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for greg, he can be happy.
it's hard. it's hard and it's a lot of difficulty.
luckily there was no poison tooth, no death to the wambsgans line, no shiv crying at a funeral because she's supposed to and she's upset but this isn't how she shows upset and it's so the cameras acknowledge feelings she expresses differently.
they do get divorced, though.
shiv and tom talk about it and tom uses his big boy words and shiv honest-to-god drops her jaw with a smile at tom wambsgans because he acknowledges the looks she gives willa.
it's fine, shiv. you're allowed. tom wishes she'd told him ( the poly thing, her bisexuality is hers to hold safe until she’s ready ) before they married- got together, really- but he respects that she needs freedom if she respects he wants commitment. he wants monogamy and he wants security in his relationships.
and the sharp, authoritative tone that usually makes him sink into his boots feels right when she says "greg. you want my cousin."
( he still flushes a shade only described in hex code, a dedicated red roman is usually the master of coaxing out. )
( he wonders if he can fix things. )
the divorce is silent, dropped in the press as a peaceful decision, one shiv did the wrestling with logan for.
tom barely hears the slur but shiv's "ex-husband or not, you talk about no man in my life like that." rings bells. he hopes she steals her brother's current girltoy. roman deserves good things, but shiv could treat a gal like that right. for real right.
checks at waystar are collected. greg's right- the inner mechanics are nasty. tom's started tuning up forgotten cars for the assorted roys. waystar is uglier than even the most ignored of vintage engines.
he can't fix things in three months, but he brings anyone and everyone who needs it coffee, messes up their orders for two weeks before he gets it, expresses anger in ways that are healthy, goes to a gay bar for the first time since college. doesn't go home with anyone, but a finger looped in his work pants by the 6'4.5" boy who expects tom to spoil him makes him feel like someone else sees him, someone separate.
two months out, tom finds greg's email. he has a small local news group in toronto- barely writes, focuses on his employees and giving those with less than him a platform, a voice, and a safe, fair, workplace. greg did wrote an article about homophobia in major news under about 40 pseuds for people. including himself. but, come on.
sometimes, scary places have good people. places have become bigger than many people. these corporations and large conglomerates swallow love, acceptance, understanding, they swallow whole people. they make classical music snobs of men who tap 500USD dress shoes to gwen stefani on the radio when they think no one is looking.
perhaps we all need a sweet escape. a dismantling of a dangerous system. to protect those men. i didn't forget to shut the refrigerator, tim. that's not the reason you're acting so cold.
the last lie tom ever tells greg is in an email claiming he's scouting for canadian waystar partners. memo attached under file name of... the title of a taylor swift song he googled.
confidentiality in sending fake documents to g-slide dates to greg.
greg's reply says "cool. monday, 1pm? that's the radio hit from red."
greg hirsch knows he researched taylor swift for him, wants to meet 3 hours after a fake touchdown he hadn't scheduled, and included a google maps link to a cafe and "Untitled_5.jpg".
this file is a mspaint-scribbled map from the closest bus station walking to the cafe. tom will die.
tom sends a thumbs up emoji as a response email. he remembers something. softens.
tom has never been to skyscanner.com. his mother booked his flight to new york city, and you don’t really afford to leave unless you’re on good terms with a more lucrative ma-n-pa duo, or you fall in love with a roy. he felt strange googling cheap plane websites, and shiv had offered a plane, no matter what their status was, but tom was experimenting.
shiv pats his back and chuckles at that one, leaves him to figure out being poor again.
he decides because this is very important, he will allow himself the splurge, the luxury of non-stop. he will get in early the morning of, he decides, sell the haggard- no.
the last lie was told.
he books reasonably, the way he would if he was scheduling around greg. because he wanted to. he will look nice because he misses greg, he will tell him the lot. greg's perfect dumb smile will get bigger than tom's ever allowed himself to cause. butterflies.
for some reason, for some stupid reason, tom is listening to a playlist from another lifetime that greg made and sent him.
we were alone, on the road, driving faster
so far from home, we were chasing disaster
it's out of laguardia.
poured on the gas, till the car caught on fire
it's $115.
we had to laugh as the smoke billowed higher
tom wambsgans books a one way ticket to toronto.
i wanna feel alive forever after
tom wambsgans knocks on shiv roy's door to discuss what of the money is his, still, technically.
greg hirsch will not hear from tom until canada.
