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The phone clicks off, the line goes dead, and Tom freezes in place. Italian breeze wafts around him, balmy and romantic, and he looks down at the freshly-manicured grass beneath his feet, the rolling countryside before him.
Shiv’s name is all over this, all of theirs are, and they don’t even know that they’ve signed it in their blood. Tom does. Tom’s standing behind them with the fucking knife, he’s collecting up the blood, he’s forcing their hands.
Tom thinks of a time a million years ago, sitting beside Shiv in a hospital waiting room while she stared down Kendall.
“You’re wet, you’re green, you’re not a killer,” she’d said, and Tom knew then, knows now, has always known, that you have to be a killer with the Roy’s. There’s no time for being gentle, for being soft.
Tom tried to be soft with Shiv, and look where he’s ended up. Cucked in his marriage, miserably depressed, standing on one side with Gregory Hirsch the only one standing beside him.
But then, Greg’s a Roy. He’s slimy, too. He’s not even entirely on Tom’s side, but he’s got a foot on Tom’s side, and that’s more than enough. It’s far easier to yank someone over the threshold when they’re already partly through the door.
Tom slips his phone into his pocket and takes a moment to breathe, rationalizing just what he’s going to do.
----
Greg slips up behind him a few moments later with a gentle shove to the shoulder and a low, excited, Tommy! slipping from his lips.
He starts to talk about royalty and contessa’s and all Tom can do is stare at him and think, God, you fucking moron. We’re about to be royalty. Fuck the contessa- you’ve got a crown on your head already. I'll make you king, got it?
Tom’s going to take him. He’s going to pull Greg into the golden elevator with him and they’re going to ride it all the way to the top.
It’s fucked up, maybe, not bring his wife with him. To stab Shiv in the back and leave her to bleed out in the Italian countryside. But he knows more than he knows anything else that Shiv would do the same to him. She wouldn’t even think about it.
She’s already hanging him out to dry, he knows that. If she and her siblings take the company, Tom won’t be high up. Tom won’t be anything. He’ll be axed before their first hour is through.
Eat or be eaten, Wambsgans, he thinks, and he makes the decision. He closes the curtain on Shiv’s bleeding form, and pulls Gregory into the spotlight.
Tom politely lets him ramble on about the two women he’s trying to pull, or maybe just the one- he can’t keep up. He files the bitter jealously away for later, figures that’s another box to deal with at another time.
When Greg’s finally done, Tom sits him down, and takes a deep breath.
“Things may be in motion,” Tom says, because he has no clue how much to let on. Greg’s bovine eyes widen, and he immediately knots his fingers together and starts to tug, some weird nervous tick that Tom only recently noticed.
“As in…someone’s going to jail?”
Tom chuckles a little and shakes his head. The jail problem seems like it’s lightyears away. That was a different Tom who spent every night imagining life in a cramped prison cell. That Tom is not this Tom, not the same one who has some of the most important information in the world in his hands.
In some ways, they’re the same. In terms of the Greg of it all, he supposes. That’s why he’s here now, isn’t it?
“Do you want to come with me?” He asks, and then, to make sure Greg understands, he tacks on, “Sporus?”
Greg’s eyes widen at the memory, but it’s a different widening than they did that day. A better one. One that doesn’t make Tom want to go into the bathroom and scream into his palms.
“Can I ask for a little more information?”
“No.” Tom says seriously, and Greg turns away, exhales in the way he does when Tom’s being difficult. “I…may need you as my attack dog. A Greg-weiler.”
It’s a pretty good pun. He doesn’t bother to congratulate himself on it at the moment, but he files that away, too.
“Tom’s attack dog.” Greg says sardonically, rubbing his neck and looking away. “I mean, I have Brightstar Buffalo in my pocket, and I’m kind of a big deal, so…”
Tom resists the urge to laugh. This is something gentle he’s handling here, asking Greg to join him. Greg can pretend all he wants, but he’s as egotistical as the rest of the Roy’s. Tom can’t laugh in his face in a moment like this and still expect it to go well.
Still.
“You fucked yourself before congress, Greg,” he snaps, thinking of the idiot on his screen, C-SPAN fucking his complexion all to hell.
“That’s your opinion.” Greg says, a petulant child.
Sure, Tom thinks. Like you didn’t call me after, freaking out in a congressional bathroom stall. Play it that way, Gregory.
Tom mocks him, then goes in for the kill shot, the one just harsh enough to slap some sense into him, just harsh enough to bring him back under Tom’s thumb, just harsh enough to get him to agree:
“You’re a fucking joke, man.”
It doesn’t work. Greg turns red, looks away, swallows roughly.
Okay, so maybe he’s not as Roy as the rest of them. Maybe Tom can afford to be a little gentler, the way he wants to with Greg, the way he’s always wanted to with Greg.
He thinks of the same hospital waiting room, but a different scene. A cheap gossip magazine spread out over his lap; a younger, innocent Greg standing over him.
I’ll look after you.
Tom leans in closer, his hand moving toward Greg’s, but he doesn’t pick it up.
“Who has ever looked after you in this fucking family, huh?” Tom asks, and Greg doesn’t answer him, doesn’t even look at him, but Tom knows it works. He knows the gears are turning again.
And then he starts asking about assistants, about underlings, about his own Greg, and Tom’s got him. Hook, line, sinker. The Waystar Two, riding out of the ashes.
“Do you want a deal with the Devil?” Tom smiles, just a little, not too much. He can’t scare him away just yet, and he can’t scare himself away either.
“What am I going to do with a soul anyways?” Greg asks, after a moment of consideration, and Tom laughs. It's fantastic, and the laugh is joyous, but it's sort of funny, isn't it? The fact that he's with Greg on the night the Roy kids go to kill their dad. It's perfect. It's a glorious callback in Tom's tragicomedy of a life.
