Chapter Text
The last night before the execution. Tom’s final waltz. He heard the first death knell sounding when he was demoted to some depressing basement office/closet at the ATN warehouse in Queens. Or, he supposes, he heard it when Kendall had his press conference with Greg waving those fucking unshred, unburnt, perfectly crisp documents like a white flag in the background. Or, he supposes, it was when he said “I do,” to the Roys during a marriage ceremony in England. That great, multi headed beast of a gorgon that is the Roys turning Tom and his hopes and dreams to stone, while he sat back and happily said, “Yes, do eat me up, please and thank you.”
Tom takes another drink of champagne. It’s time to self-destruct. Time to hit the button and send the Wambsgans plane crashing into the ground. Time to take the guns away from that merry band of murderers and shoot himself in the head.
Divorce Shiv. Quit Waystar. Roll over into his grave with dignity before they can throw him into it.
It’s his last supper. Biblical fucking shit. But even Jesus got to throw one back with his buddies before being fucked.
So now, Tom’s drinking champagne with his own little disciple, Greg. Of course, he would’ve preferred his companion to not be fucking Judas, but Tom saw the musical. Judas was so guilty over his betrayal that he’d killed himself and was damned to disco hell. Tom can only hope for the same for Greg.
When Tom had called Greg and told him they were going out, he was surprised that Greg had acquiesced so readily. Oh, uh, yeah, sure man, that sounds, like, totally cool, like where are we, um, going?
Tom scoffs and slides his eyes over to where Greg sits beside him. They’re sat together on a couch in the balcony section of a hip young club, their second setting for the evening. They started the night at a smoky bar straight out of a Billy Joel song, all lonely men in business suits surrounded by leather and red wood and blues. After drinking two old fashioneds and casually but actually very seriously chewing out Greg, Tom was feeling loose and restless and ready to move on. It was time for something a little more decadent, a little less pitiable. So, a club. Joel traded in for Gatsby.
When they had arrived, Tom immediately ordered a bottle of champagne and Greg had laughed, “Okay, champagne? Are we, uh, celebrating something, Tom?”
“Yes, Greg. We’re celebrating the end of the world.”
“Oh. Well, cheers to that!”
They’re now on their last glass of that bottle, and Greg is slack-jawed, blue eyes glassily gazing out over the horde of beautiful dancers below them, his head bobbing along out of beat to the music. Though strangely enough, Tom notices as his eyes ski down the alpen slopes of Greg’s legs, Greg’s tapping foot is managing to keep perfect rhythm.
Greg. A walking contradiction. A shrinking violet in the body of bigfoot. An assassin in the guise of a friend. The Robert Ford to Tom’s Jesse James. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or vice versa. A sheep in wolf’s clothing. With Greg, who knows?
“Hey man, like, total deja vu, right?”
Tom is jerked from his thoughts and Greg’s legs, and looks up, “What?”
“You know, like, we’ve kind of been here before?”
“We have never been to this club together, Greg.”
Greg laughs like Tom’s told a joke, “No, yeah, but we’ve done this before. Me and you? Remember, you made me eat a bird? And then we drank, like, a lot of gold?”
“Mhm,” Tom sips his champagne. What is Greg trying to get at? Is Tom boring? Is this not new and exciting enough for Greg?
“I don’t know. Just kind of funny,” Greg shrugs.
“Is this venue not up to your standards? Shall we find some unexplored frontier for you to stake your flag in, Greg?”
“No, man. I was just saying. Forget it, okay?”
Greg is frowning now, looking pointedly away and Tom figures, fine. Let Greg be dissatisfied. He wants to wield the knife, but not use it? Fine. Tom doesn’t need to be told that Greg judges him to know it.
The thing is, Tom’s life has been a line of dominos, one knock after the next. Every time he wobbles and tries to straighten himself out, someone is there to make sure he keeps falling. He’s not the hand that keeps pushing, surely. He is the domino, squeezed out of his mother forty two years ago to fall into himself, and then again, and again, and again. He’s there now, shaking over the precipice, seeing his next failure clear as day tilting further and further towards him, and he’s just waiting for Greg to be the one to push him.
“Are you not– I mean to say, are you okay, Tom?”
Tom straightens, “Yes, of course I am.”
“Okay, cool. Yeah, because like, to be frankly honest, I was really, uh, glad that you called me. Confused, but yeah, glad. Because, you know, I know things are maybe sort of weird because of the press conference and betrayal and whatever, but we’re friends, right? We’re good?”
“The, uh, betrayal, and um, whatever,” Tom snorts, mocking. Greg winces.
Then, “Yes, Greg, we’re friends. You’re maybe one of the only friends I have left.”