—
he knows an affirmation when he sees one, but he also feels like his brain just blew up on his laptop. he didnt know an emoji could make a grown man slam his lenovo shut like that.
it's not the crush, it's that he knew. someway, somehow, tom found him, and somehow, someway, he's coming back.
here's the thing- greg's smarter than tom. greg can tell when borders aren't lined up, he knows most photoshop fonts (waystar got a copyright on theirs) and that's skewed too. greg also knows logan was willing to act like he never existed. logan does not care about this kind of journalism. greg is not a threat.
that was the plan. that was intentional. come on, tom.
greg also notices when his playlists get new followers, and he also doesn't follow them when he sees this, but the empty profile picture makes him laugh and it all feels fake.
because it's a trick, right? this is what tom does, right? lures him in because that's what he can do, he has all that, he has the everything. tom's his b-
not for three months.
greg stops pacing, stops flexing bony hands like he would in a before, looks in his full length mirror, the stickers he put on made with a label maker he's had since the 2000s.
today i will be me.
today's top priority is continuing to be me, no matter what.
it's been two months and if tom pulls some shit greg will skedaddle and tom will never know where he lives and he will throw his modem out the window and on the off chance the very small chance that this is not a hoax greg bought a big big bed that should not be in a studio apartment y'know just in case one of the one night stands wanted to sleep over and-
and it will be fine. and you're high, greg.
even with the melatonin, in his dreams he's still high, but it's easier- he feels warm and safe and he feels held, he feels real- for a night he indulges in temporary memory reassociation and tom is so tall but so, goddamn short, huh. but that's fine because in greg's dreams he still remembers it all perfectly but now he stands up straight, he's allowed. and tom just barely has to tilt his head up when somehow greg feels like he's in tom's arms, wrapped up by a dumbass teddy bear who's five minute redemption arc rivals some films and "ol maple-fuckers" isn't an insult to greg and it never was. it's funny because tom's funny when's not weaponizing it.
in greg's dreams he wasn't scared. the night is a perfect length, and greg rolls to be in the warmth of morning sun when he turns off his phone instead of hitting snooze. his body pillow is fine. greg savors.
this is a two week process, getting to the right strain to feel okay enough to function regularly. which is cool, shaves some time, but when greg can acknowledge the Xs subconsciously drawn on his 'unlikely animal friendships' wall calendar every day without freaking out, there are a lot of days happening, still. he loads up on 'enemy of the state' and marshmallow papers but that won't make the world turn different.
there's the cleaning. he's not too freaked, because tom will not ever get back here, but he remembers things tom always got futzy about at his own home, focuses on those. the stress laundry pile on a chair by the closet stays. every picture frame is evened out with a level. there are paint splatters everywhere, those stay. he is now regularly rolling his furniture to get rid of cat fur.
he'd trying to ignore the fact that remembering these things is second nature. he never cleaned tom's house. tom liked control over his picky-pickys, which greg said once as a bad joke and swore tom's ears were flushed.
he makes a private playlist, keysmash for a title, obscure. even if he was hacked no one would know.
well i can die a happy man if i could be with you
tom will see a hotel room and a cafe. that's it.
behind these eyes i believe fantasies can come true
greg buys new sheets. he keeps the blankets he's always had, horse quilts.
he doesn't know how he gets so much done in what feels like 2 seconds. one per month, he supposes.
—
this airline is too baseline nice, tom thinks. it’s comfy, but this isn’t the exposure therapy he wanted.
he does get a window seat in a three-row, sips one glass of half of a ginger ale to calm his stomach the nearly six hour flight. he snaps pretzel sticks he packed in weirdly long and short ziplocs, the ones greg packed all the bits of his lunch in at the start of the past. he is not getting up, not going to pee. he will land and bolt, but right now, he is not going to rehash crotch v. ass for the first time since he was spry and young, the tom with eyes that never stopped sparkling, the boy who thought he could advocate for agricultural conservation, keep the place he called home safe and healthy for his friends who lived on it.
he didn’t expect these tv screen things, he has greg playlists downloaded, finds stuff he can tell is thoughtful and greg thinking too hard about everything, wants to feel out what happened again, but with a catchy bassline.
this feels like what young tom would do, but with, like, more doja cat. he had a fondness for bruce springsteen, once. greg finds a ways to dance through his thoughts, sway with his own fears like he craves facing them.
i’m the lonely twin, the left hand
tom is intrigued by this concept. greg has this little ball of coping that means so much to him, develops him so much.
