall stands in front of him shows one million white doors, all constructed exactly the same way. His body is superfluous because he already knows what awaits him. A million doors, the destinations behind them changing every second. Each door has a one in a million chance of being the right door. Behind each door is a one in a million chance of being the right destination.
Saito walks forward and opens the door in front of him. Another room of white plaster, another million doors. He crosses the distance between the door behind him and opens another door, two doors down. Another room of alabaster, another million doors. He continues to do this, losing patience, he breaks out into a run, barging through doors without looking, without knowing what is at the end, if there is an end. His breath comes quickly, his mortal body grows tired, but he somehow has energy, or stamina, or life. He runs and runs and hopes that one door will lead him outside (what is outside?). His goal is singular (or one million?).
He barges through one room too quickly, chances a look back as the door slams behind him. Saito catches a glimpse of black hair and blue eyes. He twists around, mid-step, to force the door back open, but it won't budge. He bangs on the door, opening his mouth to say something, but he's forgotten already what it is he wants to say. He tries to make a sound, as if this will help him remember--he only needs two sounds. Saito realizes that he cannot speak, his voice has fallen dead in his throat.
So he turns again and steps forward, opens the fourth door to the right. Many rooms and doors later, he is running again.
during this
Saito is outside.
He is standing in a field of black grass, outside, the sky overcast. The ground is wet and soggy, and he thinks that he is in a marsh, the ground dirtied with peat and bog water, rendering it that black, murky color. The marsh is infinitely large, and walking around will always lead him back to the same place. A faint fog obscures his vision, but it only seems to be in front of his eyes. He blinks (with his eyelids?) and walks a few steps forward.
He sees a hole of infinite depth, that which lies before him. Saito stands on the edge, his toes curling and uncurling around the edges. He tries to wiggle the dirt from the ground, send the earth to a plummeting faith. The ground refuses to budge; he is unable to affect his surroundings. Saito has two choices.
He steps forward and falls. And falls,
and falls, and falls,
and
and in the present
He is sitting on the steps, enclosed in an inky darkness that is not absolute enough to call itself black, in a space between inside and outside the investigation headquarters. This space, which has only served a transitioning function from the top floor to the roof, has now found another purpose. A broken fluorescent light flickers sporadically, emitting a dull, thrumming buzz of electric noise, bequeathing shadows as often as it steals them.
Fischer has Saito's feet in his hands, thumbs and knuckles kneading carefully up the length of his foot and back down again, his hands incongruously warm despite his pallor, despite the rain and the biting cold outside. He watches Fischer with interest, and wants to say something.
But doesn't, and the silence between them runs silky and long, stretching into eternity. Sitting there, his heart pounding and his hands clenched at the edge of the millionth stair, Saito wonders what death is, if Fischer has really lived life to the fullest. Saito wonders if his role in Fischer's life has been completely fulfilled, and if fulfillment is a right or merely a detail in the course of human life.
Eventually Fischer looks up from his ministrations. He holds Saito's gaze, eyes growing a brighter and brighter blue. Saito is revealed piece by piece by them, rendered immeasurably flat in two dimensions and stripped naked of his pretenses. He is left with only himself, every iota of him thrumming with an unbearable lightness. Time does not matter as they stare at each other; they could sit here forever, two opposites at peace, the equation perfectly balanced. His heartbeat, hollow in his chest, steadily counters the eerie song of stairwell echoes; it is the only measure of tracking the time that is passing.
Fischer parts his lips, as if to say something, Saito, and Saito's breath catches in the back of his throat. He feels something blossom in his chest, warm and golden like candlelight, just as subtle: the right choice. Saito has two choices.
But in truth, that choice has already been made.
before
Fischer died first.
He watched Fischer collapse into a heap and his heart shuddered toward death in that moment. Saito wanted to curl up and die too. But he had to protect Fischer's body before he could protect Fischer's mind, so he would stay awake, alive.