Greg laughs with him, leaning forward, and Tom thinks for half a second that Greg’s going to kiss him, but then he’s just planting his hands on Tom’s shoulders to make a stupid joke.
“Of course.” Greg says after, grinning like Tom should’ve known the answer all along. Tom reaches out to shake his hand and then pulls Greg to stand, letting himself be wrapped in a lanky, warm, Gumby-like hug.
It feels good. Greg’s always desperate for someone to accept some kind of touch from him, Tom’s desperate to be touched, he’s desperate for Greg to touch him. It’s a win, win, win.
Not for the first time, Tom considers the merits of tilting his head up to kiss Greg.
He doesn’t have time for that now. They’re at a wedding, they’re surrounded by people. Tom’s got to be single-minded and get to Logan before the rug can be yanked. There will be time to fantasize about kissing Greg later. There always is.
Tom pulls back and walks away, and gestures for Greg to follow when the bumbling idiot doesn’t just do it.
Wordlessly, they march to Tom and Shiv’s suite. It feels a little like fucking in his and Shiv's marriage bed when they discuss what to say to Logan, and Tom likes the feeling.
----
“Logan Roy’s phone,” Kerry picks up, and Tom rolls his eyes, pacing back and forth and resisting the urge to grit his teeth.
“Yeah, I need Logan.” He wipes a speck of invisible dust from his jacket to keep his hands moving. “It’s Tom.”
“Logan’s really busy-”
“It’s urgent. I need him now.”
Sudden fumbling, like the phone’s being handed away. Tom takes a few seconds to steel himself, taking a deep breath and straightening his spine. Greg, hunched in his chair, flashes him a thumbs-up from the corner. Tom briefly wonders if bringing Greg with him was a good idea after all, but it doesn’t matter, does it? Either way, Shiv will know that Tom’s killed her. Who cares what Greg has to say? He's self-interested as hell, and he likely won't do anything to hurt himself here.
Anyway, Tom didn't give him too much information. He's not a moron. Plus, he's has already threatened to rip Greg’s intestines out through his nose if he squeals, so the bases are probably covered.
“Yes, Tom?” Logan sounds annoyed that he’s answering the phone, even deigning himself to speak to Tom Wambsgans, the pathetic husband to his daughter.
“Logan,” Tom says, pasting on a plastic smile for no one to see. “Yeah, I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just…well, are you sitting down? Because you might want to be.”
“Tom, I’m incredibly busy. Could you cut to the fucking point?”
He glances at Greg, who nods and raises his eyebrows. Tom takes a deep breath, then cuts to the fucking point.
----
After half an hour, Kerry texts him to come and come quickly, so Tom does. He sits in the backseat of the car, his leg bouncing with pent-up energy, and thinks of dogs. More specifically, how people put dogs down when they get too aggressive, when they start to bite their loved ones, when they can't help but be mean.
That’s why you love me, Shiv had said, smelling like cigarette smoke and perfume. Even if I don’t love you.
Tom's so fucking tired of being bitten.
His phone buzzes with a text from Greg, a string of useless emojis that probably have a point that Tom’s too busy to figure out. He’s probably fucking the contessa right now, or the other one with the dishwater blonde hair, but Tom can’t find it in himself to care. Another time, maybe. He’s too hopped up on the fact that he’s just killed his wife and his in-laws. Sacrificed the whole fucking farm of goats.
You're marrying a man fathoms beneath you because you don't want to risk being betrayed, Logan had spit, and Christ. If only they knew.
When the car finally drops him off, he takes the stairs two at a time.
----
Tom can just see into the room, can see Roman on the floor, head in his hands. Kendall standing over him, a firm hand to his shoulder. Shiv, in her dress that she sent away to be steamed last night, looking like the world has just ended. Tom supposes it has.
He wonders if he should feel slimier. He doesn’t feel fantastic, but he doesn’t feel like total shit, either.
Logan stops him outside of the room, squeezing his shoulder in an almost paternal way, nodding at him with a slight smile.
Tom thinks of the way he gripped his wrist in his office, of his whispered, I’ll remember. Of his tinny voice on the other end of the phone line, a dark chuckle and then a, Thank you, Tom. You’re a valuable asset to have.
Tom’s fucking in, he knows it now. Climbing to the top with Sporus, barely glancing back at his wife lying dead at the bottom of the stairs.
Tom steps over the threshold, swallowing roughly, and makes a beeline to Shiv.
“What’s wrong?” He asks, reaching for her hand, but she yanks it away too quickly. She looks up at him, and there’s something different in her face.
She knows.
“Mom fucked us.” She says, her voice cracking, her nose wrinkling. She’s trying not to cry here, in front of her siblings, in front of Karl, Frank, and Gerri, in front of Tom.
He wonders if this is what Brutus felt like with Caesar’s blood dripping from his blade.
Tom places his hands on Shiv’s shoulders, squeezing gently, and leans down to kiss her on the top of the head. Because he wants to comfort her. Because he loves her, albeit about seventy percent less than he did at the start, and it’s fucked up but it’s what it is. Because she might not know yet, and he wants to keep her from knowing for as long as he can.
Beneath his palms, she stiffens like he’s hurt her. He knows that he has.
Suddenly, it feels fucking awful, but under that awfulness, it feels good. It feels like burning down the forest to let new life grow.
You gave me the gun, Shiv. He thinks, miserable and elated at once. You taught me to shoot, you gave me the gun, and you expect me not to pull the trigger?
Shiv jerks out from under his hands, turning to fix him with a glare. Her eyes narrow, her jaw clenches, and she nods at him, just once. It all means: I know what you fucking did.
She turns and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Tom doesn’t follow her. He just smiles, even though it tastes acidic.