reset myself and get back on track
greg’s spotify wouldn’t be hard to find. it’s not anything super creative ( eggory reminds tom that this is a nickname he learned from greg talking about himself. that he remembered. ) but no one’s really looking, the photo obscure enough and indie at its core so that the confirmation would be 50/50 if-
if these weren’t found in tom’s texts. if greg didn't send tom all these little pockets of near-explicit confessions of thought.
i want you in the picture, that’s why i’m calling you
tom takes a melatonin because his stomach feels weird and he’s not rehashing the goddamn piss debate. it’s a five hour nap ( being generous ) by the time he dozes off, but he leaves his little off-brand bluetooth headphones in and somehow remembers without being scared. his dreams are those clouds of hands pulling him too close, but these hands come from a warm summer day and take his limbs gently and ask him to come with. ask him to be a part of their experience.
tom can finally count the number of times he’s understood greg deeply on two hands.
—
i thought i had it all together
but i was led astray, the day you walked away
greg is nursing a smoothie. he had two shots of espresso when he arrived 30 minutes early. he timed this to leave tom in a rush, he needed prep time. he likes this cafe because the baristas like him and helped him curate a playlist of stomachable beats that the owner wouldn't catch onto.
went from clear to grey, on that cloudy day
how can i go on with that bomb in my palm?
love's so hard to find, when someones on your mind
he wonders if waystar took him for a musician or deep fan of it. he wonders if waystar had thoughts about him. kendall said something about his headphone game, once. that was cool.
keep the truth confined
far from our minds
tom knew. maybe. a little bit. always a quip about his playlists, a comment that didn't feel deserved but did give him the sense of being heard. that was the thing.
i can see us there, waving unaware
about tom, specifically.
this i do declare- trust me, i'll be there
tom could rant and rail and rag but he listened. the discomfort and psychological pain sucked, but he remembered the wines greg liked and he knew what albums to buy and- greg won't lie, the taylor swift thing felt like a branding rod on his heart. it felt like such a minute, specific choice to him, and he didn't pick it apart that bad, but something about tom googling "taylor swift red album" because it was greg's favorite at the time makes him feel funny.
follow me into, into my sleep
he bought a cd of folklore in case things go well.
"greg?"
baby i'm yours, i'm yours to keep
—
the last time tom saw greg, he remembered clouds of waterlogged ink on his hand- scrubbed unsuccessfully of a nightmare.
( at least greg tried. )
his hands are now pristine and his index fingernails are painted blue. tom never learned color symbolism.
when tom enters the cafe, greg is tapping something on the table and mouthing words to the french song on the radio.
ma chambre a la forme d'une cage
le soleil passe son bras par la fenêtre
three steps access a memory. greg is tapping a rose gold juul he showed tom with enough excitement to tranquilize a horse, a limited edition item from the brand's subscription box. tom was unamused at the time, made a nicotine addiction crack, but greg still has it. he also knows greg showed him exclusively the juul, showed him exclusively the excitement.
déjà j'ai connu du le parfum de l'amor
and greg still taps it like a fidget toy he cant quit after years.
un million de roses n'embaumeraient pas autant
greg's head snaps up so fast at his name tom wonders if he's voice activated. he smiles brightly at the deer in headlights that he's sliding into the booth across from, wonders why greg picked the only vintage booth in a posh cafe.
( the ambiance of the choice is insanely greg, tom wants to place why . )
greg doesn't speak when tom undoes his scarf and takes of his coat, watches tom like greg's his own secret service agent, hands curled around the vape like it's precious military documents. greg looks scared.
je ne suis pas fière de ça, vie qui veut me tuer
"heyyyy, greg!"
"hi, tom."
the sound in greg's voice isnt fear of tom, it's fear of the background. if greg was scared of tom he'd bolt. he did everything to erase his identity in new york, he wouldn't have emailed tom back if he was scared of six feet and three inches of a man equally as terrified.
c'est magnifique être sympathique
tom swallows something other than his load and pretends he's in front of his mirror again.
"i didn't come for waystar."
"i knew that. you used the wrong margin size."
"okay."
"you also had your free font at a slight angle."
"i don't work for waystar anymore."
he counts to three in his head and can confirm greg didn't know that.
"i, uh- haha, it's funny, i make a living salary cleaning the assorted vintage car collections of the roys. never touched, you'd be amazed how fucked these little beasties get."
he gets a lopsided smile.
"it reminded me of back home."
ears perk.
