[Fic] Monopoly

[fairielore]

Title: Monopoly
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2337
Summary: Saito encounters Robert in his youth and he never quite forgets it.
Author's note: Fill for this

 

It was a perfectly pleasant Saturday afternoon and Robert Fischer was standing in line to buy a ticket for an art exhibition – a show of the greatest modern contemporaries, proudly displayed side by side for any with a thirst for the art that thrived on the dark dwellings of current society. The only reason he was here was because his father had told him to go, as opposed to wasting his time with those ruffians he called friends (his father’s words) or doing any other number of things would be deemed a misuse of his attention. His father was out of town but he’d said that he’d call him tonight to ask him about the exhibit, which would essentially be a semi-casual interrogation. Every brush stroke was supposed to be ingrained in his mind for future use at some cocktail party that he might organize when he headed the company or a remark to be used against another man. Robert was supposed to grow up to be a cultured boy, filling his mind only with art and literature and what would get him farther in life.

And so there had been no room left in life for anything else.

He shuffled into the gallery, beginning from the painting to his immediate left and gazing at it for a good minute and imprinting the image into his mind as well as the information on the place card beside it. His mind was an archive, a museum, rather then any thriving machine. He moved around the room in a systematic motion, scrunching himself up whenever someone moved beside him but he wouldn’t shift away from them, as if losing his concentration would make him forget everything he saw.

The stark contrast of dark, depressing colours and blinding neons made him blink rapidly.

The curvaceous and twisting women depicted on the rough canvas only elicited an arching of the eyebrow.

It was only Jackson Pollack that finally made him cock his head.

When he looked at he saw nothing and everything, and that was how he felt. He was expected to be everything but really he was nothing. A blank canvas with layer upon caked on.

“It’s a very deep piece, isn’t it?” It was an adult voice. An adult was talking to him.

His eyes wandered over to the source and he saw a tall Asian man in a simple grey suit. He nodded, because that was what he was taught to do when talking with an adult. A polite answer, preferably silent.

“What do you think of it?” He tries again, a more direct question. He’ll get an answer, he’s sure of it.

Robert gently bites his lips and he leans forward for a few moments before he leans back again, as if the subtle changes in perceptions will make him uncover its secrets. “It’s very… chaotic.”  He says, testing the words on his lips because he knows that’s what an adult would want to hear, but the man’s look implores him to say more. “They kind of look like drizzles of ice cream.” He mumbles, earning a chuckle from the man beside him and he isn’t sure whether to smile or not.

“Chocolate and vanilla splattered on some orange sorbet.” The man smiles soothingly and finally a shy smile curls on Robert’s lips.

The man looks to the next painting and then back at Robert as if asking him whether he wants to move on to the next one or not and he nods, and they begin to make their way through painting to painting and they engage in conversations of the same nature through every one.

At a Picasso, Robert points out that the man must not have been very good at math because his proportions are all wrong and at a Cézanne he says that it would have been altogether easier if they’d just taken a picture of the bowl of fruit. His companion is ever smiling and receptive, chuckling at every one of the boy’s witty comments as if to make up for every other instance in his life that an adult just didn’t give him the time of day he deserved.

After they’ve circled the entire gallery they walk out together side by side, and the man buys the both of them a hot dog which they eat on the steps of the art gallery. Robert is nibbling at the bun because he’s not accustomed to such street food and nor does he want to get himself messy, as the older gentlemen put copious amounts of ketchup and mustard on for him.

Through his meal he’s sparing glances at the other man, unsure of what he should say. Finally, he manages a meek sentence: “Do you know who I am?” When he’s at a loss all he needs to do is come back to what his father had told him: all he is the image he’s built for himself. Robert Fischer Jr. is both a name and title, his only saving grace.

“Do you know who I am?” The man echoes back with a smile and the boy looks at him with wide blue eyes and hesitates before shaking his head. No, he doesn’t know who this man is and from the question it seems like he should. He mentally scolds himself because he knows that his father would be disappointed in him for not knowing an important man.

“That cloud looks like a dragon.” The man says, glancing up at the sky but not pointing at anything, as if it were impolite to do so. Robert is supposed to see it for himself without any guidance.

“Clouds are just clouds.” Robert pouts, cherry lips pressed together in discontent. There’s nothing to see airy wisps other then disappointment staring back at him. The sky was but a guideline to see how far you were from the top, nothing more.

“Is that so? You’ve never seen an object as something more then it really is?” He asks, knowing that the boy can’t refute his point. It’s a cleverly fabricated question, to force the truth or to catch him in a lie.

Robert squirms in discomfort for a moment as he looks at the clouds, stretching his legs out on the concrete steps and begins to dangle them. “But what’s the point of that?” He mumbles sheepishly because it’s a true question. His father had taught him that there was no merit in engaging in imagination and fanciful follies. The only thing he needed to be concerned with was what could be quantified into some sort of concrete gain, monetary or otherwise.

“There’s no more sacred gift in life then being able to animate your dreams.” Robert sees an air of certainty equal to his father’s, but he doesn’t understand how they can both believe they’re right. He’s always learned that only one can be right, only one can stand victorious.

