Chapter Text
It’s completely mad how it all starts out, actually—really something that never should have happened, never would have happened except for the perfect storm of minor slights that had been slung Baird’s way that spring.
Logan had been on a local news tear, pillaging his way through the smaller stations in the Tri-State Area that had been left for dead in the wake of Jimmy Carter’s unfortunate faith in the Phillips Curve. Royco’s brightest minds had bent over booze and takeout for months to forge a perilous path through skyrocketing interest rates and chicken-hearted advertisers and the various routine atmospheric hazards that they could never quite fully vanquish even as they accumulated allies in the federal government and the state house.
Baird has spent nearly fifteen years at Logan’s right hand, side by side nurturing this madcap little venture into the behemoth it’s becoming. They have been two in a box since Royco was mostly billboards and local rags, Baird both a trusted adviser to Logan and a respected translator of the Logan Roy Way to staff and board and investors. The title on his door is General Counsel, but his real job is True Believer.
This is what intensifies the sting as he finds himself sidelined. Over the past year and change, he thinks, maybe longer, the shine seems to be off his apple somehow. It’s hard to pinpoint which came first, his growing disillusion with the whole enterprise or his shrinking esteem in Logan’s eyes, but Frank is the golden child now, running point on the plum assignments while Baird’s mostly twiddling his thumbs over contracts he could do in his sleep.
And even more unsettling, Logan’s started making noise about expanding the executive floor. Adding a COO. Something Baird has advocated for for half a decade as they finally grew large enough to need it. There was a sharp-edged vision of it in his head: Logan’s particular brand of gruff charisma razing the venerable structures of the fusty media industry to the ground, while Baird held down the home front, built up the foundation to support Logan’s next big idea. If he were to trace it back and back, there were tiny snippets of this vision on his first day at Royco. Maybe since the moment he first met Logan in a musty Brooklyn pub, not yet the lion he’s become today, but already cannily assessing the chinks in the armor of this industry, already spinning out a picture of something new to a perfect stranger. So, yes, Baird had always assumed he’d be a shoo-in for the part of Logan’s Other Half. Terrible timing for a competitor on the come up.
But as much as the humiliation burns in his chest when Frank holds the gavel, he’s somehow found it tough to summon the vim to fight back. Maybe you turn forty and start to quell the lustful urge for more. Hasn’t happened to Logan, to be clear, but they are different sorts of men.
There is one bright spot in what is edging dangerously close to drudgery these days, and that is his new junior associate. Gerri had started some eight months ago, snapped up immediately after her graduation from Penn, and is already bounding past his last five years’ worth of new hires. She is dogged and quick in a way the slightly grayer faces on the executive floor—such as it is at this point, really more of an executive wing, an executive cluster of unimpressive boxes with doors—insist on calling “spunky.” At least when they aren’t admiring her ass or making her take notes in the corner of the meeting room. She brushes this off with a kind of breezy above-it-all-ness, a kind of low-simmering confidence that he can’t help but appreciate. Among a variety of other attributes, which propriety won’t let him name.
She is beautiful, all right?, no use denying that, in her smart little skirt suits and her lawless shock of golden curls, and the clever curl of her lips around each brilliant idea. He’s stayed out of it with the others, no benefits to speaking indelicately of your most promising employee, but it’s not like he doesn’t notice.
And it is his prerogative, isn’t it, as General Counsel, to dictate the means and manner of his employees’ work? To make assignments as befits the business needs of the firm? To monopolize her time just a little, maybe just on the outskirts of indecorous? So what. Sue him if he took the liberty of inserting her into a few extra projects so he at the very least has little peeks at her collarbones and her big blue eyes and her subtle wit to look forward to in these fucking interminable meetings.
But all that said: let the record show that every bit of this was her idea.
On the afternoon where this all begins, she is sat across his messy executive desk from him with a legal pad poised atop her crossed legs. She’s doing that thing again, pen tapping in apparent absorption against her full, red lips. Baird has the good sense and good manners to drag his eyes away as he briefs her on an emerging lawsuit that’s almost definitely going to settle, a fact he may be slightly obscuring.
“Why aren’t you running point on WNYJ?” she asks, out of nowhere, when he pauses in his description. Her eyes are big and wide and innocent in a way that would be completely believable if he were a less astute observer of her.
This jars him a little, furrows his brow. He fiddles with a stack of papers on his desk to avoid looking up at her, moves the bottom page to the top, folds down a corner. “Where did you hear that?”
“The assistants were talking about it in the break room.”
