Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Roman were a better person, a better brother, he might care a little more about how much his soon-to-be brother-in-law is playing up the fact Shiv's given him a 'hall pass' for the day. Fortunately for Tom, Roman's a shitty brother. Unfortunately for Tom, given the conversation he overheard on Thanksgiving and his knowledge of his sister as a person, Roman's pretty sure Shiv's cheated on him before, if she's not doing so currently.

Or maybe that's also fortunate, makes them even or whatever. None of his business, either way. He signed up to be Tom’s best man, not his marriage counselor.

Now if only Tom had gotten that memo.

The amount of praise Tom's showered on him for setting them up at Rhomboid crossed the line from gratifying to overcompensating over an hour ago. The hemming and hawing about what level of cheating on Shiv is justifiable went from vaguely amusing to tiresome around the same time. Tom doesn't seem to have any other conversation topics to choose from today, so Roman's had him half-tuned out since the moment he saw Tom making his way over.

He tunes back in when Tom actually asks him something, clearly expecting input. "So in terms of Shiv, where I've landed is, uh, I'm maybe just gonna ask for a handy? Think that's okay?"

Jesus, how much can one guy agonize over getting his rocks off? And why the fuck is Tom asking for his opinion, anyway? Roman doesn't think, just opens his mouth and lets words form freely. "Don't—pre-rationalize. You get off, you eat the shame for dessert."

It's a solid suggestion, not his worst work. Maybe then Tom will chill out and fuck off so Roman can find out what crevice Sandy Furness is tucked away in. He could just leave, of course, but that runs the risk of Tom following him or asking questions, and he'd prefer to keep any business dealings private. It's also probably best not to let Tom realize Roman tossed out the Prague plans for his own interests. He'd rather not deal with Tom's kicked-puppy disappointment.

Honestly, a small part of Roman is kind of regretting the cancelled plans as well—he'd pulled out all the stops to make sure Tom would have a good time in Prague, because he’s fucking Roman Roy and he can’t have people thinking he doesn’t know how to party. It's a very small part of him. The deal is way more important, and the effort was unnecessary, anyway. Tom has always been easily impressed.

At this point he'd almost consider jacking Tom off himself if that'd get him out of his hair. Tom might not be able to find anyone else willing, the way he's actively talking himself out of doing anything.

Not that Roman's actually willing. And now the mental image of Tom having a sad awful wank in a bathroom at his own bachelor party is in his head, which is disgusting and depressing, making his skin prickle.

Motion in the corner of his eye drags him out of his thoughts; Tom's waving at someone. Roman follows his gaze to a curly-haired woman across the room. Tall, blond, pretty in an effortlessly cool way and, impossibly, waving back.

"Wait,” he does a double take, “her? That one?"

"Yeah! We were talking for, like, twenty minutes about financial derivatives and she just asked me."

What the fuck kind of bizarro universe has he slipped into where someone like that propositions Tom Wambsgans of all people? And Tom, what, went I'll need to have a think about it and came to consult with him about whether to hook up with her? There's really something wrong with this guy.

"Oh my God,” Roman says, floored. “Holy shit, Dad would go fuckin' nuts for her." Miraculously, Tom's found someone else willing. He can get off, and Roman can get out. Win-win. "You should do it!"

"Yeah?" Tom doesn't sound nearly as enthused as he should be, given how much he's been talking about sex the whole time and who he's talking about hypothetically having sex with.

"Yeah! Fuck yeah, I'd be all over that. I'd, like..." Roman's mind blanks. "I'd, fucking..." She's hot, objectively, the kind of girl his dad would compliment him on landing, it's just that he can't really come up with any—Tom is standing too fucking close to him, watching him, it's distracting. His sheer proximity is making the hairs on the back of Roman’s neck stand up. He gives up, lets out a dramatic augh, fuck and hopes that gets the point across. Whatever. He's not the guy hooking up with her.

"Okay, well. Hm." Tom still sounds hesitant. If he somehow talks himself out of this, Roman's just leaving, fuck it. There's commitment to monogamy, and then there's plain stupidity. He can't be around this guy any longer. "I need something. Do you have a Smint?"

The question is so unexpected he barely registers it as English. "What?"

"Do you have a Smint?"

"What—no! Just—grab your baloney pipe and jizz."

Finally, with one last awkward exchange of "yeah"s and "okay"s, Tom crosses the room. Roman straightens up, turns to watch as he slinks up to the woman to offer her champagne.

She accepts it with a tilt of her head and a smile, saying something to Tom that Roman can't make out. Tom turns back towards him, the shifting light revealing an uncertain expression on his face. Roman's about to scowl, tell him no one's forcing him to have sex with someone if he's going to be so conflicted about it, but then Tom waves a hand in his direction, says, "Him? He's—yeah, he's, uh, a friend of mine," and he's stunned into silence.

The woman gives Roman an appraising look, glances between him and Tom with a smirk like she's laughing at some private joke. Friend of mine. At least Tom looks and sounds as doubtful as he should saying that. It'd be awkward to tell an anonymous hookup it's his bachelor party and that's his soon-to-be brother-in-law, Roman supposes, but he's also not sure why she's asking in the first place.

She waves him over, so casual and confident in the motion that Roman's stepping forward before he thinks about it. Tom looks completely lost, so Roman turns the forced politeness up to maximum to cover his own confusion.

“Hi, that’s me. The friend.” He smiles pleasantly at Tom, who stares back, a blank expression on his face that only makes it more obvious he’s panicking internally. “I had to talk him into coming over here to talk to you, if you were wondering what exactly we were chatting about just now.”

“I was wondering, actually.” She raises her eyebrows. “So you’re, what, his wingman?”

“Something like that,” Tom answers before Roman can, looking between the two of them uneasily. “For tonight, anyway.”

“Cute,” she says, teasing but just light enough that Roman doesn’t feel the need to bristle. “You don’t come to places like this often, do you?” She takes a sip of champagne, then adds: “Either of you?”

“Uh, well, no. I don’t, no,” Tom admits a little too readily, punctuated with a chuckle. He gives Roman a bemused look, too polite to answer for him but clearly expecting him to proclaim he regularly engages in debauchery.

Roman’s got no intention of letting him down in that respect. “I’m the one who got him in, actually.” It’s a neat, technically honest sidestep, and the woman doesn’t call bullshit, so.

He’s curious what gave her that impression, but not that curious. Wherever this is going, he’s cutting it short. “Listen, you seem like a lovely conversation partner, and I don't mean to be crude in the middle of this fuckin' sex club, but I was told that you’d invited—my pal, here, to… have sex, and as his friend, and the one who got him an invite, I am somewhat invested in making sure he has a good time. So if we could cut the chit-chat and you two can…” He makes a shooing motion, then mimes jerking off immediately afterwards.

The woman laughs, genuinely surprised. Tom echoes her with much less enthusiasm. He can’t seem to decide whether he wants to look at Roman or not; Roman keeps catching him staring, only for him to immediately avert his eyes when Roman looks in his direction. Five seconds later the cycle repeats. There’s this confused expression on his face, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s like he doesn’t think Roman could be altruistic enough to actually try and help Tom hook up with someone out of the generosity of his heart.

Tom’s right to think that, of course. The whole night’s defined by ulterior motives. But he signed up for this asking Roman to plan his bachelor party, so he’s got no grounds to be giving weird looks.

“I honestly thought you were just trying to let me down easy when you ran off earlier,” the woman says, drawing Tom’s attention back to her. “I didn’t think it was going to take you an hour to get your friend to say yes for you.”

“I was—” Tom cuts himself off with a weak laugh, ignoring the raised eyebrows Roman directs his way after hearing an hour. “I was going to ask if the, uh, offer was still open, first.”

“It is,” she confirms easily, “if you’re interested.” Then she looks over to Roman, thoughtful, and adds, “Since you’re so invested in his good time, you could come with, too.”

There’s a ringing in Roman’s ears. He couldn’t possibly have heard that right. “Sorry?”

“If you’re okay with it,” she says to Tom without missing a beat. Barely even a question, like she’s anticipating a yes.

Right, Roman thinks dimly, unable to even conceive of a response. Of course the woman who propositioned Tom would be fucking insane.

Tom hasn’t made a sound. He’s staring at Roman, wide-eyed, and this time when Roman meets his gaze he doesn’t look away. His expression is unreadable, and the dim lighting isn’t helping, but it’s not—he should be recoiling, laughing at the ridiculous suggestion, saying What? No, I’m not okay with it, are you insane? Instead, he’s frozen in place, mouth hanging open, which—

Roman realizes too late that he should’ve done any of those things, but he hasn’t either. Another second passes. He’s suddenly, unshakably certain that if he looks away first, if he protests now, he loses. What he’s losing, he’s got no fucking clue, other than he can’t afford it. Not losing to Tom, of all people, not here.

Tom’s fingers tense on the glass he’s holding. He nods, the motion jerky but unmistakably intentional. “Okay,” he says, a low rasp. He licks his lips, swallows, and finally breaks eye contact to look over to the woman and repeat with more confidence, “Yeah, okay.”

Roman can breathe, then, can safely turn his head to see the woman smiling, oddly smug. She tilts her head in the direction of an exit to another room. When she walks away, offering a quick ‘bye’ to the other women she was standing with who Roman completely forgot about, Tom follows after her.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tom glance back at him again and ignores it. If he looks at Tom he might—he should chicken out, honestly. What the fuck is he doing? It’s one thing to encourage his future brother-in-law to have sex at his bachelor party with Shiv’s apparent blessing, it’s another to—Roman doesn’t even fucking know what he’s just agreed to. He should get out of here and try to find Sandy Furness and by unspoken agreement he and Tom will forget all about this, forever.

He follows Tom and the woman out of the room.

The shitty music grows muffled and the crowd thins out as they walk. Roman’s relieved that they seem to be heading somewhere private, at first, and then he wonders if that makes it worse somehow. It’ll be just them, nothing and no one else to focus on other than Tom and this woman he doesn’t know who took one look at the two of them and thought, what? That it’d be fun to fuck with them by suggesting some kind of threesome?

There’s no way she assumed they were gay, or something, although the fact that neither of them objected to the proposal is admittedly—it’s not gay. She’s hot. Roman’s into her, Tom’s into her, it’s fucking… guy stuff. It’s just weird because they’re not really friends, certainly not friends who’d do this kind of thing, but fuck it, she doesn’t know that. Roman doesn’t think Tom took anything, but he’s probably been drinking, so at least one of them isn’t sober; there’s some leeway.

She leads them into a small room, empty except for some couches and chairs scattered around, a table near the center. The music is barely audible here, the faintest hint of a beat in the back of Roman’s awareness. In the near-silence, he can hear with terrible clarity how Tom’s breathing hitches in anticipation as the woman takes the long-forgotten glass of champagne from him to set it down along with her own on the table.

Roman should leave. He wants to leave. Tom probably wants him to, or maybe he wouldn’t even notice—he makes a soft, surprised sound in the back of his throat as the woman steps closer, one hand curling around the back of his neck, and kisses him.

Standing behind him, Roman can’t see either of their faces. They could be anyone, he thinks, but can’t quite convince himself. Even just by the back of his fucking head, the set of his shoulders, he knows Tom. He never realized how recognizable the guy was before.

“You don’t have to do anything,” the woman mutters, barely loud enough to hear, looking at Roman over Tom’s shoulder. “If you want, you can just watch.”

Tom starts to look back at him, but she catches him with a hand on his cheek, kisses him again to swallow the start of a sentence. He stumbles forward when she pulls away, grabs onto his lapels and guides him towards the couch against the opposite wall, offers no resistance when she turns him around and gently presses him down onto it.

Mercifully, Tom’s eyes stay fixed on her the whole time, but being able to see his face is—of course Roman’s never seen this expression on him before: awed, eager, expectant. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to wipe the image from his mind, now.

With a start, Roman realizes that at some point he’s stepped closer, following them, his leg brushing against the armrest of another chair. The woman tosses her hair as she settles herself on Tom’s lap. He’s standing at just enough of an angle that although her hair blocks her face from view, he can see her smooth her hands along Tom’s chest, see Tom bite his bottom lip as his hands come to rest almost reverently at her waist.

He needs to leave. The point of no return is rapidly approaching before he’s going to most likely see Tom’s dick, which is absolutely beyond the pale. This is… awful, filthy, depraved, fucking pathetic. Roman’s just standing here watching as the man his sister is going to marry in a month fucks another woman. A woman he thinks is hot. There’s something wrong with him.

Something seriously wrong, because as the self-deprecating thoughts come rushing through his head he feels a sudden, low stab of arousal like a punch to the gut. What the fuck. Roman crosses his arms over his chest, clenches his jaw tight. His feet stay planted.

Tom’s eyes flutter closed as the woman kisses his neck and he tips his head back with a groan. He’s got long eyelashes, Roman’s noticed before. They’re his most ridiculous feature, completely at odds with everything else about him. Tall guy, broad frame, square jaw, and long, delicate eyelashes like fucking Bambi. When he’s hurt or confused, they accentuate the patheticness to an almost comedic extent. Right now—

For one moment, Tom opens his eyes and he’s looking directly at Roman. Only one moment, and then his head falls back and his breathing stutters as the woman reaches for the front of his slacks.

It could’ve been unintentional. Tom might not have even really perceived Roman in that split second, or he’d probably have reacted in a different way. When the woman glances back at him over her shoulder with a smirk, though, it’s most definitely intentional. She leans forward to whisper something in Tom’s ear and he makes a choked sound, says something unintelligible, slides his hands further up her back.

Roman perches on the armrest of the chair next to him, digs his nails into his biceps until the pain almost drowns out his awareness of the growing tent in his pants. Fuck whatever he was thinking earlier, he knows he’s losing now, even though he still doesn’t know what he’s losing at. Leaving would be admitting total defeat. Staying is untenable.

That should be him, he thinks—with the beautiful woman in his lap, although he knows if he had her there, he wouldn’t—he’d actually leave, then, which he very much isn’t doing now. She pulls away from Tom, slides off to the floor, onto her knees. Tom doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, hesitates to touch her for some fucking reason, clenches them into fists by his side. Roman wonders if Tom’s like this with Shiv, too, passive and timid, and immediately hates himself for it.

Tom’s been quiet, which Roman wouldn’t have expected; maybe he’s too conscious of his surroundings or his audience. Not that he’s thought about what Tom would be like during sex before. Either way, the first unmistakable moan feels like a victory, a sick thrill running through him at the sound. Never mind that it’s wholly unearned on Roman’s part.

He’s always had power over Tom. He’s higher up than him in the company, able to fuck with him with impunity, born into the world and the family Tom so desperately wants to claw his way into. But this is the first time Roman’s had him vulnerable. It’s awful, all of this is awful, but fuck, he likes it. He knows boring, perfect Tom’s dirty little secret. He’s part of Tom’s dirty little secret, gets all the voyeuristic fun while keeping his hands clean.

Maybe not that clean, as he finds himself reaching for his belt buckle with shaking hands. It’s not—it’s got nothing to do with Tom. It’s the situation, the woman he wants but doesn’t have, couldn’t have, not like this. This is what he wants, as shameful as it is, because of how shameful it is: sex at a remove, safely detached. He’s here and he’s not here, he’s in the middle of it and he’s uninvolved, he doesn’t have to submit to the horrific vulnerability of being touched, being seen.

Shit. It feels—good. The heady, crawling humiliation of it, the knowledge that whatever game they’re playing, they’re both losing. This is something he could hold over Tom’s head, he realizes with a curl of satisfaction low in his stomach, use to fuck with him; he’s not the one getting married in a month.

He really shouldn’t be picturing how Tom would react if Roman threatened to tell Shiv (just the right amount of details, maybe he could spin it like Tom came onto him) when he’s got his fist around his dick. But it’s either that or actually looking at Tom’s face, and imagining that dumb, hurt confusion, the flash of fear too real to be covered with a strained smile, is less incriminating than seeing whatever Tom looks like right now. Probably fucking stupid, Roman thinks viciously, he sounds fucking stupid, gasping breaths and inarticulate curses.

There’s an incongruous, harsh grunt that takes Roman a second to register as him. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek to try and stifle any more sounds, opens his eyes halfway (when did he close them?) but keeps his gaze low. Thinks about what it would be like to run his hands through that mass of golden curls. Thinks about the way the woman smirked, like she knew something he didn’t, what it would be like to look down at her between his thighs.

He thinks about Tom’s hands, that he still doesn’t seem to know what to do with, like it’s okay to get sucked off by a woman he doesn’t know but touching her while she does it is a step too far. Fucking dipshit. Roman inhales sharply, speeds up his strokes. This is Tom’s fault; he’s the one who gave the okay. Is he into this shit? Roman had thought he might be gay when Shiv introduced them, and didn’t so much stop thinking it as not care enough to keep wondering.

If he looked up right now, would Tom be watching him?

Roman doesn’t look up. He lets his eyes fall closed again, tries to blank his mind and focus on physical sensation. But he can’t shut off his hearing, and it’s too easy to picture, instead, Tom—

“I’m—fuck, I’m gonna—” Tom’s voice sounds wrecked, almost unrecognizable; it startles Roman into lifting his head, opening his eyes, and he—

–doesn’t see anything. It’s too dark, Tom’s just far enough away, and it’s only a moment before Roman screws his eyes shut and bites down harder on the inside of his cheek and cums with the taste of metal on his tongue.

His whole body buzzes, thrumming with his heartbeat rapid in his ears. He watches as the woman gets to her feet, leans forward with her hands braced against Tom’s thighs and kisses him, slow and almost sweet.