One, two, breaths. They became fifty, sixty, two hundred, until Eames came back.
before before
Saito took the elevator up to the top floor. The building's rooftop restaurant was near-empty at three in the afternoon, with only a few lonesome lunchtime stragglers still clinging onto the edges of their bone china plates, talking in low voices to each other. Sunlight filtered through the bay windows in cloudy-white streaks, bleaching everything pale. Saito headed for the balcony and lit a cigarette, puffing slowly as he surveyed the other rooftops from this one. He counted forty-two others, and the ships floating in the harbor, just beyond the buildings. Up here, it was easier to be detached. To assume the persona of the rooftop and stand here overlooking the city and see what was at stake.
There was a man named Dominic Cobb, best in the business. There was his project director, Arthur Callahan, and their architect, Abraham Nash. Saito knew what he needed to do. He turned his gaze on the bright gleam of some glass building beyond the others and mind far, far away, and considered the idea left and right and from all angles, sucking away at the cigarette as he did so.
When he finished, he does the unconsciable and flicked his cigarette over the railing, watching it sail, a smile threatening to quirk at his lips before he heard a shuffle behind him: the balcony panel sliding open.
"My apologies." It was Fischer, although it wasn't quite clear what he was apologizing for. "Do you mind if I have a smoke?"
Saito thought about the cigarette, floating lazily down to the street thirty-three stories below, past the boardroom on the twentieth and the negotiations taking place inside, where he and Fischer were supposed to be. He wondered if Fischer saw him flick it away and watch it fall, and what that might have said about his character.
"Not at all," Saito replied. "Actually, I was just about to leave."
Fischer fixed him with those blue eyes and Saito didn't know if he felt hot or cold under them, but passed by without another word.
"See you back down there," Fischer said, as Saito brushed by. It caught him off-guard. It took him a moment to gather himself, but he nodded in acknowledgement.
Saito took the stairs, savoring the journey. He imagined Fischer's eyes boring into him brighter, brighter with each step down.
before before before
The door opens just as Saito is heading out the restroom, and he almost runs into Fischer face-first.
"Excuse me," Fischer says, but doesn't move. Waits for Saito to move. After a beat, his gaze flicks up to meet Saito's.
They are close, too close for this to be correct or professional or appropriate. There is more at stake here than what Saito, but at this moment, Saito cannot make himself feel it so. A perverse adolescent determination compels him forward to hold Fischer's gaze. Blue irises cave into the endless black of his pupils, blown wide with challenge.
The younger man sighs, eyes closing, the most minute collapse. In that moment Saito is falling with him too, arms reaching up and ready to catch him and bring them to a tumble down and down.
But Fischer leans back and the moment is gone. "Saito-san," Fischer breathes, the honorific slipping awkwardly, an afterthought, and steps aside to let Saito go through the door first.
before before before before
The meeting was held in a conference room at Fischer Morrow's Asia-Pacific headquarters, the penultimate floor of a glossy glass and steel skyscraper in the heart of Hong Kong, overlooking the rest of the city. Plasma TV screens lined the walls; a long table furnished with bottles of Evian also held big bowls of cashews, pistachios, and dried seaweed.
Chairing the meeting was Peter Browning, planted firmly in his chair with an air of patriarchal forgiveness and a viciousness in his eyes that betrayed his otherwise restrained joviality.
Next to him was Nick Gray, Fischer Morrow's vice president of finance, eager-eyed and tense in the shoulders. They were flanked by select members of the Inpex board--the meek, sickly-looking Aizawa Tachibana, a senior VP at Mizuho Financial Group, and Francis Chen, Goldman Sach's Asia-Pacific Director of M&A, exuding a bright confidence which may or may not have been feigned.
Off to Browning's side sat Robert Fischer, legs crossed and leaning away from the boardroom table, spinning a pen in his fingers. Fischer was all lean and sleek lines, thick black hair swept up and out of his face. His eyes wandered over the table before his gaze crossed the table. His eyes paused briefly on Saito, questioning and considering for the briefest moment, before he returned his attention to the document in front of him.