He raises an eyebrow, still only looking at her obliquely. “What were you doing in the break room with the assistants?”
Gerri shrugs impatiently.
A deep, bone-weary sigh puffs out of his mouth. Bit of a sore subject actually but since she had asked. “Logan gave it to Frank. Apparently,” and this is really ill-advised to say, but he’s so goddamn irritated with the whole thing and if there’s anything he’d learned about Gerri, it’s that she knows the value of discretion, “Frank’s wife got a bit of intel at the Christmas party. Caroline. It seems her lips are lately quite loose. Sealed the deal.”
He fishes a paper clip out of a small aluminum tray and teases it out of shape between his fingers.
Gerri hums. “It sounds like Frank’s wife is quite an asset,” she says after a moment, plainly enough on the surface but with a little quirk of her brow that he catches unmistakably. She rests her pen again in the corner of her mouth.
“Sure,” he replies. Where the hell is she going with this? He fixes his gaze on her fully, finally, with a sharp little spark of authority that doesn’t seem to cow her at all.
She twirls the pen between two fingers, but keeps her eyes locked on him. “Frank’s been picking up a lot of the top jobs lately, hasn’t he? Tyler Media? And the German investor?”
He cocks his head with a tight, peevish smile. “Sure. Frank’s very…capable.”
She is actually very good at this, he has to admit. She’s got this knack for observing things, for remembering the things you need to remember to make sense of the fast-paced twists and turns in this place. She’s got a knack for knowing what’s important. He’s taken to watching her in meetings, where she lurks unobtrusively on the sidelines, but with her eyes brightly attentive to the what and why, the gears in her head visibly turning, if one were just to look. It was a frequent occurrence, her resurfacing something small but vital he would have otherwise missed. Saved his ass more than once. Maybe he is losing his touch.
Inconveniently for him, this also seems to make Gerri invulnerable to his best trick, too disciplined already, green as she is, to let her nerves flow out of her mouth to fill the silence he’s trying to hold open.
She taps the pen three times against her lower lip.
“Here’s the thing,” she says, finally, rising elegantly to her feet, delicately placing her pen and pad back on the seat of her chair. “I think we have a common interest.”
“How’s that?”
She lopes around his desk, fingers gliding on the rare vacant patches of glossy wood as she moves. The air around him becomes tastefully floral, hints of vanilla, as she leans back against the desk next to him and casually crosses one ankle over the other. His arm is one involuntary movement away from brushing against the plushness of her thigh.
But she’s cool and unperturbed. It’s impressive, actually, the delicate control she keeps over each minute pore of her face, which he is watching now from half a yard’s distance.
“We both have rooms we can’t get into,” she says, matter-of-factly, as though she were presenting a business case at a faraway podium and not close enough to touch. “You’re missing ears on the ground on Frank’s portfolio. I’m barred from entry at the saunas and the golf games and the clubs. Don’t you think we might be able to help each other?”
“I can’t trade you to Frank, Gerri, he’d see right through it and freeze you out.”
“Well, what if you had to?” She’s clearly winding up to something, big eyes glinting with a certain vivid audacity.
His eyes narrow. “Had to how?”
“Suppose you were in violation of Royco’s fraternization policy,” she says, with the tiniest tug of a smile on her lips. “It’s standard practice to change reporting lines in the case of a relationship of a personal nature, isn’t it?”
Once the words are out of her mouth, he can’t help the shaky laugh that escapes him, the hand raking incredulously into his hair. “I’m not going to marry you to get inside eyes on the acquisition.”
Her brows draw together, pinching her face into a withering glare as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“You don’t have to marry me. We aren’t negotiating some alliance between two warring kingdoms,” she says tightly with an impertinent roll of her eyes. “All I’m saying is: look at us, two intelligent, accomplished people, who work very closely together, who perhaps have grown fond of one another and perhaps might choose to spend a little time together…extracurricularly. And if Logan and the rest were to jump to certain conclusions about the nature of that time, maybe we just…wouldn’t correct them.”
Baird blinks, swallows. Kicks off from his desk and lets the slightly uneven wheels of his chair put a little space between them.
“Jesus Christ, Lady Macbeth,” he scoffs, but she maintains her unflinching gaze.
She looks so sure of it, is the thing, this patently insane idea she seems to be pitching. It’s left him at a loss, an unfamiliar sort of feeling for someone who’s made his name in this place on knowing both what he’s supposed to know and what he isn’t. He searches her face for some little crack, some minute tell that this is some kind of joke, but all that stares back at him is her characteristic resoluteness.