The woman pulls back. Tom swallows, wide-eyed. She grins, lifts her hand to brush a thumb against his lips.

“Good boy,” she murmurs, warmly condescending, before stepping back and turning on her heel. She considers Roman for a moment; he can only stare back and feel his skin prickle under the scrutiny, the un-fun kind of shame beginning to creep in at the edge of his thoughts.

He definitely looks like an idiot with his dick out and jizz all over his hand, but all she does is smile, say “You too,” and brush her lips against his in a jarringly chaste kiss before she walks out, calm and composed.

Roman turns to keep his eyes on her, ends up twisted around to face the door. The back of his neck feels warm. He licks his lips and doesn’t taste anything. Tom’s looking at him, he knows. Of course he is. There’s nothing else to look at.

Other than the muffled, distant music, the only sound is their ragged breathing.

Tom inhales a little too deeply, like he’s about to say something, while Roman’s trying to fumble his fly closed mostly one-handed. He bolts before he can hear what comes next.

There’s no way in hell Tom’s going to come lumbering after him now, so once he’s clean and collected, Roman sets off in search of Stewy and gets a lackluster assurance he’ll arrange a meeting with Sandy. Fucking figures with that guy. Really, he should learn from Kendall’s example: putting your trust in Stewy Hosseini will guarantee you get fucked.

It took him long enough to track Stewy down, trying to find Sandy on his own is pointless. Sandy might not even be willing to talk if Stewy doesn’t vouch for him first. Great. He threw out his plans for Prague and he’s got nothing to show for it, other than—whatever the fuck just happened. Roman doesn’t know how to categorize it, doesn’t want to think about it long enough to try.

His own words echo in his head, rattling around the inside of his skull. You get off, you eat the shame for dessert. Easier said than done. The shame’s eating at him, not the other way around. Roman moves from one room full of faceless strangers to another, feeling like something’s taken a bite out of his internal organs.

He wonders how Tom’s doing right about now, and doesn’t manage to find much consolation in the thought that he’s probably taking it worse, the repressed fuck. This is his fault, top to bottom. Tom asked Roman to plan his bachelor party, Tom nodded and gave the okay. Further back than that, even; he started dating Shiv in the first place, and then was stupid enough to not only stay with her but propose marriage, miring himself deeper and deeper in their fetid golden cesspool of a family and smiling all the while, rolling with the punches.

Whatever. That’s his poor decision to make. Roman’s a bystander, or maybe more of a spectator, morbidly fascinated by the slow, drawn-out descent preceding a crash and burn. And then Tom just had to go and get him involved.

Roman doesn’t know where he’s going, but he’s too frustrated to stay still. He walks in random directions, vague ideas of trying to find Stewy again to see if he’s actually arranging a meeting or just jacking off somewhere, avoiding Tom, of course—

A hand brushes against his shoulder. He spins around, heart in his throat, and scowls when he realizes it’s fucking Cousin Greg, of all people. Honestly, he’d forgotten the gangly fuck was here, or he’d have been trying to avoid him, too.

“Do you need something?” Roman snaps, taking a step back to put some space between them. Greg is sweating and shaky, a few stray strands of hair sticking to his forehead. He looks even more like shit than usual, frankly. Is he on something?

“Hey—hey, I was, um, looking for, if you’ve seen Kendall anywhere?” Greg has to shout to be heard, which makes his natural awkwardness even more pronounced. But he’s also talking a little too fast, mouth struggling to catch up with his brain. His eyes are huge. “Because I’m supposed to—I’m a little worried about him? I think a check-in may be in order, because I haven’t seen him in… a while, and the last time I did he, uh, did two lines.”

Roman sets his jaw, in no mood to be receiving this information. It’s not surprising to hear. He’d expected this, dreaded it, but short of following Kendall around the entire time there’s not much he can do. Outside of this party he’s got an entire life as a grown adult who can make his own choices, whether or not those choices are compelled by psycho-physiological dependence.

“And, what, you decided to go splitsies with him?”

“He, um,” Greg tucks his hair behind his ear and laughs, high and jittery. “He said that if I didn’t do them he was going to, and I was worried that—he might, like.” He makes an incomprehensible gesture with his hands that Roman decides to take as a graceless way to get around saying ‘OD.’ “And then I started getting worried that something might happen to me, but I think I’m mostly okay now. Probably.”

Despite himself, Roman feels a twinge of pity. He knows how Kendall gets, and Greg doesn’t seem to be having a great time. The twinge passes momentarily and he’s back to being annoyed when Greg leans down to ask, “So, have you seen him?”

“No, I don’t fucking know where he is. My brother’s keeper and all that.” Honestly, if Roman wasn’t preoccupied he might go looking for Kendall himself, partially to rehash the dog pound argument, but he does have shit to do, so— “Did you check with Connor or—Tom? Maybe just start asking people if they’ve seen a depressed Muppet in a blazer pass by recently, that might work.”

Greg frowns, doing a quick scan of their surroundings. “Yeah, no, they had no clue. Tom was there when, um, I did the coke? And he hasn’t seen Kendall since either. He, uh,” Greg makes a strange expression, like he doesn’t quite understand what’s coming out of his own mouth as he says, “he told me he swallowed his own load?”

The non sequitur takes a second to process. By the time Roman realizes what Greg just said and his blood turns to ice in his veins, Greg has continued, oblivious. “He said it was a thing, but I—I didn’t know that was a thing.”

He hasn’t seemed to notice Roman’s dumbstruck reaction, and he’s saying it like it really is something novel, something he doesn’t expect Roman to know about. Both the move, and the fact Tom got a blowjob in the first place.

Roman wills himself to breathe. He has to say something. “It’s called snowballing, Greg,” is the first response to come to mind. Nice and informational. An insult has to follow, or Greg might start thinking they’re friendly. “Just because you’re a fucking prude who can only get off holding hands in missionary doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.”

Greg blinks, taken aback, giving Roman precious seconds to think. So Tom told him about the woman, bragging about his bachelor party sexcapades to a buddy, but he left Roman out of it. Of course he left Roman out of it; Roman wasn’t really involved, might as well not have been there. It’s better for everyone if he wasn’t there.

He’s relieved, at first. Then suddenly, inexplicably, there’s an awful feeling boiling in the pit of his stomach and he’s clenching his hands into fists. Fucking Tom, he thinks, and the name is like acid in his brain, dissolving everything around it and turning his mind into a murky sludge. What the fuck.

“Oh,” Greg says weakly. “I, um, didn’t know that.”

There’s an unconvincing note in his voice that Roman doesn’t care enough to analyze. This conversation needs to be over ten minutes ago. “Congratulations, you learned something new today. Maybe tomorrow you’ll figure out how to convince a woman to let you fuck her so you can try it out,” he says with an insincere smile.

That gets Greg to recoil and look around them again, more desperately this time. “Uh, I’m—I think I’m gonna go look for Kendall,” he mumbles, taking an uncertain step backwards.

“Yeah, well.” Roman waves him off like he’s swatting a fly. “Good luck with that, this place is a maze.”

Greg stumbles off in a hurry, clearly trying and failing to blend in with the people surrounding him on account of his absurd height. He looks like a fucking idiot, and the sight takes some of the edge off of Roman’s irritation. That must be why Tom practically adopted him as his sidekick. Greg may be the only person in existence who could make Tom look almost respectable in comparison.

His brain’s scrambled, thoughts all over the place. Roman reorients. Stewy. Sandy. Fifty local TV stations. A woman looking his way.

The woman looking his way.

When she sees him staring, stunned, she just smiles mildly, raises her eyebrows. She’s by herself this time, the other women she was hanging out with earlier nowhere to be seen. Again, he thinks, Dad would like her. In any other situation, Roman might say fuck it and approach her. In this situation, he’s mostly considering whether or not he could get her to sign an NDA.

His skin prickles. He was barely there, shouldn’t have been there. According to Tom, he wasn’t, and Roman certainly isn’t going to contradict him. It’s just her with an alternate, incorrect perspective on things, but she’s outvoted two to one.

Official ruling, then, is that Roman wasn’t there. Tom got a fun, horrible story to tell about his bachelor party, and Roman isn’t involved in any way. There’s no reason not to smile back and head over.

Roman leaves Rhomboid with reasonable confidence he’s secured a deal and Tabitha’s number. He’s pretty pleased with himself up until Kendall, for some fucking reason, shoves him on their way out of the elevator.

It’s more surprising than painful, leaves him feeling off-kilter as they join back up with the rest of their little gang to wait for the cars. The sky is a dull, pre-dawn gray. Everything looks cold and lifeless.

Roman is suddenly, keenly aware that it’s five a.m. and freezing.

“Greg tells me you swallowed your own load,” Connor remarks off-handedly as he and Kendall approach, phone held to his ear.

This time, Roman’s able to take the statement in stride. His name doesn’t figure in, there’s no implications to be mined. The repetition makes it real.

Tom nods easily. “Yeah, it was… yeah. It was pretty wild,” he laughs, sounding more tired than anything. “It’s cool though, ‘cause it’s like I didn’t cheat, ‘cause all the sperm stayed in my own body. Like a closed-loop system, so…”

He trails off. “It’d be really nice to see Shiv.”

Closed-loop system. Tie a neat little bow on this night and go back home to his fiancée like nothing ever happened. Tom’s bachelor party is a complete story, a neat, contained experience just outside the edge of reality, and there’s not going to be any need to open it up and dig through the viscera ever again.

Roman slinks up to Tom’s left. "Congratulations, Tom.”

Tom looks over to him, face carefully blank, worry pulling at the corners of his eyes.

Evenly, Roman meets his gaze and says, “I hear you swallowed your own load."

To his credit, Tom doesn't flinch. He turns back to stare out at the horizon and says, defeated, "Yeah, I did."

That’s all there is to say between them. The repetition makes it real. Roman heard the story from Greg, just like Connor did, and that’s all he knows. It would be fucking insane to suggest otherwise.

Apart from Connor gushing over the phone to Willa, the five of them wait in silence until the cars arrive. The whole ride home, up until he falls asleep alone in his own bed, Roman thinks with a vindictive pointedness that Tom doesn’t know her name is Tabitha.

Chapter Text

Tabitha’s great. Really.

She’s hot, she’s funny, she’s fucking smart, like crazy smart—he hadn’t really processed Tom saying they’d talked for twenty minutes about financial derivatives at the time, but honestly Roman thinks she might do a better job running Waystar than he ever could. When he tells her this, she laughs, thanks him, and passes on the opportunity to ask him about his dad or his stake in the company, which makes him fall in love with her a little bit.

When she pulls a ‘your place or mine’ and he makes a stupid excuse, she just smiles, says okay, and doesn’t push it. Kisses him goodbye without any expectations, which makes him… feel something he doesn’t know how to categorize, toeing the line between pleasant and unpleasant but definitely unfamiliar. It takes the bite out of his own cringing self-awareness, smooths down some of the raw edges.

She’s only brought Tom up once, during their first real conversation at Rhomboid. Roman had simply told her it was his friend’s bachelor party, he was getting married in a month, and Tabitha had cocked her head with an unreadable expression, taken a sip of her drink and changed the subject.

He’s mentioned Tom since then, a slow drip-feed of information when he’s come up in conversation: his name, his position in the company, the fact he’s marrying Roman’s sister. Maybe on some level, he wonders if she’ll take the bait and make a thing out of it. Tabitha simply acknowledges the new information and lets it go every time.

So he lets his guard down, and he doesn’t think anything will come of it when the next time they meet up at his apartment he asks, “Hey, could I get your thoughts on something?”

“Sure,” Tabitha agrees readily, having made herself at home on the couch. “Is it business related?”

“No, personal. Or…” Roman considers for a moment, perches himself on the armrest across from her. “Both, technically. Do you think it would be a nice—not a gift, exactly, but a nice thing,” he waves his hands in circles, “gesture, to time the rocket launch for Shiv’s wedding?”

She mulls it over, looking up towards the ceiling in thought. “Not exactly what I think of when I think ‘wedding gift.’ A rocket is a little…”

“Too much?”

“You don’t want to do something more traditional?” Tabitha suggests with a tilt of her head. “Random pick from the wedding registry?”

Roman groans. “That’s boring, normo shit. We don’t really do traditional gifts, it’s not like she can’t afford her own fucking dish towels.” He shrugs, fidgets with his wristwatch. “I just figured it would be nice, like—like fireworks. Commemorative. Fun.” God, he can barely stop from cringing, hearing how stupid it sounds out loud.

“It’s… thoughtful.” Roman’s not totally sure if Tabitha’s just humoring him or not. Her expression gives nothing away. “It shows that you, you know, think about her and you want something special for her wedding day. I mean, this is something you would’ve needed to plan a while ago, though, if you wanted everything to line up.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s been the plan for ages,” he says. “But now we’re coming up on the date, and it looks like there’s some… concerns, about me pushing to speed it up, that could maybe lead to some delays.”

Tabitha raises her eyebrows.

“Not—anything big,” Roman assures her, waving a hand dismissively. He’s not a rocket scientist, ha ha, but he does consider himself pretty good at detecting bullshit, and the emails he’s been receiving are really just complicated engineering jargon with no substance. “Stupid shit. But I do have to decide now whether it one hundred percent has to be on the wedding day or if it’s okay to let it go.”

She nods, thoughtful. “I mean, I don’t know your sister. Do you think she would like it?”

“Shiv?” Roman frowns. He hadn’t really considered that, he’d just thought the gesture would be nice. “I don’t know,” he admits. “She can be a real bitch sometimes. But it’s—I went through a lot of effort to try and arrange this, it’s a satellite launched in her honor, she has to appreciate that.”

Tabitha furrows her brow slightly, glancing off to the side and deliberating for a moment. “What about Tom? Would he like it?”

Roman stares at her blankly. “Why would it matter if Tom likes it?”

“He’s the groom, Rome,” she points out with great patience. “It’s his wedding too.”

Right. Roman mostly thinks of it as Shiv’s wedding, because she’s his sister and clearly the one wearing the pants in that relationship. It still hasn’t entirely sunk in that Shiv’s getting married to Tom Wambsgans of all people. Tom’s more of a barnacle that got attached to her one day than a person of his own. His opinions don’t factor into Roman’s decision-making.

“I don’t know. I don’t fucking care.” God, but Tom’s the corniest guy to walk the earth, maybe he would be flattered by the gesture and the effort it took. That almost makes Roman want to scrap the whole idea. “Maybe, I don’t know. It’s for Shiv, not him.”

Tabitha gives him a side-eye and a confused smile that he doesn’t enjoy. “Aren’t you his best man?”

“I’m—we’re not, like, friends, if I haven’t made that clear.” Which he hasn’t, Roman realizes, because that’s literally how he introduced himself to Tabitha and they haven’t talked about Tom since then to clear up the misconception.

Who’d have thought these complications might arise from dating someone who sucked off your brother-in-law at his bachelor party? “Tom just asked me because his actual friends aren’t rich or interesting enough, and I figured fuck it, why not? I’m obligated to attend anyways, might as well take the chance to roast him during my best man speech.”

“...But you’re not friends,” Tabitha says, making no effort to hide her skepticism.

She seems oddly amused by the whole thing. Roman doesn’t get the joke and he’s not happy about it. “No,” he scoffs. “Of course not. I don’t know what impression you got, but Tom is quite possibly the most boring man alive.”

She takes this in without offering any comment or changing her expression in any way. “And exactly how long have you known each other?”

He’s pretty sure he won’t like where this line of questioning is going, but Roman decides to humor her anyway. “Shiv started bringing him to events and little family get-togethers maybe two years ago or so? None of us thought he would last longer than a month or two—me and Kendall actually had a bet going for a while about when and how she’d dump him, Connor thought it was ‘bad taste’ or whatever.”

That gets a laugh out of her. Roman grins, remembering their chaotic introductions to Shiv’s new Midwestern beau. Kendall had been a little too aware of Nate’s absence to respond with anything but stiffness, but Roman was equal parts disbelieving and delighted. Hey, blink twice if you’re a hired actor. Wambsgans? How’s that spelled?

The delight had been short-lived, after Roman had his first real conversation with Tom and Shiv started nudging Logan about getting someone new in at Parks. “But then she got him a job at Waystar, and by some miracle they survived Dad shipping him off to the other side of the world for a while, and now they’re getting married, so neither of us won that.”

Roman had thought Hong Kong would spell the end of Tom’s tenure as Shiv’s tagalong. Honestly, he’s not totally convinced that spite didn’t factor into Shiv sticking it out—maybe if he’d resisted the urge to make some stupid quip at the RECNY that year, a butterfly would’ve flapped its wings. Shiv would have thrown in the towel, told Tom there was no need to catch a plane back to New York.

Or maybe not. “Anyway,” he concludes with a shrug, “now Tom is a permanent, bland fixture in our lives. At least until they get divorced.”

He expects another laugh, but Tabitha’s plainly staring at him, searching his face for something. The back of Roman’s neck prickles. He narrows his eyes. “What? You’re looking at me like…”

“Nothing!” She pulls back, raising her hands in a placating gesture. “Nothing. Just, that wasn’t really the vibe I got from you two.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” she draws the word out playfully, “at the bachelor party you planned for him, you seemed pretty friendly. I mean, you were playing wingman.”

That’s… the thing is, Tabitha isn’t technically wrong, she just lacks context. “Yeah,” he concedes, frowning, “but that was—do you know how long Tom spent telling everyone about the ‘hall pass’ Shiv gave him to fuck whoever he wanted? Without actually fucking anyone?”