Saito was the only one standing.
"Gentlmen," Fischer intoned solemnly, like a father chastising his son for playing baseball inside the house. "I hate to talk business on such a beautiful day--but the chairman of Fischer-Morrow is notorious for his impatience. We want to know what you thought of the merger proposal, and how we might be able to move forward."
Saito had landed in Hong Kong at the break of dawn, just as the sun was coming over the horizon. The water gleamed in shades of red and yellow, warm morning tones taking on a lusty appearance in the sheen of oil and debris that coated the harbor's waters. A fishing ship puttered in a few docks away, and even from the view of his plane, Saito could see that the catch was meager. Hong Kong proper loomed a distance away, skyscrapers shrouded in a golden thicket of smog.
A shuttle waited outside for him as he disembarked. Ito loaded his luggage into the trunk as Saito made small talk with the driver, ever courteous.
In relative silence the three of them rode, the hum of the shuttle's electric engine peppered with murmuring crescendos and decrescendos from Ito and the driver's conversation, the shuffling of documents, the continuous typing as Ito began to organize everything for Saito's dealbook.
They arrived in the city just as traffic was beginning to still, pulling into the drop-off of the International Finance Center building. A lone security guard watched them walk to the elevators and ducked his head down as the doors shut, writing something down.
Saito let himself indulge that thought for a moment. He fingered the lining on the inside of the coat pocket and let himself believe for a moment that he could have been anybody, anybody riding an elevator with anybody else. The thought flooded through him, wilting and sensual, traces of nostalgia coloring his vision sepia.
The elevator stopped and Ito stepped out first, holding the doors open and waiting for Saito, keycard coming out of his pocket, always one step ahead. Saito blinked once, twice, slowly, counting the seconds he had left in his thoughts, a mere pedestrian on an elevator heading upwards.
"Saito-san?" Ito gestured, though gesturing wasn't necessary. Saito found himself irritated and walked out of the elevator, head held high. He thought of what he would say, how he would move his hands, how he would emote, and how he would meet Robert Fischer. Down the hallway he and Ito walked, inhabitants of a short stretch of world filled with taupe carpet and beige doors, and Saito ambling through it all, watchful and watchless, his mind years beyond the future, past space and time and perspective. Then, forcibly, he thought of nothing at all, casting every thought in his head a white, nothing-color.
Saito had tried to keep that absence of thought a current in his head when he entered the boardroom.
Instead, his body crowded and expanded upon itself, reemerging in the physical world as a defiant authority even as he stood rigidly, a bodyguard of his own self, a persuader who hadn't yet persuaded. He wilted, emasculated, as emotions and hot blood flowered through him--contained and controlled as that sensation reduced itself to a point, his consciousness asserting and denying himself, alternatingly and obsessively. It was paranoia, it was anticipation.
Fischer had to watch him throughout the entire meeting, of course. It was standard procedure. But it still left Saito in tatters, and he remembers,
a long time ago and yet, all at once
Saito is twenty-seven and just out of business school, not sure if he wants to stay in Boston or move back to Tokyo. A friend has invited him to the Fischer-Morrow's annual company party on one of the many Fischer yachts as a favor to a friend who is need of a date for the event. Saito puts on his best cotton shirt and linen slacks and is charming to the lady who is to be his other half for the afternoon. She is charming too, a sophisticated girl from uptown New York and a year younger than him at HBS, and her father is a senior executive at Fischer-Morrow. They sip merlot and talk about everything except anything related to the energy industry.
Eventually they both begin to tire, so they part ways for a while she catches up with an old colleague from her university days. Saito opts to wander to the front of the ship, taking his time to navigate through the crowd until it becomes thinner and thinner, wine glass empty and emptier in his hand and nowhere to put it. It's dusk, right at that moment where it hits the water right so that if you look at it straight on it's nothing but a strip of yellow path leading straight to the sun.
