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Greg has the eyes of a cow, Tom thinks. Too big and too startled and too bovine. Like something on a cheap plush toy that a child would drag around for too many years.
Tom sort of wants to stab Greg in his cow eyes. He wants to stab Greg in the chest. He wants to hand Greg the knife and say please, please, please, take me instead. I want to do it. I want you to do it. Please.
(No one’s stabbing anyone. Tom’s not sure when his thoughts got so dark, or so desperate.)
Tom’s going to prison, and all he can think of are those dumb cow eyes. Greg looks entirely too open, entirely too honest, entirely too warm, and Tom thinks it’s because Greg is a veritable moron. He’s open and honest and warm because he doesn’t know how to be anything else. He’s stupid. He’s fucking his life for a rocky Waystar salary, for a watch, for the pride of being the guy to sue Greenpeace and win.
Tom fucked his life a long time ago. It doesn't matter how terrible it is, but he thinks it's nice to see someone else down so low with him, desperation clinging to another waist.
----
When Tom can’t sleep, he daydreams of simpler times. He’s not sure when all of those daydreams started involving the big, dumb, Gumby suddenly lurking in the corners of every room, but he can’t make them stop.
He thinks of taking Greg to dinner, the night that Shiv went to D.C., the night before the morning where Kendall tore everything down. Of eating songbirds and wearing napkins to mask their shame. He thinks of unsaid words. Of:
Greg, no napkin is large enough to mask my shame.
Greg, do you like this dinner? Do you know what luck you have, this kind of wealth in your lap? Me, as your spirit guide through it all?
Greg, eat your songbird. All at once. Take in the whole bite, buddy, bones and all. You’ve got to get used to swallowing up everyone, bones and blood and all. Eat.
Greg, if you leave me alone, I may very well do something drastic. I’m worried about the person I’m becoming.
Tom is, of course, only deranged in his head. He would never say these kind of words out loud, and he’s not even sure if he believes them.
(There’s one thing he’s terribly unsure of: that he was worried about the person he was becoming. A year later, lying in bed beside Shiv, Tom’s not sure if he’s ever cared about the person he is. Not since meeting the Roy’s, at any rate.)
Or he thinks of other things. Of worse times. Of kneeling in front of a fireplace, heat on his back, Greg beside him. Of, “Please”, of grappling with another grown man on the floor, of ensuring that Greg picked up a stupid sausage and wondering if Greg would ensure the same for him.
(Or he thinks of other things from that night, things he keeps deep in his mind, under careful lock and key.
Greg knocking his door, eyes too big and face too pale. Greg bending down to hug Tom fiercely, to drag his flat hand up and down Tom’s spine.
“That was so fucked up,” Greg had said stupidly, ineloquently. Eliza Doolittle before she was Henry Higgins-ified.
“Yeah.” Tom had said anyway, and clung to Greg’s sweater. “Yeah.”
The door clicked shut softly. Tom didn’t let go of Greg.)
Or, the safe room. Flinging water bottles and screaming obscenities and thinking about the purple bruises that would bloom on Greg’s skin. Tom finds that he liked marking up someone else. Physical proof that someone else was there struggling with him, getting knocked down time and time again. A fellow novice in the ring with Ali.
I don’t always like who I am, Greg, Tom had said, far closer to the truth that he was comfortable with. More unsaid words.
He meant:
I hate who I am when I’m alone with myself. You can’t leave me, or else there will be no one around to mop up the shame. You’ve got to take some of the hatred. I can’t carry it myself.
He meant:
You’re not fucking leaving me, got it? I’m not letting go of two of the things I need at once. Fuck you and your business open relationship and your stupid wants. I’m not letting go. Once I get my claws in, they’re in.
Tom doesn’t think about the press conference. Really, he doesn’t. Some things are best kept behind a locked lid. Not everyone needs to be all Pandora about it all.
He doesn’t think about anything after the press conference, either. Of calling Greg until his phone died, of waiting for Greg to meet with him, of Nero and Sporus and hey, let’s fight like chickens.
Tom doesn’t like thinking of the embarrassing incidents, because he hates playing the fool. He does it for Shiv, because he has to, but he doesn’t enjoy it. He's no glutton for punishment, not with her. And he doesn’t want to do it with Gregory, with someone who’s already peeled back the layers of his skin and seen him for what he is.
(He doesn’t know what he is, but he knows that Greg looks at him differently than the other Roy’s do, like Tom isn’t the largest imbecile on the planet. Like Tom doesn’t deserve to be garroted at the next turn.)
----
Tom watches Greg across the crowded breakfast buffet, watches him carefully pull some ham off of the carving plate and onto his own plate. He likes watching Greg’s hands. They’re deft and sure of themselves, unlike his eyes.
Greg places a sharp knife onto his plate. Tom thinks of letting Greg cut his chest open and remove his heart. He wonders what Greg would do with it: crush it, treasure it, cast it aside.
Tom gets that familiar itchy feeling underneath his skin, and ducks into the bathroom to try and scrub it away.
(He’s gotten into the habit of not looking at himself in the mirror. He’s finding that he hates what he sees.)
When he goes out to the breakfast buffet to talk to Greg, he hates what he sees in Greg’s face, too. He's not the lanky freak in the hideous coat anymore, wearing a baseball glove like he's unsure what to do with it. His eyes are entirely unlike they were then, unlike they were even last night in the weak light of that disgusting diner. Here, in the light of this hotel ballroom, his eyes look too much like Roman’s, like Logan’s, like a Roy’s.
(I sculpted you in my image, Tom thinks. I’m sorry. I got it all wrong; I went too far. It’s my fault. I repent, I repent, I repent.)