“I have an idea, actually,” she replies cheerfully, “considering that after we flirted for half an hour he ran off the moment I asked if he wanted to fuck.”

It’s not new information, but Roman finds himself taken aback. He still can’t wrap his head around why Tabitha would approach Tom of all people—he could ask, sure, and she’d probably tell him, but he also kind of doesn’t want to know—and she’s so direct about it. No qualms or hangups, while Roman can’t make eye contact, finding himself staring at the floor. “Exactly. I just needed him to… fucking, nut up or shut up, it was driving me crazy. I was, honestly, just doing what needed to be done to preserve my sanity.”

Sounding completely unconvinced, Tabitha says, “Right. No, no, absolutely. Very non-friendly.”

Before Roman can interject and defend himself, she tacks on, “Except, you know, to put it bluntly, you also watched and jerked off while I gave him a blowjob.”

Roman’s barely able to think about it—scratch that, he’s completely unable to think about what happened at Tom’s bachelor party, and she just came out and said it with no hesitation. He opens his mouth but fails to come up with anything to say. Tabitha doesn’t even look judgmental or smug, when he dares to peek at her out of the corner of his eye. She’s just watching him, content to let the silence sit, and that’s somehow worse.

“I thought we weren’t talking about that,” he mumbles, staring down at his hands.

“Really? I didn’t know.”

“Like, as an unspoken thing. What happens in the underground sex club stays in the underground sex club.” He scratches at the back of his head. “Isn’t that the first rule of underground sex clubs?”

Tabitha just seems entertained, when he raises his head to look at her. “I don’t think that holds up if you start dating someone you met at an underground sex club.”

Roman sighs. Again, she isn’t technically wrong, but— “Okay, but that’s—Tom didn’t have anything to do with that.” He waves his hands dismissively, fully aware what he’s saying sounds stupid but unable to phrase it any better. “We’re two cool, sexy people who happened to meet and start talking and hit it off. All the—the other shit, it’s irrelevant. Might as well not have happened.”

She frowns, amusement vaporizing and something else taking its place. Roman would say she looks concerned, except that’s fucking ridiculous, why would she be concerned? “I mean, Roman,” she says, with an inexplicable, awful gentleness, “it did happen, even if you don’t want to talk about it.”

Roman ducks his head and fiddles with the band of his watch, trying to ignore the acrid taste in his mouth. “If I acknowledge that it happened,” not that it did, really, but it seems like the quickest way out of this conversation, “but also point out that it’s not important or relevant, can we stop talking about it?”

“I would like to talk about it,” Tabitha retorts, “since I do think it is pretty relevant, actually. If it’s so awful for you, we don’t have to, but—” She pauses, tilts her head with a curious look. “You know I’m not… judging you, right? It was my idea.”

Roman swallows thickly. His brain can only conjure up incoherent statements—she should judge him, it was her idea but it was Tom’s fault, it didn’t fucking happen, that’s the story. Roman only approached her because it didn’t happen, so it’s not relevant, they shifted tracks into this reality and that’s where they’ll be staying, thank you very much. It’s one or the other, and, well, he genuinely likes Tabs. He’s not going to give that up so he can engage in navel-gazing about his fucked up sexual proclivities.

She really should judge him. Roman hadn’t considered that Tabitha would be capable of acknowledging the incident as real without judging him for it. He’d been stupid enough to think her lack of open disgust was a silent agreement to forget about the entire thing.

Judgment would be better than… whatever this is. At least he knows what to do with disgust. It’s one-note, predictable, practically an old friend at this point. There’s no active thought in sitting back and let revulsion wash over him, in all its mind-numbing simplicity.

He opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again to find himself asking, a barely audible mumble, “Why did you come up with it in the first place?”

“I thought it would be fun.” She makes it sound so simple and obvious, punctuating the sentence with a relaxed shrug. “Admittedly, I was a little high, but as a general rule, when I meet people I think are hot I try to have sex with them. And I thought you might be into it, both of you.”

Tabitha pauses, Roman’s pretty sure just for effect, then adds, “As far as I could tell, you both were into it.”

Yeah, any straight man would be into getting sucked off by a gorgeous woman. It’s Roman who’s left looking like a freak, because he was into it, which makes him at best a voyeur and at worst, it could be argued, kind of gay, maybe. He’s never wanted to come back and analyze what gets him off after the getting off is accomplished, and this time is no exception.

When he goes a little too long without responding, Tabitha shifts to face him fully, legs tucked underneath her on the couch. The concern on her face is undeniable now, which is stupid. This is only an issue if she makes it an issue. Roman’s fine, or he will be as soon as they change the subject.

“Hey,” she says, so soft it makes him want to scream, “you did—did you have fun? If—”

“Yes, I fucking—obviously.” He doesn’t let the implications of her words settle in, spits out his own admission to beat them back. It was his choice to follow Tom and Tabitha, and his choice to stay and then pull his dick out, and he—liked it, it’s just. That’s all in past tense, it’s lost, ancient history. “I just don’t want to talk about it. It didn’t happen. Not, like, really.”

He’s met with pure, blank confusion. “And what you mean by that is…?”

“What do I—” Roman cuts himself off with a groan, throws his hands up in frustration. “I mean, I might as well have not been there, I wasn’t… actually involved. And Tom wants to forget about the whole thing because he’s getting married, and I want to forget about it because I don’t want to think about my girlfriend giving my brother-in-law a blowjob. So. Majority vote, didn’t happen.”

Tabitha takes a second to react with a startled laugh. “Roman, that’s not how it works. You don’t majority vote to decide on reality.”

“Sounds like something someone who’s outvoted would say.”

“No, seriously.” She scoots closer, her voice insistent. “Is it just the getting married to your sister thing? Because I get that, I do, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. I just thought… You know, when…” For the first time since Roman’s met Tabitha, he sees doubt flicker across her face.

She hesitates. It comes out a little too sincere when she says, “I’m not judging you, really. It’s fine. Even if he is getting married to your sister, it’s not… I, mean, probably don’t tell her, but I for one am perfectly happy to factually acknowledge that the two of you had a good time.”

That’s—hearing it phrased like that catches him up, because— “Wait, wait.” Roman holds up a hand to stop her. “You’re making it sound like something happened between me and Tom.”

“Well, yes, because it did, Roman, we just went over this. Even if—”

“No, hold on.” There’s no way she’s trying to take a turn down this road. Roman shakes his head in disbelief. “That’s not—not between him and me. The two of you, that’s a direct connection. Three of us, jury’s out. But very clearly, Tom was not involved in me getting off and I was not involved in him getting off.”

Tabitha is looking at him like he’s stupid, which is insane. “So you were just masturbating for entirely unrelated reasons.”

Roman tries and fails to repress a wince. “Not Tom related reasons. Fucking, you related reasons.” He flaps a hand towards Tabitha in a vague, throwaway gesture. “You’re hot.”

“Sure. Okay. And I guess by that logic, you think he—” She seems to realize something halfway through and restarts her sentence. “You realize that’s still more—involvement, sexually, between the two of you than there has been between the two of us, independent of Tom.”

“What?” Roman frowns, furrowing his brow as he tries to make the mental math add up. It doesn’t compute. “No, it’s not.”

“I don’t know if this has escaped your notice,” she says slowly, “but we haven’t actually fucked yet.”

Well, when she puts it like that. They haven’t, he hasn’t even tried, really. Tabitha’s obviously interested, when I meet people I think are hot I try to have sex with them, even if she hasn’t pushed it yet. And Roman likes her, likes simply hanging out with her, likes the smaller, chaste expressions of affection. She’s hot, objectively, he just said.

He would like to have sex with her. His mind won’t let him conceptualize it in detail, but he would like to. In the abstract sense, at least, of sex as—a thing that normal people do with each other when they’re attracted to each other, without all the nitty-gritty of the exposure, the skin-crawling intimacy and bare affection.

“We could… try,” he offers, trying to sound more certain than he actually is. It’s worth a try. Hearing his own voice, he wants to cringe. He sounds like a fucking child.

Tabitha smiles, crooked and a little skeptical, and tilts her head to the side until it’s straight again. “...Could we?”

The audible doubt in her voice pulls at something in the pit of his stomach, and he snaps back into spiteful conviction. “Fuck you,” he says. “Yeah we can.” Roman practically lunges towards her across the couch; she lets out a shriek that dissolves into peals of laughter, and he likes the sound of it so much he almost believes it will work out.

It doesn’t work out. It’s not Tabitha’s fault, exactly, she didn’t do anything wrong, but she is—responsible, because where Roman would try to push through any hesitation she notices, and stops him, and tries to figure it out, which is decidedly unsexy.

He tells her as much. She shoots back, “What do you find sexy, then?” The next thing he knows, he’s been tricked into some kind of fuck negotiation that’s too reminiscent of a business deal in all the wrong ways to be titillating.

The end result is a bastardized echo of the bachelor party, Roman looking like a fucking idiot with his dick in his hand and shame creeping in at the edges of his thoughts. It’s worse, somehow, and not in a fun way—because he and Tabs know each other now, and she’s looking at him, he’s too aware of her proximity, he can’t—

It doesn’t work out. They shelve the issue for another day. Roman excuses himself to the bathroom, splashes cold water on his face and stares into the darkness of a towel over his eyes for a minute until he feels a little more like himself and less like a weird, shambling pile of flesh, too aware of how blood moves through his body. When he steps back into the bedroom, he flops face-first onto the mattress before he attempts to make eye contact.

He’s afraid Tabs will bring up Tom again, then he’s irritated with himself for bringing Tom up mentally. So can you only get off if another man is in the room? It’s low-hanging fruit to pick, but she doesn’t go for it. She gives him this gentle look that makes him scrunch up his nose and turn away, and then she laughs it off and it’s fine.

He doesn’t know what to say. She looks stunning. Tabs is always fucking hot, but there’s something about the dimmer lighting, her relaxed pose sitting on the side of the bed leaning back on her hands. Even the unbearably gentle expression on her face. She’s not looking at him with judgment or irritation, she’s just looking at him because she thinks Roman’s something to look at.

Lying on his stomach, he props himself up on his elbows and asks, “Do you want to come to the wedding?”

Tabitha looks at him over her shoulder for a moment before she says anything, processing the change in subject. “You want me to come to your sister’s wedding?” she repeats, carefully enunciated and clearly skeptical.

“It’ll be fucking boring without you,” Roman says, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. He traces spirals in the sheets with his index finger, wrinkle then smooth. It takes his mind off of… the other stuff. “You know, that beautiful cold, gray English countryside and thousand year old decrepit castle, it’s riveting stuff. And you could meet my mom, I think you’d like each other. The rest of my family too, I guess.”

Tabitha smiles, but there’s still confusion in her eyes. “That sounds… lovely, but, you know, wouldn’t it be… inappropriate?”

When Roman frowns at her, she turns towards him, pulling her legs up onto the bed. “Because of the thing that didn’t happen?”

“Oh.” Honestly, he hadn’t considered that at all; he’s been preoccupied with dreading how dull the wedding is going to be. His dad was right to bow out of all that boring, stuffy ceremony, but Roman doesn’t have the luxury. Sure, he’s got the launch lined up, and a great, horrible best man speech planned, but that’s only two bright spots in a surrounding void of drudgery.

With Tabs around, he’ll have someone to hang out with, to complain to, to make fun of the yuppie liberals Shiv will no doubt invite by the dozens. In bygone years, he’d have talked shit with Shiv at fancy events, but this is her own wedding. Tabitha will be sure to spice things up.

“I mean, again, did not happen,” he clarifies, once more, “so it won’t be an issue. I can bring a plus one to my own sister’s wedding.”

Before Tabitha can start up the argument again, which she clearly wants to, Roman moves first. “And, technically, whatever may or may not have happened was given the green light.” Sure, Shiv probably didn’t give Tom a hall pass with the expectation Roman would turn up with his bachelor party hookup to their wedding, but… huh.

“Actually,” Roman muses, an idea slowly forming, “maybe that’s another reason you should come.”

Tabitha leans back slightly, a look of disbelief on her face. “Roman Roy,” she says, “are you trying to use me to sabotage your sister’s wedding?”

“No, I’m not—do you think I’m that much of an asshole?” Marrying Tom is definitely a bad decision, but it’s Shiv’s bad decision to make. Roman’s never had an active interest in the destruction of their relationship, he just figured it was inevitable that Tom would get scared off or Shiv would regain her standards and dump the dead weight. If a couple years of dating didn’t do it, a few years married are sure to ferment their relationship into a fine, full-bodied acrimonious divorce, at which point he’ll cash in his obligatory ‘I always thought he was trash’ and move on with his life.

He shrugs, waves his hand dismissively. “Shiv wants to get hitched to some nobody with a hard-on for her last name, good for her. I hope they have a wonderful, loving marriage up until he finds out she’s been fucking the poolboy.”

Tabitha stifles a laugh, attempting to look disapproving but clearly struggling not to smile. “Roman.”

“What?” Roman can’t stop himself from smiling either, pleased with himself. “She can get married to and then inevitably divorced from whoever she wants, that’s her right. But it is also my right, as her brother and the best man, to have some fun with—by fucking with Tom.”

“Oh, so it’s about Tom.” Tabitha looks skeptical, but not wholly uninterested. She puts a funny emphasis on his name that Roman doesn’t know exactly what to make of; she’s the one making this about Tom, if anything. He’d accuse her of being hung up on him if the thought didn’t make him nauseous. “You know, usually, the best man is supposed to support the groom.”

Well, Roman doesn’t really do anything in the usual way. “If Tom didn’t want me to rag on him at his wedding, he shouldn’t have…” Shouldn’t have looked him in the eye and said Okay. Shouldn’t have told fucking Greg that he swallowed his own load. “...asked me in the first place. He knew what he was signing up for.”

“You didn’t have to say yes.”

That gives Roman pause. It was a ‘why not’ thought process more than anything, but for some reason he hadn’t ever seriously considered turning down Tom’s offer. He doesn’t particularly want to put any more thought into it.

“Too late for that now.” He shrugs, shifts onto his side to face her directly. “Look, do you want to come or not? It’s fine if you say no, it’s a wedding in England in March, the only other person you’ll know will be Tom, you probably have way more interesting things to do, I get it.”

Tabitha chuckles. “You’re not doing a great job selling it,” she says, leaning back in and tilting her head to the side. “But yes, if you want me to come, I’ll come. To spend time with you and meet your family, not to ruin your sister’s wedding.”

“I don’t want to ruin her wedding. It’s fucking—I’m just giving Tom shit, it’s like…” Roman waves his hand vaguely, failing to come up with an appropriate word. “Hazing, I don’t know. Marriages in our family have a seventy-five percent failure rate, did you know that? If he can’t handle a little ribbing, then he’s not gonna make it.”

“How benevolent of you,” Tabitha says, raising her eyebrows. So it’s a flimsy justification, sue him.

“Okay,” he sighs, “and I just get a kick out of fucking with him. It’s—you, fucking, made him swallow his own load, you should get it. He’s an easy target, he’s so…”

Roman’s never had to justify being a dick to Tom before; he’s just got an innate, bullyable aura that’s hard to describe. He’s always so deferential, eager to roll over, with his strained polite smiles and forced, loud laughs. It’s fun to insult him to his face and watch him take it on the chin, but there’s something satisfying about getting him to properly flinch. “I mean, just imagine the look on his face when he sees you.”

Tabitha pauses for a moment to glance up at the ceiling and, presumably, imagine Tom’s face. The corners of her lips twitch into a small smile, and she lasts only seconds before chuckling and admitting, “It does sound fun.”

“Right? It’s good, harmless, very slightly mean-spirited fun. Not wedding-ruining fun. And Tom’s, you know, in love with Shiv,” Roman emphasizes the words with finger quotes and retches for good measure, “and she’s fucking stubborn, so the fact you sucked him off—with her okay, technically—isn’t going to… implode their whole relationship. If anything, like, actually happens, Shiv will just call me a dick for bringing you to stir shit and maybe she won’t talk to me for a month, that’s nothing new.”

Tabitha gives him a curious look, lips pursed in thought and eyes narrowed slightly.

He squints back at her. “What?”

She shakes her head, smiling. “Nothing.” The word hangs for a moment, while she keeps smiling like there’s a joke here that she’s the only one in on. “You’re an interesting guy, you know that?”

It sure sounds like there’s something, if she follows it up with that, but Roman’s had his fill of involved conversation for the night. He’ll let her have this. “I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment.”

Tabitha laughs, gives him plenty of time to pull away before she leans forward to kiss him, so light it’s almost nothing. “It is.”

Chapter Text

The last time Roman visited England was… Jesus, maybe more than a year ago? His mom doesn’t come stateside if she can help it, thinks of it as ‘your father’s territory,’ and while Roman keeps in touch, it’s not often he has the opportunity to see her in person. Since Logan’s birthday turned near-death experience and all the mess that followed, he’s been even more pressed for time.

(Early December. Over the phone, Caroline goes quiet for several seconds too long before saying, Well, of course, I understand. I suppose I’ll have to take a tumble down the stairs myself if I want to see you anytime soon. But she laughs easily when Roman begs her not to say shit like that, his reward for providing the correct answer.)

He’s looking forward to seeing her. The castle and the country, not so much. Maybe he should have some nostalgia for the backdrops of fond childhood memories, but it’s difficult to muster up much three decades later when the memories really weren’t that fond. A kind of blankness settles over him while he stares out of the car window, leaves everything muffled and distant.

