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Here. It starts like any other day for him. He wakes up, head pounding and faking a king-sized personality before he can even look in the mirror. He’s lifeless, life-sized, unreal. He keeps a smile on his face for Dad’s funeral. For his dad’s funeral.
He hates the performative nature of it. He’s fine; he’s pre-grieved, he won’t be the disappointment-child again. He can smile and nod and read off of a few measly cards- that are handwritten and show too much of his heart tucked in his sleeve.
Maybe that is why he feels punctured, bleeding out, when he chokes. His weaknesses were pumping near the surface and all the people that wanted to fuck him, finally got to. It’s a free for all, it’s a fuck fest. He knows he needs to man up and tighten his tie on properly and pretend that it was all some weird fucking play on his part. That don’t worry Kendall, I’m acting, it’s fine! God forbid I’m falling apart because our dad just died. Fuck you.
He stumbles back to the pews, accepting and flailing in the fleeting attempts of comfort from his siblings. He’s fucked. He’s really fucked. This is why he couldn’t be CEO, this is why his siblings couldn’t get along, why his Dad wouldn’t even try to love him. Because he fucked up, he fucks it up. That’s- he does that best. He’s so fucking good at his job, at this business.
He wants to tear himself in two, manifest the inner ache into something physical, raw.
He’s been teetering on the edge of trialing and swapping random pills he swiped from dad, that it will numb the grief, that he can forget where he is, what’s going on. That maybe there’s a solution in this. Maybe he could be happy being braindead.
He doesn’t- he doesn’t think. He never thinks and he should. He should walk straight back from where he came from and get his driver to take him back home. Back . . . to where he lives. He’s sick at the thought. He can’t be so soft in the same place he- just hours ago- paraded around with such confidence. Besides, there is nothing comforting in the soulless abyss of his gray-scale miniature office. He needs something to just- he needs to- he just.
He needs to not be here. He doesn’t have the balls to take the pills, so he goes where his body takes him. He feels faded, sort of loopy, confused and craving. He needs comfort, familiarity- he needs to wretch his guts out on the pavement, he needs to be the joke, the spectacle again. On his own terms or whatever bullshit.
He’s not sure this is on his own terms. He’s hardly aware of what he’s doing, watching himself from across the street.
Roman is half-awake, blinking and bruised and bleeding out. He stabilizes himself against a wall with a flaring pain in his arm, he slips to the ground despite his attempts to will his mind to be strong and tough and- and manly. Or just- strong enough to keep his body afloat.
He’s scared. He’s tired- of running and hiding and all the bullshit involved in his life. And he doesn’t want to admit that, to vocalize his fears. That’s just- that’s stupid. He’d be stupid to fuck away his life right now.
He calls his mom, crying about being hurt and needing somewhere to stay.
It’s not even really Roman’s idea to not let anyone know where he is, he doesn’t think about it. It’s not on the forefront of his head (what is- though- is a great slit around his brow that’s been stitched into place). He’s not thinking how annoyed his siblings might be- if they even realize he’s gone missing. He needs space and air- needs to breathe air that doesn’t remind him of the shitshow of the last week, a few months. Air that doesn’t make his breathing funny.
He only asks, because he knows he’s been invited, that he’s welcomed. He doesn’t really want to see Caroline, but it’s inevitable.
The first night he’s in the Caribbean, he sobs into a mouthful of pillow.
Part of him hopes everyone in New York forgets about him, lets him slink away into isolation on his own with a whimper and not take it as a cry for help.
Still, Kendall and Sioban show up the afternoon after he disappears.
No one ever takes the runt of the litter seriously. He knows this. It still hurts, a squirt of lemon and a ring of salt to his wounds. When he’s being wined-dined, assaulted and auctioned off by his siblings.
He’s tired of being treated as another pawn in the great schemes of family business. He doesn’t want his siblings to be here because he’s the final vote that matters for some bullshit company acquisition. If he was going to slip away quietly, into the frigid night and get his guts beaten out of him- he was only going to accept worry and love from his lost family. He couldn’t- he can’t go back to the city, to that fucking sky scraper of a thing. He’s not . . . he’s not built for all this.
Sure, maybe all the Roys are or aren’t or whatever they might be. But whatever they were supposed to be- he isn’t. He can’t mold himself to be the larger than life projection his dad was. He can’t even try to fill in his own place in this mess, much less try to be his dad or some nutjob at the company.
He wants to say he was built for love- but even that he fucks up.
Maybe he’s better off slipping down into his own kind of hell instead of adding to the one at Waystar.
What are they going to do, drag him kicking and screaming onto a private plane back to the states- just so little Kendall gets to fill Daddy’s shoes? Fuck, he doesn’t think so.
He doesn’t think about Y/n when he leaves. He leaves on a selfish whim and even if he didn’t- he wouldn’t have been imagining the possibility of their tear-streaked face not knowing where he was.
Because no one means anything to anyone. Everybody’s always fucking somebody else.
He knows people. Everyone knows people. He doesn’t do the whole “friend” thing. He talks more than he gives out.
Even if what they were was . . . friends. It’s the weird chirping back ‘n’ forth he finds so common in the industry. When you’re maneuvering your tactics to screw someone with a bigger dick than you, to seal some deal, make a few bucks with a quickie.
And maybe the occasional after party drink alone at Roman’s place. Which no other weird-businessy associate had with him; maybe with the girls he hung off of but never fucked.
He doesn’t really think of them till Kendall and Shioban leave. He doesn’t have anywhere else for his mind to wander, unless it’s this weeks highlights of: your dad died, you fucked things with Gerri, you made an embarrassment of yourself in front of future world leaders, everyone hates you.
He guesses it’s the only neutral semi-positive aspect in his brain, in the right now, maybe forever.
See, it’s like this. Roman- at the most technical level- has a friend. He doesn’t think of them as this sort of “ride or die” more of a- “you’ve seen me fucked up at too many parties to count and maybe we met in LA first and you moved to NYC when I started making a fool of myself on the corporate ladder”.
He’s never been very good with the whole love thing, though. No matter how hard he tries. So maybe if he was smarter with it, about it- it wouldn’t come as such a blindside seeing them pull up in a private car to his mother’s Caribbean estate.
He’s confused and scowls a bit with a sudden distaste in his mouth, with unfamiliarity of it all. They hadn’t hunted him down to scream at him for how stupid it was to run off and hide. They were worried and told him everything they had in New York was also here, in some country they’ve never been to.
He’s not going to say he loves them. Because who willingly drags the one he loves into the volatile self-depreciation pit with himself? You’ve got to be pretty fucking deranged or self-centered or- and that’s exactly what he is.
With a better education in the arts of acceptance and care, if it weren’t for everything being so fucked maybe what he has with them could be sweet.
Maybe in this new
non-Waystar-Royco-sibling-affiliated
venture could he pretend to understand what it means to be loved.