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He's done this dance easily five times already today, and it hardly seems worth remarking on, that it's happening one more time. He and Shiv have just left the library, and he's trying to say a single coherent sentence to her, something beyond what the actual fuck, but Tom stops halfway down the stairs and glances significantly at them. Says it without saying it. I need to talk to one of you right now, and the other one needs to fuck off. Don't make me say which one is which.
Ken and Stewie. Shiv and Tom. Karl and Frank. Greg and fucking Marcia for some reason. Pairing up faster than cheerleaders at prom, like the aftermath of Logan's death is a duel and every man needs a second.
Literally, spiritually, or both, there’s an odd number of people at this shriveled-up dick of a wake. But Roman's used to being the odd man out.
Roman doesn’t say anything, just makes a sound that he hopes conveys he wants Tom to stumble into a tar pit and leaves his sister and her estranged husband on the stairs. Ken, he knows, is still upstairs, having some weepy-eyed heart-to-heart with Frank about the handwritten will that means—meant—for at least twenty seconds at some unspecified point in the past—that the Titan of Industry, Sick Fuck in Charge, Ghost of Christmas Prime Time Logan Roy loved him.
It’s pathetic, is what it is. Begging for scraps when the kitchen is closed.
It’s also spitting in the face of fate, which is a thing he tries not to do. Ken’s crying upstairs, and Shiv’s about half a second from crying on the stairs, and Roman is trying to put as much space as he can between himself and both of them before something he can’t stop happens.
He hasn’t cried once since the news broke at Connor’s wedding. That dam’s gonna break eventually, but it’s not gonna happen here. Saying it to himself will make it true. That's how these things work.
I need you, Romulus.
There’s a commotion happening at the foot of the stairs, and thank fuck for that, is his current opinion. He glances to the ceiling, saying a quiet thank you to the gods of distraction or whoever for giving him something else to think about. He trots down the rest of the stairs, lingering near the doorway just out of sight as what promises to be a real shitshow continues to unfold.
Kerry is coming out of the elevator, and it takes everything in him not to draw back a step at the absolute blasted emptiness that he can see in her even from here. She’s smiling, but there’s nothing behind it. Roman’s an expert at slapping an insincere smile over whatever’s going on beneath, but even he’s never seen a mask this thin. It seems like if he taps her forehead with his fingernail, the whole thing will shatter, and he’ll have to look into the screaming black hole that’s filled up what used to be Kerry.
“I just have some things,” she’s saying, and she gestures toward the stairs.
Roman would rather think about damn near anything than try to guess what Kerry left in his dad’s bedroom. Silk underwear. Bright pink handcuffs and a cattle prod. His brain is flashing images in front of his eyes faster than he can stop them, Kerry and Logan naked in bed, Logan’s head thrown back, Logan’s eyes closed, Logan’s bare torso on the scratchy blue carpet of the airplane aisle, Logan’s eyes closed, Logan’s lips parted but no breath coming from between them, Logan's skin gray and slack, Logan’s face disappearing behind the zipper of a body bag—
Marcia shoves a plastic bag into Kerry’s hands, packed to overflowing with innocuous nonsense. A few bottles of hair product. Notebooks. A phone charger. A handful of orange-tinted prescription bottles with the child-safe caps. The bag, not quite in her grip, clatters to the floor. Three of the glass bottles shatter.
Both Roman and Kerry flinch like somebody’s slapped them.
Do you take pleasure, Logan used to ask, in being a twisted, fucked-up sack of shit, and usually the words would be enough but once a decanter of scotch had crashed into the wall just above Roman’s left shoulder, and bits of glass had rained down over him, one nicking him below the eye, and he’d stood there with his back still against the damp wall for a quarter of an hour after Logan had stormed out, not moving until the housekeeper had slunk in, not meeting his eyes as she said can you move, please, Mr. Roy, I need to clean the carpet.
Fucking shit.
How long would Kerry stand here without anyone saying anything? Until the cleaning staff comes with a mop?
“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, pushing past Greg to crouch down on the floor next to Kerry. “Are you okay? It’s fine. I’ve got it.”