“So,” Tabitha says as they step out of the car, “is it like you remember?”

She’s been trying to prompt conversation since they stepped off the jet, with mixed results. If she’d spent less time trying to work the childhood angle, she might have been more successful. Roman squints at the church steeple in the distance and tries not to shiver.

“Not at all,” he grunts. “We weren’t ever big church-going people.” Why bother going to a church to find God when, as far as you’re concerned, he’s just down the hallway? The last time Roman was in one was probably for Logan's wedding to Marcia, and isn’t that a funny thought. “I think I see my mom waiting for us, let’s head over.”

There’s no shift into familiarity as they draw closer, just Caroline, smiling and waving, and an uncomfortable awareness of exactly how cold it is here. She greets Roman with a hug and an exaggerated kiss on the cheek. “You’ve arrived before the bride and groom,” she informs them, “who would’ve thought?”

Only after she pulls back does she register Tabitha; she gives her a once-over, raising her eyebrows when there’s no spark of recognition. “And who’s this?”

“Mom, this is Tabitha.” Roman gestures towards her, looking pleased. “Tabs, this is my mom.” He slips into an affected, posh accent, and adds a flourish of his hand. “Lady Caroline Collingwood.”

“Oh, a new girlfriend!” A grin breaks out on her face with the realization. “Delighted to meet you.” Caroline offers a hand, which Tabitha takes, returning the sentiment with a polite smile. She immediately turns back to Roman, curious. “What happened to the other one, with that precious little girl?”

Roman glances back over his shoulder, checking if any other members of the wedding party are close by. He’s anticipating the arrival of the bride and groom with no small amount of excitement. “Grace? Yeah, she…” A nondescript black car approaches, indistinguishable from the rest of the small fleet they’ve got puttering around. He turns back to Caroline and shrugs. “It didn’t work out,” he says, a quick mumble. “She was kind of, if you’ll excuse my language, a demanding bitch.”

Tabitha raises her eyebrows. Roman’s mentioned Grace in passing but hasn’t talked about her in any detail. It’s just poor etiquette to start complaining about your ex right off the bat, and there’s not much to say, anyway. He doesn’t look over to her, keeps his eyes trained on his mom, who absorbs this information with mild interest.

“Well,” Caroline chuckles, “I always thought she was a bit… you know. Something arrogant about her. But you seem lovely,” she tacks on as an afterthought, turning to Tabitha as if she’s just remembered her presence. “Roman’s told me nothing at all about you. He likes to keep his girlfriends a secret from me, I think.”

Grace had regarded Caroline with a kind of wariness that seemed better suited for a stray dog wandering too close to a picnic table, or a vulture in the middle of a slow, circular descent. Tabitha looks more entertained than put off by her total disregard for tact, which is a good sign. She maintains her smile and returns easily, “Well, he’s spoken very highly of you.”

“Is that so?” Caroline glances towards him, looking pleased. “It’s been so long since he came by to visit I was starting to worry he’d forgotten all about me.”

Roman frowns, about to protest and explain, again, that he just can’t find the time, especially with the upcoming launch. Caroline preempts him with a touch to his shoulder and a laugh. “I’m joking, I’m joking. You’re swamped in work, your father’s not well, I know. At least you’re here now, thanks to your sister.”

Something catches her attention and she pauses to look back over her shoulder. “And there’s our happy couple. Hello!” She calls out to them with entirely too much cheer in her voice to come off as sincere. “Hello, hello.”

Roman turns to see, finally, Tom and Shiv making their way towards them, Kendall trailing a few steps behind with his stupid hat and dead-eyed stare, like a little personified storm cloud.

He hasn’t had a real conversation with Tom since the bachelor party. He’s not even sure he’s seen the guy, actually. Sure, they may technically work at the same company, but Roman hasn’t touched Parks with a ten-foot pole in years, he’s washed his hands of the kiddie shit, and there weren’t any family gatherings in the interim where they would’ve crossed paths—though it’s been a while since Tom’s been forced to turn to Roman for company. He just holes up in the corner with Greg these days, whenever Shiv leaves him to his own devices, in defiance of the fact that there’s never a good reason for Greg to be… well, anywhere.

Saying this lack of contact was a relief doesn’t get it quite right. In order for Roman to be relieved, he would have had to be anxious in the first place, which he wasn’t. Why would he be? There’s no reason to worry about interacting normally with someone you never talk to, when you’ve mutually agreed there’s no reason things wouldn’t be normal.

He honestly hadn’t thought about seeing Tom at all, much less worried about it, until he got the idea to invite Tabitha to the wedding. Until he’d imagined for the first time how Tom might react to a tangible reminder of his little indiscretion slipped right under Shiv’s nose, and suddenly found himself looking forward to the occasion with acidic glee, bright and sharp as biting into a lemon. The childish, bitter satisfaction of refusing to flinch first.

Now that Tom’s actually in front of him, it’s impossible for Roman to repress a shit-eating grin. Shiv comes in for her requisite hug from Mom and hollow exchange of affection, but Roman barely processes it. He’s focused on pinpointing the moment when recognition strikes.

Tom’s carefully crafted, mother-in-law-pleasing veneer wavers when he looks over towards them, then cracks; in three seconds, his expression shifts past suspicion into slack-jawed disbelief.

There it is. Got him. Roman gestures towards Tabitha, who offers up a friendly, unassuming smile. “Tom, remember Tabs?”

Three words, perfectly crafted for maximum impact, delivered like a completely normal introduction. Tom glances between the two of them like he’s trying to convince himself that no, that can’t possibly be—and then he only has a moment to plaster on his well-behaved son-in-law look before it’s his turn to be greeted.

For one moment Roman’s convinced he’s going to burst out laughing and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He turns his face into Tabitha’s shoulder; she looks down at him, clearly amused, as Tom and Caroline exchange kisses on the cheek.

“Gosh, look at you.” Caroline steps back to give him a cursory once-over. “You’re very plausible.”

Her tone is light and easy, which always catches people off guard. Tom is no exception, hesitating with a confused quirk of his eyebrows before replying, “Oh, thank you.”

“Exactly,” Caroline says with a withering chuckle.

Looking no less confused, Tom laughs, like if it isn’t actually a compliment the only other option is for it to be a joke. Roman just raises his eyebrows and smacks his lips, trying not to laugh himself. If he does, Tom might not realize that he’s the punchline.

Perhaps realizing her fiancé’s in dire need of support, Shiv smiles and rubs Tom’s shoulder before taking his arm and leaning into him, managing to make the simple gesture look just a little too unnatural to believe—less marital affection and more marionette. Plausible, indeed. The one jab seems to have satisfied Caroline, though, and she directs her attention to their final straggler trudging up the path.

(Roman also hasn’t had a real conversation with Kendall since Tom’s bachelor party, which isn’t worth thinking about. They’ll talk if they talk. There’s not much they have to say to each other.)

Tom bounces back from the neat one-two punch with practiced ease. He doesn’t even wince when Roman introduces Tabitha to Shiv with an overacted, “Have you guys met?” That’s disappointing, but the challenge of rattling Tom is part of the fun. There will be plenty of opportunities to knock him off balance in the next two days.

While Tabs greets Shiv in a perfectly ordinary, polite manner, Roman smirks at Tom over her shoulder. Tom, already giving him a wary side-eye, freezes for a split second before quickly looking away and mumbling a half-hearted hello in Tabitha’s direction. It’s about finding joy in the little things.

The joy is short-lived. Caroline steps back from hugging Kendall, who immediately turns to Roman and acknowledges him with a flat “Bro.”

Really? Just “Bro?” That’s not even worth a response, not in English at least. Roman imitates a dog barking: Intruder alert! Failed usurper in our midst! Bite his ankles! Fuck you! If Kendall feels rejected, he doesn’t show it, though it’s hard to glean any finer emotions from the grim mask of despondency he’s got going on these days.

Caroline breezes past this without a second thought. “So, shall we go and play happy families?”

“Yes! Great.” After only a minute of exposure to Caroline’s particular brand of conversational warfare, Tom’s usual oblivious enthusiasm is flagging already. Roman doesn’t know why Shiv didn’t introduce them sooner.

He takes Tabitha’s hand in his as they head into the church. Kendall speedwalks past, but Tom falls into step beside them, looking somewhat lost as he takes in his surroundings—unfamiliar territory in both the literal and social sense.

Roman can’t resist laughing at his expense. “Mom’s giving you a hard time. That’s good, that means she thinks you’re part of the family.”

Tom’s initially wary look when Roman started talking fades into something more sheepish. “Well, that’s—honestly, from what Shiv said, you make her sound like…” He pauses, clearly expecting to see Shiv when he glances over to his other side. Instead, he has to turn halfway around to find her and Caroline still talking by the entrance.

For a moment Tom hesitates, like he might retreat to offer backup. Instead, he turns back to Roman and Tabitha with an overly wide smile that reads more frantic than friendly. “That was nothing, that was very friendly, really. I expected much worse. So, uh,” he gestures towards Tabs, “sorry, just to—I didn’t catch your name, you’re…”

“This is Tabitha.” Roman touches his hand to her elbow and smiles back, smug. Tabitha mirrors his expression with a tilt of her head. “We’re dating.”

Tom looks between the two of them with an unconvincing chuckle, slowly rising panic in his eyes. “Right. You’re… and you…” He pauses to squint up at the ceiling in thought, before he tacks on a hurried, “Since when? Exactly?”

Matter-of-fact, Roman says, “Since we happened to hit it off at your bachelor party. You should get to know each other better, Tom, you’d get along. Tabs is great.”

“Right,” Tom says again, smile waning and voice growing faint as he fumbles through failed beginnings of sentences. “So you—At the—How exactly—”

“Well,” Tabitha cuts in, a double-edged act of mercy, “Roman and I ran into each other, you know, and started talking, and it turns out we have a lot in common.” She glances over to Roman, who nods obligingly. “And he asked me to attend his sister’s wedding as his plus one, so here we are.”

She smiles at Tom, so perfectly serene that Roman could almost believe she’s not enjoying this. God, he really doesn’t know how he would survive this wedding without her as a partner in crime. Poking at Tom all by himself wouldn’t be the same.

Tom looks like he’s buffering, frozen in place with his mouth hanging slightly open and brows drawn together. He’s trapped by propriety, unable to take issue with Tabitha’s presence but clearly unprepared to deal with it either. Roman had suspected, but now he’s completely certain Tom wasn’t at all candid with Shiv about the events of his bachelor party, if he even told her about using his ‘hall pass’ at all.

Nothing incriminating has been said just yet. Roman doesn’t have any plans of telling Shiv what happened, not really. If she even believed him—You know this how? And now she’s your girlfriend?—it wouldn’t be worth it. She’d never let him have the satisfaction of seeing her react.

Tom, who does nothing but react, doesn’t need to know that. He finally manages to stammer out, “That’s—fantastic. It’s great to meet you.” Immediately afterwards, he winces.

“Likewise,” Tabitha returns, the barest hint of smugness in her voice. She maintains eye contact until Tom breaks it first, gaze flicking over to Roman for an instant, then to the wall. As if nothing happened, she scans the church. “This is a lovely location for a wedding. It must be gorgeous later in spring.”

Roman thinks muddy, mostly, but his aesthetic sense wasn’t exactly developed in his pre-teens. Tom doesn’t seem to know what to think, forcing an uncertain laugh. “Yes, it’s… very historic, for the family, I’ve been told. It was Shiv’s idea—”

He glances back over his shoulder; Shiv and Caroline are still talking by the entrance. “I, we were thinking Italy, originally, but, ah. Family won out,” he says with a shrug.

In an exaggerated British accent, Roman adds, “Mummy missed us dearly.”

Tom gives him an odd look, but Tabitha seems amused enough. “Well,” Tom continues, ignoring him, “I hope you have a good time, it was—lovely meeting you. Again.” Another wince. “I uh, I should probably talk to some of the other guests, make sure everyone found their way here alright.”

He waves in the general direction of the small group hovering around the altar, clearly desperate for an out. Tabs nods graciously, and Tom takes a few steps back, shoving his hands in his pockets to wander around the church. Roman smirks at his retreating back before directing Tabitha towards one of the pews.

Once she sits down she lets out a soft laugh and pushes her hair out of her face. “That went well, I think.”

“Yeah, we’ve got the wedding rehearsal to sit through after this, so don’t get too excited.” He allows himself a little chuckle, though, and leans on the back of the pew. “You made a good impression on my mom and terrorized Tom. Too bad my dad’s not gonna make it, I think he’d like you.”

“Hm. We’ll have to wait until another time for me to get acquainted with all of your weird family,” Tabitha says lightly. She takes a look over towards Kendall, sitting not far from them, curled in on himself with the brim of his hat low over his face. “That’s your brother, right? You didn’t introduce us.”

“Kendall? Kendall’s about as interesting as a wet sock. About as much charisma, too.” Roman leans back on his heels with a sigh. “We haven’t really talked in a while, he tried to kill Dad a little, so it’s…” He waves his hand in a vague circular gesture. “I thought I told you this.”

Tabitha leans in towards him. “No, you did not. You don’t mean that literally, right?”

“You think Shiv would let him come to her wedding if he literally tried to kill our dad?”

“I mean, your dad isn’t coming.” Tabitha shrugs, a glimmer of humor in her eye. “Would she?”

Roman laughs, disbelieving. “Shiv? Kendall? I—” He pauses to think it over, do the mental math. One career as a liberal political consultant, minus being left in the dark about a failed attempt at a coup, plus being held partially responsible for said coup equals… “You know, maybe.”

Logan is coming after all. Kendall laughs him off when he suggests it could be about the launch, but Dad’s stubborn as fuck, it’s out of character for him to change his mind on this for no reason. No offense to Shiv, but Roman really doubts that this is the delayed onset of some sense of fatherly responsibility. Not that Shiv seems ecstatic about Logan’s potential presence.

It makes for a strange, apprehensive atmosphere, storm clouds dark on the horizon that no one wants to acknowledge, much less talk about. Roman checks his email every ten minutes, re-reads the last updates he received again and again until Tabitha tells him to snap out of it, relax. She’s right, of course, it’s going to be fine, but in the extremely slim, almost impossible chance that something goes wrong…

“Go talk to someone,” Tabitha says, gentle but firm. “Anyone. You have to get out of your own head.”

Roman frowns. “I’m talking to you.”

“And you’re stressing me out. Someone you don’t know, do boring wedding small talk, get your mind off it.” She touches his shoulder, leans in to say softly, “It’s going to be fine, Rome, just stop worrying.”

With great reluctance, Roman pockets his phone and heeds her advice. He’s never been big on all that oh have you tried this new all-kale diet mingling shit. Especially not with the kind of crowd Shiv and Tom have amassed, equal parts opportunistic social climbers and pretentious liberals that only know how to talk about their latest masturbatory philanthropic endeavor. That senator of hers is around here somewhere too, though Roman would prefer not to run into him. Seems like bad luck to have someone tragically widowed a year ago attend your wedding, but maybe that’s just him.

If he was feeling particularly masochistic, he could find Stewy—Roman definitely caught a glimpse of him in the crowd earlier—and ask him what the hell was up with the local news deal that fell through. Knowing Stewy, Roman would walk away looking like the idiot, but it might make him feel better in the moment. Without those stations, he’s really counting on the launch—

“Excuse me,” an unfamiliar voice calls, too close to be directed to anyone other than him. Roman turns to find the source: an older man, tall and white-haired, with a shorter, auburn-haired woman (wife, presumably) by his elbow. “You’re Roman, aren’t you?”

“That is what people call me, yes.” There’s something subtly out of place about these two as guests, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. In the way they carry themselves, maybe, a little ill at ease.

“I’m Mark,” the man says, extending a hand to shake, “and this is Sharon. Wambsgans. We’re Tommy’s parents.”

Roman takes several seconds longer than is polite to process this new information, getting especially caught up on hearing Tommy said out loud.

“Oh!” It finally clicks. “The Wambsgans…es.”

He shakes the offered hand—Mr. Wambsgans has a surprisingly firm grip—and tries to adjust to the reality of Tom having parents. Roman always kind of imagined him spontaneously emerging from the Great Lakes fully-formed, primed to trudge his way over to New York, not being born and growing up like a real human person. If he squints, he… doesn’t see any resemblance, really. It’s unnerving. The couple standing before him look like they stepped out of a stock photo.

“That’s us,” Mrs. Wambsgans confirms with a polite laugh that does sound eerily like Tom’s. “We just thought we’d introduce ourselves, since—we’ve met Siobhan, of course, but we were very curious about everyone else from your family. So we’re taking the chance to say hello while we’re all together.”

“Especially you,” Mr. Wambsgans adds. “Would be a shame if we never got to meet our son’s best man.”

“Oh, yeah. For sure.” Roman’s still too stunned to disagree or try to extricate himself from the situation. “Glad you could make it from, uh… good old Hockeyville, USA. Minnesota,” his brain helpfully provides five seconds too late.

His stupid, zero-thought remark nets him another polite laugh. He’s not totally sure where to aim on the scale of dickishness with Mr. and Mrs. Wambsgans, already thrown off by the simple fact of their existence. There was no prior warning that one of his duties as best man would be entertaining Tom’s parents.

Roman mentally weighs whether it would be funnier for Tom to hear from his parents that his best man is perfectly charming or a total dickhead, then whether either option is even worth the effort instead of just leaving. Inconclusive.