There's someone at the helm, a young man. Both his hands are gripping the railing and he's thrust himself out so far he's tipping on his toes. The blunt of the wind catches his hair, tangling it mercilessly. He has his eyes closed and his mouth is tipped upwards in a soft, self-indulgent smile, sweet as the sea-salt air.
Saito draws in a sharp breath before he can help himself, and the young man turns around, blue eyes blazing, face painted a feral orange and pink by the sun.
"Hello," he says curtly, and steps down from the helm, letting go of the railing. They stare at each other for a moment because Saito can't make his mouth work right. It seems that the young man takes pity on him and asks him,
"how are you enjoying the party?"
"it's a beautiful day," Saito says inanely. "It was a beautiful day," he corrects. The sun is almost gone now, light softening all around them. And then he realizes that the question is a host's question, and that this is Maurice Fischer's son.
He introduces himself, "I'm Robert, I don't think we've met before," and extends his hand.
"Saito," he replies, and shakes firmly, looking him in the eye. The sun slips under the ocean, hushing the sky into a series of indigos. The boat lurches under them but Saito holds on. He sails and sails until the storms tip the boat over. Then he swims and swims until he sights land. His hands are pruned from the water and his skin is speckled from the sun. He crawls to the shore, an old man.
He looks a little too long, it seems. Robert coughs, embarrassed, cheeks reddening, and Saito lets go, however much he doesn't want to.
-|-
Inception → Saito/Fischer
It was a long time ago and yet all at once when Saito fell in love with Fischer. 3000 words.
A/N, inceptionkink prompt for Saito/Fischer.
before
When Eames returns, Saito can finally let go.
now
Saito is light, particles and waves. He penetrates an indiscernible blankness, cuts through the white noise, illuminates a space, if it is not space itself.
He is everywhere and every little bit, but spread so thin, feeling so fragile. He is running at the speed of light, vibrating in a thin sheet of three dimensions, the thrumming of his movement rippling across space, manifesting as white noise, a dull, steady hum. Everything about him is colliding yet there is nothing to report for it, no explosions, crashes, accidents.
Just him, existing, running, colliding, forever.
meanwhile
Saito has eyes to see, and a solid body to feel, but this is merely a detail. He is standing in a white plaster room with a white plaster ceiling (or perhaps a foggy sky) some many meters above his head. A bright, sterile light emanates from nowhere, illuminating everything so that there are no shadows. A white noise fills his ears, clean and abrasive as bleach.
A white wall stands in front of him shows one million white doors, all constructed exactly the same way. His body is superfluous because he already knows what awaits him. A million doors, the destinations behind them changing every second. Each door has a one in a million chance of being the right door. Behind each door is a one in a million chance of being the right destination.
Saito walks forward and opens the door in front of him. Another room of white plaster, another million doors. He crosses the distance between the door behind him and opens another door, two doors down. Another room of alabaster, another million doors. He continues to do this, losing patience, he breaks out into a run, barging through doors without looking, without knowing what is at the end, if there is an end. His breath comes quickly, his mortal body grows tired, but he somehow has energy, or stamina, or life. He runs and runs and hopes that one door will lead him outside (what is outside?). His goal is singular (or one million?).
He barges through one room too quickly, chances a look back as the door slams behind him. Saito catches a glimpse of black hair and blue eyes. He twists around, mid-step, to force the door back open, but it won't budge. He bangs on the door, opening his mouth to say something, but he's forgotten already what it is he wants to say. He tries to make a sound, as if this will help him remember--he only needs two sounds. Saito realizes that he cannot speak, his voice has fallen dead in his throat.
So he turns again and steps forward, opens the fourth door to the right. Many rooms and doors later, he is running again.
during this
Saito is outside.