Greg swallows the last of his champagne and turns so he’s facing Tom, one knee folding up onto the seat, dangerously close to Tom’s thigh. Tom watches and keeps himself still. The domino teeters.
“So, see, this is why I asked you if you were okay, because it feels like you are probably not okay? Because of statements like that,” Greg asks with faux-concern in his voice.
“What, I can’t be a little dramatic when I’m about to torpedo my whole life?”
“Well, okay, so that’s very dramatic. What are you planning on, uh, torpedoing?”
“My life, Greg. My job, my marriage, my everything. Whoosh, kaboom, there it goes! What business is it of yours, anyways?” Tom watches as Greg’s knee makes contact with his thigh and he doesn’t move.
“I feel like you kind of made it my business when you just, uh, told me?”
“Alright. Fair enough. Lay it on me, then. Give me your sage wisdom, oh mighty Gregory.”
Greg laughs and runs a hand through his hair, his cheeks flushed from the dinner wine and club champagne. “Okay, okay. Well, I don’t actually know anything? But like, you can tell me about it if you want. Like, what’s your plan?”
“So you can sell it to Kendall? Stab me again? No, thank you,” Tom finishes his own drink, and flags down a waitress to order another bottle.
“Come on, dude,” Greg says, laughing again. He shifts again to rest his elbow on the back of the couch, and using the new leverage, props his face up in his hand to look fully at Tom. “We’re, uh, friends? We here for you, right? So, uh, I’m here.”
Suddenly, Tom is distinctly aware of how they must look, flushed and mussed, sitting separate from the rest of the club.
He forces out a laugh and pats Greg’s knee, shifting to the far end of the couch, “I’m kidding, Greg. It’s fine.”
Usually, Tom’s mind is more than content to gloss over what people are thinking of him, but every now and again, his brain revolts and brings up that ugly magic mirror that is self-awareness to show him the truth. The truth tonight is, he’s a middle-aged man sitting, no, practically snuggling, with his nebulously young friend in the private section of a club made for the young and wealthy and beautiful. Even if Tom would like to convince himself he ticks two out of three of those boxes, he’s currently lucid enough to admit that it’s sadly only one. Good God, am I Connor? Tom thinks.
“How old are you?” He asks Greg.
“Uh, what? Old enough, I guess.”
“What a creepy answer, Greg. You tell that to all your hookups? Pull out the old jailbait card and bat your eyelashes?”
Greg wrinkles his nose, drawing his eyebrows together, “That’s a creepy answer too, Tom. I’m like, thirty in a month.”
Tom nods, doing the math, forty two minus twenty nine, when the waitress returns with their second bottle. Their respective glasses are filled and Tom drinks liberally while Greg sips at his.
Swallowing, Tom asks, too loudly, “Are you aware of how we look, Greg?”
“I’m pretty sure no one’s looking at us, dude,” Greg says, looking around.
“Oh, sure, right. Of course no one is looking at the old man and little Cousin Greg, canoodling in private.”
“I wouldn’t say we’re like, canoodling,” Greg mutters, shifting away from Tom. “And I’m not– You’re not old. And like, could you not call me your cousin, please?”
“Right, I’m not a Roy anymore. Or at least, for not much longer, huh?”
“You never really were,” Greg says before chugging his champagne like an animal.
It stings, but it’s true. Tom was always an overly large Minnesotan puzzle piece crammed into the tight knit jigsaw that was Shiv and her family. Without the family connection, though, what claim does he have to Greg? What claim does he have to anything?
He wants to be a Roy. He wants to dig his claws in. He wants to drag Greg down with him. He wants to stand at the top of the world and have every single little fucker down there rejoice in his name. He wants. He wants, he wants.
“Did you want to go dance or something?” Greg asks, staring into his empty flute.
“Down there? With you?”
“I mean, there’s other people down there. But yeah.”
“No, you go ahead. Someone’s gotta finish off this bottle, right?”
Greg precariously stands, turning his face away from Tom, “Yeah, sure. Whatever man, you do that.”
“No, no, go on. Go do your Greg thing,” Tom laughs, imagining Greg on the dance floor, “Go awkwardly charm the pants off people with your mile long legs and sad blue eyes. I won’t get in your way.”
Greg sits back down. Tom raises his eyebrows, “Unless you need me to be your wingman, Greg?”
“Are you sure you don’t just wanna come dance? I think it could be fun. For us.”
“Look, I don’t know if you’re feeling particularly understimulated, but I am having fun.”
“Are you though?”
Tom shrugs. He refills his glass. When Greg, apparently decided against dancing, sits back and raises his empty glass, Tom refills that too.