They seem like perfectly polite, normal, boring people, which is the problem. Like if Tom lost his air of desperate pretension and thus most of his entertainment value.

There’s something Tom-like about Mrs. Wambsgans’ smile, the longer Roman looks at it. “Well, of course we couldn’t miss this. It was worth the trip just to see this gorgeous castle,” she says with what sounds like genuine fascination. “Your father was so kind to pay for all this, you have to give him our thanks when you get the chance.”

Mr. Wambsgans cuts in, “And tell him that we hope his health improves. I hope he’s alright, it’s really just awful that he couldn’t make it.”

“Oh, that’s—” Something twinges in Roman’s chest. “He’s feeling great, actually, in prime condition, so you can thank him for his generosity yourself. He’ll be here later tonight.”

“Well, that’s fantastic,” Mr. Wambsgans says. He’s the first person Roman’s talked to today who actually sounds glad to hear about Logan’s late arrival. “Tom hadn’t told us.”

Matching her husband’s enthusiasm, Mrs. Wambsgans adds, “We’ll get to meet all the Roys after all.”

Roman gives them a tight-lipped smile. “Lucky you. Usually it takes at least a couple million dollars to get the whole family somewhere.”

Another pair of polite laughs. After a beat, Mrs. Wambsgans replies, “I guess we’ll have to make the most of this opportunity, then.”

The bluntness about money seems to have thrown them off balance. It’s almost endearing. Mr. Wambsgans clears his throat and inelegantly changes the subject. “Have you tried the wine, by the way? Our contribution.”

Oh, they paid for the wine. Isn’t that just… somehow more pathetic than sitting back and letting Logan cover it all. Roman can’t even remember if he has tried it. “Don’t think I had the chance. That’s very kind of you,” he says, just a little too flat to come off sincere. “You didn’t have to do that. Really.”

“It was the least we could do.” Mr. Wambsgans waves a hand dismissively. Whether he’s oblivious to the implied dig or choosing to ignore it is anyone’s guess. More Tom-isms; the familiar mannerisms land right in the uncanny valley, just off enough that Roman feels wrong-footed. He’s not sure he likes knowing how much Tom takes after his parents.

“You know, it took us by surprise when Tom told us you were going to be his best man,” Mrs. Wambsgans remarks. “I thought he’d ask one of his college buddies, or something like that. But it’s good to know he gets along with the in-laws,” she adds with a small laugh. “No hard feelings for taking your sister away, I hope.”

“No hard feelings.” If anyone’s being taken away from their family, it’s Tom. Though that implies Tom’s anything but an eager participant in his own abduction.

“So do you and Tom work with each other often, at Waystar?” Mr. Wambsgans asks.

He at least has the decency to sound confused while asking, which he clearly is. Roman has to do a double take at the shift in subject. “What? Us?” He laughs, disbelieving. “Me and Tom? No. No, we don’t. He’s over in Parks and Cruises doing the… Parks and Cruises thing, and I’m, you know, chief operating officer. So, uh, no, not much overlap. Did Tom tell you that?”

“Well, no,” Mr. Wambsgans admits, sheepish. “I just—assumed that was how you got to know each other. Tom hasn’t had the chance to tell us much about you.”

“He was probably trying to be nice. Not a lot of good things to say.” Roman waits a second until both Mr. and Mrs. Wambsgans’ faces fall, and then he adds with a smile, “I’m joking. Unless you’ve read articles about me already.”

Mr. Wambsgans is the first to let out an uneasy laugh, but doesn’t seem to know what to say. He averts his eyes and catches the attention of a nearby waiter instead.

Sounding a little shaky, Mrs. Wambsgans remarks, “He did warn us about your sense of humor,” and smiles weakly. Taking a glass of wine from the waiter’s tray, Mr. Wambsgans nods. “But, ah, how did you two get to become friends, then?”

Friends. Jesus. He can’t wait for this wedding to be over so people can stop thinking that just because he’s Tom’s best man, that makes them friends. It’s kind of funny, sure, to a point. But now he has to either look like a weird dipshit by telling Tom’s parents they aren’t friends and this is essentially a joke, or look like a weird dipshit by trying to explain a friendship that doesn’t really exist.

“Well, you know.” Roman barely suppresses a grimace, scratches behind his ear and tries to improvise. “Shiv introduced us way back when, I think that was on her birthday a couple years ago, and, uh…”

He’d thought Tom was as far from Nate as was humanly possible, somehow completely non-threatening and lacking in presence despite being over six feet tall. His smile looked stupid, that was a big part of it. Too wide, too desperate to be liked. Tom held out his hand and Roman took it, said something about him having a strong, manly handshake. Thoughtless shit, just opening his mouth and letting whatever fall out. Tom laughed. He laughed at Roman’s next quip about his name, then Shiv nudged him over to meet Connor, and that was that.

Roman wouldn’t even remember the ‘manly handshake’ thing if Tom hadn’t brought it up the next time they met—celebrating something company-related, he thinks. He acted like it was an inside joke: Nice. Manly handshake, with that same too-wide smile. Roman let out a surprised laugh before he could help it, and then it was too late, it was an inside joke. Tom looked so pleased with himself for it.

That was the first time they really talked to each other. Shiv had to leave Tom by himself and go butter up Logan; at that point she was either in the process of getting him in the company, or had just managed to maneuver him into Parks, Roman couldn’t remember which. Left to his own devices, Tom for some reason decided he should come bother Roman, ask about his stint in Parks, what LA was like.

Roman didn’t have anything better to do, and Tom was still novel enough to be entertaining, so he humored him. Parks had been a fucking slog, running the numbers on ride popularity and food sales and how to get people to stop littering and jizzing all over the place. LA was only marginally better, with Frank breathing down his neck and a joke of a film studio that spent all its time generating bullshit market analysis about what trends to jump on instead of investing in any actual creative endeavors. He mentioned his screenplay, a throwaway remark that he fully expected Tom to laugh off or ignore like everyone else had.

Tom said, “That sounds fantastic. Tell me more.”

There wasn’t any malice or insincerity in his voice and it made Roman’s skin crawl. It was a joke. He was supposed to be laughing.

With nothing but open, genuine interest, Tom said, “You really wrote an entire screenplay?”

Shiv wandered over several minutes later, looking amused to find the two of them deep in conversation. She accepted Tom’s kiss on the cheek with a patient smile; Roman wrinkled his nose at the overacted show of affection. When Tom told her they’d been talking about Roman’s screenplay, she raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, his screenplay,” Shiv said, smirking. She’d found the joke again. Tom opened his mouth but didn’t say anything, glancing between the two of them with a suddenly uncertain expression.

“Yeah, my screenplay.” Roman’s mouth tasted like chalk. “Fuck off,” he shot back, forceful enough that Tom flinched. Before he got the chance to share his thoughts, Roman walked off. He didn’t need to hear it. He didn’t know why he’d talked with Tom for so long in the first place.

They settled into a pattern after that. Whenever Tom found himself at a Roy gathering without Shiv as his anchor, he’d inevitably gravitate towards Roman. Anything, it seemed, was preferable to being alone, even having to force laughter through Roman’s endless supply of backhanded compliments and crude jokes. He was lucky Roman found the whole suck-up thing more amusing than annoying. And, yeah, their one inside joke was funny, arguably a couple of inside jokes, and he was fond of the ‘Global Tom’ nickname he came up with after Tom’s stint in Hong Kong.

None of that made them friends, though, not by any definition Roman was familiar with. At best, they were… occasional, circumstantial comrades, or something. Anyway, that was all before Greg stumbled onto the scene and imprinted on Tom like a baby duckling. Some kind of instant psychic bond between tall Roy wannabes.

Tom should’ve asked Greg to be his best man instead. His parents would probably find the bumbling newborn giraffe schtick endearing. Greg would have something to tell them other than ‘Your son is so desperate for approval I can insult him to his face and he’ll keep smiling, and it’s some of the best entertainment I can get without paying a single cent.’

“Sorry, could you excuse me?” Roman points towards absolutely nothing. “I think I see my girlfriend having a disagreement with one of the waiters and I feel like I should probably intervene.”

Before either Wambsgans can react, he’s already leaving. “Lovely to meet you,” he throws back over his shoulder, distinctly unenthused. “Thanks so much for the wine.”

Trying to actually locate Tabs in the crowd a minute later, he realizes, much to his irritation, that she was right. He didn’t think about the launch that entire time.

Roman hasn’t been avoiding Logan since the helicopter touched down. He would love to talk with him, really, say hi, check in about the launch. He just doesn’t get the chance. First Logan has to get in some menacing standoff with Kendall, and Kendall laughs Roman off when he tries to ask about it. He was just, uh, telling me what a sensational job you’re doing. Very funny, definitely not bitter or jealous at all.

There’s no opportunity after that to drop in for a ‘Hey dad, how’s it going.’ Kendall’s back recedes from view and Roman’s attention shifts instead to Caroline, flitting into the room as soon as Logan’s a safe distance away. She neatly inserts herself into a conversation that Tabitha’s having with a smug-looking older woman, which is more than enough to pique his curiosity.

Roman maneuvers his way over just in time for the introductions and niceties to conclude. The first thing he hears with absolute clarity is Caroline asking, “So, how long do you give it?”

Her tone is so casual, it takes a moment for the meaning to sink in and stop Roman in his tracks. Tabitha blinks, taken off guard, but maintains a polite smile. After several seconds pass with no answer, Caroline clarifies, “The marriage,” like lack of comprehension is the issue.

The woman Tabitha was talking to clears her throat and stammers out, “Well, I… forever, I would hope.”

“Yes, I would hope so,” Tabitha agrees, looking amused. “And, uh, you?”

“Oh, of course, I think they’ll stick it out.” With a chuckle to herself, Caroline adds, “Right up to the bitter end.”

It’s then that she notices Roman, lurking close by with a disbelieving smile on his face he can’t repress. She waves him over, and he obligingly steps into place next to Tabs. “Hey, Mom. Interesting way to make small talk.”

“It’s just a bit of fun,” she replies easily. “I’m being impish. Gets people to loosen up, take things less seriously.”

Roman raises his eyebrows and refrains from comment.

Caroline considers him for a moment, not looking repentant in the slightest. “Well, what do you think?”

“Me?” Of course it won’t last. He knows that, everyone knows that. But it was one thing to joke about it with Tabitha in the privacy of his apartment. In front of his mother, at Shiv and Tom’s wedding, Roman’s throat closes up.

He does a quick survey of the room, just to make sure the happy couple aren’t within earshot—imagine Shiv’s reaction if she found out this was Caroline’s new icebreaker of choice—or Tom’s parents. Hopefully his mom doesn’t try this tactic on them. “I mean, I have to say forever, or I’m going to sound like an asshole, right?”

That nets him a laugh from Caroline. He sees Tabs giving him an odd look out of the corner of his eye, but before he can turn to stare back at her she’s asking Caroline something about the history of the castle.

Imagine if Tom and Shiv did last forever. Imagine if Roman had to live the rest of his life burdened by the knowledge that any family gathering would have a Wambsgans in the corner, smiling too wide and laughing too loud and showering Shiv with as much affection as she was willing to tolerate with a roll of her eyes. Greeting Roman with a stupid inside joke, acting like they’re friends, or fucking family as if brothers-in-law is any kind of real relation.

If Tabitha’s there, in this eventuality, Tom can look her in the eye without flinching, can greet Roman’s girlfriend without any other concerns in his mind. This hypothetical Tom can fuck off.

The idea settles in his stomach like a lead weight. It’s fine. It’s not like there’s any chance of that happening.

For some reason that doesn’t settle much better.

It takes less than half an hour, by Roman’s count, for Shiv to find out. The scent of mother-daughter conflict draws him, blood in the water, and he wanders into the middle of Caroline defending herself. “It’s not all about you, Shiv. Other people need something to say.”

“Okay, well, can you ask them about the price of fucking fish instead?”

If Shiv was less frustrated, maybe she’d be able to point out the obvious fact that asking people how long her marriage will last is very much about her, actually. Caroline always has a way of reducing her to immediate, kneejerk reaction. That’s what makes watching them bicker fun. To a point. If someone tries to get him to pick a side, he’s leaving.

Now Caroline chooses to acknowledge his presence, a neat cop-out from giving Shiv an answer. “I like your girlfriend, Ro.”

“Oh, thank you.” Roman’s pleased by the compliment, then amused as he thinks about it a little more. He feels like he’s gotten away with something. “I met her at a sex party where she was giving the groom a blowjob,” he adds, pure impulse, before he can stop himself.

Caroline chuckles. Shiv doesn’t even bother acknowledging the statement, too heated about Caroline, too used to disregarding anything Roman says by default. Roman smiles at Shiv reflexively, a pinched expression, and takes a sip from his glass. Not like he expected anything else. It’s hard enough for him to believe in anything that happened at Rhomboid; for Shiv, it must be close to impossible.

“You should marry that one,” Caroline says.

He doesn’t do a spit take, but it’s a close thing. “‘Scuse me?”

She moves right ahead while Roman’s still trying to process. “And Shiv, stop taking everything so seriously. I’m trying to sparkle. When people ask me how long I give it, I say forever!”

Marry Tabs. There’s a thought.

Shiv’s mollified, at least. Her volume is cut by half as she says, “Okay, well…”

He rolls the idea around in his head, looks at it from different angles. It’s something to think on, for sure. His mom never said anything like that about Grace.

“It will be forever,” Caroline insists.

“Well, thank you.”

“Or it’ll feel like forever.” With that, Caroline walks off, leaving Shiv to stare at her in disbelief.

Roman just barely resists the urge to say she’s probably off to ask another unwitting guest how long they give it. He aims for something more neutral. “She says she’s being impish.”

“She’s being a stone-cold bitch,” Shiv retorts sharply.

Not sure how to comment on that, Roman lets out a high-pitched little laugh instead.

Thankfully, Shiv’s practiced at neatly tucking away her indignation. When she turns to Roman her composure is restored. “Uh, hey, you wanna meet up later tonight? All together?”

The unexpected request takes a moment to click, long-forgotten neurons firing to connect Shiv’s strangely self-conscious manner with her vague phrasing. “At the place?”

“Yeah!” She seems relieved that Roman’s picked up what she’s putting down. “We haven’t been able to get together and talk in—a while. Since we’re all here again, why not?”

There’s a childhood memory, fucking around down by the docks, studying the patterns of light reflected in the water, listening to his siblings’ stifled laughter echo off the walls. If he’d remembered it earlier, that would’ve been something to tell Tabs.

“Just like we’re kids again,” Roman muses. “Maybe I’ll stop by the kitchen and swipe some secret snacks for us, too. Score a joint. Steal your diary so I can read all about your latest crush.”

Shiv rolls her eyes, but she can’t fully hide the amusement in her voice. “Don’t be so—I just figured it’s somewhere we all know that’s, you know, private. And it’s… nostalgic.”

“Hmm. Nostalgia.” Even though Roman knows he doesn’t sound like it, the idea is nice. A good old-fashioned sibling hangout the night before a wedding. Unfortunately, he hasn’t yet filled his quota of stupid impulsive remarks for the evening. “That why you invited your ex to your wedding?”

Shiv recoils immediately. “What?”

“Fucking, Nate what’s-his-face.” Roman had been more focused on the senator at the time, but there’s no mistaking that cocky aura, the chin with the stubble. He’d registered Nate’s presence with a spark of disbelief, tinged with something a little meaner. “Sole… Som… you fucking know him. Why’s he here?”

Shiv scoffs. “Nate? We work together, Roman, on Gil’s campaign. That’s… ancient history.”

“Does Tom know he’s here?”

“Of course Tom knows he’s here, we went over the guest list together.” The answer comes so easily, it’s almost believable.

“Right,” Roman says, drawing the word out for effect. He’s not entirely sure why he asked that question in the first place, but there’s a feeling in his gut telling him to keep pushing. “...Does he know you used to fuck?”

Shiv gives him an incredulous side-eye, but she takes a second too long to respond. “Come on, Roman, we’re coworkers. I invited Gil, it’s not like I was going to tell Nate not to come.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure you should have invited Senator Butthead anyway,” Roman mutters under his breath. The feeling in his gut has escalated to something brighter, sharper, a kind of bitter satisfaction. Her non-answer doesn’t say anything, which is exactly what he expected, which is… “But I’m assuming that’s a no. I hear that’s great for a marriage, the lack of honesty. Keep it up.”

(Yeah, the lies—can’t wait for the big one tomorrow, he’d said. Shiv hadn’t even flinched.)

“Look—” Shiv cuts herself off and sighs, frustrated. “It doesn’t matter. Just, tell Kendall and Connor if you see them, okay? I have shit to do.”

She sounds harried enough that Roman lets her leave without getting another smart comment in. What’s got her so preoccupied the night before her wedding? He’s involved in organizing a satellite launch and—okay, yes, he was checking his phone pretty frequently earlier in the evening, but he’s chilled out now. That was Shiv’s full ‘fuck off, I’m busy’ voice.

Weddings are a pain in the ass. That’s something he’d have to consider, he supposes, if he were to marry Tabs. But even then, the more Roman thinks about it, the more he starts to like the idea. If Shiv can, he can. She's not better than him. Never has been.

Chapter Text

The wedding, the actual ceremony of it, is picture-perfect, of course. Not a single flower petal can be allowed to stray from its designated place. The air is so thick with the spirit of blessed matrimony Roman could choke on it.