He is standing in a field of black grass, outside, the sky overcast. The ground is wet and soggy, and he thinks that he is in a marsh, the ground dirtied with peat and bog water, rendering it that black, murky color. The marsh is infinitely large, and walking around will always lead him back to the same place. A faint fog obscures his vision, but it only seems to be in front of his eyes. He blinks (with his eyelids?) and walks a few steps forward.
He sees a hole of infinite depth, that which lies before him. Saito stands on the edge, his toes curling and uncurling around the edges. He tries to wiggle the dirt from the ground, send the earth to a plummeting faith. The ground refuses to budge; he is unable to affect his surroundings. Saito has two choices.
He steps forward and falls. And falls,
and falls, and falls,
and
and in the present
He is sitting on the steps, enclosed in an inky darkness that is not absolute enough to call itself black, in a space between inside and outside the investigation headquarters. This space, which has only served a transitioning function from the top floor to the roof, has now found another purpose. A broken fluorescent light flickers sporadically, emitting a dull, thrumming buzz of electric noise, bequeathing shadows as often as it steals them.
Fischer has Saito's feet in his hands, thumbs and knuckles kneading carefully up the length of his foot and back down again, his hands incongruously warm despite his pallor, despite the rain and the biting cold outside. He watches Fischer with interest, and wants to say something.
But doesn't, and the silence between them runs silky and long, stretching into eternity. Sitting there, his heart pounding and his hands clenched at the edge of the millionth stair, Saito wonders what death is, if Fischer has really lived life to the fullest. Saito wonders if his role in Fischer's life has been completely fulfilled, and if fulfillment is a right or merely a detail in the course of human life.
Eventually Fischer looks up from his ministrations. He holds Saito's gaze, eyes growing a brighter and brighter blue. Saito is revealed piece by piece by them, rendered immeasurably flat in two dimensions and stripped naked of his pretenses. He is left with only himself, every iota of him thrumming with an unbearable lightness. Time does not matter as they stare at each other; they could sit here forever, two opposites at peace, the equation perfectly balanced. His heartbeat, hollow in his chest, steadily counters the eerie song of stairwell echoes; it is the only measure of tracking the time that is passing.
Fischer parts his lips, as if to say something, Saito, and Saito's breath catches in the back of his throat. He feels something blossom in his chest, warm and golden like candlelight, just as subtle: the right choice. Saito has two choices.
But in truth, that choice has already been made.
before
Fischer died first.
He watched Fischer collapse into a heap and his heart shuddered toward death in that moment. Saito wanted to curl up and die too. But he had to protect Fischer's body before he could protect Fischer's mind, so he would stay awake, alive.
One, two, breaths. They became fifty, sixty, two hundred, until Eames came back.
before before
Saito took the elevator up to the top floor. The building's rooftop restaurant was near-empty at three in the afternoon, with only a few lonesome lunchtime stragglers still clinging onto the edges of their bone china plates, talking in low voices to each other. Sunlight filtered through the bay windows in cloudy-white streaks, bleaching everything pale. Saito headed for the balcony and lit a cigarette, puffing slowly as he surveyed the other rooftops from this one. He counted forty-two others, and the ships floating in the harbor, just beyond the buildings. Up here, it was easier to be detached. To assume the persona of the rooftop and stand here overlooking the city and see what was at stake.
There was a man named Dominic Cobb, best in the business. There was his project director, Arthur Callahan, and their architect, Abraham Nash. Saito knew what he needed to do. He turned his gaze on the bright gleam of some glass building beyond the others and mind far, far away, and considered the idea left and right and from all angles, sucking away at the cigarette as he did so.
When he finished, he does the unconsciable and flicked his cigarette over the railing, watching it sail, a smile threatening to quirk at his lips before he heard a shuffle behind him: the balcony panel sliding open.
"My apologies." It was Fischer, although it wasn't quite clear what he was apologizing for. "Do you mind if I have a smoke?"
Saito thought about the cigarette, floating lazily down to the street thirty-three stories below, past the boardroom on the twentieth and the negotiations taking place inside, where he and Fischer were supposed to be. He wondered if Fischer saw him flick it away and watch it fall, and what that might have said about his character.