Tom is having fun. Tom’s having the time of his life. Tom’s never felt better. He just doesn’t want to move from this spot on the couch ever again.
Is Greg having fun? Tom peers sidelong at him, where Greg has settled back in on the couch, his bony shoulders a taut line, his legs spilling over the edge to puddle into delicately crossed ankles on the floor. Of course Greg isn’t having fun. He wanted to go dance, get swallowed by the sea of glittering young socialites pulsing beneath them. Tom pushes himself downward, resting chin on chest, and considers pushing Greg to go out there. Go and be free, Greg! Don’t come back! Go on, get!
But if he pushes, there’s too high a risk that Greg will happily let himself be shoved into that youthful dancing oblivion, far, far away from Tom. With Greg gone, the night would be essentially over, and then it would just be Tom alone, a sad old man drunkenly planning metaphorical suicide. He would’ve stayed in the Billy Joel bar if that was the plan. So he won’t push. It’s fine for Greg to be a little miserable anyway, it builds character. And he won’t have to endure much longer, not when the ticking Tom-Bomb is set to detonate tomorrow.
“You should come work for Kendall,” Greg announces.
“What?”
“I mean, I guess it would be an interview actually? But if you’re, uh, planning on quitting, which I think you are? Then I think it could be a good thing, to come help me and Kendall?” He pauses, then adds on with a smile, “You know, like, lend your business expertise to the cause.”
It’s Greg’s turn to cast a sidelong look at Tom now, two side-eyes meeting then turning away, like virgins circling on prom night.
Tom looks away, “You don’t want me around. I don’t know if you’ve retained anything in that giant head of yours, but my last business venture ended, shall we say, quite poorly. I’m basically executive poison, Greg.”
“I want you around.”
They both take a drink. They’re halfway through their second bottle, but it’s not enough. Tom replays Greg’s response in his head. He wants to argue, but he doesn’t want to lose. He says nothing. He tops off his champagne.
“I think– Well, okay. Kendall likes you, I think, and like, I don’t think the cruises stuff was entirely your fault? And Kendall says it’ll be a fresh start, so your poison– not that I think you’re poison, but maybe we, as a team, would be immune? To that particular violence, as it were?”
“Is this your pitch, Greg?”
“Yeah. Yes. I think you should interview with Kendall.”
“I actively participated in the public fucking of his family’s company. I’m about to divorce his sister. Forgive me for thinking, Greg, that he wouldn’t want an audience with me.”
“Well, um, I don’t think Kendall’s priority is his family right now, so? And like, you wanted to do a press conference about it originally, which was, unfortunately, somehow, derailed, but still. That was good. I could, like, tell him about it. I want to. Do you want me to?”
“Don’t–” Tom groans and scrubs a hand over his eyes. “It’s not realistic.”
“Okay, well, I think it is!” Greg sits up, four feet of spine straightening into an iron rod, drunken brilliance sparking in his blue eyes. “I know you want to, like, torpedo yourself or whatever, but I think there’s actually a lot of, uh, promise, in this idea? You’re not a villain, dude, you can do the right thing. And me and Kendall want to do the right thing? Like, no more shredded documents and murder or whatever, so it’s cool. Logistically, obviously, I wouldn’t be your assistant anymore, but that would– I think that would be cool too? To work together? And we work together well, I mean, I like– I appreciate the opportunity to work alongside you, so–”
Greg rambles on, stuttering through the fantastical idea of good triumphing over evil, of Tom and Greg (and Kendall) as moral crusading coworkers. Tom tunes him out, something naive and hopeful twisting his gut like a fatal disease. Instead, he tops off his glass and watches Greg’s hands.
While Greg suffers through his speech, his arms and hands dance through it. There’s a sort of equine grace in his long limbs, his tensed hands. Matchstick fingers cut through the air, breaking into joints and sharp knuckles as they gesture their way through life. The tendons in his wrist rise as he arcs his hand over the expanse of his words. Thin arms sway like the boughs of a tree. Or a hangman’s noose.
Tom is attracted to men. He knows this.
But it didn’t work out. Wasn’t strategically viable. Not while in St. Paul, Minnesota, waiting to step on the first rung of the social ladder. It continued to not work out as he found that ladder and was allowed to start climbing. It doesn’t mean he’s not aware, though. It just means that it was another push of the dominos that he had to try and pick himself up from. So, he met women. He met some more women. He met Shiv. Things were good, until they weren’t.
When he met Greg, he noticed all the things any normal person would notice. Tall as fuck, features like a porcelain doll baby, and the stilted movements and speech of a dummy puppeteered by some crackhead ventriloquist. It wasn’t attraction that Tom first felt. It was an opportunity for him to be the one guiding someone else’s strings.