“I have to go now.” The man announces, his dark brown eyes still set on the clouds.

“Oh.” Robert says hollowly, sadly. He doesn’t understand why this man to leave him, just like why his mother had to die. Why she had to leave.

“Where do you have to go?” Robert asks with a frown, like the man is leaving the confines of this earth and moving to another. But in his mind that’s what it mine swell be if he won’t ever see him again.

“To the background, where I only have my dreams to entertain me. I wish you luck with your reality.” The man says and leans forward to press a soft kiss to the boy’s forehead before he leaves Robert on the cold, stone steps.

 ***

In the evening his father calls him just like he promised (a miracle in of itself, since he can’t remember the last time he stayed true to either) and he asks him about the art exhibit. Robert recounts painting by painting, from Gauguin to Manet with studious perfection but he slips up at Pollack – drizzles of chocolate and vanilla on orange sherbet and there’s a long, icy silence that ensues between them. There’s not even a goodbye before the phone hangs up, like the phone call was only ever to confirm something. One little thing.

Maurice spends every waking hour from then on to memory wipe these silly notions from Robert’s head but the boy clings to the only moment of childish delight that he has. With years of downtrodden glances and academic lectures that will confirm the same these things will bury themselves deep, imperceptible by no one that they’re even there, not even by his father. But Maurice will never forget that his son failed him. A pawn unworthy to be played.

Fischer-Morrow and Proclus Global play Monopoly with other people’s money and other people’s time. Everyone was an unwitting participant to this life sized game, a commodity to be bought and trade at will. There was no one immune to the economic of an ever fluctuating world governed by men with power and pride on their mind.

Not even Maurice’s son, not if the price is right.

The charges for corporate espionage are steep and there was a time when Fischer-Morrow couldn’t take such a hit. A time when it had to bend to the whims of a man who fancied knocking the arrogant smirk right off of Maurice Fischer’s face. But rather then a messy court affair that he would no doubt win he gambled it all on an agreement made behind closed doors: the seduction of one Robert Fischer. Maurice had sneered and scowled and spit in his hand before he shook because he could never imagined what he’d intended. It was not enough for him to break and bend the boy’s body to his will. No, instead he’d rather capture his mind because he knew he could.

And he had, with a few well placed words and smiles that a mere boy couldn’t wrap his head around. But it wasn’t his fault, it was never his fault. There were simply too many strings being pulled that eventually he’d get tangled in it all. There is always collateral damage when warring kings are involved.

They do not meet again for many years, not until after the business of his little mind hijacking. There were too many blurred lines between business and personal affairs that had been crossed that he at least let the hands of fate decide whether they should ever meet again. He ended up seeing him in the hotel bar of an upscale hotel – a one day stopover for him. Everything was temporary. Saito sat on the elegant wooden stool and ordered a glass of cognac. Nothing of this business of Cosmopolitans or Mai Tais. Instead, simple and classy.

And there sat Robert Fischer beside him, brooding over his drink and looking deep inside his glass as if he expected some sort of fortune cookie answer.

Saito took a sip of his drink before speaking up: “Do you know who I am?”

It took a moment, a long moment before something lit up in Robert’s eyes as he looked over to the person beside him, his eyes scanning every inch of the face. “Do you know who I am?” He echoes back and there’s half a smile hidden behind the haze of alcohol.

“Do you know who you are?”

And Robert is just as much at a loss for an answer as the first time they had met.

He was hard-pressed to find a reason not to wander back to the man’s hotel room and to be pushed against elaborate wallpaper that made his head spin and every kiss uncovering those small flights of fancy he’d buried away. From that one conversation when he’d been a child he’d been inflicted with the dreamer’s disease, hoping and wishing to be taken away from this formless shadow land and to the vibrant world that the kind gentlemen who saw dragons in clouds seemed to only have the key to.

Flurries of kisses adorn his neck and he can’t even muster up the words to beg for more because he finds he can’t breathe even though that’s really all he seems to be doing. Breathe in, breathe out, the world seemed like a different place when another body was pressed up against his, a magnetizing force that he couldn’t get away from nor did he want to. If he let it go he might never find his way back.

He’s laying on the bed and the sheets feel as cold as marble as he was suspended in time, blue eyes pleading for this idle moment to be shattered. He never wanted to waste time again, he never wanted to pretend to be himself again. Anyone else would do just fine, whatever Saito wanted. Pain neither here nor there, a love that was never meant to be fair – as long as he kept scratching at the man’s flesh and swearing to himself that all he needs to do is make a mark and he’ll have him. Branded, claimed. Robert chokes up at every pulsation and writhes without any self control at all. When he wasn’t thinking at the back of his mind what he did yesterday or the day before or what his drink tasted like he was moaning; sweet sounds coming out of compliant lips.

Afterward when he’s laying there spent staring up at the ceiling he’s wiped his mind of remembrances of the past and only thoughts of the future and he feels even more lost. The past was what? He was the heir to nothing in particular at all and now that his father was dead he was free to wander this empty world. The only thing worse then captivity was the freedom to realize how little he actually had. But he’s sure with the repeated pealing off of expensive suits the world will be stripped bare as well and him and Saito can rebuild the world anew.