"i don't think new york city is my home."
they are blessed by a waitress who seems to know greg because she sees the look in his eyes from the counter and arrives to take toms order with an espresso already sliding over to greg. tom orders an iced almondmilk latte with honey, because poor people forget to pack things, and he has no lactose pills. also, it's a good ass drink, and he misses it. the waitress looks at greg with worry, furrows her brow for an uncountably short moment at tom, and disappears.
greg has so many friends. tom thinks the people at his house that day actually liked him for the first time.
greg slams his espresso and doesn't let tom finish monologuing.
"you got fired?"
"i peacefully quit."
"why, you love it there, i- you know, i mean i thought-"
"maybe i did. legend had it happen, long ago, when eager evil thrives."
greg perks up instantly, scrambles for his phone, opens spotify, eyes wider than should be reasonable for human anatomy. when his head snaps up, tom says a sentence hes thought about and never forgotten for months-
"they had 28 when you left."
"it is a well of parasitic energy there."
tom doesn't laugh nervously- his lips slowly spread into the wide, toothy grin he wanted of the man across from him. tom will need to compose himself.
"wait-and uh, you- shiv?"
tom will need another moment to compose himself. he takes it. the waitress arrives quietly, sets down the latte and escapes again. tom sips and still sounds hoarse and raw with fear.
"we got divorced. amicably- she still likes me. she said i can live with her as long as i need, ooooo."
"that's nice."
"it will be until she starts having nightly arguments over roman's girlfriend. i want to leave."
greg nods without words, lets tom process.
"i got here a few days ago, saw the city. it's nice. i see you bristle, gregory, relax. i may not be the smartest person in this booth-"
( a moment to savor the little glow greg gets. barely noticeable. unless you're greg hirsch. )
"-but i know it looks bad to encroach on your territory. that's not my plan. i'll work in a garage, get back to my roots, maybe get a teaching degree, wherever i end up.
"greg, i am telling you this because you deserve to hear it. what waystar did, we did, i did, wasn't right to you. you were hurt, put in the middle of a job you didn't need or want for yourself. i am as much as if not more responsible for what happened there. i put you in danger- from the start! i have excuses. waystar is a vat of excuses. shiv is 80% good excuses, bless her heart. but you deserve better than lies or excuses or skirting around the point."
greg's eyes look like they're going to pull a kartrite resort and tom forgoes his straw to slam his iced latte. telling the truth is goddamn terrifying.
oppressor, i beseech
"i don't have to be in your life. ill fuck off to the other half of the globe if you need me. but i hurt you and i'm sorry, greg. nothing is going to change that. nothing is going to change that you are a morally just person who was hurt by me and many others despite having love seep from your every pore and kindness behind your eyes- you may be a roy everywhere but your name, but corporate injustice isn't hereditary. you deserve better and- and- and-"
tom can't get the breath to suck in air but greg leans in closer and tom feels lava in his ears and the words are hot and singe his tongue
"dammit, greg, i want to fucking hang myself there and i berated you endlessly because i was supposed to but any moment with you loosened the nose and i want one more goddamn chance to cut it free if you'll have me. you can say no and i'll go to wisconsin and lay low. but i promise you i have no plans to lie to you and i will respect you kicking me to the curb the second you need."
tom leans back in the booth to breathe like he just got a handsy under the table and he wonders why human beings have emotions. greg's first words are a whisper to the waitress for a third ( how long have you been here, greg? ) smoothie and he hasn't spoken by the time hes tracing his blue index finger on the cool, almost wet rim of his glass. tom wonders if greg forgot he's there.
then he scoffs.
"don't go to wisconsin."
kansas, tom thinks.
"i have a cat."
this is the first piece of personal new greg information he has received.
"i named him carter. seemed nicer than ferraro as a memory. he's just a stray i fed too much, but he's, uh, normal? like, i got him his shots and stuff."
greg is talking like greg. "don't say and stuff." a wink. greg fell asleep showing tom that after the burning. tom slept in greg's bed and called it a power move the next day.
"okay, mister nice guy." he gets it.
"are our animals going to run the united states?"
"i think a cat president would be pretty cool."
greg hasn't heard this laugh because tom hasn't been not scared in a long, long time. tom wonders if he’s heard this many independent thoughts from greg, ever.
he wonders if he ever allowed himself to hear them.
"you wanna come meet him? the food here kinda sucks, and i really tricked out the kitchen in my studio."
"feline and dine me, greg?" it's a risk.
tom gets the smile he prayed to a debatable god for.
"if i'm allowed?"
greg is blessed with words he thought he'd never hear.
"i'm not your boss anymore, greg. let carter be the pussy. what's for dinner?"