They’re all staring at him now, but he can ignore them so long as he’s only looking at Kerry, who is about a heartbeat away from hyperventilating and is scrambling to sweep her trivial, inessential bullshit back into the bag like it fucking matters. Her hands are trembling. He’s picking everything up, putting it away, cleaning up the mess and making eye contact with her like both their lives depend on it. You’re a fucking person, he’s saying, without words but through sheer force of goddamn will. You’re a person, and I see you, and be fucking careful not to get cut, because people bleed, when you cut them.
“He said he was going to look after me, can you just check, please—”
Kerry. Ken. Goddamn Question-Mark Greg. The list of people Logan intended to look out for is getting longer and longer, and pretty soon it’s going to be long enough he can make a noose out of it.
“It’s okay,” he says again, “I’ll check, I promise. I don’t think I have your personal number, can you—”
But it’s too late. With most of her shit in the bag, security has decided they’ve waited long enough, and Kerry is ushered through the hall and toward the back entrance, her shoulders still shaking, tears starting in earnest now.
Roman stays where he is for another beat, surrounded by broken glass.
“Fuck,” he says. “Marcia, that was unnecessary, right?”
“We’re calling her a taxi to the subway,” Marcia says.
I can call you a taxi, Logan said from across the conference table, in the packed-full board room, as Roman shrank into his chair and became smaller and more spineless than he’d ever been in his life, an insect would have more dignity than he did then, and you can go home to the apartment that I pay for with the money from my fucking company and jerk off until your hand cramps, or you can sit up straight, get serious, and try to behave like a fucking man.
Broken glass and scotch, and a thin trail of blood trickling down from beneath his eye. If he’s remembering right, he was fifteen then.
“Nice,” he says quietly. “Jesus.”
The room is buzzing now, like static around the edges. Nobody is looking at him now, nobody is paying attention to him. He could not be here at all and it would be all the same to them. He could walk straight off the balcony and splatter into a pulp on the sidewalk thirty stories down, literally not a single fucking person would look.
Before anyone else can try to offer insincere condolences or start pissing on the wallpaper to get their scent-claim on Logan’s apartment, Roman turns on his heel and almost runs down the hall, away from the chatter in the dining room and the study, into the tiny guest bathroom at the very end of the hallway, where he shuts the door behind.
This bathroom is one of the only rooms in the house that doesn’t feel like Logan’s ever been in it. It's tiny, impersonal. Basic. If Roman reaches out his hands, he could touch all four walls from where he’s standing. It’s laid out like a hotel, green wallpaper and a brushed metal soap dispenser with a gold ring around the bottom. He finds himself staring at the gold like there’s going to be an answer in it. His hands grip the bathroom counter until they’re shaking. He’s not breathing right. Can’t even fucking breathe right, you piece of shit. Breathe.
Breathe, fuck.
He glances up without meaning to, and then his own face in the mirror freezes him in place.
He looks awful. He looks unhinged.
He looks like he’s about to rip off his own skin.
He looks like Logan.
Shiv and Ken have always taken after their mom, tall and willowy and elegant the way old money is supposed to be, and Connor is his own fucking thing entirely, but Roman got Logan’s genes with the force of a double-barrel shotgun. Short, sturdy, deep-set eyes and strong nose. How many times, when he was growing up, did people dropping by the house to close deals or sign contracts or rig elections look Roman up and down and say to Logan, “That one takes after you”?
And how many times had Logan blown out a breath, shaken his head, and said, “Fuck, not that one.”
Logan Roy minus the brilliance. Minus the confidence. Minus the presence, the command, the power, the fearlessness, the ruthless precision, minus, minus, minus, minus.
Roman’s gripping the bathroom counter so hard his hands ache.
Is he going to pass out? Fuck, wouldn’t that be the perfect ending. He hasn’t eaten anything since before Tom’s phone call yesterday. Not that it's a new habit. People have just chalked it up to shock or grief this time, and he doesn't have to hide it the way he usually does. He likes the static feeling of emptiness that comes from a day without food. Likes the feeling of hovering six inches above his stupid useless body that doesn’t know how to be, doesn’t know how to sit, doesn’t know how to fuck, is constantly taking up the wrong amount of space at the wrong time, the fucking photo negative of Logan Roy. Here, past the point of hunger, all those things are still true, but it’s almost like it’s happening to someone else.