Kendall talked Rava into a Catholic service to appease Logan; Shiv has opted for a non-offensive, non-denominational affair, which Roman struggles to stay awake through all the same. Everyone is all smiles, Tom especially. He looks deranged, like if his canines aren’t on display for one second he’ll be left defenseless before the hungry masses. Logan’s jovial demeanor is so unlike himself Roman’s almost convinced he hired a body double. On his part, Roman plasters on his least sincere smile and allows the officiant’s drone to fade into the background.

Tabs doesn’t want to get married.

Not that Roman had been proposing in any serious way, of course, he was just throwing out an idea. That isn’t what’s bothering him, not really.

Because this isn’t a normal relationship, she’d said, like it was obvious. Like the minor detail of how often they do or don’t fuck cancels out all the mind-numbing normalcy of being a heterosexual white couple in their thirties going out to dinner at pretentious, overhyped restaurants and talking about their jobs and—enjoying spending time with each other. The sole determinant of normalcy, apparently, is amount of dick-vagina contact. What a fascinating thing to learn this late in life.

Even if he concedes that their relationship isn’t normal, so what? Is there some kind of normalcy threshold you have to pass to get married? People do all kinds of fucked up shit with marriage. Arranged marriages, child marriages, open marriages. God forbid the hallowed institution be tarnished by something as deviant as two people who aren’t constantly getting it on.

I’ve had more sexual contact with the groom than I have with you, Tabitha said, laughing, which Roman had asked her not to talk about, but whatever. Okay, so that’s not normal. Tom’s implicated in that too. He’s not normal, him getting married to Shiv isn’t fucking normal, but the chapel has yet to disintegrate around them.

Tom gets choked up in the middle of his vows; Roman can barely stand to look at him, but Shiv smiles with all the patience of a saint. The expression is practiced, a magazine profile smile that’s been fine-tuned to sell the performance. Maybe it would be for the best if the chapel did fall to pieces.

Do you think this is the way to get someone to stay?

Roman hadn’t answered, just looked up at her from where he was crouched by the empty fireplace.

It’s unnerving, the way Tabs does this. She’ll catch him off guard with a scalpel of a statement, turning an innocuous conversation into exploratory surgery. Which of his organs looks most unsightly in the light?

Tabitha would say she isn’t looking for ugliness, she’s just trying to help. The way Roman sees it, a cut made with gentle hands is still a cut. He doesn’t need anyone poking around his insides. No matter what she’s looking for, nobody’s guts are good-looking.

Take this as an example—it sounds, he sounds so stupid when she puts it like that. Does he think this is the way to get someone to stay? Roman’s seen many more marriages fail than he’s seen succeed. By all indications, getting married is the best way to ruin your life.

Of course, he wants to think they’d be different, him and Tabs. There’s no addictions to drive a wedge between them like Ken and Rava. Neither of them is secretly a basket case like Connor’s mom, at least he thinks so. They actually like each other, which Logan and Caroline never did.

They’re honest with each other. That’s more than Roman can say for Tom and Shiv.

The thing is, he does want Tabs to stay. He doesn’t know how to make that happen. He’s probably already fucked up.

This morning had been… weird. Last night’s little sibling meetup by the docks had left him with a weird, uneasy nostalgia, an uncomfortable awareness of just how much distance there was between childhood and the current day.

Combined with his failed proposal and the impending launch, his thoughts kept wandering. He zoned out while dressing and found himself standing in front of the bathroom mirror with his shirt half-buttoned, picking at his nails. His bottom lip had been chewed raw.

“Rome?”

Sitting at the vanity, Tabitha was half-turned towards him, mascara wand still held between thumb and index finger. Everything about her posture and expression made it clear she was expecting an answer of some kind, but Roman had missed the question.

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

Roman frowned down at his undone buttons. He pressed the tip of his tongue against his lip and tasted metal. “I’m—fine.” He gestured towards his head, waving his hand in a vague circle. “Thinking about, you know. What were you saying?”

She hesitated for a moment, turning to face him fully. “Nothing serious. Just—destination weddings, I don’t know. Go there for your honeymoon, you’ll have more fun, save everyone else the trouble. Right?”

“You didn’t have to fly out here if you didn’t want to.” Roman returned to the task of buttoning his shirt. “I told you it was going to be boring.”

Tabitha laughed and turned back to the mirror. “No, meeting your family has been very interesting. I’m just saying if I was getting married, I’d stay in New York.”

The button slipped from Roman’s fingers.

“But I’m not that crazy about big fancy weddings in the first place,” Tabitha continued, softer now as she focused more intently on her makeup. “You should be having fun at your own wedding, not… tearing your hair out over table settings. You know what I mean?”

Given how she’d reacted last night, Roman had thought Tabs would prefer to forget all about his not-proposal and avoid the subject of marriage as much as possible. That had been his plan. She didn’t want to get married, he didn’t want to be examined. Nothing had been gained and nothing would be; effectively, it hadn’t happened, and there was no reason to bring up the topic again.

But here she was, testing the waters instead of running for the hills. Tabs didn’t seem to think anything of it, giving Roman a curious look when he took too long to answer.

“Yeah,” he said, to fill the silence. “If I was, you know—all this seems like a fucking shit show. Ken’s wedding was way smaller. Cozy.”

“Sounds nice.”

Roman took his tie in hand and paused, catching sight of himself in the mirror. The fabric of his collar pressed close against his throat. “It was.”

In the here and now, Shiv manages to make it through her vows without breaking into tears or laughter. The newlyweds exchange their first kiss as a married couple while Roman squints at Jesus in the stained glass window, glowing in his immortal suffering.

Apparently oblivious to the elaborate farce playing out within its walls, the chapel stays standing. No, Roman thinks, he wouldn’t want his wedding to be like this.

If Roman’s met any of Shiv’s bridesmaids before, then they all failed to leave any kind of impression on him. That or they’re hired actresses. They strike the right poses in front of the camera to invoke camaraderie, anyway, cozying up close with big smiles.

Like Shiv would let any of these women near her without witnesses. He knows how she holds herself, hyper aware of distance to avoid any unintentional contact. She can barely even stand to have her husband touch her most of the time, shying away from his hands like a feral cat.

Tom claps his old college buddies on the shoulder with unthinking ease, laughs at some inside joke that Roman doesn’t fully catch. These guys Roman remembers, even if it’s just from turning them away at Tom’s bachelor party. Something about their mundanity is memorable, out of place in the middle of a crowd that’s been as meticulously curated as the wedding decor. There’s no space here for people who knew Tom before he did, before Shiv did. It doesn’t compute.

While the photographer tries to fit Cousin Greg in frame with normally proportioned human beings, Tom asks how some nobody is doing these days, whether she’s still out in Colorado doing who fucking cares. Joshua, or Jason, whatever his name is, doesn’t manage to get the answer out before the photographer’s asking everyone to look this way, please.

Tom and the ‘Fly Guys,’ Jesus, take another photo by themselves doing some stupid pose. The matching ties are beginning to grate on him—dark purple and polka dots, really? It only works if you don’t look too closely. Roman grips the bouquet in his hands tight enough to bruise the stems and grimaces. He’s beginning to fear the parade in front of the camera will never end.

For once, though, Connor gives him an example worth emulating. It takes him a second to clock the hushed, uneasy discussion Connor’s having with Tom and Shiv after the photographer calls for siblings and partners. He doesn’t realize what’s going on until Connor strolls over to Willa, cheering.

The gears start turning in his head. When Shiv steps away for a quick chat with the photographer, Roman grabs the opportunity to approach Tom in a perfectly unassuming manner.

Close enough and low enough not to be overheard, he throws out a casual, “Hey, Tom. I’d like Tabs in this one, okay?”

Tom glances over to Tabitha, in the middle of conversation with some other guest, and then to Shiv, looking put-upon while talking to the photographer.

“Oh—really?” His tone is light, a little too carefully so.

“Uh huh. I’m pretty into her. Nice to get a photo of us with all the family.”

“Okay.” Roman’s never heard more reluctant permission. Sure enough, before he can move away, Tom adds a hushed, “It’s just—”

“It’s just what?” Roman asks innocently, at normal speaking volume.

Tom winces, eyes on Shiv’s back. “I—we, you know, shared a moment—”

Shared a moment? The attempt at censorship creates more hair-raising implications than reality, an almost romantic turn of phrase that Tom sputters and skews into a setup for a dirty joke. He’d stop lashing out if Tom stopped handing him the whip.

When Roman’s only response is a blank stare and a smile, Tom leans in and whispers, “She sucked me off, and—you—”

He can’t even make it through one sentence of plain, straightforward speech without choking. It was cringe-inducing during the ceremony, but now Roman watches him with keen attention, cataloging every facial twitch. Tom stares back at him, asking for a lifeline.

Shiv’s almost finished giving the photographer whatever instructions or warnings are necessary before including Willa. If all Roman wanted was Tabs in the picture, he could just give Tom and Shiv a quick heads up together. Tom’s forced silence would be a passing discomfort. The joke would be on Shiv, who can’t even imagine her doting husband is capable of cheating on her.

That’s not the goal here. Not the primary one, at least. This, the pseudo-privacy on a clock, is about making Tom squirm.

Roman prompts, “And?”

For a fraction of a second Tom looks horrified, one instant where Roman knows they understand each other with perfect clarity. No blustering, no hemming and hawing; Tom fell for the bait, he knows it, he regrets it. Either he keeps the hook in his mouth or he bleeds out.

The second passes. Tom pulls back and composes himself, manages to summon up an almost believable smile. “No, no. I mean—no. Fine. Sure. It’s all—good.”

“Thank you. Just wanted to check in.” Roman gives him a friendly, slightly condescending pat on the arm. Tom braces for it like he’s expecting a punch.

Connor guides Willa into frame with a hand to her elbow and a triumphant smile. They’re situated at the end of the line, Roman can’t help but notice. Maybe the plan is to crop Willa out, or apply a generous helping of Photoshop. Maybe that’s the plan for Tabs too, posed by his side at the opposite end—as far from Tom as possible.

It’d be a shame to edit the only photo that accurately captures the joke at the core of this whole affair. Tom’s no more respectable than Willa, bound for the same fate as Rava.

Tabs wordlessly picks up Roman’s cue to strike a stupid pose, a challenge to crop this out. There’ll be no flipping through the wedding album without acknowledging the two of them and all their implications. Even if Tabs doesn’t stay, that will.

The one event at this wedding that Roman is invested in isn’t until the late afternoon. He’s been checking his phone and then tucking it back away for the past two hours; muscle memory has him sliding his phone back into his pocket before he even processes the notification.

Fortunately, it’s only Tabs who witnesses him freezing in place like an idiot while his brain catches up to his body. She gives him a knowing smile as he fumbles his phone back into his hands, scrabbles at the screen to get his messages open. Final checks have been completed, they’re good to go. He should be getting the link to the livestream a couple minutes before takeoff.

After months of buildup, all the bureaucratic slog he’s had to suffer since Dad asked him to do this in the first place, his efforts are going to pay off in spectacular fashion. Relief hits him in a rush. Fucking finally.

Just one piece left to fit into place. “Hey, have you seen Shiv anywhere?”

“I think in the great hall, a little while ago,” Tabs replies absentmindedly, peering down at his phone. “Everything good for the launch?”

“Yeah, it’s good! It’s great.” Instinctually, Roman finds himself angling the screen slightly away from her, though it’s not like there’s anything to hide. “Just, uh, I have to go tell her so we can get it set up, you know, on a screen so everyone can see.”

“You didn’t tell her earlier?”

Roman frowns. “No, it’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“Wait—” Tabitha side-eyes him. “Did you not tell her at all?”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the whole idea of a surprise.” He prickles, clutching his phone to his chest in a defensive posture. “It’s hooking up a livestream to a display, it’ll take five minutes. I could figure it out, easy.”

“That’s not really… It’s a lot to spring on someone on their wedding day. ‘Congratulations on the marriage, by the way, want to see two tons of metal get launched into space?’”

She’s making it sound so—it’s a gift. A show of support for Shiv, something to make the wedding really special. The two tons of metal aren’t the point.

And, besides. “Who doesn’t want to see two tons of metal get launched into space? It’s a fun, celebratory—thing.” With his free hand, Roman flicks his fingers out in an imitation of an explosion. “I asked you if you thought it was a good idea for a gift, you said yes.” At least he was pretty sure Tabs had said yes.

She laughs, but there’s a healthy portion of incredulity mixed in with the amusement. “I mean, I thought you would give Shiv a little more heads-up than half an hour. It might seem like you’re stealing the spotlight.”

“Well, either I tell her right now, or I don’t tell her at all, and we don’t show the launch, and I put a lot of work in to accelerate it for nothing. So if it’s cool with you,” Roman tacks on sarcastically, “I’m going to go tell her now.”

Tabitha waves him off, conceding defeat with a halfhearted shrug. “No, of course, sorry. Good luck.”

He responds with a clipped, clearly enunciated “Thank you,” the kind of polite disdain Caroline would titter at. Roman doesn’t like it. Any of it.

What’s the point of saying he should’ve told Shiv earlier now, when it’s too late to do anything? It’s an argument that didn’t need to happen. Tabs’ only achievement is putting him in an irritated, uneasy mood, entirely the wrong mindset for telling his sister about a surprise gift.

He feels his lips being pulled down into a frown, a wrinkle forming between his brows, and has to pause in the middle of descending the stairs to smooth out his features. Congratulatory is the goal here, not contemptuous. Look, I did a nice thing for you, a sincere gesture for your sham wedding to your joke of a husband, because I do care about you, even if you’re a fake. Maybe not in that many words.

Shiv is easy to pick out from the crowd, at least, bright white and glowing with conjugal cheer despite—or because of—the fact her husband is nowhere to be seen. Some pair of nobodies has caught her near the bottom of the staircase, in the middle of an obligatory exchange of pleasantries. This late in the afternoon, Roman can only imagine how tired she is of the same conversation over and over. No better time to shake things up.

“Shiv! Hey, hey—” He hurries down the last couple steps just as she turns to walk away. Her guests get the magazine profile smile, but Roman gets an apathetic, ‘what is it now’ dead-eyed stare. “There’s a, you have a—display, right, somewhere around here? Like a big TV you can hook up to?”

She stops in her tracks, squints at him in confusion. “What? Why?”

“I want to show something on it, obviously. Is there one?”

“Yes,” Shiv says slowly, blank confusion turning skeptical. “But I’m not going to let you use it to broadcast some—what do you even want to put up there?”

Roman pushes down a sudden, unwelcome sense of unease. “It’s not anything weird.”

Wrong move. From him, sincerity is suspect. Shiv narrows her eyes, mouth pressed into a flat line. All he can do is keep fumbling the delivery. “It’s a surprise, for you, that happens to be a satellite launch. As a gift, I thought it would be cool if we could show it live, on a big screen.”

“No, absolutely not.” She doesn’t even hesitate for a moment. “I don’t want to have a big… fucking… dick blasting off at my wedding.”

He talks over her before he can stop himself, kneejerk, indignant defense. “It’s not a big fucking dick, okay—”

“Yeah, it is,” Shiv insists, cutting him off in turn and ignoring his protestations. “It’s a rocket.”

“It’s not the fault of rockets, or dicks, they both happen to be aerodynamic in shape.”

“You’re unbelievable. This is not happening!”

She’s right—this is unbelievable. What the fuck even is this argument? Because it kind of maybe looks like a dick, seriously? “You’re the one making it weird with the phallic imagery. I just wanted to do something special for your wedding.”

“Well, maybe you should have asked me if I wanted you showing your little dick rocket to all my wedding guests. No, Roman, it’s not happening.”

Her tone is that of a disapproving mother, telling her spoiled kid to put the expensive toy back up on the shelf. Roman’s not a fucking kid, he’s not stupid, he just—

“The launch is in less than half an hour, Shiv,” he quips before he can stop himself. “It’s happening whether you like it or not.”

“Half an hour,” Shiv repeats. “And you’re telling me now? Are you serious?”

Roman doesn’t know what to say. This isn’t supposed to be an argument, he’s not supposed to be getting mad. Tabs, Shiv, they aren’t getting it. There’s been some fundamental misunderstanding that he can’t correct.

“Yeah,” he says finally, lamely, more a whimper than a word. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Okay, well, it’s not happening at my wedding. It’s not part of the plan, it’s not—” Shiv waves her hand, summoning up the right word. “Wedding… y. You can jack off about your launch anywhere else, Roman, just not here.”

Five different retorts pop into his mind, one after the other, snarky little turns of phrase that are sure to get him at least a scoff in return. None of them are what he needs. Roman opens his mouth and finds himself at a loss, gaping stupidly. He doesn’t live here, in the world of thoughtful gestures and carefully articulated goodwill.

Shiv sighs and turns to survey the room for the most convenient escape route. Tabs descends the staircase behind her, catching Roman’s eye over Shiv’s shoulder to give him a smug, ‘I told you so’ look, eyebrows raised.

In the millisecond it takes for Roman to frown back, Shiv’s already started walking off. Tabitha glances at her retreating back, then to Roman. “She didn’t like it?”

Roman doesn’t dignify that with a response. “Look, can you help me convince her? She says she doesn’t want a fucking dick at her wedding. That’s a stupid reason, right? It’s not a fucking dick.”

All Tabitha says is “Rome,” soft and sympathetic. “I don’t think... I mean, maybe you could see if Tom—”

“Alright, thank you for your help, much appreciated.” Roman waves her away with a hand flourish. “I’ll come find you later. When the launch is being streamed for everyone to see. Thank you, bye!”