“You can’t be serious about this.” Just say no.
“I’m extremely serious,” she says firmly. “It’s a good proposition.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend who’ll feel slighted while you’re acting out this little drama with me?” Why isn’t he just saying no?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snips. “I don’t have time to date if I’m going to have a director title in five years.”
He can’t help but smile at her now, genuine this time, at least for a moment, at the haughty tip of her nose and square of her shoulders. “You’re well on your way to that regardless.”
“Not if all the business strategy stays on the golf course.”
He watches her watching him, two eagle-eyed observers waiting for the other to flinch.
“I’m practically twice your age.” No thank you? I’m flattered, but no? I simply couldn’t? There are so many options, man.
“I’m twenty-five, I’m not a child,” she breezes, the cheeky way her hands come to rest on her hips slightly undermining her message.
“This doesn’t end well, Gerri, and you know it.” So close to no.
She allows this to cool things off for a moment, holds a silence open as she shifts her thoughtful gaze over his shoulder.
“How about this,” she says, loosening her posture, holding up her hands in conciliation. “How about you make us a dinner reservation. Maybe Saturday. Seven. Lutèce. A trial run. We’ll see if we like each other enough to keep up the ruse. What do you think?”
This is preposterous, this Hollywood sort of solution. There is no good reason for him to be pondering a yes.
She isn’t entirely wrong, is the thing, at least not in her diagnosis. And she certainly isn’t about to relent.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, with no discernible direction from his brain. This is madness.
She nods back at him, a pleased little grin spreading on her face. She grabs her things again and turns to go—fully turns, turns her back, so he can watch her, which he does.
Goddamn it.
“You’re insane, actually,” he calls to her, chuckling as she makes her way to the door.
She pauses with her hand on the knob, leans her head over her shoulder without swiveling around. “I guess we’ll see about that.”
Baird isn’t much one for fate, but something feels like stars align when Logan steps into his office that evening. It’s not common for Logan to be the one to travel. More often it’s him holding court in his own office or the board room, summoning the rest of them at his whim. Especially these days, as the circle gets bigger and the easy intimacy of the early years has dulled. Logan ambles into the room without knocking and the door closes behind him with a heavy thud against the threshold.
“I need your help with something,” Logan says as he settles onto the long leather couch to the right of the desk. His hands are dancing uneasily around his face, wiping across his mouth, tugging at his ear. “I don’t have to tell you how important this is, WNYJ?”
“Sure, of course.”
Logan sighs, holds his hands palms up in front of him. “I need you to keep an eye on Frank.”
Baird’s ears prick up. He smooths his face into a neutral mask, keeps his mouth shut as his heart starts to beat in his throat. There’s this image that pops into his head all of a sudden, of a horse with a carrot on a stick tied to its bridle. There’s another image, too, of a shiny new nameplate that says “Baird Kellman, COO.” He gulps this down.
“He’s been with me almost as long as you have, but I’m not sure…” His face twitches fitfully. An act or genuine? Usually Baird can tell. “I’m not sure he’s entirely up to the task.”
“I’m sure he’s got it in hand,” Baird says tentatively, noncommittally, waiting for the other man to lay down his cards.
“Sure, sure,” Logan replies, pauses, stares. “But you’ll tell me, won’t you? If he’s getting off the mark?”
Logan’s face seems so genuine here, so open and earnest. He’s out of practice, it seems, with reading Logan’s mind.
Logan grunts as he gets to his feet and crosses the short distance to the desk. He drops his hands onto Baird’s shoulders, heavy, meaningful, grave. He smells like cigars, like the alley outside their favorite pub.
“Baird,” he says, sharp blue eyes sparkling, “You’re the only one I can trust with this.”
It’s a spark of something old and familiar, of those first few years in that windowless basement office suite with mismatched furniture they slowly purloined from higher floors. Baird thinks he knows better than to take all this on its face, but it seems more prudent to agree than to argue. Keeps more options open.
“Well, it’s my job to protect Royco,” he says, fiddling with his watch around his wrist. “So. Of course.”
Logan smiles his crooked, enigmatic smile as he straightens up and takes a few steps backward. “Thank you very much, Baird. I know I can always count on you.”
He can hear Logan’s heavy footfalls all the way back to his office.
It only takes a minute of reflection to convince himself to follow the surge of instinctive certainty that starts to gather in the silence left behind, to manually override the little siren shrieking and flashing red about this whole thing.
“Linda!” he bellows, and his secretary is closing the door behind her within seconds. “I need a reservation at Lutèce.”