Which is all well and good, except he’s had one too many glasses of whiskey on an empty stomach today, and between the panic and the alcohol and the fact that Logan’s death has changed the way gravity usually works, he’s about to lose it.
Fainting is what he’s afraid of. Puking is what actually happens.
He’s too rattled to move to the toilet, but there’s nothing in his stomach anyway. The amber-colored mucus that burns through his throat is thin enough that it washes straight down the sink when he turns on the tap. Like nothing ever happened. The only evidence is the sound, and no one’s out there listening. He could howl at the ceiling like a wolf and no one would notice.
He opens his mouth intending to do it, to scream, to hurl obscenities at the overhead light, just to see what it would feel like in his foul-tasting mouth, to tell the ghost of Logan Roy how he really feels.
The tears come instead, surprising him.
I think I pre-grieved, he’d said less than an hour ago, like the fucking liar he is. Whatever he’s felt up until this moment, it wasn’t grief. Wasn’t this.
He sinks down to the floor, leaning his back against the wall. The room is so narrow that he’s almost wedged between the wall and the vanity, his toes resting against the baseboard. He bends over on himself, taking up even less space than the little he’s been given. Forehead on his knees, arms around his shins.
Everything he hasn’t felt for twenty-four hours crashes into him all at once, and in the seclusion of the tiny bathroom, there’s no one to see as he shatters.
The noise he’s making sounds like it’s coming from a huge distance, the breaths rattling through him, the sobs tearing out loud and ugly and raw. He’s never made these sounds in the thirty-five years he’s been alive, even though there’s been a hundred reasons he should have, but he can hardly even hear them now.
All he hears, through the silence and his own howling grief, is Logan.
You’re a fucking coward.
You’re not serious people.
A closed fist to the jaw. Silver ring drawing blood from his gums. He’d spat red into the bathroom sink, swilling water until it faded to a pink tinge. Everyone on the board had seen.
Are you a fucking sicko? Are you scared of pussy? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Don’t you ever speak to me like that again, you sick fuck.
Sixteen, home from military school for the summer. Ken and Shiv lounging across deck chairs at the pool, laughing and pointing at his crew cut. The reflexive way he keeps squaring his shoulders because he’s used to getting hit across the shins with a rifle every time he slouches. The way he flinches every time he sees Logan from the corner of his eye. Logan, who hasn’t met his eyes once since he stepped out of the taxi a month before.
Maybe they’ll beat some sense into you at that place. Don’t come back until they do.
If I hurt you, it’s because you needed to be hurt.
He’d been in the dog kennel for two hours, and Ken refused to open the door, and he was gonna piss his pants because it had been two hours and he was four years old and he was fighting like fuck not to cry but the door was locked and even then it was too small for him to stand up in, hardly wide enough to sit down, and he punched the kennel bars until his knuckles broke open. Logan in the doorway, watching. You’re lucky, Romulus. In real life, you were a puppy, they’d drown you.
We’re gonna show them all, son. No one fucks with us and lives to tell.
I need you, Romulus.
I love you.
He can’t tell whether the last one is in Logan’s voice or his own.
He’s never loved or hated anyone more than his dad.
With Logan gone, there’s no one left for him to hate but himself.
The bathroom door is opening, and Roman is so surprised the sob chokes back in his throat like it's suddenly embarrassed to be here. He runs the back of one hand across his eyes—like that’s going to hide anything, he’s just been wailing like a fucking Scooby-Doo monster for shit knows how long—and looks up.
Gerri stands in the bathroom doorway for about three seconds. Then, she steps inside and closes the door after her. Cautiously, movement hampered by her pencil skirt, she settles herself onto the white shag rug next to Roman.
Wordlessly, she hands Roman a cut-crystal tumbler of whiskey.