Again, Tabs says, “Roman,” but he’s already hurrying after Shiv, heading towards the drawing room. Too much work went into this for Shiv to shut it all down because she can’t stop seeing dicks everywhere.

So this is what Roman gets, for all his effort and consideration: he’s hunched over a tiny screen in the bathroom, alone, scratching his nose while he waits for the livestream to load. Too many things are wrong with this image to decide what to be angry about first. Instead, he stews in a generalized, impatient discontent, without even the satisfaction of a single target to pin blame on.

The rocket abruptly pops into existence on his screen, interrupting his brooding, rendered in glorious high definition and in no way phallic.

It would’ve looked fantastic on a big display, fuck Shiv. What isn’t wedding-y about a bunch of people holding their champagne flutes and cheering as a marvel of human engineering goes shooting into space? Isolated in the bathroom, the effect is eerie, watching massive clouds of dust and smoke billow out from the launchpad without a single sound. The quiet would be less overbearing with some polite background chatter.

A flare of orange bursts from the body of the rocket.

Roman watches, but doesn’t comprehend, his brow furrowing; in a matter of seconds, the rocket is consumed by the cloud—the explosion, then the entire screen. Perfectly silent, it feels unreal, almost biblical, like he’s just borne witness to the rapture.

The light fades, white to yellow to red to soot black. Unreality gives way to debris raining down upon massive pillars of smoke and flame. There’s no telling how far it extends past what the camera captures.

It is still completely silent.

Roman inhales with a sharp sound that almost surprises him. He straightens up and puts the phone away. His mind is oddly blank.

Running on instinct, he steps up to the sink and squirts soap onto his hands. There’s no reason for it, of course, he hasn’t touched anything, but there’s something compelling about the motions and sensations of lathering up. He can feel the weight of his phone in his pocket, swears there’s still heat radiating off of it.

Roman glances up to see himself washing his hands, unremarkable, routine. His first coherent thought in the past two minutes arrives as he looks down and turns on the faucet: Good thing Shiv said no. Nobody else saw that.

He’s not sure he did, really. Watching from a million miles away, so detached from the material reality of the launch—explosion—that he didn’t hear a sound, much less feel any of the impact, it doesn’t count for anything. A phone screen is so small that a rocket is reduced to a toy. Without the image in front of him, it feels like something imagined, a movie scene. The camera didn’t even shake.

Water swirls down the drain, lingering soap bubbles scattered around the rim. Roman’s hands are clean and slightly cold, stiff-fingered. He’s not sure if he’s waiting for everything to sink in, or if he’s trying to keep awareness at bay.

He sniffs, dries his hands, catches sight of himself in the mirror again as he steps back towards the door. Same old Roman. Dissatisfaction strikes. Pointlessly, he wipes at the corners of his mouth before leaving through the still-open door.

Outside, nothing has changed. Nobody even knows the launch was planned, and none of them care about what might have happened, maybe, to some rocket on the other side of the globe.

It might as well not have happened at all. He reminds himself that that’s a good thing.

Corporate manslaughter is one of those perfectly constructed phrases, clean and precise with the ‘t’s in just the right places. It practically invites you to imagine a news anchor reading it out in a judgmental tone, the text scroll below listing out the number of casualties with clinical authority.

Right now it’s Gerri’s voice echoing inside his head, hushed and urgent. But fuck, you’re looking at potential corporate manslaughter. Even silenced, his phone has been burning a hole through his jacket for the past hour. He hasn’t dared to look at it directly for more than two seconds at a time, turning email subject lines into hieroglyphics.

Forty calls, Gerri said. Roman’s pretty sure his voicemails number in the triple digits.

He’s been drinking too much, eating too much, for want of something to do with his hands other than check his phone, something to occupy his mouth other than talking. Something to feel between his teeth. The combination of alcohol and salt hasn’t been settling well. Any second now, someone will look at his bloated, chalky face and realize where the smell of death is coming from.

Since Logan’s yelling at Kendall and waiters, not at Roman, he must not know yet. Maybe there’s an email sitting in his inbox, subject line: Roman fucked up, marked urgent. It’s only a matter of time. It’s always a matter of time. When Dad finds out, not if.

Surely he’s too old to feel like this. A loud enough noise would get him ducking under a table, holding his breath at the sound of approaching footsteps. Hoping no one finds the shards of porcelain he swept under the rug.

Big fucking shards. Thin rug. And he’s a grown man with adult responsibilities acting like a kid in trouble. Kids hide, lie, cower and snivel, sob like the world is ending over something that doesn’t matter because they don’t know any better. Their brains are too puny and their lives too small to comprehend how insignificant a shattered vase is in the grisly totality of it all, how much worse a slap on the wrist hurts when you’re dreading it the whole time.

Roman’s thirty-six. He can figure out how to sweep a wreck into a dustpan and buy a replacement, compensate whoever needs to be compensated, and move on. That’s how a colossal fuckup transforms into strength in the face of adversity, the kind of phrase people use to describe Logan. Unflappable determination.

Potential corporate manslaughter.

Out of the corner of his eye, Roman spies Tabitha making her way towards him with the stronger drink he requested. If he wants to try and clean up, he needs to figure out what exactly it is he’s cleaning up, which means confronting reality and reading his emails. Tabs, dutifully eager to congratulate him on a complete fabrication, can’t see those emails.

He thinks he might puke. Instead, Roman walks. Eyes low to the ground, he neatly maneuvers through the crowd with no destination in mind other than ‘away.’ There’s nowhere for him to get some privacy. The space is designed for courtesy, not crises.

The restroom door is ajar.

Roman hesitates for a moment, touching his phone through the lining of his jacket pocket. That’s where this mess started. It makes sense, in a way, that that’s where he should go to clean up. It’s private enough, he’s already taken the hit to his dignity, and no one will think twice about him ducking out for a minute to take a piss.

Before his nerve can fail him, Roman nudges the door open and steps in. He’s pulled it closed and gotten his phone halfway out of his pocket before he realizes he’s not alone.

Tom Wambsgans is staring right at him. Or Tom’s startled reflection is, with an expression like he’s been caught with his dick out instead of leaning over the sink.

The longer Roman looks, the more Tom seems off somehow, unfinished. Water beads at the curve of his jaw, flattens the hair at his temples. His tie has been tugged loose. He’s almost white-knuckling the rim of the sink.

The effect is unsettling enough to stop Roman in his tracks and derail his train of thought entirely. Usually Tom looks like an idiot, but it’s the intent, the fact you can tell he’s trying too hard, that really makes him stick out. An overstated fitted turtleneck, a suit he obviously picked out himself and didn’t get tailored quite right. He turns himself into a cartoon character: square for the body, flick of the pen for the quiff, rounded triangle for the big nose, dumb, toothy grin. Identifiable by silhouette alone, because everything about Tom is made to be seen.

A guy who goes into the bathroom to splash water on his face at his own wedding wants to be ignored. That’s not Tom, not as Roman knows him. It would’ve been less weird to catch him with his dick out, literally exposed, than whatever this is.

Tom blinks, relaxes his grip on the sink. When he reflexively flashes his teeth in a placating smile, something slides back into place. He lowers his gaze. The light above the sink casts long shadows over his face.

Roman starts to take a step forward, past Tom and into the security of a stall, but can’t make himself follow through. His momentum fizzles out; he lets his phone settle back into his pocket. “You good, Tom?”

Tom’s attention snaps back to him, instantly gratifying. Roman watches himself smirk in the mirror. “Little late to be getting cold feet.”

“Ha! No, no. Just—freshening up.” Every motion as Tom straightens up is painfully conscious, compounded by the fact Roman can see Tom check his own reflection, assessing the tension in his shoulders. His new posture is almost more rigid for the forced relaxation.

Insulated from the noise of the people outside, Roman’s acutely aware of the rustle of paper towels as Tom dries his hands. “Dead on my feet, really,” Tom says, tacking on a humorless chuckle as punctuation.

“Hey, you got through the worst part. I don’t think anyone will care too much if you try to sneak in a nap before the reception. Or if you sleep through it.”

Tom exhales a sharp puff of air that hints at a laugh, mumbles “Right, yeah,” half-hearted acknowledgment. “Thank you, Roman.”

He breaks their reflected eye contact, dropping his gaze to fumble with his tie. After a few seconds it becomes clear that the knot is beyond saving. Tom pauses, frowning, before deciding to undo it entirely and start over. With every movement, light catches on the smooth surface of his wedding band, eager to announce its new presence despite its simple appearance.

Tom’s hands go still. Roman looks up and finds Tom staring back at him, confused. Right. He’s standing in the corner of this small bathroom, blank-faced, watching Tom fix his tie instead of taking a piss like a normal person. There’s an actual reason he came in here.

Roman is about to step into the stall when Tom starts to say, “Do you—”

He turns halfway towards Roman and stops, cutting himself off. His regret is audible. Roman considers pretending he didn’t hear, but Tom takes a rallying breath and tries again. “Do you know, uh, Nate?”

Roman turns back to him. Tom’s expression is neutral and his tone casual as he resumes tying his tie, but he hits the ‘t’ with too much force.

“Nate?”

“Sofrelli, I think. Kendall’s old pal?”

It’s pretty on the nose, isn’t it, after Roman needled Shiv about him last night. He suppresses the urge to laugh. “Oh, sure, Nate. With the… chin, and the stubble, and the general aura of sleaze. What about him?”

Tom hesitates, probably sensing that he’s being fucked with. It’s too late to back out. “I ran into him, last night. Uh, and I was wondering if you… So, how exactly did he and Kendall get to know each other?”

“He was a consultant on some project in Shanghai when Dad shipped Kendall over there, so he and Kendall went to orgies together and did lines off each other’s dicks, or whatever.” Roman waits for Tom to nod stiffly, then decides to cut to the chase instead of dancing around the subject for another five minutes. “Then Kendall introduced him to Shiv when she was trying to get into politics, and they ended up fucking until she got tired of him. If that’s what you were wondering.”

Tom won’t meet his eyes in the mirror, pretending to be focused on his tie. “Right.”

“But Shiv probably told you that already,” Roman adds, as if it’s only just occurred to him.

Tom doesn’t answer for long seconds. He tugs the end of his tie through the knot, pulls it snug up to his collar. “Right,” he says again, hollowly. “Just… forget I asked. It’s nothing important.”

“Yeah? Everything’s above board?” Roman smiles, close-lipped and insincere. “Great to hear. Hate for any secrets between the two of you to ruin your happy day.”

When Tom laughs, it catches him off guard. The sound is soft, not the overacted guffaw that Roman’s used to. Tom sounds too genuine, unable to stop something uncontrolled from escaping him, propping himself up against the sink as his shoulders shake.

“Of course,” Tom says. “I really don’t know what I—” He shakes his head, interrupted by more muffled laughter.

They’ve been talking to each other’s reflections for so long, Roman has to suppress a flinch when Tom finally turns around to look at him face-to-face. Without that layer of separation, Tom’s presence is too immediate. The room is too small for this, too neatly arranged, too warmly lit. Too isolated. It seems impossible for anyone else to come through the door. It would be life-ending if anyone did.

“I mean, it’s on me, I know that. I guess I just assumed that we’d come to kind of an unspoken agreement about what…” Tom presses his lips together, trying to find the correct phrasing. His eyes flick up to the ceiling, then back down, voice strained with the effort of holding back more hysterics. “Is that what this is about? Tabitha?”

“What about her?” Roman asks innocently. “Is there a problem with me bringing a plus one?”

“Are you trying to make one? Because if—Obviously she must have told you—and I know the hall pass doesn’t, didn’t exactly cover…” Tom trails off, waving the end of the sentence away with frantic hand gestures. “But clearly you haven’t told Shiv, and now, I mean. It’s too late to call off the wedding. You can’t be planning to bring it up during the reception in front of everyone. Are you?”

Roman’s about to say maybe, maybe not, who cares. His train of thought is abruptly cut off by a sensation of wrongness, an incongruity that he can’t let himself ignore. The more Tom talks in circles, he starts to outline a shape with impossible geometry.

“What doesn’t the hall pass cover?”

Tom glances over to the door, tracing the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. He fidgets with his wedding band, turning it around his finger as if to remind himself it’s there.

“You,” Tom says, defeated. “Her brother.”

Something’s gone wrong. There’s been a terrible, fundamental misunderstanding. This is the moment when the foundations crumble and the roof collapses under the weight of trying to hold up this unstable structure, a wedding trying to support itself on a bride that doesn’t want to be here and a groom that—

“That didn’t happen.” The immediacy of Roman’s response startles both of them. For a moment, the unease on Tom’s face disappears, replaced by pure confusion. Roman barely processes it, struggling to figure out where he went wrong.

He shouldn’t have gotten in that last jab. He shouldn’t have started talking to Tom at all, shouldn’t have come into the bathroom. A month ago, skeptical, Tabitha tells him, You realize that’s still more—involvement, sexually, between the two of you than there has been between the two of us, independent of Tom. This morning, Shiv just out of earshot, Tom stammers, we, you know, shared a moment.

Who’s we?

Tom repeats, incredulous, “That didn’t happen?”

Something’s gone wrong. They’re talking to each other across two different versions of reality. “No, nothing happened. Not—between us? No.” Tom’s the one who cut Roman from the story in the first place. It doesn’t make any sense to add him back in as a central figure he never was.

The confusion on Tom’s face intensifies, brows furrowing. “So the, uh, Tabitha, the thing with the photos, that’s,” he waves his hand in a dismissive gesture, “nothing. It’s not about…”

“Tabs isn’t—I’m fucking with you. Come on.” Roman’s laugh sounds unconvincing even to him. “Fuck you, dude, it’s just—it’s funny.”

“Ah.” Just for a moment, there’s something pinched in Tom’s expression, a flash of hurt, and then it’s smoothed away into resignation. He slumps back against the sink, muttering, “No, no, okay. I get it.”

“Seriously, do you think I’d stand up in front of everybody and tell them, by the way, everybody, Tom got a blowjob at his bachelor party. And I,” Roman falters, “I’m dating the woman that sucked him off, which is how I know all about it. I’d look like a total asshole. Not in a fun way.”

“...Uh huh.”

“I brought Tabs to your wedding because I fucking like her and I wanted her to meet the family. It’s not some—we—”

“Nothing happened,” Tom helpfully completes for him, even though he sounds uncertain.

“Exactly,” Roman affirms, relieved to have gotten through on some level, at least. “Nothing happened. You, Shiv,” me, he doesn’t say, “it’s fine.”

The repetition feels forced this time, a crude, patchwork job. Nothing hangs heavy between them, an emptiness loaded with implications. Roman doesn’t want the wedding called off, doesn’t want some dramatic unveiling of the truth, whatever that means at this point. Maybe if he was a better brother, he’d tell Shiv. Maybe if she was a better wife, she’d believe him.

He tracks the bobbing of Tom’s Adam’s apple as he swallows, his eyes darting from the wall to the floor and back again. He won’t look at Roman.

It hits him: Tom really thought Roman would fuck him on his wedding day. He’s been thinking about it, remembering. He picked apart his own historical revisions out of a dread so potent it became anticipation. Roman could have fucked him. Tom thinks he could have. What’s the difference?

Tom’s afraid of him. Has been afraid of him, but that was in the context of Roman as Shiv’s brother, as Waystar’s COO. This is a new fear. Undefined, shapeless, but—Roman realizes with predatory delight—personal. Uniquely his.

“Hey. Chin up, Wambsgans,” Roman says, mostly to see Tom flinch and look back up at him. He grins. “You’re in. A married man. Congratulations, condolences. Pick one.”

Tom touches his fingers to his wedding band and smiles, tight-lipped. “Thanks, Roman.”

A second later, the smile drops away. With his shoulders slumped forward, still leaning against the sink, he looks exhausted. It’s a vulnerable state that could only exist in this tenuous privacy, the polar opposite to the serenity Shiv’s been carefully maintaining the whole day. Never too excited, that would be embarrassing and impolite; never too subdued, that would be suspicious. Roman wonders if they even let the act go around each other.

Tom sighs, adjusts the cuffs of his sleeves, and stands up straight. All of a sudden he’s Tom again, self-consciously presenting himself to a judgmental audience. When he steps back out, no one will know that only a few minutes earlier the doting groom was asking probing questions about Nate Sofrelli.

This is who Roman’s been talking with the whole time: Tom, the groom, his brother-in-law. This is someone entirely different.

The thought is disquieting. Roman turns away to seclude himself in a stall before this Tom can say anything to him.

He waits, holding his breath, for the sound of footsteps. The door opens and clicks closed. Then he waits a few seconds more, his thoughts unintelligible.

Finally, Roman pulls out his phone. He stands there, staring at his own reflection on the black screen. A new notification lights it up. More hieroglyphics, an endless chain of Re: Re: Re: ad infinitum. For a long minute, he seriously considers chucking it into the toilet.

The screen goes black again. Roman lets out a long, slow exhale until his lungs start to ache.

On the other side of the world, something might have happened, but Roman’s here, at his sister’s wedding. Outside of this room, Tom’s looking for his wife. He’ll find her in a minute and greet her in some overly affectionate way while she barely tolerates it. Together, the happy couple will be inundated by congratulations, well-wishes, compliments on how well-matched they are, how beautiful the ceremony is, the venue. It’s a wedding too perfect to ruin.

He thinks about it, during the reception. Locking eyes with Tabitha and seeing her grin back without a care in the world, there’s one moment of insanity where Roman wonders what would happen. The audience is primed and ready, he’s already brought up the bachelor party in a suggestive tone of voice.