"Not at all," Saito replied. "Actually, I was just about to leave."
Fischer fixed him with those blue eyes and Saito didn't know if he felt hot or cold under them, but passed by without another word.
"See you back down there," Fischer said, as Saito brushed by. It caught him off-guard. It took him a moment to gather himself, but he nodded in acknowledgement.
Saito took the stairs, savoring the journey. He imagined Fischer's eyes boring into him brighter, brighter with each step down.
before before before
The door opens just as Saito is heading out the restroom, and he almost runs into Fischer face-first.
"Excuse me," Fischer says, but doesn't move. Waits for Saito to move. After a beat, his gaze flicks up to meet Saito's.
They are close, too close for this to be correct or professional or appropriate. There is more at stake here than what Saito, but at this moment, Saito cannot make himself feel it so. A perverse adolescent determination compels him forward to hold Fischer's gaze. Blue irises cave into the endless black of his pupils, blown wide with challenge.
The younger man sighs, eyes closing, the most minute collapse. In that moment Saito is falling with him too, arms reaching up and ready to catch him and bring them to a tumble down and down.
But Fischer leans back and the moment is gone. "Saito-san," Fischer breathes, the honorific slipping awkwardly, an afterthought, and steps aside to let Saito go through the door first.
before before before before
The meeting was held in a conference room at Fischer Morrow's Asia-Pacific headquarters, the penultimate floor of a glossy glass and steel skyscraper in the heart of Hong Kong, overlooking the rest of the city. Plasma TV screens lined the walls; a long table furnished with bottles of Evian also held big bowls of cashews, pistachios, and dried seaweed.
Chairing the meeting was Peter Browning, planted firmly in his chair with an air of patriarchal forgiveness and a viciousness in his eyes that betrayed his otherwise restrained joviality.
Next to him was Nick Gray, Fischer Morrow's vice president of finance, eager-eyed and tense in the shoulders. They were flanked by select members of the Inpex board--the meek, sickly-looking Aizawa Tachibana, a senior VP at Mizuho Financial Group, and Francis Chen, Goldman Sach's Asia-Pacific Director of M&A, exuding a bright confidence which may or may not have been feigned.
Off to Browning's side sat Robert Fischer, legs crossed and leaning away from the boardroom table, spinning a pen in his fingers. Fischer was all lean and sleek lines, thick black hair swept up and out of his face. His eyes wandered over the table before his gaze crossed the table. His eyes paused briefly on Saito, questioning and considering for the briefest moment, before he returned his attention to the document in front of him.
Saito was the only one standing.
"Gentlmen," Fischer intoned solemnly, like a father chastising his son for playing baseball inside the house. "I hate to talk business on such a beautiful day--but the chairman of Fischer-Morrow is notorious for his impatience. We want to know what you thought of the merger proposal, and how we might be able to move forward."
Saito had landed in Hong Kong at the break of dawn, just as the sun was coming over the horizon. The water gleamed in shades of red and yellow, warm morning tones taking on a lusty appearance in the sheen of oil and debris that coated the harbor's waters. A fishing ship puttered in a few docks away, and even from the view of his plane, Saito could see that the catch was meager. Hong Kong proper loomed a distance away, skyscrapers shrouded in a golden thicket of smog.
A shuttle waited outside for him as he disembarked. Ito loaded his luggage into the trunk as Saito made small talk with the driver, ever courteous.
In relative silence the three of them rode, the hum of the shuttle's electric engine peppered with murmuring crescendos and decrescendos from Ito and the driver's conversation, the shuffling of documents, the continuous typing as Ito began to organize everything for Saito's dealbook.
They arrived in the city just as traffic was beginning to still, pulling into the drop-off of the International Finance Center building. A lone security guard watched them walk to the elevators and ducked his head down as the doors shut, writing something down.