He takes it, because what else is he going to do? The cool glass shocks his palms. It’s so fucking absurd that the sob still caught in his throat turns into a laugh, and then before he can stop himself the laughter keeps bubbling out in this goddamn ludicrous torrent. We didn’t get you from the hyena farm, he hears Logan say in his ear, and the laughter only gets worse, or is he crying again? He’s long past the point where he can tell the difference.
Finally—he can’t tell how long, could have been an hour or two minutes—the wave passes, and Roman comes back to himself. He leans his head back against the wall and lets out a shuddering breath, which he chases with a healthy swig of whiskey. Hard to tell whether the buzzing in his brain is from too much to drink on an empty stomach or whatever Exorcist-style bullshit he’s just projectile vomited across the bathroom.
And across Gerri. Who’s still sitting here holding her own drink, watching him.
Motherfucker.
Roman clears his throat. “Cocksucker,” he says hoarsely.
It’s not eloquent, but Gerri has seen worse. “Are you done?” she says.
“Jesus fuck, Mother Teresa,” Roman says. “They teach you that one at Frigid Bitch School? My dad died yesterday, but yeah, I’m done.”
“I know,” Gerri says. “Roman. I know.”
She reaches over and puts her free hand on his shoulder. Roman squirms away from her touch—it feels wrong, too close, too real, and he knows that if he isn’t careful she’s gonna set him off crying again—but even though she takes the cue and draws away, it feels good, the memory that she tried. Plenty of people have tried to touch Roman today, hugs and bracing pats on the back and somber handshakes. Gerri’s hand on his shoulder is the first one that hasn’t felt like the beginning of a business transaction.
It feels like someone lifting him to his feet. Holding him up. Even in memory, that’s enough.
“Blah blah blah they fuck you up, your mom and dad,” Roman says, sniffling loudly, before draining the rest of his glass and setting it down next to him on the tile.
“He loved you,” Gerri says.
"Fuck off."
“I think he loved you,” Gerri amends. “I really do. But that doesn’t matter.”
Roman stares. “Fucking Christ, Gerri, you get possessed by Dad’s angry ghost yesterday? Are you about to call me a cocksucker and tell me to go close the GoJo deal?”
Gerri rolls her eyes, and it feels so good, that familiar expression. “Roman. Feel this tomorrow. Feel it for the rest of your life. Today, go play the game.”
She’s exasperated with him. Well, fine. Roman spends plenty of time being exasperated with himself. But she hasn’t given up. She’s here. She’s sitting next to Roman. Not Shiv, not Ken, not Frank, not Karolina, not Tom. All the assassins in today’s battle royale for the throne of Waystar, and Gerri has decided to sit next to him, Roman, fucked-up disaster third child of a dead titan.
Finally, Roman thinks, a little hysterically. A goddamn pair.
“This your Lady Macbeth moment, Ger?” Roman says, but his voice is coming back to its usual tenor, and he feels his heart rate start to ease back into its cadence. “Gonna give me a dagger and tell me to go stab the king. Fitting at a fucking wake.”
“Don’t be like Kerry,” Gerri says. She stands up, smoothing the wrinkles out of her skirt. “Be a Roy.”
It feels like a compliment, not a sneer, when she says it.
“Aye aye, captain,” Roman says grimly, pulling a mock-salute. “Permission to make sure I don’t look like I need a lobotomy before it’s back to the wars?”
Gerri gestures at the sink. “Board meeting’s at noon. Be ready for the vote.”
She leaves him, closing the door softly behind.
Probably she wants something. Probably she thinks she can manipulate him easier than she can Ken or Shiv. Probably she’s right. But in that moment, Roman doesn’t particularly care what her motive is. He splashes cool water on his face, dampening his hair to get it to lie flat. It doesn’t quite clear the pink from his eyes, but he’s at his fucking father’s fucking wake. If he isn’t allowed to look like he’s been crying here, he doesn’t know the rules for anything.
I need you, Romulus, Logan’s voice says quietly in his ear, one more time.
“Fuck off,” Roman says to the empty bathroom. "I needed you too."
He opens the door and returns to the buzz and activity of the house, losing himself in the crowd as if he’s never been away. The cut-crystal tumbler remains on the tiled bathroom floor, each facet of the whole catching the light like shards of broken glass.