Tom got a blowjob. Which I know because I was watching, by the way. He was into it. I was—

How far would he have to go before people stopped taking it as an off-color joke? At what point would Tom break, his panic confirming his guilt?

Tom catches the look he gives Tabitha, Roman knows, because for a split second his smile falters and his eyes widen in fear.

“Nothing happened!” Roman announces to polite laughter, a few stray murmurs of mock disbelief. “Sorry to disappoint. We’ve got a proper Boy Scout over here. At least I imagine he must’ve been a Boy Scout at some point.”

When he glances over to Tom again, the fear has softened into a lingering wariness. There’s something else in his expression, too, a kernel of understanding. Roman looks away first.

Leave it to Kendall to fuck everything.

Shiv’s wedding is the least of their concerns in the face of the apocalypse. Mulling it over the morning after, though, Roman has to admit: it’s a strong choice to fuck the whole family at your baby sister’s wedding, symbolically. Really underscores the whole maverick, black sheep thing.

Although—adding in Logan crashing the party and Connor suddenly deciding to launch a presidential campaign, it’s hard to say whether anyone attended this wedding and thought about Shiv.

Well, apart from Roman, for all the good it did. At least nobody died. And after Tom got past his initial confusion at Roman’s contextless enthusiasm, his reaction had been—

You rescheduled the launch? How much work did that take? A sincere question, surprised and somewhat awed, as if it was something Roman did for him. I would’ve liked to have seen it. That’s sweet of you, Roman.

Even when Roman reminded him the rocket had blown up on the launchpad, it did little to dampen his cheer. Tom thought, Tom understood that it had been a thoughtful gesture. Which meant nothing, less than nothing; he’d been grateful when Tabitha showed up for her turn to be clued in and Tom hurried away.

God, he’d spent half the day on the verge of panic about the launch, only to get upstaged by Kendall and then find out nobody even died. Before and after the explosion, none of it had mattered to anyone who mattered. When he’d finally checked his emails, assured no corpses were lurking, there’d been mention of a trip to Japan for an obligatory press conference and not a murmur about corporate manslaughter. It might as well be a vacation. The bliss of complete inconsequentiality.

At breakfast, the atmosphere is mind-numbingly normal. Shiv and Tom greet him and Tabitha as they walk in, all smiles. They’ve set themselves to the side on a bench beside the door, looking like perfectly content newlyweds cozied up side-by-side. The room is filled with the ambient noise of soft conversations and clinking silverware. To an outside observer, there’s no hint that the family is eating itself from the inside out.

Roman could almost be fooled himself if not for the fact that Logan is noticeably absent. Along with Marcia and Gerri, the combination can only be intentional. Kendall’s nowhere to be seen either, but that’s a coin flip. Could be too guilt stricken to show his face, could be passed out, could be holed up somewhere with Stewy, scheming.

No one is going to draw attention to the hole in their midst when they can walk around it, Roman included. He seats himself at the end of the table. Tabitha follows, and gives him a significant look over her cup.

“So, what’s next?”

Roman stops shifting around the mound of eggs on his plate. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, with everything, I guess.” Tabitha looks around, self-conscious, then leans in to whisper. “The takeover is… it’s huge, Rome. With Kendall, and serious financial backing, your dad might not be able to stop it.”

“Well.” If he squints, the blurred shape of the eggs resembles a weird-looking dick. “First, so sorry, but you’re going to have to fly home by yourself, because I need to head to Japan for a press conference about, you know.”

Tabs raises her eyebrows. “And then?”

“Then I come back to New York, my dad rallies the troops and prepares for a siege, and we cut Kendall’s head off and display it on a spike outside the castle walls.”

“Simple and elegant. That’ll impress the shareholders.”

Roman grunts acknowledgment and nibbles at the edge of a bagel. There’s an almost meditative numbness he achieves the morning after each fraught family gathering, allowing him to review the events with detached clarity. He can’t maintain that Zen state if Tabs insists on dragging him back into the thick of it. “Yep. So it’s pretty much handled.”

“Mm hmm.” Tabitha relents, leaning back in her chair. The reprieve only lasts as long as it takes for her to half-heartedly swallow another bite, frowning the whole time. “...But are you going to be okay?”

“Am I going to be okay.”

Tabitha gives him an unimpressed look.

“Oh, because of the…? This is probably the most peaceful event we’ve had in the past year. It wouldn’t be a family get-together without some big, dramatic confrontation.” Feigning confusion, Roman frowns at her, scratching behind his ear. “Is that not how it is with your family?”

A beat passes. Roman maintains his innocent expression without wavering. Tabitha still looks unconvinced, but when Greg strolls in with his plate of food and slides out the seat on Roman’s other side, she reluctantly admits defeat. It’s a fucking desperate situation if he’s grateful to see Greg. His fumbling attempts at small talk are a welcome reprieve from Tabitha’s probing. The fact she means well just makes his skin crawl.

The atmosphere is approaching cozy when Kendall finally makes his appearance. He shuffles in, hands stuffed in his pockets, looking like a sullen teenager in his dark sweater and shiny sneakers. Shiv doesn’t greet him, but Tom does, something effusive that Roman can’t quite make out and that Kendall barely reacts to.

So he was passed out, and now he’s hung over. Figures. Roman tosses out his requisite “Good morning, Mr. Fuckface,” and gets a weak chuckle in return. Tabitha isn’t even trying to hide the look she’s giving him, waiting for a reaction.

He doesn’t know what she thinks is going to happen. Sure, Ken’s a spineless, two-faced piece of shit, but that’s family. They’re having breakfast. The head-on-a-spike thing happens later, when Dad makes the call. No reason not to let the black sheep graze before he gets shipped off to the slaughterhouse.

Colin materializing in the doorway, Lurch-like, is an unexpected outcome. He cuts through meandering members of the wedding party with purpose, pushing at the edges of their bubble of domesticity, and makes a beeline for Kendall.

Maybe the slaughterhouse comparison was a little too prescient. Roman feels as if he’s watching a convict being led to the gallows. It’s not much of a relief when Kendall and Colin disappear from sight.

As far as he can tell, Shiv’s the only other one who paid any attention to that little interaction. She shoots him a conspiratorial look from across the room: What was that? Want to talk about it?

He raises his eyebrows back at her, tilts his head. Maybe later.

Shiv purses her lips for a moment, thoughtful, until Tom turns to look at her and the expression dissolves into a placid smile. Matching, cheerful oblivion.

As a child, having free roam of a castle was endlessly novel. There was always a new corner to explore, and every room, every piece of furniture was a mystery to solve. How long had this been here? Who had chosen it, arranged it just so? There was no such sense of wonder about the homes they were shepherded through over the years, all of them transient and uninteresting. The castle wasn’t theirs, which made it permanent, impervious to Caroline’s fickle tastes and Logan’s fits of dissatisfaction. History was material here, embedded in the stonework and, as Caroline liked to remind them, in their blood.

It could have been yours, she liked to say, almost accusatory. In lieu of the extravagant castle she’d been denied, she’d pass down a grudge to her children.

Despite her best attempts, the resentment didn’t take. After two days here as an adult, Roman thinks he might be sick if he has to stay for an hour longer.

In a small act of mercy, Caroline pulls him and Shiv aside to say goodbye outside. Under the colossal archway of the front entrance she looks small and solitary. Her request for them to “visit again sometime in the next calendar year” teeters on the edge of sincerity. Shiv evades a direct answer, leaving Tom to patch the holes. Roman promises to try and make it work.

Paltry offerings, but the act of deference matters more than the substance. Caroline smiles thinly. “You should come by, too,” she tells Tabitha, “if Ro can tear himself away from the company. When the weather’s a bit warmer, maybe.”

Tabs gives Roman an appraising look out of the corner of her eye. Whether she’s trying to gauge his reaction or doing her own mental evaluation is anyone’s guess; the moment Roman catches the look, she politely returns her attention to Caroline. “That sounds delightful.” There’s no tell in her tone of voice, perfectly cheerful. “It was great to meet you and the rest of the family.”

“I’m sure it was fascinating. Like getting acquainted with a pack of wolves,” Caroline says with a biting laugh. Tom’s the only one stupid enough to politely chuckle along.

“Well,” Caroline continues before anyone has to come up with an appropriate response, “I’ve other people I need to see off, so I won’t keep you any longer.” Her expression softens. “It was good to see you, after so long. I hope it wasn’t too painful.”

It might be the cruelest thing she’s said the entire wedding. Shiv’s smile is brittle. “Oh, you know, it’s something you have to get over with, like ripping off a bandaid. No, it’s—” She hesitates, catching her tongue between her teeth. The jab dangles uselessly, unable to commit to landing. “It was great to have your help with everything, prepping for the wedding.”

“I did want it to go well for you, despite all the fuss. Hopefully your honeymoon will be smoother.”

“Knock on wood,” Tom cuts in, tone light but something pinched in his expression.

He still manages to earn a withering laugh. “I’ll leave before I jinx it, then. You must be eager to get started.”

Caroline steps over to Roman for a half-hug, more air than arms. A split second of indulgent warmth, and then she’s flitting away to go rub elbows with someone else. Tabs watches her go with mild interest, Tom with poorly disguised apprehension. Logan’s barbs and Roman’s quips he can weather fine, but Caroline’s verbal snares aren’t so easy to slip out of with a deferential smile. Shiv should’ve introduced them sooner.

He glances at Shiv and finds her looking back at him with a delicately neutral expression, letting Caroline pass out of view without any reaction. She changes the subject too smoothly to be anything other than deliberate. “Have you seen Kendall?”

“Not since breakfast. You?” Shiv shakes her head; Roman frowns. Kendall’s absence has been completely unremarked upon, and all the stranger for it. As if he’s been deleted from existence, quietly pruned from the family tree while no one was looking.

“He wouldn’t have just left, surely,” Tom says with a characteristic lack of grace. His frown is cartoonish, brows drawn together in a parody of concern. “Without saying goodbye or anything?”

“I guess he’s too busy ruining our family’s future. You’ll get a card in the mail in a month, probably.”

That, or Colin took him out back and shot him. Roman can’t get himself to make the joke, though, it gets gummed up somewhere in his throat. He squints at someone waving as they walk past instead, trying to figure out if he’s ever seen them before in his life. So many fucking people and not a sign of their brother.

Sure, Ken might’ve cut and run, avoiding Shiv after ruining her wedding. Maybe he figured fleeing with his tail between his legs was preferable to staring at the floor while he stuttered through excuses and justifications. But would he do that, really? Roman’s opinion of him isn’t high these days, but this is a new low.

Shiv scans the crowd once, perfunctory, and sighs. “You think next time he’ll maybe text me before turning our lives upside down?”

“You think there’s gonna be a next time?”

“I mean, Dad would kill himself and Kendall before selling the company,” she says flatly. Roman grunts agreement. “And Ken’s fucking… obsessed. He doesn’t know when to give up. They could keep doing this forever.”

As she speaks, Roman can see Shiv’s vision of the future laid out in front of him: Kendall throwing himself against the walls of the fortress again and again, leading whatever idiots he’s managed to rally this time in a futile charge and emerging the sole survivor, limping off to do it all over again for as long as Logan keeps him alive. God, maybe they could keep doing this forever.

It’s a bleak prospect. Roman grimaces. “You don’t have to worry about it. You get your senator into the White House, he nationalizes everything to create a twenty-first century Soviet America, you’re set.”

“I have to worry about Tom,” Shiv points out, though she sounds more petulant than anything.

At the mention of his name, Tom looks politely uncomfortable, trying his best to blend into the background only for Shiv to drag him back into focus. “Well, I don’t think it’s—”

“Oh no,” Roman cuts him off, voice dripping with sarcasm. “What if my trophy husband finds himself out of a job? I can’t possibly hope to support us with my billion dollar trust fund alone.”

Shiv determinedly does not react. “You’re impossible.” Then, directed to Tabitha, “It was a pleasure to meet you, by the way. After you get sick of him, I hope we can still chat sometime.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” Tabitha replies easily. “Thank you for having me. But you don’t have to worry about that.”

It takes Tom a pained second to realize he should say something as well, not just stand there looking chastised. “We’ll look forward to seeing you around, then.”

Roman smirks at him. “You can count on it.”

He’s not expecting anything as dramatic as a full-on flinch. A moment’s hesitation, maybe, a faltering smile, an instinctual nervous chuckle. What he gets instead is Tom staring at him, wary but not intimidated, studying his face with intent. This level of scrutiny from anyone would make Roman uncomfortable. Coming from Tom, he has to suppress the urge to recoil. There’s no grounds for Tom to be giving him a look like that.

Except of course there is, and when Tom shifts his focus to Tabitha without any lingering concern, Roman can’t shake the feeling that he’s lost, again.

The fact is, Tom and Shiv are married. Nate Sofrelli was on the guest list, Tabs will be in the wedding album, Kendall is trying to make the world turn backwards, but the only thing that meant anything, the only thing that was actually achieved, is that Tom and Shiv are married.

It’s not that Roman wanted to stop the wedding. He’s not sure what he wanted, what he wants, but he knows it’s not that. Just… something. One thing. If the launch had been successful, maybe that would’ve been it. If Tabs had said yes, sure, we could get married. If Tom had—if Tom hadn’t started talking to him in the bathroom, hadn’t said yes at Rhomboid, hadn’t asked Roman to be his best man.

When Tom had asked, Roman thought it was hilarious. A week after the botched family therapy he showed up in Roman’s office unannounced and made the request in typical awkward, simpering fashion, playing it off like Shiv’s idea when Roman was certain the opposite was true. It was all he could do not to bust out laughing—seriously, Tom was asking him?

But it had been flattering, too, on a level he didn’t want to admit. There was a spark of pride in ensuring he’d live up to expectations. Tom had picked him. Roman had made it mean something. Maybe that was his fault. What did he think he would get out of it? There’s nothing Roman wants from Tom that he can get. Or nothing he can get from Tom that he wants.

God, he doesn’t fucking know. He’s about to fly to Japan and remove himself from the chain of causality for the explosion. No, I didn’t have anything to do with this. I’m not responsible, I made no difference. None of this is mine.

Right on cue, Gerri comes down the stairs of the entrance hall with purpose in her step, phone clutched close to her body like a protective talisman. She locks eyes with Roman as she descends, giving him a quick nod. Time to go, then.

“Siobhan, Tom.” Gerri’s greeting as she stops in front of them is clipped but still polite. “I wanted to give you my congratulations before I go. I wish you both the best.”

There’s something slightly off about the way she regards Shiv, almost wary; Shiv’s smile borders on smug. “Thank you, Gerri. Already back to work?”

“I never stopped working,” she says flatly. “But I won’t burden you with the details when you’re about to go on your honeymoon, you should start off married life on the right foot. Roman, once you’re done here…?”

“Be right there.” With one last nod, Gerri walks off toward a waiting car. The hairs on the back of Roman’s neck prickle; sure enough, when he whips his head back around, Shiv is narrowing her eyes in confusion.

“There’s going to be a press conference in Japan about the launch, the satellite,” he mumbles quickly, preempting her question or, worse, any explanation Tom or Tabs would jump in with. “It’s not a big deal.”

Tom creases his brow in concern, but Shiv instantaneously loses interest. “Oh, your satellite,” she says, in an unimpressed monotone. “Well, have fun in Japan.”

His satellite, yes. Which he rescheduled for her. Which he royally fucked up because he wanted to do something special for her wedding, and she doesn’t even care enough to ask how it went.

When he tries to grab hold of that resentment, to turn it into venom and spit it back out, the feeling slips away from him. He knows why he could be angry, he can imagine telling Shiv to fuck off, she has no idea how much work he put in. It’s hollow, and cold, and the truth is that Roman is sick with relief. She has no idea at all.

He hums acknowledgment, taking a moment to regain his composure. “Have fun drinking mimosas in the Bahamas, or whatever you’re doing on your honeymoon. No way Ken can fuck that for you.”

Shiv’s laugh trails off into a soft groan of dread. “I hope not. We’ll be disconnected, no looking at the news, so as long as the world doesn’t end I think we’ll be fine.”

“That’s a good choice,” Tabitha says. “Ignorance is bliss and all that.”

“I bet by the time you’re back it’ll all have blown over,” Roman adds cheerily. “Ken will piss his pants trying to confront Dad, back out, and Sandy and Stewy just have to go fuck themselves without him as their in.”

Tabs doesn’t miss a beat. “Right, or that could happen.”

“You never know.” Roman raises his eyebrows and pops his lips, feeling like he should say something else at the same time as he wants nothing more than to leave. “I guess I should say congratulations again.” He winces. “God, you’re actually married.”

“Did that only sink in now?”

“You’re not going to convince me you’re already used to it. At least you’re not Siobhan Wambsgans now, that would be a truly criminal vowel-to-consonant ratio.” He waits for Shiv to give him an exasperated look before continuing, smirking in a way he knows will irritate her more. “Seriously, though. Congratulations.”

Embarrassingly quick and infuriatingly genuine, Tom grins and says, “Thanks, Roman.”

It takes Shiv a respectable second longer before she gives him a small, doubtful smile and a “Thank you,” of her own, still waiting for the punchline. “That’s it?”

Roman glances over to Tom before he can stop himself. Tom meets his eyes with nothing more than polite, mild interest. “Yeah,” Roman says, turning his head to look at the car waiting for him instead, safely meaningless. Objective, material, unchanging fact. He swallows and doesn’t taste anything. “That’s it.”