Saito let himself indulge that thought for a moment. He fingered the lining on the inside of the coat pocket and let himself believe for a moment that he could have been anybody, anybody riding an elevator with anybody else. The thought flooded through him, wilting and sensual, traces of nostalgia coloring his vision sepia.
The elevator stopped and Ito stepped out first, holding the doors open and waiting for Saito, keycard coming out of his pocket, always one step ahead. Saito blinked once, twice, slowly, counting the seconds he had left in his thoughts, a mere pedestrian on an elevator heading upwards.
"Saito-san?" Ito gestured, though gesturing wasn't necessary. Saito found himself irritated and walked out of the elevator, head held high. He thought of what he would say, how he would move his hands, how he would emote, and how he would meet Robert Fischer. Down the hallway he and Ito walked, inhabitants of a short stretch of world filled with taupe carpet and beige doors, and Saito ambling through it all, watchful and watchless, his mind years beyond the future, past space and time and perspective. Then, forcibly, he thought of nothing at all, casting every thought in his head a white, nothing-color.
Saito had tried to keep that absence of thought a current in his head when he entered the boardroom.
Instead, his body crowded and expanded upon itself, reemerging in the physical world as a defiant authority even as he stood rigidly, a bodyguard of his own self, a persuader who hadn't yet persuaded. He wilted, emasculated, as emotions and hot blood flowered through him--contained and controlled as that sensation reduced itself to a point, his consciousness asserting and denying himself, alternatingly and obsessively. It was paranoia, it was anticipation.
Fischer had to watch him throughout the entire meeting, of course. It was standard procedure. But it still left Saito in tatters, and he remembers,
a long time ago and yet, all at once
Saito is twenty-seven and just out of business school, not sure if he wants to stay in Boston or move back to Tokyo. A friend has invited him to the Fischer-Morrow's annual company party on one of the many Fischer yachts as a favor to a friend who is need of a date for the event. Saito puts on his best cotton shirt and linen slacks and is charming to the lady who is to be his other half for the afternoon. She is charming too, a sophisticated girl from uptown New York and a year younger than him at HBS, and her father is a senior executive at Fischer-Morrow. They sip merlot and talk about everything except anything related to the energy industry.
Eventually they both begin to tire, so they part ways for a while she catches up with an old colleague from her university days. Saito opts to wander to the front of the ship, taking his time to navigate through the crowd until it becomes thinner and thinner, wine glass empty and emptier in his hand and nowhere to put it. It's dusk, right at that moment where it hits the water right so that if you look at it straight on it's nothing but a strip of yellow path leading straight to the sun.
There's someone at the helm, a young man. Both his hands are gripping the railing and he's thrust himself out so far he's tipping on his toes. The blunt of the wind catches his hair, tangling it mercilessly. He has his eyes closed and his mouth is tipped upwards in a soft, self-indulgent smile, sweet as the sea-salt air.
Saito draws in a sharp breath before he can help himself, and the young man turns around, blue eyes blazing, face painted a feral orange and pink by the sun.
"Hello," he says curtly, and steps down from the helm, letting go of the railing. They stare at each other for a moment because Saito can't make his mouth work right. It seems that the young man takes pity on him and asks him,
"how are you enjoying the party?"
"it's a beautiful day," Saito says inanely. "It was a beautiful day," he corrects. The sun is almost gone now, light softening all around them. And then he realizes that the question is a host's question, and that this is Maurice Fischer's son.
He introduces himself, "I'm Robert, I don't think we've met before," and extends his hand.
"Saito," he replies, and shakes firmly, looking him in the eye. The sun slips under the ocean, hushing the sky into a series of indigos. The boat lurches under them but Saito holds on. He sails and sails until the storms tip the boat over. Then he swims and swims until he sights land. His hands are pruned from the water and his skin is speckled from the sun. He crawls to the shore, an old man.
He looks a little too long, it seems. Robert coughs, embarrassed, cheeks reddening, and Saito lets go, however much he doesn't want to.
-|-