Work Text:
A most insufferable party for a most insufferable man.
Gerri hoped that when—-if—-she reached her eighty-second birthday, no one around her decided that it would be a great idea to get fifty of her colleagues and acquaintances together to stare at each other and make awkward small talk.
She also sort of hoped that maybe she wouldn’t see age eighty-two.
Admittedly, her thoughts had been straying down darker, more cynical paths than usual since Italy. Since ‘DickPicGate.’ Since her reputation was shot to hell because Roman couldn’t keep his penis to himself. All of Waystar knew—-three months later and she was still entering the building through the fucking freight elevator just to avoid the snickers and stares shot her way every time she passed a group of two or more people.
She was attending this party purely out of obligation. Keeping up appearances. Saving face. After Italy she had almost walked away from all of it, and some days—-days like this, especially—-she wished she had acted on that gin-induced impulse. There was a resignation letter drafted on her personal computer, all shiny and ready to go. Too bad she had sobered up the morning after writing it, and chickened out.
Here and now, she concentrated on doing her best to disengage with a drink and the comforting thought of a cigarette on the balcony when she could slip away. She parked herself first on a settee in the sitting room, then relocated to lurk in a corner when the settee and surrounding area became too crowded for comfort. One of the Pierce clan engaged her in cordial conversation, as only a Pierce could, something about the history of a painting on the wall in Logan’s dining room. She bullshitted through her teeth, wondering if the Pierces, too, knew of The Accidental Dick.
If Roman were here—-if things could go back to the the way they were before, the way they were supposed to be—-he would no doubt be making her laugh, even if the joke was wholly inappropriate. He would sense her stress and her nerves and he would do what he did best, he would turn on that impish charm and engage that sharp, biting wit and…
Well, fuck.
She missed him, and she hated herself for it.
Whiskey wasn’t doing enough to keep her sanity in check. This was the first big social event since Italy, the first gathering of the inner circle plus the expanded inner circle. Gerri had no doubt that every single person within spitting distance knew about her fraught relationship with Roman and his penis and if they didn’t, well, they had heard something and maybe it was even worse, even more salacious than the real truth.
The Pierce cousin had wandered off, likely due to Gerri’s rather unenthusiastic nods and ‘uh-huhs’ once her tolerance for small talk hit its limit. She was beginning to feel trapped in a sea of wagging tongues and rolling eyes and it could be that everyone was talking about her and Roman or no one was talking about her and Roman—-she just knew, very suddenly, that she needed to get out of there.
She attempted to look casual, nonchalant as she sought out the half-bath off the kitchen. Finding it mercifully unoccupied, she locked herself in and sat atop the closed toilet, head in her hands, sweat dampening the back of her neck and trickling down to her bra line. Her jacket was too heavy, too hot. She tugged on the zipper, loosening it until she felt some relief on her flushed, clammy chest. Was this an anxiety attack? Heart attack? Sheer and utter dread manifesting in physical form?
Whatever it was, she knew she had felt it before—-in that sterile, small ladies’ room in Milan.
That had been the direct result of a very specific incident, but this… this was everything, all of it culminating at once. Gojo and the horrors that lurked around the corner—-Matsson likely had a ‘kill list,’ everyone knew it—-the fucking Pierce bid, the specter of Roman and what happened three months ago haunting her at every turn… and the certain knowledge that without Roman, no one was on her side. Perhaps that would not have mattered to a Gerri of the past, but to this Gerri, the now Gerri who was sixty-five and tired in every sense of the word, it served as a reminder of how lonely, how isolated she truly was.
Through the closed door, she heard Logan bellowing her name. Party’s over, everybody go home. Rival bid—-upstairs, library—Tom, Gerri, Frank, Karl.
End of birthday party, end of pity party.
She zipped her jacket, patted cool water on her cheeks and at the nape of her neck, and breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth more than once before she felt like she could rejoin the land of the living.
“Where in the fuck-piss is Gerri,” Logan was shouting from upstairs, loud enough to echo through likely the whole building.
Tom, of all people, was peeking over the top of the stairs just as Gerri started to make her way up. “You’re, ah, being summoned.”
“Yeah, I got that.” She never bothered to adjust her tone for Tom.
Karl and Frank were looking at her somewhat expectantly when she entered the library, and when she gave Frank a quizzical eyebrow-raise he held up his phone for her to read the text.
“It’s the kids,” he said plainly, and once that registered properly in Gerri’s brain she… giggled. She actually laughed, because what else was she going to do, and because frankly it was funny, Logan’s cast-aside children going for his piece of the Pierce pie likely just to… fuck with him.
She wished she had come up with that herself.
But then Karl was looking pointedly at her, and she quickly sobered up. “What.”
“Somebody has to tell him.”
“Uh huh,” she nodded, “Well, I think he’ll take it best from one of you.”
“Uh,” Frank was quick to deflect, “No, I mean, I’m not exactly his favorite person these days.”
Gerri just glared at him. Preach to the choir much, Frank? Received any photos of his son’s penis recently, Frank? “Okay, then” she pivoted to Karl, turning on her saccharine-bullshit voice as best she could, “You’re a trusted advisor.”
"With all due respect, Ger, given that you’re in the position of interim CEO—-”
Her right eyelid twitched—-had Karl actually just called her Ger? Jesus fucking Christ. “I don’t know what the news is,” she cut him off, “It’s beyond my purview, and I’m walking away.”
She turned on her heel, marched exactly three feet away and sat in a chair against the wall, phone in her hand. Her heart was threatening to beat out of her chest; she opened texts > new message > Roman Roy and typed Good luck without a second thought, sent it before she could change her mind.
What she wanted to say was I hope you crush him, I hope you annihilate him, I hope he goes down swinging.
And what she wanted in return was a response. Anything. Three dots appeared, three ominous typing dots… and then just as quickly, they disappeared.
Logan was blathering on, trying to get someone to play class clown; his tone was vaguely reminiscent of Boar on the Floor and Gerri wanted no part of it. She kept her eyes down, focused on her phone, waiting for those three dots to pop up again or better yet, for an actual message to come through. He was busy, she told herself. They were actively meeting with Nan Pierce right now and he was busy—-and no sooner had she thought it than she also thought Jesus Gerri are you fifteen years old? A teenager pining over a boy. A crush mourning love lost.
That was when Logan’s grizzled, intimidating gaze landed squarely on her. Like he could read her mind and know that in that exact moment she had been wishing that his degenerate delinquent son would text her back. Her entire body felt tense, as though her fight or flight response was engaging in the form of the latter. She wanted to bolt out of that chair, hurry down those stairs and into that elevator and get out of there as fast as humanly possible.
And then he spoke to her—-no, not to her, at her. “Gerri. Been sent anything funny lately?”
She was biting down so hard on the inside of her cheek that she tasted blood.
“All a bit horrible for me, Logan, thanks.”
Years of self-preservation, she supposed, left her primed for times like this. She drew from some inner reserve, some well deep down that held a shred of the dignity she’d lost since Italy. That reserve was dwindling, though. Her nails were bitten to hell and back, tips of her fingers too sore to damage any further. The cracks in her usually stoic veneer were showing more and more every day.
Staring at her phone, willing those three dots to show up, she thought again about the resignation letter in her email drafts. She could do it. She could send it right now, without a word, and wait for the world to explode around her. She could send it and text Roman I did it, I’m free, whatever you’re doing I want in. I’m yours.
Maybe one day. Maybe soon.