Attraction was never the draw, until it was. Until Tom had to prompt, “No?” when Greg, sitting pathetically alone in an empty meeting room, refused to commit to a night out. When all Tom could think was, I won’t let you say no, not now, not ever. When all Tom could think was, I want you, and I will make you say yes if I have to. He’s not some beast, but everyone has to play their part, and Greg was playing a very convincing Belle.
But Greg said yes. And he said yes tonight, didn’t he?
“Are you gay?”
The question bursts out of Tom like a parasite intent on destroying everyone in its wake.
Greg blinks, his mouth snaps shut. He crosses his arms, tries on a frown, discards it, replaces it with a look of wide-eyed, eyebrow raised incredulity, “Uh, wow dude, what? That’s- like, uh. Are you?”
Tom is frozen. Most of him, at least. His mouth, however, is working overtime. It opens and closes. Opens and closes. The easy answer is obviously a no.
His answer instead becomes, “It’s not a good time for me, Greg.”
Greg pauses, his eyebrows fall back down, “What? Like, what? Not a good time for what?”
“I’m married to Shiv fucking Roy, Greg. ”
“Okay, sure, but not forever, right, because of the torpedo? So, like–” Greg’s hands disappear underneath his armpits, his arms folding impossibly tighter, like twisted dough, “Are you– Tom, I think I need, like, a little more transparency right now?”
“It was just a– a question. I don’t know!”
“Yeah, but it feels like a very, uh, loaded question?”
Tom’s getting a bit lost in the weeds here. In fact, he’s feeling a bit sweaty and red-faced from the exertion of hacking through the weeds. “I simply need– No, I want– No, I am feeling like there is– That this is information that is your duty to disclose to me.”
“Well, I am feeling like this is information I would prefer not to, uh, disclose to you, at this moment.”
“This waffling is doing your mysterious sexuality no favors, Greg. You could’ve simply said no,” Tom grits out through clenched teeth. He’s sure he looks insane. He definitely feels it.
“I agree, yeah, because, like, so could’ve you.”
Tom folds, falls, “Then, yes. Sort of. Yes.”
“Oh. Shit. Yeah. Okay. Me too. Yes.”
Tom regards Greg, poor, sweet, terrified Greg, his face managing both waxy and rosy, his wide eyes shining limpid pools of whatever the fuck, looking like he’s ready for the other shoe to drop right onto his head, braining him on the sacrificial stone. Tom wonders what the policy on tearing off your clothing and ravishing your ex-cousin is in this club. He digs his fingers into his knees and looks away.
“I am,” he starts. He exhales loudly through his nose, closing his eyes, and begins again, “Despite all reason, I am– I am interested in you.”
He keeps his eyes closed while he tries to focus on breathing properly, while his heart threatens sudden failure, while the beat of the club’s music pounds in his head, brain aneurysm imminent. His jaw tightens and cracks, and Tom wonders if perhaps all of his teeth will shatter under the pressure. He can distantly hear Greg shifting (away, he’s shifting away, he’s repulsed, surely) and is about to play it all off with a laugh and another bottle of alcohol, when he registers that, oh, Greg is speaking.
“–get out of here?”
“What?”
Greg looks at him, “I said, I think I would like to get out of here now?”
Oh. The death knell sounds.
Outside the club, Tom feels a sort of world weariness, a World War II soldier ready to pack his bags and return to modern life, stuffing all that baggage back in his head where it belongs and then Greg touches his arm, a fleeting glance of fingertips, guiding him away from the entrance and towards the darkened mouth of the neighboring alley. So we’re back in the trenches, thinks Tom.
“I’m sorry, but it was like, a lot of sensory overload in there, and I, um, needed to get out? Like, it was just very loud, and I wanted to make sure I was hearing you properly, because, um. So, you were saying?”
“It’s fine,” Tom sighs, “It was nothing. You don’t have to tiptoe around it, Greg. I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do understand? Because like– Wait, you were being serious, right?”
“What?”
“You gotta tell me if you were being serious, man.”
“And if I was?”
“Then, I guess, despite all reason,” Greg mocks, “I’m interested in you, too.”
Oh. Oh.
Tom stands there, forty two and frozen and feeling fourteen, when Greg takes his hand and smiling sheepishly, asks, “Is this– Are you okay?”
Tom raises their interlocked hands and presses a kiss to Greg’s jutting knuckles, feeling like he’s going to cry, which would be ridiculous, because he’s happy , and responds, “It is. I am.”
And he is.